Overnight News Digest
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall,side pocket,Man Oh Man and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, and Oke. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Much less loss of life than expected.
BBC
India's Cyclone Phailin leaves trail of destruction
Indian disaster teams have begun a relief operation after Cyclone Phailin crashed into eastern areas, forcing up to one million people to flee.
Officials are assessing the damage and providing food to hundreds of thousands who spent the night in shelters.
The cyclone wrecked many coastal homes, uprooted trees and blocked roads in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states.
Eighteen people have been killed. All but one of the deaths were in Orissa, a senior state official told the BBC.
"We have been able to [keep] the death toll to a bare minimum," Marri Shashidhar Reddy of the national disaster management authority told reporters in Delhi.
In 1999 a cyclone killed more than 10,000 people in Orissa.
But the authorities said they were better prepared this time.
BBC
Humans do what a cyclone couldn't.
India temple stampede in Madhya Pradesh 'kills 89'
Some 89 pilgrims, mostly women and children, have been killed in a stampede at a Hindu festival in central India, local officials have said.
Many were crushed after panic broke out on a bridge near the Ratangarh temple in Madhya Pradesh state. Others died when they jumped from the bridge.
Officials said the stampede may have been sparked by a rumour that the bridge was about to collapse.
Hundreds of thousands had gathered near the town of Datia for the festival.
Local devotee Atul Chaudhary, who survived the crush, told BBC Hindi there had been a couple of thousand people on the bridge.
BBC
IMF chief warns a US default could spark recession
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has warned that a US default could tip the world into recession.
In a US TV interview she said a default would result in "massive disruption the world over".
The US Treasury will start to run short of funds on Thursday if no agreement is reached for it to raise its debt limit.
Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate held direct talks for the first time in weeks on Saturday.
But there is little sign of any breakthrough, correspondents say.
In an interview with ABC's Meet the Press Christine Lagarde said America must now raise the debt ceiling before Thursday's deadline
"If there is that degree of disruption, that lack of certainty, that lack of trust in the US signature, it would mean massive disruption the world over and we would be at risk of tipping yet again into recession," she said.
BBC
Link to Oetzi the Iceman found in living Austrians
Austrian scientists have found that 19 Tyrolean men alive today are related to Oetzi the Iceman, whose 5,300-year-old frozen body was found in the Alps.
Their relationship was established through DNA analysis by scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University.
The men have not been told about their connection to Oetzi. The DNA tests were taken from blood donors in Tyrol.
A particular genetic mutation was matched, the APA news agency reports.
Oetzi's body was found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991.
Always makes me think of the 1984 movie
Iceman, which is one of my favorite movies but not so well known.
BBC
Iran rejects West's demand to ship out enriched uranium
Iran will not allow any of its enriched uranium to be shipped abroad, the deputy foreign minister says, rejecting a key demand of Western powers.
Abbas Araqchi was quoted by state media as saying that "shipping the material abroad is our red line".
The comments come ahead of key talks this week in Geneva between Iran and international negotiators over the nuclear dispute.
The talks will be the first since President Hassan Rouhani took office.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the window for diplomacy was "cracking open".
"But I want you to know that our eyes are open, too," he added, addressing a summit of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee by video link from London. "Words must be matched with actions."
Reuters
U.S. Senate leader sees chance for breaking fiscal impasse
I think I reported a similar statement a week ago.
But this is serious. They're going to work on a holiday!
(Reuters) - Senate negotiations to bring a boiling fiscal crisis to an end showed signs of progress on Sunday, but there were no guarantees that the U.S. federal government shutdown was about to end or that a historic default would be avoided.
Friday's optimism that a deal might be forged before financial markets opened on Monday vanished on Saturday and the talks moved from the acrimony of the House of Representatives to the Senate.
Negotiations that were likely to stretch into the week continued between the Senate's top Democrat and Republican.
Underscoring the urgency of resolving the impasse, both the Senate and House are scheduled to be in session on Monday, even though it is the Columbus Day federal holiday.
Reuters
Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussles for talent
It might be enough to make a down payment on a Silicon Valley house.
The senior vice president of engineering raked in $10.3 million last year, just behind Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo's $11.5 million, according to Twitter's IPO documents. That is more than the paychecks of executives such as Chief Technology Officer Adam Messinger, Chief Financial Officer Mike Gupta and Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani.
Welcome to Silicon Valley, where a shortage of top engineering talent amid an explosion of venture capital-backed start-ups is inflating paychecks.
"The number of A-players in Silicon Valley hasn't grown," said Iain Grant, a recruiter at Riviera Partners, which specializes in placing engineers at venture-capital backed start-ups. "But the demand for them has gone through the roof."
Stories abound about the lengths to which employers will go to attract engineering talent - in addition to the free cafeterias, laundry services and shuttle buses that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are already famous for.
NPR
15 Years Later, Where Did All The Cigarette Money Go?
Fifteen years after tobacco companies agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines in what is still the largest civil litigation settlement in U.S. history, it's unclear how state governments are using much of that money.
So far tobacco companies have paid more than $100 billion to state governments as part of the 25-year, $246 billion settlement.
Among many state governments receiving money, Orange County, Calif., is an outlier. Voters mandated that 80 percent of money from tobacco companies be spent on smoking-related programs, like a cessation class taught in the basement of Anaheim Regional Medical Center.
"So go ahead and take a minute or two to write down reasons why you want to quit and we'll talk about them in just a bit," Luisa Santa says at the start of a recent session.
L A Times
In Virginia, government shutdown already hurting a GOP candidate
Good news, that guy is as crazy as Bachmann.
RICHMOND, Va. — Ken Cuccinelli is running for governor, not Congress, but the Virginia Republican is struggling to dodge the political fallout from Capitol Hill.
His campaign in this crucial battleground state is in danger of becoming the first political casualty of the federal government shutdown, which Americans largely blame on Republicans.
With the election just weeks away, Cuccinelli's poll numbers have tumbled since federal agencies were closed Oct. 1. The conservative state attorney general was already lagging, but he went from within striking distance of a vulnerable Democrat to trailing by 8 to 10 percentage points in three independent polls.
L A Times
Grand Canyon, Statue of Liberty and Mt. Rushmore to reopen
As lawmakers wrangle over how to end the partial shutdown of the federal government, officials in New York, South Dakota and Arizona secured late on Friday the reopening of three national parks: the Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, and the Grand Canyon.
The iconic parklands -- and crucial drivers of state tourism revenue -- will reopen with operating funds "donated" by state coffers. The Grand Canyon and Statue of Liberty will open Saturday in time for the three-day weekend, and Mt. Rushmore will reopen Monday, according to the Department of Interior.
“While this deal will buy us some time and bring back lost revenue to the state, I would hope our elected officials in Washington move urgently to negotiate an immediate end to this government standstill," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said in a statement released Friday
.