As your faithful scribe, I welcome you all to another edition of Overnight News Digest.
I am most pleased to share this platform with jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall, JLM9999 and side pocket. Additionally, I wish to recognize our alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, and ScottyUrb along with annetteboardman as our guest editor.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Lead Off Story
Madison Bumgarner, Giants Hold Off Royals To Win World Series
Madison Bumgarner pitched five innings of near-perfect relief and the San Francisco Giants held off the Kansas City Royals 3-2 Wednesday night in Game 7 of the World Series for their third championship in five seasons.
With both starters chased early, this became a matchup of bullpens. And no one stood taller than the 6-foot-5 Bumgarner, who added to his postseason legacy with a third victory this Series.
After Gregor Blanco misplayed Alex Gordon's drive for a single and two-base error, Bumgarner got Salvador Perez to pop foul to third baseman Pablo Sandoval for the final out.
The Giants ended a Series streak that had seen home teams win the last nine Game 7s. San Francisco took this pairing of wild-card teams after earning titles in 2012 and 2010.
Pitching on two days' rest after his shutout in Game 5, Bumgarner entered in the fifth with a 3-2 lead. After giving up a leadoff single to Omar Infante, he shut down the Royals.
espn
World News
Turkish Intelligence Coordinates Peshmerga Crossing To Syria
As Peshmerga forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) arrived in Turkey early Oct. 29, the Turkish intelligence agency has been commissioned to manage their crossing to Syria to help Syrian Kurds in the defence of the border town Kobane against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The main Peshmerga convoy, which consists of 80 vehicles, entered Turkey via Habur the border crossing at 5:50 a.m. The convoy is expected to use the Silopi-Cizre-Nusaybin-Kızıltepe-Suruç route to meet a group of Peshmerga fighters who arrived at Şanlıurfa Airport at 1:30 a.m. Both groups are expected to enter Kobane on Oct. 29. The distance between Suruç, a Turkish border town, and Kobane in Syria is 16 kilometers.
"There is now no political problem. There is no problem in the way of them crossing. They can cross at any moment," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu was quoted as saying by the official Anadolu Agency.
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After the Turkish army stated its unwillingness to manage the Peshmerga crossing during the latest security summit, the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) has been given the responsibility, Hürriyet has learned. The Turkish army is only expected to take initiative during the crossing through the military zone on the border.
Meanwhile, a group of demonstrators was assembled near Habur border crossing late Oct. 28 to meet the Peshmerga convoy that left Arbil earlier in the day. Unfurling the flags of the KRG, as well as the Syrian Kurdish group PYD, the group celebrated the expected arrival with songs and dancing. However, when some protesters started to pelt Turkish police units on the border with stones, security forces responded by firing warning shots into the air before dispersing the group by using tear gas.
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Ebola Crisis: Infections 'Slowing In Liberia'
The World Health Organization (WHO) says there has been a decline in the spread of Ebola in Liberia, the country hardest hit in the outbreak.
The WHO's Bruce Aylward said it was confident the response to the virus was now gaining the upper hand.
But he warned against any suggestion that the crisis was over.
The WHO later said the number of cases globally had risen more than 3,000 to 13,703 since its last report, but that this was due to reporting reasons.
The number of deaths was put at 4,920, roughly the same as the last report four days ago. All but 10 of the deaths have been in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
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As Afghanistan Looks For Investment, China Eyes Stability
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani arrived in China on Tuesday for four days of meetings aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries. The visit emphasizes Afghanistan’s need to shore up dwindling foreign investment and China’s interest in leveraging expanded economic cooperation with Kabul to ensure regional stability as NATO forces depart.
On the first day of his first state visit since becoming Afghanistan’s new leader last month, Ghani met with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, in a ceremony announcing closer economic and security cooperation. “We feel that our vision of Afghanistan as a hub of regional trade, transit and peace would be an illustration of your vision of East Asia and South Asia cooperation,” Ghani said. Xi, meanwhile, called for “a new era of cooperation in China-Afghanistan relations” to “take development to a new depth and breadth.”
For Afghanistan, the visit highlights the nation’s stark economic picture and uncertain future. As the 13-year war de-escalates, Afghanistan’s economic growth is stalling at 1.5 percent, according to World Bank figures. With his China visit, Ghani, a former World Bank economist who made a career creating state-building institutions in poor countries, hopes to change that. At the heart of a stronger economic relationship is one of the world’s most valuable untapped mineral deposits, which include large quantities of copper, iron and ore.
A recent U.S. geological survey estimated that Afghanistan’s untapped mineral wealth could exceed $1 trillion thanks to a massive deposit said to include copper, iron, cobalt, ore and other rare earth metals. An assessment by the Afghan government has put the number of estimated mineral wealth as high as $3 trillion.
aljazeera
U.S. News
Lava Threatens Up To 60 Buildings In Pahoa
A breakout from the main flow of lava from Kilauea Volcano was just 100 feet from a two-story rental home on an agricultural lot Wednesday morning and 240 yards from Pahoa's main road.
The leading edge of the flow continued to burn through an anthurium farm owned by a contractor where the lava ignited a stack of tires Tuesday and sent black smoke into the sky.
At least 50 or 60 structures -- including homes and businesses -- are in an area that officials warn will likely be hit by the lava flow.
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Tuesday's tire fire was out Wednesday and only vegetation was burning on the contractor's lot, Oliveira said.
But Civil Defense officials warned people -- especially children and the elderly -- that pipes, steel beams and other metals and material on the property could send up potentially harmful fumes if they're also hit by lava.
The leading edge of the lava was 240 yards from Pahoa Village Road and six miles from the ocean at 11 a.m. Wednesday, said Janet Babb, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
honolulustaradviser
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California Issues Quarantine Policy For Ebola Exposure
nyone arriving in California from an Ebola-affected area and who has had personal contact with a person infected with the deadly virus will be quarantined for 21 days, according to an order issued Wednesday by the state's public health director..
The order provides a more nuanced set of guidelines to assess the risk associated with people returning from regions afflicted by an Ebola outbreak -- currently Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- than the controversial blanket quarantines in New Jersey, New York and Maine.
In California, county health officials will have the ability to screen passengers arriving from Ebola-stricken regions in West Africa, or who have worked with infected patients, to determine if they’re at risk for the disease and if they should be quarantined for the virus' three-week incubation period.
Failure to comply with a quarantine order could result in misdemeanor criminal charges.
“This order will allow local health officers to determine, for those coming into California, who is most at risk for developing this disease, and to contain any potential spread of the disease by responding to those risks appropriately,” department director Dr. Ron Chapman said in a statement.
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Dr. Brantly Joins Obama To Encourage Ebola Volunteers In West Africa
Dr. Kent Brantly, the Fort Worth doctor who became the first American to contract Ebola in treating patients in West Africa, starred at a White House event meant to put a spotlight on the need for health care workers to volunteer to fight the outbreak.
The medical professionals of the three nations battling Ebola – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – “have fought with valiant effort against this menace,” Brantly said, introducing President Obama. “More medical professional are desperately needed.”
Obama warned that the United States “can’t hermetically seal ourselves off” from the rest of the world. He urged the public and state leaders to set aside fear — a term he invoked four times in 15 minutes, in pointed remarks aimed at displaying displeasure with state-level efforts to quarantine nurses and doctors returning from the Ebola hot zone.
“If we’re discouraging our health care workers who are prepared to make these sacrifices … then we’re not doing our job” in terms of protecting Americans, Obama asserted. “What we need right now is these shock troops who are out there leading globally. We can’t discourage that. We’ve got to encourage it and applaud it.”
dallasmorningnews
Science and Technology
Smallpox Samples Slated For Immediate Destruction Are Still Intact
After U.S. government researchers discovered six forgotten vials of smallpox in a freezer this past June, the plan was to destroy the vials. That's still the plan… but the demolition date has been pushed back, Nature News reports.
The actual destruction should be fairly easy, biosecurity consultant Erik Heegaard told Popular Science in July. Smallpox can killed by autoclaving, then incinerating it. However, officials from the World Health Organization are supposed to witness the destruction of the forgotten U.S. vials and the WHO is a bit busy right now with Ebola. Nature News reports:
The CDC promised to destroy the NIH samples immediately, with WHO officials present. But that has proved more difficult than anticipated. . . . no WHO employee is certified to enter the CDC's high-security smallpox lab. This means that a WHO official must fly to Atlanta to witness the destruction of the virus on closed-circuit television. Arranging the trip has been made more difficult by the Ebola crisis, says Alejandro Costa, head of the WHO team in Geneva, Switzerland, that monitors smallpox issues.
Meanwhile, the vials are being kept in a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facility in Atlanta, Georgia, which is one of the two places in the world authorized to store smallpox, according to international agreement.
popsci
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Liberal Or Conservative? Reactions To Disgust Are A Dead Giveaway
The way a person's brain responds to a single disgusting image is enough to reliably predict whether he or she identifies politically as liberal or conservative. As we approach Election Day, the researchers say that the findings reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 30 come as a reminder of something we all know but probably don't always do: "Think, don't just react."
P. Read Montague of Virginia Tech says he was initially inspired by evidence showing that an individual's political affiliation is almost as heritable as height. Montague and his colleagues also recognized that those political ideologies summarize many aspects of life -- attitudes associated with sex, family, education, and personal autonomy, for instance -- and have deep connections to the way our bodies respond to threats of contamination or violence.
To find out just how fundamental those connections are, Montague and his colleagues asked whether functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) of the brain taken as people passively looked at a series of disgusting, pleasant, and neutral images was enough to give away their political leanings, as measured on a standardized test. (The Wilson Patterson inventory produces a score from 0 to 1, from extremely liberal to extremely conservative.)
The researchers applied a machine-learning method to all of those pictures together with the test scores in search of a predictable relationship between the two. And, indeed, they found it. Disgusting images, and the mutilated body of an animal especially, generated neural responses that were highly predictive of political orientation. That was true even though the neural predictors didn't necessarily agree with participants' conscious rating of those disturbing pictures.
It's not clear from the study exactly how or why liberal versus conservative brains differ from each other, Montague explains, only that they do. In fact, the researchers were especially surprised by the strength of the response.
"A single disgusting image was sufficient to predict each subject's political orientation," he says. "I haven't seen such clean predictive results in any other functional imaging experiments in our lab or others."
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Creationism Conference At Large U.S. Research University Stirs Unease
A creationist conference set for a major research campus—Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing—is creating unease among some of the school’s students and faculty, which includes several prominent evolutionary biologists.
The 1 November event, called the Origin Summit, is sponsored by Creation Summit, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit Christian group that believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and was founded to “challenge evolution and all such theories predicated on chance.” The 1-day conference will include eight workshops, according the event’s website, including discussion of how evolutionary theory influenced Adolf Hitler’s worldview, why “the big bang is fake,” and why “natural selection is NOT evolution.” Another talk targets the work of MSU biologist Richard Lenski, who has conducted an influential, decades-long study of evolution in bacterial populations.
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Creation Summit is “not overtly evangelistic,” Smith wrote. But “we hope to pave the way for evangelism (for the other campus ministries) by presenting the scientific evidence for intelligent design. Once students realize they're created beings, and not the product of natural selection, they're much more open to the Gospel, to the message of God's love & forgiveness.”
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Some leaders of MSU’s evolutionary biology community are urging their colleagues to simply ignore the event, predicting that any engagement and debate will be fruitless. “In my opinion, this event will be just another forgettable blip in the long history of antiscience, antievolution screeds,” Lenski says. “I suppose the speakers chose to target our research … because their event is being held here, and maybe because they find it confusing to their worldview that evolution isn’t supposed to happen.” (Creation Summit invited both Lenski and Pennock to participate in a debate at the event; Lenski says he declined.)
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University officials say they have no plans to interfere with the event. “Free speech is at the heart of academic freedom and is something we take very seriously,” said Kent Cassella, MSU’s associate vice president for communications, in a statement. “Any group, regardless of viewpoint, has the right to assemble in public areas of campus or petition for space to host an event so long as it does not engage in disorderly conduct or violate rules. While MSU is not a sponsor of the creation summit, MSU is a marketplace of free ideas.”
sciencemag
Well, that's different...
New World Order:
In September, Dr. Sean Perry of the Marathon (Florida) Veterinary Hospital saved the life of Buttercup, an orange tabby who needed blood -- by giving him a transfusion from a West Palm Beach dog blood bank. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, 62 cats have been known to receive such "xenotransfusions," and cats are apparently the only animals (besides dogs) that can safely process dog blood.
newsoftheweird
Bill Moyers and Company:
The Fight — and the Right — to Vote
This week, Bill talks with an attorney and journalist about the ongoing vote suppression controversy. Sherrilyn Ifill is president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine and author of the upcoming book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.