OND Editors OND is a community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
OND Editors 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.
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BBC
Marion Barry: Ex-Washington DC mayor dies at 78
Former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry, who won re-election after a drug arrest, has died at the age of 78.
A Democrat, Mr Barry served three terms from 1979 to 1991 before his personal life overshadowed his politics.
He was arrested in an FBI sting operation and tried on drug charges in 1990, but was only convicted on a single count of possession.
He remained popular with many poorer African American voters, and served a final term as mayor from 1995 to 1999.
Mr Barry died overnight at a hospital in Washington, DC Council spokeswoman LaToya Foster said.
The cause of death was not disclosed, but he had kidney problems stemming from diabetes and high blood pressure.
His 1990 arrest - which came during his third term - came after he was videotaped by the FBI smoking crack in a Washington hotel room with a female friend.
BBC
Regin, new computer spying bug, discovered by Symantec
A leading computer security company says it has discovered one of the most sophisticated pieces of malicious software ever seen.
Symantec says the bug, named Regin, was probably created by a government and has been used for six years against a range of targets around the world.
Once installed on a computer, it can do things like capture screenshots, steal passwords or recover deleted files.
Experts say computers in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Ireland have been hit most.
It has been used to spy on government organisations, businesses and private individuals, they say.
Researchers say the sophistication of the software indicates that it is a cyber-espionage tool developed by a nation state.
They also said it likely took months, if not years, to develop and its creators have gone to great lengths to cover its tracks.
Sian John, a security strategist at Symantec, said: "It looks like it comes from a Western organisation. It's the level of skill and expertise, the length of time over which it was developed."
N Y Times (good news story)
A Lifesaving Transplant for Coral Reefs
SUMMERLAND KEY, Fla. — David Vaughan plunges his right arm down to his elbow into one of nine elevated tanks where thousands of tiny colonies of coral are growing at an astonishing rate in shaded seclusion next to the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory.
“Now this is the exciting part. You ready for this?” he asks, straining to be heard over the relentless hiss of filtered saltwater squirting from a maze of pipes and plastic tubing into the shallow fiberglass tank, the size of a dining-room table.
Dr. Vaughan, a marine biologist who is executive director of the laboratory, retrieves a flat rock from the bottom. A chocolate-brown colony of brain coral, nearly eight inches wide, has grown on the stony surface, its distinctive fleshy, serpentine folds nearly covering the rock.
A year ago the colony began as inch-and-a-half-wide coral fragments cut with a band saw from the same parent colony. As if doused with a growth elixir, these coral “seeds” began to grow 25 times as fast as they would in the wild.
N Y Times
Graft Hobbles Iraq’s Military in Fighting ISIS
BAGHDAD — One Iraqi general is known as “chicken guy” because of his reputation for selling his soldiers’ poultry provisions. Another is “arak guy,” for his habit of enjoying that anis-flavored liquor on the job. A third is named after Iraq’s 10,000-dinar bills, “General Deftar,” and is infamous for selling officer commissions.
They are just a few of the faces of the entrenched corruption of the Iraqi security forces, according to Iraqi officers and lawmakers as well as American officials.
The Iraqi military and police forces had been so thoroughly pillaged by their own corrupt leadership that they all but collapsed this spring in the face of the advancing militants of the Islamic State — despite roughly $25 billion worth of American training and equipment over the past 10 years and far more from the Iraqi treasury.
Now the pattern of corruption and patronage in the Iraqi government forces threatens to undermine a new American-led effort to drive out the extremists, even as President Obama is doubling to 3,000 the number of American troops in Iraq.
Al Jazeera America
Civic group: Ferguson grand jury will keep meeting Monday
Crews set up barricades around the building where a grand jury has been considering whether to indict the white police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, setting off weeks of sometimes-violent protests. Tension has been mounting for days in the St. Louis suburb, with the grand jury's decision widely expected this weekend — but that seemed increasingly unlikely as Sunday dawned.
Downtown STL Inc., a St. Louis civic group that promotes local businesses, told members in an email Saturday that the grand jury would reconvene Monday to continue deliberating whether charges are warranted against Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of Brown.
The email did not explain how the group obtained the information, and a spokeswoman declined comment. Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, did not respond to several messages Saturday.
The Brown family's attorney, Ben Crump, said Saturday that he hadn't heard a decision had been reached and that prosecutors had promised to tell him when that happened.
Al Jazeera America
St. Louis churches to offer sanctuary when grand jury decision announced
FERGUSON, Mo. — As the St. Louis region warily awaits a grand jury’s decision on whether to indict a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teen in the suburban community of Ferguson, churches are trying to offer some comfort by promising to open as 24-hour sanctuaries when the decision is announced — which many fear will ignite widespread unrest. Major protests raged in Ferguson for weeks after the shooting, and some turned violent.
More than 15 churches have pledged to be safe spaces for protesters and congregation members alike. Many will offer food, water, phone chargers, medical supplies and counseling.
The Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson became involved with protest groups when it was asked to hold a prayer rally for 18-year-old Michael Brown, just a few days after he was killed. The death ignited weeks of unrest that occasionally turned violent in Ferguson as protesters and police clashed. Vandals burned a convenience store and some storefronts were looted.
“I thought [our participation] would only be one day — it’s evolved into months,” said the Rev. Tommie L. Pierson, pastor of the Greater St. Mark Family Church. He said he will be ready to lead prayers and offer support to those who walk into the church, a couple of miles from where Brown was killed.
Al Jazeera America
Don’t expect an Aztec Spring with Mexico protests, analysts warn
MEXICO CITY — After weeks of protests over the disappearance of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero, many thousands of demonstrators converged on Mexico City. Their demands were no longer simply to learn the fate of the missing students or to bring those responsible to justice; instead, they also called for the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto. But despite such revolutionary demands and such dramatic imagery as the torching of the doors the national palace last weekend, analysts are not predicting that dramatic change in Mexico is imminent.
The pageantry of revolution pervades much of politics in Mexico. The missing students from Guerrero had been trying to raise funds for a trip to the capital to observe the anniversary of yet another revolutionary tragedy — the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre of protesting students in Mexico City. The march to protest their disappearances was staged on the anniversary of the 1910 revolution, and along the way marchers received a message of support from the Zapatista Front, which had launched a brief armed insurrection in the southern state of Chiapas on New Year's Day in 1994.
The current upsurge reflects deep-seated revulsion shared among wide sectors of civil society at the pervasive corruption and drug-war-related violence of the status quo. But there are no signs yet that this protest wave is any different from a number of other eruptions of mass anger over the past two decades that have failed to transform that status quo despite its stark failure to deliver security and justice to the citizenry.
Raw Story
LA school district agrees to record $140 million settlement in Berndt sex abuse case
Lawyers representing the Los Angeles Unified School District have agreed to set up a fund containing close to $140 million as a settlement in a civil case brought by dozens of students over the district’s handling of a case involving a Miramonte elementary teacher accused of sexually molesting the children.
According to KPCC, the $139,250,000 fund will be established allowing “the judge to review each of the claims and assign the appropriate individual amount,” to each of the 82 students who took part in the suit against the district following the arrest and conviction of Miramonte Elementary School Mark Berndt.
Berndt was arrested in 2012 and charged with 23 counts of committing lewd acts on children, and is currently serving a 25-year sentence after pleading no contest to the charges.
According to court documents Berndt was originally accused of feeding students semen-laced cookies and taking pictures of them blindfolded.
Months after Judge John Wiley Jr handed down Berndt’s sentence, a L.A. Sheriff’s Department investigation found that Berndt’s alleged crimes went far beyond the previous allegations and included touching girls’ genitalia, inducing children to touch his genitalia, and exposing his genitalia to students.
Raw Story
Extreme weather could be ‘new climate normal’
The World Bank Sunday warned extreme weather will become the "new climate normal," increasing the risk of world instability. The report, "Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal," analyzes the impact of warming of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (3.6 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels on crops and coastlines.
USA Today
More weather misery on horizon for beleaguered Buffalo
The cold eased and it was no longer snowing Sunday in battered Buffalo and elsewhere around the Great Lakes.
Here comes the rain. And behind that, another foot of snow.
Areas that saw up to 7 feet of lake-effect snow in recent days were basking in temperatures well above freezing Sunday. Buffalo could see 60 degrees on Monday. The warmer temperatures and half-an-inch of rain by late Monday could mean intense flooding for the beleaguered region.
"They are going to have flooding problems, there is no doubt about that," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Jack Boston said.
Boston said the lake-effect snow is usually "the real fluffy stuff." But last week's storm came early in the season when Lake Erie's water temperature was still in the 50s -- the warm water brought wetter, heavier snow.
The Big Melt will pass into history by Tuesday when a wave of arctic air will sweep across the region.
"Some areas could see another foot of snow Tuesday. Isn't that nice ..." Boston said.