Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
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The Guardian
Vice-president Joe Biden arrived in Japan on Monday amid a rift with America's closest Pacific ally after China announced an expanded air defense zone.
While the US and Japan have made a public show of unity following China’s demand last week that all aircraft passing over a disputed island chain identify themselves to Beijing, American and Japanese aviation authorities are adopting divergent positions over whether civilian flights should comply with the Chinese demand.
Biden, who arrived in Tokyo late Monday night local time, now has the task of reassuring Japanese and South Korean allies over their fraught confrontation with China about its expansive so-called “air defense identification zone.” The issue is likely to overshadow a week-long trip to the three Asian countries that US officials had hoped would focus on economic affairs.
“I believe this latest incident underscores the need for agreement between China and Japan to establish crisis management and confidence-building measures to lower tensions,” Biden said in an interview with Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper on the eve of his arrival.
Spiegel Online
Beijing's recent establishment of a new air defense zone in the East China Sea is exacerbating long-running disputes with its neighbors Japan and Taiwan -- and threatens to draw the US military into a larger regional conflict.
If it were only a matter of distance, the solution to a dispute over a small group of hotly contested islands in the East China Sea would be simple. Taiwan, which is just 200 kilometers (125 miles) away from the islands, would take the prize. The Chinese mainland is farther off, at 330 kilometers away, and the Japanese island of Okinawa even more distant, at 400 kilometers. Why then shouldn't small Taiwan take control of the five uninhabited islands and three rock outcroppings, known as the Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan?
New York Times
Tokyo — With Japan locked in a tense standoff with China over disputed airspace, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived here late Monday for a weeklong visit to Asia intended to reassure a close ally and demand answers from a potential adversary.
But first, Mr. Biden may need to repair a perceived disconnect between the United States and Japan in their responses to China’s declaration of a restricted flight zone over a swath of the East China Sea that includes disputed islands claimed by both Japan and China.
McClatchy DC
MIDLAND, TEXAS — All along the highway that leads into this city in West Texas, the rows of black pump jacks seem endless, bobbing up and down as they pull crude oil from beneath the parched scrub desert.
The pump jacks have long been here, in good times and bad, a symbol of this city’s long status as the heart of America’s petroleum industry. Even when U.S. oil production was dropping and many feared the Permian Basin, which feeds Midland’s oil economy, was all but exhausted, the pump jacks continued their work – even when the result seemed hardly worth the effort.
Now, their up and down motion seems all but unstoppable, a symbol of an energy revolution that seems likely to transform the globe.
“Everything has changed,” said Jim Henry, 78, who’s worked in Texas’ oilfields most of his life .
A surge in U.S. oil production has in just a few short years propelled the United States from a country largely dependent on oil imports to one that soon could become the world’s top oil producer. The goal of North American energy self-sufficiency, the holy grail of American politics since the Arab oil boycott of 1973, seems to be within grasp.
McClatchyDC
WASHINGTON — The railroad industry brags in its national publicity campaign that it spends billions of dollars improving its infrastructure “so taxpayers don’t have to.”
But the ads don’t tell everything. The nation’s freight rail network has been the quiet recipient of more than $600 million in federal investment during the Obama administration.
According to Federal Railroad Administration numbers, at least half that amount has gone to projects that benefit the nation’s four largest railroads, the same companies at the heart of the industry’s ubiquitous “Freight Rail Works” campaign.
That doesn’t even include tens of millions more that states have contributed for additional investment in ports and high-speed passenger trains that’s boosted the nation’s freight railroads.
Al Jazeera America
GLENDIVE, Mont. — In the kitchen of a small white farmhouse down a corrugated dirt road, through a sea of grass, Irene Moffett pointed at chalky buttes on the blue horizon. For generations, her family has worked this land. Now, one mile from her property, a Canadian company hopes to lay the Keystone XL pipeline, which would siphon crude oil from Canada's tar-sand mines to a seaport on the Gulf of Mexico.
"Most jobs won't last after the pipeline's built, and what happens if there's a spill?" said Moffett, 77. "Why should we put up with the pollution, the disruption of agricultural lands? What's in it for Montana?"
Across this massive state, with scenery ranging from snowy mountains to virgin prairies, a diverse collection of Montanans, in love with their land, is opposing new transportation infrastructure for coal and oil.
Three proposed projects — the Keystone XL pipeline, a new coal railroad and a trucking route for mining equipment the size of apartment buildings — have triggered protests in different regions of the state, and not just from people who dislike fossil fuels.
Al Jazeera America
Online retailer Amazon plans to deliver packages using drones within four to five years, CEO Jeff Bezos said Sunday on the CBS television program "60 Minutes." If successful, Amazon could become the first retailer to employ the technology.
The drones, called octocopters, will pick up items from Amazon distribution centers and fly them to customer's homes, he said.
The aim of the first-generation drones, which would have a 10-mile travel radius, is to deliver packages within 30 minutes. The program has been dubbed Prime Air.
"In urban areas you could actually cover very significant portions of the population," Bezos said.
He added that the drones were electric and "very green — it's better than driving trucks around."
Bezos said the drones could deliver packages that weigh up to five pounds. That includes roughly 86 percent of packages that Amazon delivers, he said.
The drones are still being tested and will operate autonomously. No one will control them beyond entering GPS coordinates.
DW
The National Transportation Safety Board said it expected to continue investigating the accident for at least the next week, with the focus on track conditions, signaling, mechanical equipment and the train crew’s performance.
Four people were killed with 63 others injured on Sunday when the Metro-North passenger train derailed in the Bronx.
Speaking at the scene of the crash, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said officials believed everyone at the site had been accounted for and that the train operator was among the injured.
The train, heading southbound from Poughkeepsie to New York's Grand Central Station, derailed at around 7:20 a.m. (1220 GMT) by Palisade Avenue near the Spuyten Duyvil railroad station, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) said.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) spokesperson Marjorie Anders said the curve where the accident occurred was in a slow speed area. She said the black box onboard should be able to tell how fast the train was traveling at the time of the crash.
Photos taken of the scene of the accident show several cars on their side, with one just feet from the edge of the water where the Harlem River meets the Hudson.
NPR
Tambra Momi has been eagerly awaiting the promise of guaranteed health insurance.
Since 2011, she has battled Dercum's disease, a rare and painful condition in which noncancerous tumors sprout throughout her body, pressing against nerves.
Jobless and in a wheelchair, Momi needs nine different drugs, including one costing $380 a month, to control the pain and side effects. No insurer has been willing to cover her, she says, except a few that have taken her money and then refused to pay for her medications.
Yet her effort to sign up for the health law's coverage has been painful in its own way. Momi, who lives in Fort Mohave, Ariz., hasn't been able to complete an application on the federal HealthCare.gov website. Three attempts to submit an application over the phone haven't panned out. Once when she called back, she says she was told they had no record of the application. Another time, officials told her they could see the application but couldn't open it.
NPR
It's not something we think about a lot or something that gets reported on often, but once you start digging around some, it's hard not to see the consequences of our country's long, sordid history of housing discrimination everywhere racial disparities manifest. The giant wealth gap between black and Latino Americans and white folks. Shorter life expectancies. Worse educational outcomes. Mass incarceration.
Last week's This American Life episode was entirely devoted to this topic, and it makes the relationship between housing discrimination and these other disparities jarringly clear.
"[On] every measure of well-being and opportunity, the foundation is where you live," Nikole Hannah-Jones, the ProPublica reporter on whose reporting much of the episode was based, told TAL's Nancy Updike. "Cancer rates, asthma rates, infant mortality, unemployment, education, access to fresh food, access to parks, whether or not the city repairs the roads in your neighborhood."
Reuters
The death toll in Syria's civil war has risen to at least 125,835, more than a third of them civilians, but the real figure is probably much higher, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.
The pro-opposition monitoring group also appealed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and "all people in the international community who have a conscience" to increase their efforts to end the 2-1/2 year war.
The conflict began as peaceful protests against four decades of rule by President Bashar al-Assad's family, but under a fierce security force crackdown, turned into an armed insurgency whose sectarian dimensions have echoed across the Middle East.
Spiegel Online
In a new book, a political scientist describes Vladimir Putin as a traumatized orphan with alleged homosexual tendencies and enormous wealth. The Kremlin has dismissed the claims as baseless insinuations.
To supporters, Russian President Vladimir Putin is his country's savior. To his opponents, he's little more than a relentless tyrant. In the Wikileaks diplomatic cables, he is likened to cartoon superhero Batman; US business magazine Forbes has just chosen him as one of the most influential people on the planet. Yet there is one thing that pretty much no one has claimed before: That the ruler of the world's largest country (by land), with 143 million inhabitants, nuclear weapons and huge quantities of natural resources, is in reality a pathetic weakling.
DW
Online bidders can submit their offers for a piece of Olympic history that also recalls the history of Nazi Germany and of American segregation. One of the four gold medals won by Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 will have a new owner by December 7; estimates suggest that the medal could fetch about $1 million (737,000 euros).
Owens won gold in the 100- and 200-meters, the 400-meter relay and the long jump in the Berlin Games, triumphing in front of Adolf Hitler and undermining Nazi propaganda myths on Aryan supremacy.
He returned to America as a celebrity but still struggled under policies of segregation.
"When they came back, the US was just as it was when he left - segregated. Even though he came back an Olympic hero, he wasn't offered opportunities that Olympic heroes of today are offered," his daughter, Marlene Owens Rankin, told the Associated Press news agency. "We lived well, a middle-class life. We didn't want for much. But like many black men of that era, he struggled to provide for his family."
The Guardian
The Taliban have urged the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to turn a delay in signing a long-term security deal with the United States into outright rejection, in an unusually polite statement directed at a leader the insurgents have repeatedly denounced as a US puppet.
Karzai last month called a national assembly to vote on the bilateral security agreement (BSA) and then shocked most of the country, including some of his closest advisers, by ignoring the advice of the handpicked group that he sign as soon as possible.
The deal would allow US forces to stay on past the 2014 end of the current combat mission, and seal billions of dollars a year in funding for the Afghan police and military. Karzai's delaying tactics stirred widespread condemnation from many in the Kabul elite worried about how the country would fight the Taliban without foreign funds or back-up.
The Taliban on Monday offered the Afghan leader rare, if somewhat grudging, support for his position so far, but also demanded that he abandon all conditions and reject the pact unilaterally.
New York Times
KIEV, Ukraine — Thousands of people milled about on Independence Square on Monday morning, as the Ukrainian government effectively ceded control of the landmark plaza to protesters demanding the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich and a revival of accords that would draw the country closer to Europe.
Several thousand people also marched on the Cabinet Ministry to demand the resignation of the government. They carried blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags and chanted, “Gang, get out!” Many employees could not enter the building and left — aiding the demonstrators’ effort to paralyze the government.
Bloomberg News
Canada's bid to become what Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls an energy “superpower” is at risk as approval delays for new pipelines threaten an industry already hurt by high costs and rival production.
The world’s sixth-largest crude producer can’t get its surging crude supplies to markets in Asia where prices are higher than in North America. Decisions in the next year or so on proposed pipelines designed to connect oil-sands production to supertankers on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts may set the tone for the future of the nation’s energy industry.
“There’s no doubt that over the next 12 to 24 months, there will be some significant decisions made on pipelines infrastructure in Canada,” Ian Anderson, president of the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan (KMP) Energy Partners LP, said in a Nov. 29 interview in Lake Louise, Alberta. “What’s important about the time frame is, there’s a window of opportunity here to build this infrastructure.”
Reuters
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Monday she would "open every door" to find a peaceful solution to a political crisis gripping Bangkok as police used rubber bullets against protesters seeking to topple her government.
The violence is the latest twist in a conflict pitting Bangkok's middle class and royalist elite against the mostly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist former prime minister who was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and lives in self-imposed exile.
Yingluck told a news conference that police would not use force but the national security chief said rubber bullets were being used as protesters threatened to advance on Yingluck's office, the focal point of the demonstrations since the weekend.
A Ramathibodi Hospital official later said two protesters had been wounded by gunfire but it was not known who shot them.
Al Jazeera America
Africa could lose 20 percent of its elephant population in a decade if current poaching levels are not slowed, animal conservation groups warned Monday.
An estimated 22,000 elephants were illegally killed across the continent last year, as poaching reached "unacceptably elevated levels," according to a joint study (PDF) by three conservation groups released at the start of the African Elephant Summit in Botswana.
The threshold of sustainability of the African elephant population was crossed in 2010, with poaching rates remaining above the population growth rate threshold ever since, the report states.
Experts and ministers met in Botswana Monday to look at ways to stamp out the elephant slaughter, which is mostly fueled by a growing demand for ivory in Asia.
SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Reuters
Hong Kong confirmed its first case of deadly H7N9 bird flu on Monday in a further sign that the virus is continuing to spread beyond mainland China's borders.
The case coincides with the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed nearly 300 people in Hong Kong and had a significant impact on the city's travel and retail industry.
A undated handout artists conception made available 14 November 2013 by Foster and Partners of the the new Apple Campus 2 design which has been approved by the city of Cupertino, California and is a reported 2.8 million square foot (260,000 square meter) building located on an approximately 175 acre (.71 square km) site in the city.
Spiegel Online
Technology giants in the United States are building bombastic new headquarters to immortalize their grandiose ambitions, while inside they plan to turn traditional office culture on its head.
A few weeks before his death, Steve Jobs commissioned one last marvel of ingenuity. He knew that it would be his legacy, a symbol of his work and an expression of creative global supremacy: a new headquarters for Apple, designed by British star architect Sir Norman Foster. "The best office building in the world," Jobs called it when he first revealed the plans, "a little like a spaceship."
It will also probably be the most expensive company headquarters in the world, a gigantic, circular monolith with an estimated price tag of $5 billion (€3.7 billion), eclipsing even the cost of rebuilding the World Trade Center in New York, which has been under construction for the past 10 years.
But nothing that Apple does these days goes unchallenged for long, especially when it comes to symbols.
DW
Argentine environmentalists from the city of Gualeguaychú are enraged over plans to increase production at the Fray Bentos pulp mill over the border in Uruguay. Run by Finland-based multinational UPM, the mill produces cellulose, which looks like thick white cardboard. It then ships the cellulose to UPM's paper plants in Europe and Asia.
Matías Martinez, a spokesperson for the mill, said Uruguay and its small-scale ranchers reap huge economic benefits from UPM's presence in the country. The company plants trees on the land of small-scale cattle ranchers, and the cattle benefit from the shade, he said. Currently, 50 percent of the plant's timber comes from the fields of such small-scale ranchers.
According to Martinez, the company and its timber suppliers employ 3,400 Uruguayans, three hundred of them professionals with university degrees. The company's economic output comprises 1.3 percent of Uruguay's GDP, he added.
The Guardian
Tiny bits of plastic rubbish ingested by marine worms is significantly harming their health and will have wider impact on ocean ecosystems, scientists have found.
Microplastic particles, measuring less than 5mm in size, have been accumulating in the oceans since the 1960s and are now the most abundant form of solid-waste pollution on Earth.
Two UK-based studies published in the journal Current Biology looked at whether these near-invisible, microscopic plastics that sink into mud and sand in high concentrations are causing harm to species at the base of the food chain that ingest this sediment during feeding, and play a key ecological role as a source of food for other animals.
Using the lugworm as an indicator species, the first study, from the University of Exeter, found that worms feeding in highly contaminated ocean sediment ate less and had lower energy levels. The second study, from Plymouth University, has established for the first time that ingesting microplastics can transfer pollutants and additives to worms, reducing health and biodiversity.
C/NET
The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by online retailers to throw out a New York state law that requires their customers to pay state sales tax on online purchases, according to The Associated Press.
The justices rejected the appeals without comment. Amazon and Overstock argue in their appeals that a New York state law requiring them to collect sales tax on items sold on their sites to consumers living in New York violates the Constitution. The e-commerce Web sites argue that customers shouldn't be forced to pay state sales tax since these companies do not have a physical presence in New York. A 2008 New York state law considers local affiliates enough of a presence to collect the sales tax.
Los Angeles Times
Did Comet ISON survive its brush with the sun? Four days after the comet made its closest approach to our nearest star, the scientific consensus is "probably not."
Yes, something did survive ISON's harrowing Thanksgiving Day encounter with the sun. (See that puff of light emerging from the sun in the video above?) But most scientists believe it was not a comet with a nucleus, but rather a collection of pebbles and dust -- the rocky remains of the comet from the Oort Cloud.
Karl Battams, an astronomer who has been chronicling ISON's journey toward the sun for NASA, published an obituary for the comet on Monday morning that made its end seem fairly official.
"Tragically, on Nov. 28, 2013, ISON's tenacious ambition outweighed its ability, and our shining green candle in the solar wind began to burn out," he wrote.
And in a conversation with the Los Angeles Times, heliophysicist Alex Young said he and his colleagues were "pretty certain that it's gone."