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 editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
McClatchy DC
ACKERMAN, MISS — Up in Washington, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is regarded as a reliable conservative.
In Mississippi, angry Republicans brand him a liberal.
As Cochran fights to win renomination in a June 24 runoff against a tea-party challenger, the race is hinging on a brutal battle over whether he’s sufficiently conservative.
Challenger Chris McDaniel, as well as groups based outside Mississippi, are pounding away at the notion Cochran shares the political philosophy of President Barack Obama.
“In Washington, he votes with the liberals on spending, on judges, even on funding Obamacare,” charges an ad by the conservative Club for Growth Action. The group has made what it calls a “large, six-figure buy” to run the spot on state television.
Ed. note: This from the guy who, in Nov. 2013 said re negotiating with Iran:
“We’re dealing with people who are not only untrustworthy: this is a murderous regime that murders their own people, create chaos and mayhem throughout the whole world, the largest sponsor of terrorism,” Graham said Monday on CNN. “This deal doesn’t represent the fact we’re dealing with the most thuggish people in the whole world.”
The Guardian
The US should “sit down and talk” with Iran over the crisis in Iraq, top Republican senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday.
Graham, a leading foreign policy hawk, also attacked President Barack Obama for what he said was his “delusional and detached” response to the crisis.
In Iraq, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) fighters are now outside Baghdad. On Saturday, while Obama was in California to attend a Democratic fundraiser and deliver a commencement speech, defence secretary Chuck Hagel ordered an aircraft carrier and two missile-carrying ships to the Persian Gulf, raising the possibility of imminent US airstrikes.
Also on Sunday Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the House homeland security committee, told ABC's This Week: “Well, this is a crisis. It does call for a response, not going to Palm Springs for a fundraiser.”
On Saturday, secretary of state John Kerry spoke to the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, by phone. The State Department said Kerry “stressed that the United States is committed to supporting Iraq and that the president is examining a range of options that could help the Iraqi security forces push back [Isis] advances.”
Reuters
The U.S. military has appointed a two-star general to investigate the circumstances under which Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier recently freed after five years in Taliban captivity, disappeared in eastern Afghanistan in 2009, a U.S. official said on Sunday.
A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the general had been appointed to conduct the army investigation of Sergeant Bergdahl's June 2009 disappearance and capture, but said the probe had not yet begun.
The official declined to name the general.
Bergdahl, who was released on May 31 in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban, arrived at a military hospital in Texas on Friday.
While the release of Bergdahl, who had been the only U.S. prisoner of war, was widely hailed initially, it has also attracted widespread criticism, in part from lawmakers who say the five senior Taliban figures freed from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for Bergdahl could return to the fight.
NPR
Just over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which connects the nation's capital to Virginia, lies a piece of sacred ground: 624 acres covered in rows and rows of headstones and American flags.
Sunday marks the 150th anniversary of the designation of Arlington National Cemetery. The military burial ground was created on land that once belonged to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee — and was established, in part, to accommodate the many Americans killed in the Civil War.
Today, more than 400,000 men and women are buried there.
Most of them were members of the armed forces who served in active duty, and we often think of the cemetery as the final resting place of many of the nation's fallen soldiers.
But others are buried in the cemetery, including family members and other civilians.
In honor of the cemetery's anniversary, NPR's Weekend Edition explores the lives of three people who aren't war heroes, but whose legacies reside at Arlington.
NPR
You don't even have to get out of your PJs to go to the farmers market now.
All over the country, trucks are now delivering fresh milk, organic vegetables and humanely raised chickens to your door — though in New York, the deliveries come by bike.
Fifty years ago, about 30 percent of milk still came from the milkman. By 2005, the last year for which USDA has numbers, only 0.4 percent was home delivered.
But while we don't yet have the official government numbers on this trend, there's no doubt that bottled milk is once again showing up on stoops in the pre-dawn hours.
South Mountain Creamery in Maryland began home delivery in 2001 with 13 local customers. Today they have 8,500 home delivery accounts in five states. The company promises there will be no more than 48 hours between the time the cow is milked and the bottle arrives at your door.
NY Times
He could have written about the green toy truck he kept hidden in his room, a reminder of Haiti, a place he did not yet fully understand.
He might have mentioned the second-place trophy he had won for reciting a psalm in French at church — “le bonheur et la grâce m’accompagneront tous les jours de ma vie...” — his one and only award.
He could have noted his dream of becoming an engineer or an architect, to one day have a house with a pool and a laboratory where he would turn wild ideas about winged cars and jet packs into reality.
But on a windy April afternoon, as the first real sun of spring fell on Public School 397 in Brooklyn, and empty supermarket bags floated through the sky, Chrispin Alcindor’s mind was elsewhere.
“I am a 9-year-old,” he began, “who struggles with math.”
DW
Foreign Minister Steinmeier told the Sunday edition of Die Welt newspaper that the international community "must prevent the outbreak of a proxy war between the regional powers on Iraqi soil."
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has made rapid military advances in Iraq over the past week, further escalating tensions in a region already deeply divided over the civil war in neighboring Syria. The Sunni extremist group, which broke off from al Qaeda, operates in both countries.
"All [Iraq's] neighbors - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Turkey and Iran - cannot have an interest in a huge, lawless area developing beyond Syria in their immediate neighborhood, which becomes a stomping ground for mercenary groups, Islamists of every color and terrorists," Steinmeier said.
Berlin's top diplomat ruled out the deployment of German troops, calling on the major Mideast powers to take responsibility for stabilizing the situation in Iraq.
Spiegel Online
Beneath their hardhats, the workers laboring away at the construction sites in Qatar wear thin cotton balaclavas as protection against the morning chill and the midday sun. The preferred headgear has only a thin slit for the eyes, making it look as though the city were being erected by ghosts. But the men have been charged with transforming the Gulf state into a glitzy paradise, complete with hotels, office buildings, shopping malls and football stadiums. And the first thing the desert takes from them is their faces.
Ganesh was one of these phantoms. He has since returned to his family in Nepal's southeast. He could hardly wait to leave Qatar. Ganesh has promised himself to never again set foot in the desert.
On this spring evening, though, Ganesh's trip back home still lies before him. He is sprawled out exhausted on his bed on the outskirts of Doha after finishing his shift. The room is just 16 square meters (172 square feet) -- and provides shelter to 10 workers. With the fan broken and the window sealed shut with aluminum foil, the air is thick and stuffy. Outside, a diesel generator roars. It is only with great effort that Ganesh, a cheerful, somewhat shy 26-year-old with jet black hair hanging to his shoulders, is able to suppress his frustration and fatigue.
The Guardian
Pakistani fighter jets have carried out raids on suspected militant hideouts in the tribal North Waziristan region in response to an audacious attack on the country's busiest airport a week ago.
Nearly 80 militants, mainly ethnic Uzbek fighters, were killed in the air assault on Sunday in the region bordering Afghanistan, where some of Pakistan's most feared militants and al-Qaida commanders are based, intelligence sources said.
"Fighter jets targeted militant hideouts in the village of Dagan near the Pakistani-Afghan border," said a source in the regional capital of Miranshah.
"An important Uzbek commander, Abdul Rehman, has been killed in the air strike," he said, adding that Rehman was believed to be directly involved in masterminding the Karachi airport attack.
The account could not be independently verified and the Taliban did not immediately comment on the air strikes..
Reuters
Rival camps in Afghanistan's presidential race each proclaimed to be leading the contest on Sunday, a day after the run-off was held and as officials were still tallying the hundreds killed or injured in election-related violence.
Observers and other officials in Kabul are worried that both candidates are setting the stage to complain about fraud and refuse to accept defeat should the outcome of the vote be close.
The United Nations on Sunday urged the candidates, former Northern Alliance leader Abdullah Abdullah and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, to honour the election procedures, in the tallying of votes.
"The Secretary-General encourages the candidates and their supporters to respect the electoral process," the U.N. said in a statement.
On Sunday night, Abdullah said he was concerned about "engineered fraud" in the elections and questioned the voter turnout figures of over seven million released by the election commission.
Reuters
Israel said on Sunday that Hamas militants had abducted three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank, warning of "serious consequences" as it pressed on with a search and detained dozens of Palestinians.
The two 16-year-olds and a third man aged 19, seminary students in a Jewish settlement bloc, disappeared on Thursday.
"These teenagers were kidnapped and the kidnapping was carried out by Hamas members," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters, referring to the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
There has been no public claim of responsibility. Asked about Netanyahu's allegations, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, stopped short of a clear denial or confirmation that it was involved.
The Guardian
Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council.
"He said to us, 'you don't realise what you have done'," an intelligence official recalled. "Then he said: 'Mosul will be an inferno this week'.'
Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in his hideout near Mosul. From the home of the dead man and the captive, Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group.
The treasure trove included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group's finances.
"We were all amazed and so were the Americans," a senior intelligence official told the Guardian. "None of us had known most of this information."
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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McClatchy DC
ANAHEIM, CALIF. — President Barack Obama Saturday tore into those in Congress and the media who deny climate change, calling them a radical fringe that threatens the future by shutting down debate even among those who might agree with the warnings.
“Today’s Congress … is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence. They’ll tell you climate change is a hoax, or a fad. One says the world might actually be cooling,” he said in a commencement address to 8,000 graduates of the University of California-Irvine.
“Many others duck the question by saying, ‘Hey, I’m not a scientist.’ Let me translate. What that means is, ‘I accept that man-made climate change is real, but if I admit it, I’ll be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot.’ ”
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
In 2002, the California Legislature passed a law enabling cities and counties to establish Community Choice Aggregation programs such as Sonoma Clean Power and Marin Clean Energy. PG&E spent millions of dollars trying to defeat Community Choice by way of Proposition 16 in 2010. But the voters said a resounding no.
Customers of these new programs are starting to reap benefits that go beyond the vision legislators had in 2002. At least 12 more California communities are in varying stages of starting up community choice energy programs.
But community choice systems will be crushed if Assembly Bill 2145 passes. This proposed law, sponsored by PG&E and other privately owned utilities, is now speeding through the state Legislature.
A lot is at stake. If AB 2145 becomes law, Californians will lose the opportunity for choice of electricity provider, competition, lower electricity rates, greener power, local economic development, local decision-making and leadership in a clean energy future.
NPR
You can't hear it over the noise of London's traffic. But it's there. That faint, whining hum. Right under my feet, thousands of mosquitoes are dining on human blood.
To visit them, you have to go through a sliding glass door into the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This school started as a hospital on the Thames River, where doctors treated sailors returning from faraway places with strange parasites.
Today, the building holds countless exotic diseases that you hope you'll never catch. The mosquitoes carry just a few of them, and their keeper is an entomologist named Dr. James Logan.
To get to them, you have to go underground, then through two sets of doors and a net, and into the restricted access room.
"We don't want any mosquitoes to escape onto the streets of London, obviously, because we've got tropical mosquitoes here," says Logan.
CNET
Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya grew up on welfare but caught a lucky break. He has an idea how the tech industry can help people -- and profit everyone concerned.
Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya is that rare one-percenter who grew up on welfare.
The 34-year-old tech executive-turned-venture capitalist says his upbringing helped inform his thinking about the nature of the social compact between state and citizen. He's come up with a 1 percent plan of his own to help bridge the growing economic gap in San Francisco caused by tech disruptors. But not everyone is thrilled with his idea. Palihapitiya's backstory fed into a verbal confrontation recently with one of the most connected angel investors in Silicon Valley. More about that in a moment.
After Palihapitiya's family asked Canada for asylum from Sri Lanka's civil war in the 1990s, his mother worked as a housekeeper and nurse's aid while his father found odd jobs. It was a struggle, but Palihapitiya says they got by thanks to government assistance.
"There was at least some social infrastructure there to support us," said Palihapitiya, whose family of five managed to keep their small apartment as he grew up. "We were able to get access to health care that was affordable, and I was able to go to what is the best school in Canada, which only cost me $10,000 or $11,000 a year because it was all subsidized by the government."
Reuters
U.S. medical device maker Medtronic Inc said on Sunday it had agreed to buy Covidien Plc for $42.9 billion in cash and stock and move its executive base to Ireland in the latest transaction aiming for lower corporate tax rates abroad.
The deal will allow Medtronic to reduce its overall global tax burden. The Minneapolis-based company said the move was not driven by tax considerations, pointing instead to medical technology synergies with Covidien.
The merger of Medtronic, the world's largest stand-alone medical device maker, and Covidien, a maker of devices used in surgery, will create a close competitor to the medical device business of Johnson & Johnson Co.
The deal values each Covidien share at $93.22, paid for by $35.19 in cash and 0.956 Medtronic shares. This share consideration represents a 29 percent premium to Covidien's closing stock price on Friday, Medtronic said.