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.
Reuters
The new U.N. human rights chief urged world powers on Monday to protect women and minorities targeted by Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, saying the fighters were trying to create a "house of blood".
Jordan's Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, the first Muslim to hold the position, called for the international community to focus on ending the "increasingly conjoined" conflict in the two countries, and abuses in other hotspots from Ukraine to Gaza.
Islamic State's Sunni Muslim fighters have over-run large parts of Syria and Iraq since June, declaring a cross-border caliphate. The Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council last week agreed to send a team to investigate killings and other abuses carried out by the group on "an unimaginable scale". [ID:nL5N0R23C4]
Zeid, Jordan's former U.N. ambassador and a Jordanian prince, described Islamic State in his maiden speech to the Council as "takfiris" - hardline Sunni militants who justify killing others by branding them apostates.
McClatchy
WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led international strategy to combat the Islamic State that President Barack Obama sketched out Friday is likely to require years of thorny diplomacy and deeper U.S. military involvement in conflicts that he’s struggled to avoid.
Obama’s remarks at the end of a NATO summit in Wales offered the administration’s most in-depth explanation to date of how it plans to fight the Islamic State, the transnational extremist group that has seized control of an area as large as Jordan straddling the dividing line between Syria and Iraq.
The nascent strategy calls for working with European and Arab allies to confront the group not only in Iraq, where the U.S. is conducting airstrikes to assist government-aligned fighters, but also in Syria, where the United States has failed to fulfill its years-long promise to help build a moderate rebel force.
The Guardian
The White House was on Monday finalising its plan for a sustained confrontation against Islamic State (Isis) militants, which could involve extending air strikes in Iraq to the jihadist group’s strongholds in Syria.
President Obama will address the nation on Wednesday – the eve of the September 11 anniversary – to give details of how he plans to execute his “degrade and destroy” strategy against Isis.
In advance of the speech – which could herald a significant shift in Obama’s foreign policy – officials have been trying to drum up support for the president’s plan. On Tuesday, Obama will meet congressional leaders in Washington, where Democrats and Republicans are receptive to intensifying the fight against Isis. Hawks from both parties are urging the White House to attack Isis in regions of Syria where it has solidified its power base.
However, less than 24 hours before Obama’s meeting with Congress, officials in the administration were believed to be undecided about the wisdom of switching the focus from Iraq to Syria. The decision is expected to rest in part on the response from the international community to Wednesday’s speech.
BBC
Iraqi government forces say they have cleared Islamic State (IS) militants from a wide area around the strategic Haditha dam, helped by US air strikes.
The jihadists have repeatedly tried to capture the dam on the River Euphrates, in the western province of Anbar.
The US air strikes were the first to have taken place outside northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament is scheduled to convene later on Monday to vote on Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi's proposed government.
The make-up of the cabinet has not been revealed, but Mr Abadi is expected to include representatives of all religious and ethnic factions.
The BBC's Jim Muir in Irbil says that should ease tensions between the Shia Arab majority and the Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities, which accused the outgoing administration of pursuing sectarian policies.
McClatchy
RALEIGH, N.C. — Robert Malick has weathered plenty of uncertainty in the 22 years he’s run a multimillion-dollar heating and air conditioning firm.
To do it, his company, Southern Mechanical, landed government-backed housing projects and used a hiring strategy that federal officials have been trying to combat for years. On payroll forms he filed on jobs around the Southeast, his Nashville, Tenn., company left blank a space for tax withholding and explained: “1099 employees pay their own taxes.”
“It puts the monkey on their back to produce instead of being an hourly employee that just hangs out on the job,” Malick said in an interview.
Treating his workers as independent contractors saves Malick on payroll taxes and unemployment insurance, nearly 10 percent of wages. It also may run afoul of numerous state and federal laws and regulations, and it undercuts his competitors.
The Guardian
More than seven decades after beginning their relationship, Vivian Boyack and Alice “Nonie” Dubes got married.
Boyack, 91, and Dubes, 90, sat next to each other during Saturday’s ceremony, the Quad City Times reports.
“This is a celebration of something that should have happened a very long time ago,” the Rev Linda Hunsaker told the small group of close friends and family who attended.
Bloomberg
By the time Jerry Brown returned to the California governor’s office for a third term, he had as Oakland’s mayor eschewed affordable housing for $1 billion in downtown development and as attorney general sued the biggest U.S. mortgage lender for stoking the financial crisis.
Through those roles, two prior terms as chief executive and a tenure as secretary of state, the 76-year-old Democrat has emerged as the nation’s most experienced governor. Brown, who once trained to be a Jesuit priest, says he’s learned after four decades in political office to embrace pragmatism, anticipate challenges long in advance and accept that too many variables exist in any situation to try to ride any one to success.
“It takes many factors,” Brown said in an interview with Bloomberg News at his San Francisco office. “As Machiavelli said, fortuna e virtù. Virtù is skill. Fortuna is good fortune. You have to have both of those.”
NPR
About 100 Yosemite National Park visitors were evacuated by helicopter Sunday when a wildfire that started weeks ago in the park's backcountry grew unexpectedly to at least 700 acres, officials said.
Some of the evacuees included hikers who had climbed the park's iconic Half Dome peak, rising nearly 5,000 feet above Yosemite Valley, park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said. Others had to be airlifted from campgrounds and hiking trails in the area, she said.
Firefighters had monitored and controlled the lightning-sparked fire that started several weeks ago between Little Yosemite Valley and Half Dome, Cobb said.
NPR
A leaked video of the altercation between football star Ray Rice and his then-fiancee, Janay Palmer, that took place earlier this year has led the Baltimore Ravens to terminate Rice's contract.
The NFL says Rice has also been suspended indefinitely.
The newly released video shows the couple in an apparent argument before Palmer collapses after being hit in the face. It emerged early Monday, days before Rice's two-game suspension over the incident had been set to end.
"The #Ravens have terminated RB Ray Rice's contract this afternoon," the team's official Twitter account announced. The team says it will hold a news conference about its decision tonight at 8 p.m. ET.
The NFL says it had not previously seen the video that emerged today:
"We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator. That video was not made available to us and no one in our office has seen it until today."
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said the same thing, during a press conference. He said he had seen the full video for the first time today.
NPR
The co-owner and CEO of the Atlanta Hawks says multiple people have reached out to him to buy the NBA franchise following the announcement by controlling owner Bruce Levenson that he would sell his stake in the team because of a racially charged email he sent two years ago.
"I had over seven phone calls directly today from multibillionaires," CEO Steve Koonin, who is now overseeing the team's operations, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview Sunday. "It blew my mind some of the people who wrote me today."
Koonin's comments came after Levenson's stunning announcement on Sunday. Citing what he called an "inappropriate and offensive" email he sent two years ago, Levenson said he was selling his interest in the Hawks "in the best interests of the team, the Atlanta community, and the NBA." Levenson said he voluntarily reported the August 2012 email to the NBA in July.
In a statement, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league had started an independent investigation into Levenson's comment, but Levenson informed him Saturday night, prior to the investigation's completion, that he was selling the team.
NY Times
FERGUSON, Mo. — In the first major sign of change in this small city since last month’s police killing of an unarmed black teenager, the Ferguson City Council on Monday said it would establish a citizen review board to provide guidance for the police department and announced sweeping changes to its court system, which had been criticized as unfairly targeting low-income blacks, who had become trapped in a cycle of unpaid tickets and arrest warrants.
Municipal court fines are the city’s second-highest source of revenue, leading many critics to argue that the authorities had a financial incentive to issue tickets and then impose more fees to those who did not pay.
Young black men in Ferguson and surrounding cities routinely find themselves passed from jail to jail as they are picked up on warrants for unpaid fines, one of the many simmering issues here that helped set off almost two weeks of civil unrest after the teenager, Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a white Ferguson officer on Aug. 9.
Reuters
British financial markets tumbled on Monday after an opinion poll showed for the first time this year that Scots may vote for independence in a referendum next week, breaking up the United Kingdom.
The survey prompted concern bordering on panic among Britain's ruling elite, with Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative-led government promising proposals this week to grant Scotland greater autonomy if it stays.
Cameron's job would be on the line if Scots vote on Sept. 18 to secede, less than eight months before a national election planned for May. His spokesman said on Monday the government was not making contingency plans for the possibility of Scottish independence.
Al Jazeera
ron Dome is arguably one of the most talked about defence systems in the world.
Israeli officials say the defence "shield" is able to detect an incoming rocket, determine its path and likely point of impact, and intercept it if it poses a threat to Israeli towns or cities. Some rockets land in empty fields, while others are shot down by a battery of Tamim interceptor missiles.
Israel claims that of the purported 3,500 rockets fired from Gaza during its latest military operation, 90 percent of those that would have hit population centres were neutralised by the Iron Dome system.
But experts outside of the country have questioned the efficiency of the system. "'In order for Iron Dome to have any chance of detonating the rocket warheads, it must engage from the front, in what is called an Inverse Trajectory," wrote Richard Lloyd, a warhead designer, in a recently declassified 28-page technical report obtained by Al Jazeera.
In other words, the Iron Dome missiles must approach rockets head-on, or the probability of intercepting them drops to virtually zero. This is due to the nature of the interceptors' warhead, which is not in the nose of the missile but a third of the length down.
Al Jazeera
Members of the Iraqi parliament are preparing to vote on a new government, a key moment for the country as it tries to mount a counter-offensive against the Islamic State group.
Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abbadi's efforts to form a cabinet were hampered by last minute wrangling on Monday over who should get what post, and the Kurdish bloc's reluctance to join the national government.
Abbadi was expected to include representatives of all the country's religious and ethnic components in a bid to save Iraq from collapse.
According to a report on Iraqi state TV, Abbadi will have three deputies in the new government - one Shia, one Sunni and one Kurd.
Abbadi has until September 10 to submit his government for approval, or Iraq's president must select another candidate for prime minister.
Al Jazeera
Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has insisted that he won the country's disputed election, dimming hopes that a UN-supervised audit of votes could soon end the prolonged political crisis.
Abdullah repeated claims on Monday that massive ballot-rigging had denied him victory over his rival Ashraf Ghani in the race to lead Afghanistan as US-led NATO troops withdraw from their long war against the Taliban.
The bitter stalemate over alleged fraud in the June 14 vote has raised fears of renewed ethnic violence as the 13-year international military and civilian development effort winds down.
"We were the winner of the elections, we are the winner of elections based on the real and clean votes of the people," Abdullah said in a speech.
"We do not accept fraudulent election results, and we will not accept a fraudulent government for a day."
In a deal brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the feuding candidates had agreed to the audit of all eight million votes, and to form a national unity government together whoever emerged as winner.
Al Jazeera America
Last week authorities in Kazakhstan announced that a container holding cesium-137, a radioactive material, disappeared, possibly after falling off a truck.
Details of the incident are sparse. The Kazakh government says they are actively searching for the container, which weighs over 100 pounds, but would not or could not say where it came from, or where it might be headed.
It’s unclear how big of a threat the missing cesium poses, but experts say it highlights a growing global problem: As radioactive materials proliferate throughout the world, including in countries that don’t have the resources to secure, track or find them, there’s mounting fear that they could find their way into the hands of criminals and radical groups who could use them to build radioactive weapons, often referred to as “dirty bombs.”
“There’s concern that these sources are widely spread and easily accessible,” said Andrew Bieniawski, the vice president of material security and minimization at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and a former top official in the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration. “They’re used in everything from oil wells to the medical industry. You have thousands of these sources around the world, and people don’t realize they’re a threat.”
Spiegel Online
The debate over Germany's insistence on euro-zone austerity has flared anew as an ailing France continues to demand economic stimulus. The European Central Bank may now be siding with Paris, leaving Merkel looking increasingly alone.
The chancellor peered at her impassioned interviewer as if he were some kind of rare insect. An orange microphone in her left hand and eyebrows severely arched, Angela Merkel sank deeply into the armchair on the stage of the Berliner Ensemble theater, as though trying to put the greatest possible distance between herself and the journalist from the political magazine Cicero. Gesticulating wildly, he had just asked for her thoughts on the pain felt in France at being left behind by Germany economically. "Can Germany continue to play such a dominating role?" he demanded.
Her response was evasive. After a pause, she commended France for its military operations in Mali and the Central African Republic. Beyond that, though, not much praise for Paris would be forthcoming that evening on the last Wednesday in August. Merkel's larger message was the same as it has been for years: France has to solve its structural problems. Only then can it resume its role among Europe's leaders
NPR
Ukraine and the West, including the United States, insist that the Russian army has been fighting in eastern Ukraine, a charge that Russia just as vehemently denies.
But reports from Russia now acknowledge that Russian soldiers are part of the battle — though they are claimed to be volunteers, on leave from their army jobs.
Critics say the Russian military is ordering soldiers into the fight, and covering up the deaths of those who are killed, in an unacknowledged war on foreign soil.
The Russian TV channel NTV carried a report on the funerals of two Russian paratroopers who were killed while fighting in Ukraine. The men were buried with full military honors, including the Russian national anthem and a gun salute fired by fellow paratroopers.
The NTV report quoted the leader of a prominent veterans' group as saying the men were heroes who died for the freedom of Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. The report also said the two men took leave from their military duties in Russia, without telling their superiors that they planned to fight alongside the separatists in Ukraine's eastern provinces.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Reuters
A panel appointed by search engine Google will hold the first of a series of meetings on Tuesday to debate the balance between privacy and the free flow of information after a May court ruling reinforced Europeans' "right to be forgotten".
The event in Madrid will be the first of seven meetings in European capitals, as the Internet giant struggles with thousands of requests a month to remove from its search results everything from serious criminal records, embarrassing photos, instances of online bullying and negative press stories.
By mid-July, Google, which holds more than 80 percent of Europe's search market, said it had received more than 90,000 requests and accepted more than half since the European Union's top court ruled they must remove results if the information was "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant".
Spiegel Online
With Ebola spreading rapidly in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, international organizations fear the number of infections could exceed 20,000. Experts are calling for the industrialized world to do more to help stop the virus.
Kalashnikovs cost as little as $100 in Port Harcourt, says Helmut Lux, an orthopedist and trauma surgeon from the city of Neckarsulm, Germany. The machine gun is said to be the favorite weapon of gangs in the Nigerian city. And they are used in street fights almost every day. "If 100 people start firing at each other," Lux says, "around 10 die and five wind up on the operating table.
"Lux came to the port city in oil-rich southern Nigeria two years ago and worked for the aid organization Doctors without Borders. He quickly learned that an AK-47 can rip large holes in a person's body.
The Guardian
warning has been issued about what has already become known as the "Peter Pan virus" after thousands of people received a scam email claiming they had booked tickets to see a pantomime in Bournemouth this Christmas.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK and further afield are thought to have received the message, described as one of the most convincing examples yet of a phishing email designed to install malicious software – known as malware – on to the recipient's computer.
Phishing emails typically purport to come from organisations such as banks or HM Revenue & Customs, but this one is different: claiming to be sent from ticketing company BH Live, it states that the recipient has booked nine tickets to the 7pm performance of Peter Pan at Bournemouth Pavilion on 23 December.
NPR
About seven years ago, just as Greece was falling into its worst recession in a half-century, veteran archaeologist Xeni Arapogianni made an important find in a forest of olive trees above the city of Kalamata, in the southern Peloponnese.
"It was an asclepio, an ancient healing center, but one that has not been recorded in any ancient or modern source," says Arapogianni on a recent day, as she walks on the bone-white stone foundation. "It's an entirely new discovery. And it tells us a lot about the ancient city that it came from."
That city, Ancient Thouria, was notable enough to be referenced by Homer. Yet Arapogianni, who has excavated in Greece for more than 37 years, is struggling to finance her work.
"We don't have any support from the state or the Greek archaeological society," she says. "So we have to get all of our support from private sources," including a tobacco heiress and local donors from Kalamata.
NPR
There was an unexpected crash landing near the international airport in the Nicaraguan capital over the weekend, but luckily no one was hurt: A small meteor, thought to have broken off from an Earth-passing asteroid, left a 40-foot-wide crater.
The meteorite — which experts say may have disintegrated on impact — smashed through a wooded area outside the airport in Managua, leaving a 16-foot-deep hole.
"We thought it was a bomb because we felt an expansive wave," Jorge Santamaria, a resident in the area of the impact, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying.
The AP quotes Nicaraguan government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo as saying the meteorite was relatively small and "appears to have come off an asteroid that was passing close to Earth."
DW
Hundreds of villages in both India and Pakistan have been inundated by flooding over the past several days brought on by heavy monsoon rains. This is the worst monsoon flooding to have hit the region of Jammu and Kashmir in several decades. Apart from washing away thousands of houses, the floods have damaged roads, buildings, bridges and crops.
In India alone, around 170 people have reportedly been killed and more than 15,000 others evacuated from flood-hit areas. Thousands of soldiers, police officers and emergency workers are helping with the relief efforts.
On September 7, Indian PM Narendra Modi flew over the region to take note of the situation and described the floods as a "national level disaster." The prime minister also promised around 200 million USD in emergency aid and compensation.
NPR
A rarely seen virus is sending children to the hospital with severe respiratory infections, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning doctors and parents to be on the alert.
"Hospitalizations are higher than would be expected at this time of year," Dr. Anne Schuchat, head of infectious diseases for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday at a press briefing on enterovirus 68. "The situation is evolving quickly."
In August, health officials in Illinois and Missouri reported a surge in emergency room visits for severe respiratory illnesses in Chicago and Kansas City. That surge is continuing. Enterovirus 68 has been identified in 19 of 22 people tested in Kansas City, and 11 of 14 cases in Chicago. The sick patients have all been children and teenagers, and 68 percent have a history of asthma or wheezing, according to a report published Monday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. No one is known to have died.
So far about a dozen states have reported higher-than-usual numbers of severe respiratory infections, and the CDC is working with them to figure out if EV-68 is to blame, Schuchat says. "This is a very dynamic situation, an unusual virus, and we're just beginning to understand it."
NPR
A prominent scientist has started a big new debate about breast cancer. Geneticist Mary-Claire King of the University of Washington, who identified the first breast cancer gene, is recommending that all women get tested for genetic mutations that can cause breast cancer.
"My colleagues and I are are taking a really bold step," King said. "We're recommending that all adult women in America, regardless of their personal history and regardless of their family history, be offered genetic testing for the breast cancer genes."
But others say that one study is far from enough evidence to know if these women face a higher risk of getting cancer, and that universal testing could lead women to undergo unnecessary surgery, doing more harm than good.
The breast cancer genes are called BRCA1 and BRCA2. Women who have mutations in these genes are much likely to get breast cancer and ovarian cancer. From 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer is caused by BRCA mutations, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Doctors usually recommend women get tested only if one of those cancers runs in their families.