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.
W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
DW
On September 1, 1939, German troops under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime launched an attack on Poland. The countries’ presidents have come together 75 years later in commemoration of the event that marked the start of WWII.
German President Joachim Gauck joined his Polish counterpart, President Bronislaw Komorowski, in northwestern Poland on Monday evening for a commemoration ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War.
"I feel a deep shame and a deep compassion for those who suffered under the Germans," Gauck told those gathered at the ceremony on Monday evening, recounting the particularly grave losses suffered by Poland under Nazi terror.
The event was held on the Westerplatte peninsula, which lies just under 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the Polish city Gdansk, where the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired on the Polish fort in the early hours of September 1, 1939. The battle marked the beginning of WWII, which would claim over 50 million lives worldwide.
Between 1939 and 1945, Germany and Poland both lost over 6 million soldiers and civilians each during the six-year war.
BBC
Britain entered World War Two because of Germany invading Poland. But it failed to save the country from Stalin's clutches in 1945. So has a feeling of historic debt affected Anglo-Polish relations over the years?
I hear someone speaking Polish every day. On the train, in a shop, in the street. Ten years after Poland joined the EU, no-one knows for sure how many Poles live in the UK. The 2011 census estimated it at nearly 600,000.
But that doesn't include those who stayed after the end of World War Two, or their offspring - people like me. In total, the UK is probably home to a million or more people who regard Poland as their ancestral home in some way. Yet Britain and Poland have no long standing historical ties, like Britain and Ireland or Poland and France. The 1931 Census showed only around 40,000 Poles lived in the UK. Poland did not open an embassy in London until 1929. So how and why did we all end up here?
When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 it did so for only one reason - Germany had invaded Poland, and Britain had guaranteed to support her ally, like it had supported Belgium in WW1. The diplomat and writer Sir Nicholas Henderson, himself a former ambassador to Poland, called it "a fatal guarantee".
McClatchy DC
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama heads to Europe next week, looking to assure nervous allies of the United States’ commitment to the region, as NATO prepares to beef up forces amid fears that Russia will step up its provocations beyond Ukraine.
Obama arrives in Estonia late Tuesday, where he’ll meet with the presidents of the three Baltic states, along with U.S. and Estonian troops. He’ll also travel to Wales to meet with world leaders at a NATO summit, as the group that was created in 1949 to bolster security against the Soviet Union finds itself gearing up to respond to a new type of Russian aggression.
“The two stops are essentially part of the same effort to send a message to the Russians that their behavior is unacceptable,” said Charles Kupchan, senior director for European affairs on the National Security Council.
Al Jazeera
North Korea gave foreign media access on Monday to three detained Americans who said they have been able to contact their families and – watched by officials as they spoke – called for Washington to send a high-ranking representative to negotiate for their freedom.
Jeffrey Fowle and Mathew Miller said they expect to face trial within a month. But they said they do not know what punishment they could face or what the specific charges against them are. Kenneth Bae, who already is serving a 15-year term, said his health has deteriorated at the labor camp where he works eight hours a day.
The three were allowed to speak briefly with The Associated Press at a meeting center in Pyongyang. North Korean officials were present during the interviews, conducted separately and in different rooms, but did not censor the questions that were asked. The three said they did not know they were going to be interviewed until immediately beforehand.
All said they believe the only solution to their situation is for a U.S. representative to come to North Korea to make a direct appeal.
That has often been North Korea's bargaining chip in the past, when senior statesmen including former President Bill Clinton made trips to Pyongyang to secure the release of detainees.
Spiegel Online
Documents from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal wide-scale spying against Turkey by America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ. They also show the US worked closely with Ankara to battle Kurdish separatists.
On a December night in 2011, a terrible thing happened on Mount Cudi, near the Turkish-Iraqi border. One side described it as a massacre; the other called it an accident.
Several Turkish F-16 fighter jets bombed a caravan of villagers that night, apparently under the belief that they were guerilla fighters with the separatist Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK). The group was returning from northern Iraq and their mules were loaded down with fuel canisters and other cargo. They turned out to be smugglers, not PKK fighters. Some 34 people died in the attack.
The Guardian
Abortion providers in Louisiana will be temporarily sheltered from a law requiring them to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals, after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction. Opponents of the law claim it was “specifically designed to shutter abortion clinics across the state”.
Louisiana has five abortion clinics, and critics believe it has the potential to shut down three. The law would have taken effect on Labor Day.
“Today’s ruling ensures that Louisiana women are safe from an underhand law that seeks to strip them of their health and rights,” said Nancy Northup, the chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “As the flimsy façade of these laws grows thinner by the day, we continue to look to the courts to uphold the constitution and protect access to safe and legal abortion for all women regardless of where they happen to live.”
An injunction issued by a federal judge stops part of the law from going into effect, pending another hearing.
Louisiana is one of more than 10 states to try to enforce such requirements on abortion providers. On Friday, a federal judge overturned a Texas law requiring new operations standards at abortion clinics. In early August, an Alabama judge ruled a similar admitting-privileges law unconstitutional.
NPR
Rich families sustain American politics. Some produce candidates; others supply money. And in rare instances, a family will do both.
Meet Nebraska billionaire Joe Ricketts, founder of Ending Spending, an independent political organization that's among the top 10 spenders this election cycle. Three of his four children are politically active, including one who's running for governor.
A Billionaire With Political Punch
The gubernatorial hopeful is Pete Ricketts, a conservative Republican. He spoke earlier this month at a forum of Nebraska chambers of commerce, at the Strategic Air and Space Museum near Omaha.
With chamber members sitting in front of a 1940s-vintage B-29 bomber named "Lucky Lady," Ricketts pledged to "unite Nebraska east and west, urban and rural."
Omaha is where Joe and Marlene Ricketts raised Pete, his sister Laura, and brothers Todd and Tom. It's also where Joe founded one of the first discount stock brokerage firms, now known as TD Ameritrade.
Vox
Labor Day is a day of rest that commemorates years of war. Congress inaugurated the holiday just days after President Grover Cleveland sent 12,000 federal troops to break the Pullman strike. The tactics were bloody; U.S. deputy marshals killed two men, and wounded many more.
That was 1894, an election year. Cleveland needed a way to win workers back to his side. He saw an opportunity in a federal holiday honoring workers — as well as organized labor.
"The movement for a national Labor Day had been growing for some time," writes PBS Newshour. "In September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland's harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation's workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike."
Reuters
Throughout much of his presidency, Barack Obama has been under siege about the state of the U.S. economy.
But with economic growth now far more robust than when he took office, he is finding some measure of solace on the domestic front while a number of crises rage abroad.
With his handling of foreign policy under fire in confronting challenges from Ukraine to the Middle East, Obama made a Labor Day trek to Milwaukee's annual Laborfest event to underscore how he feels his leadership on the economy has paid off.
"I just want everybody to understand because you wouldn't always know it from watching the news," he said. "By almost every measure, the American economy and American workers are better off than when I took office."
The national unemployment rate was 6.2 percent in August, down more than a percentage point from the year before, and a far cry from when he took office in 2009 with the economy in crisis. After a 2.1 percent contraction in GDP in the first quarter of this year, GDP rebounded at a 4.2 percent growth clip in the second quarter.
NY Times
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — One sweltering afternoon last month, a Boeing C-17 military transport plane arrived at the American naval base here. It had come to take six low-level detainees to new lives in Uruguay after 12 years of imprisonment.
Days before, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had called Uruguay’s president, José Mujica, pressing him to resettle the men. The foreign leader had offered to accept the detainees last January, but by the time the United States was ready for the transfer this summer, Mr. Mujica was worried that it would be politically risky to follow through because of coming elections in his country, according to Obama administration officials.
After four days of frantic negotiations between the two governments as the plane sat on the tarmac, the C-17 flew away without its intended passengers.
Although President Obama pledged last year to revive his efforts to close Guantánamo, his administration has managed to free just one low-level prisoner this year, leaving 79 who are approved for transfer to other countries. It has also not persuaded Congress to lift its ban on moving the remaining 70 higher-level detainees to a prison inside the United States.
Reuters
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia on Monday of "direct and undisguised aggression" which he said had radically changed the battlefield balance as Kiev's forces suffered a further reverse in their war with pro-Moscow separatists.
In the latest in a string of setbacks in the past week, Ukraine's military said it had pulled back from defending a vital airport in the east of the country, near the city of Luhansk, where troops had been battling a Russian tank battalion.
Poroshenko said in a speech there would be high-level personnel changes in the Ukrainian armed forces, whose troops fled a new rebel advance in the south which Kiev and its Western allies say has been backed up by Russian armored columns.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who called on Sunday for immediate negotiations on the "statehood" of southern and eastern Ukraine, blamed Kiev's leadership for refusing to enter into direct political talks with the separatists.
Reuters
Factory activity in Europe and Asia cooled in August after a strong July, as new orders dwindled in the face of escalating tensions in Ukraine and a patchy recovery in China, purchasing managers indexes showed.
Despite euro zone manufacturers barely raising their prices, growth in the region slowed slightly more than initially thought, and activity in China's vast factory sector slackened on weak foreign and domestic demand, stoking speculation that further policy stimulus would be needed.
"A concerted slowdown in the China, euro zone and UK manufacturing PMIs as the second quarter gets under way raises alarm bells about global demand conditions," said Lena Komileva, chief economist at G+ Economics in London.
"This raises serious questions about the ability of major economies such as the U.S. and the UK, to weather higher interest rates, or in the case of the euro zone to withstand deflationary pressures without further stimulus."
Reuters
Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary forces secured the state television headquarters in Islamabad on Monday after a crowd of anti-government protesters stormed the building and took the channel off the air.
Protesters led by opposition leaders Imran Khan, a hero cricket player turned politician, and firebrand Muslim cleric Tahir ul-Qadri have been on the streets for weeks trying to bring down the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Protests descended into deadly chaos over the weekend, with demonstrators clashing with police in a central area near many government buildings and embassies. Three people were killed.
DW
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her military aid plan to northern Iraq. However, her critics accuse her not only of a poorly-timed announcement, but also going against Germany’s anti-war stance.
Speaking before the Bundestag – the Lower House of the German parliament – on Monday, Chancellor Merkel said it was necessary to send weapons to northern Iraq.
"Our own security interests are threatened," Merkel told German lawmakers.
The previous day, her government confirmed it would supply Kurdish forces battling "Islamic State" (IS) terrorists with 70 million euros ($92 million) worth of high-end military equipment. The roughly 4,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are to receive anti-tank missiles, machine guns, protective gear and communications equipment among other supplies.
The government had deliberated "carefully" over the decision, the German chancellor added.
"Right now, we currently have the chance to rescue people's lives and to hinder further mass murder in Iraq. Right now, we have the chance to hinder [Islamic State terrorists] from creating another safe haven. We must take advantage of this chance," she said.
The speech came ahead of a parliamentary vote on Monday. Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat-led political bloc and its left-leaning Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partner, led by Sigmar Gabriel, backed the move.
Spiegel Online
After months of failed telephone diplomacy between Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin, hardliners are gaining the upper hand in discussions over the appropriate response to Russia. They may soon prevail with demands that go far beyond new economic sanctions.
The official number is 25. That, according to the government, is how often German Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the telephone since last November. But there are estimates and evidence to suggest that there have been closer to 35 such chats. All of the conversations focused on Ukraine. A breakthrough was never achieved.
The Guardian
The UK and US governments have criticised, in unusually strong language, Israel's decision to approve one of the largest appropriations of Palestinian land for settlement in recent decades.
The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said he deplored the move as "particularly ill-judged".
However, Israel's economics minister, Naftali Bennett, who visited the Gush Etzion settlement in the occupied West Bank on Monday, applauded Sunday's decision as an "appropriate Zionist response to murder". Bennett said: "What we did yesterday was a display of Zionism. Building is our answer to murder."
The settlement affects nearly 400 hectares (1,000 acres) at Gvaot near Bethlehem, which have been designated as state land, as opposed to land privately owned by Palestinians, clearing the way for the potential Israeli building.
Israel's announcement comes after an apparently concerted effort by some of its officials and politicians to use the kidnap and murder of three religious students earlier this summer to justify the expropriation.
Al Jazeera America
RIO DE JANEIRO — As José Paulo Barcellos’ family grew, so did his house.
Over time, the two-bedroom bungalow he built at the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship spawned another story, where his daughter and her two children now live, above him and his wife. His patchwork carport, which doubled as his workshop, is now also a playground for his 2-year-old granddaughter, Nicole.
But like many in the Vila União favela in western Rio de Janeiro, Barcellos’ home has been marked like a condemned house with “SMH” — the initials of the municipal housing secretary.
Later this month, about 900 of the 1,500 families who live in Vila União will start to move out to make way for the TransOlímpica rapid bus system (BRT) to be built for the 2016 Rio Olympics. It is one of the biggest favela resettlements since Rio was chosen to host the games, with some 500 families also resettled from 2010 to 2011 for the construction of the TransOeste BRT.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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NPR
We've reported a lot this year about how there's a major rethinking of fat happening in the U.S.
Turns out, eating foods with fat — everything from avocados and nuts to dairy fat — doesn't make us fat.
But eating too many carbohydrates — particularly the heavily refined starches found in bagels, white pasta and crackers — does our collective waistlines no favors.
The low-carb group, which reduced their carb consumption to about 28 percent of their daily calories, lost almost three times as much weight as the low-fat dieters who got about 40 to 45 percent of their calories from carbs.
The low-fat group lost about 4 pounds, whereas the low-carb group's average weight loss was almost 12 pounds. Participants in the two groups were eating about the same amount of calories.
NPR
More and more kids are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and many are medicated — often with stimulant drugs like Ritalin or Adderall.
With so many children taking these drugs, plenty of parents and doctors are concerned about potential side effects, including the possibility of curbed growth. Some studies have suggested that the drugs can cause growth to slow a bit, while others haven't found a link. Few studies have followed these kids beyond their youth to track their final heights. Now there's some reassuring news on that front: Research published online in Pediatrics on Monday found that children who took ADHD medicine didn't have height deficits in adulthood.
C/NET
The stakes have never been higher for Samsung's oversize Galaxy Note 4.
While Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone franchises have duked it out for flagship supremacy, Samsung's other marquee smartphone line, the Galaxy Note, has enjoyed the lack of opposition in serving power users willing to pay up for a much larger display -- a market it essentially created. But the Galaxy Note 4, which will be unveiled at Samsung's "Unpacked" event Wednesday, may no longer be the only legitimate jumbo phone in the market -- Apple is expected to unveil two larger iPhones next week.
The Unpacked event comes at a critical time for Samsung. While the Galaxy Note line has always played second fiddle to the Galaxy S line, the Note 4 arrives as more consumers are willing to tolerate the bulkiness of a larger display for an improved video, gaming, and Internet-browsing experience. Interest in the product is high. And the company badly needs a hit after the disappointing sales of the Galaxy S5 and mounting competition from Chinese vendors for budget smartphones and from Apple on the high end. Apple potentially offering two larger iPhones doesn't help.
Think Progress
Global warming is projected to have a serious negative impact on labor productivity this century. Here is a look at what we know.
In 2013, a NOAA study projected that “heat-stress related labor capacity losses will double globally by 2050 with a warming climate.” If we stay near our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway, then we face a potential 50 percent drop in labor capacity in peak months by century’s end.
Many recent studies project a collapse in labor productivity from business-as-usual carbon emissions and warming, with a cost to society that may well exceed that of all other costs of climate change combined. And, as one expert reviewing recent studies put it, “national output in several [non-agricultural] industries seemed to decline with temperature in a nonlinear way, declining more rapidly at very high daily temperatures.”
Reuters
When Charlie Crist last governed Florida, his green energy and climate policies made him few friends among the state's powerful electricity corporations.
Now, as the Republican-turned Democrat bids to return to the governor's mansion, it may be payback time.
Florida's three largest utilities have poured money into the re-election campaign of Republican incumbent Governor Rick Scott in an expensive and closely watched political battle for the nation's largest swing state.
The election spending is notable in a tight race where the issues of energy and climate change have taken center stage in recent weeks, with both candidates asserting their environmental credentials.
As Republican governor between 2007 and 2011, Crist "sent shivers through the entire utility system," said Colleen Castille, who headed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under Governor Jeb Bush.
NPR
Mechanization has made the farming of many crops — lettuce and tomatoes, among them — a lot less labor intensive. But some crops are still tended and harvested by hand, and it can be painstaking work.
How do you measure the labor intensity of crops? We thought there would be an easy answer to that, but there isn't. Some agricultural economists talk about labor input in terms of hours per acre, but that may not take into account the difficulty of the labor.
For Labor Day, we thought we'd round up some of those crops that still require specialized human labor. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and some of these crops are only labor intensive in certain parts of the world, because their harvest has been mechanized elsewhere. And intensive does not necessarily mean abusive, though, as we've reported, slave and child labor do still plague the food system.
NPR
BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico disrupted business all along the coastline. Through the end of July, the oil giant paid more than $13 billion to compensate people, businesses and communities affected. The company is disputing some of those claims in court battles that could drag on for years.
But there's another group of people who lost money after the spill and never received compensation. That's because their claims are tied to a six-month government moratorium on drilling put in place after the spill.
Among them is Patrick Roy of Patterson, La. He owns Coastal Rental Equipment, which rented equipment to the offshore oil and gas industry.
"This has been my dream since I can remember as a child — wanting to own my own business," says Roy. After the spill, business was OK, but then the moratorium was enacted while the government overhauled offshore drilling regulations. That's when his business collapsed.