Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular 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.
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The Guardian
Barack Obama has answered continuing Israeli criticism of the framework agreement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, telling the New York Times the deal is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table”.
The US president added: “There is no formula, there is no option, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon that will be more effective than the diplomatic initiative and framework that we put forward – and that’s demonstrable.”
Two days after the announcement of the deal between Iran and the major world powers – achieved in Switzerland after 18 months of talks and which must be finalised by the end of June – Obama spoke to the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman at the White House for an interview that was published online on Sunday.
Al Jazeera America
President Barack Obama defended a framework nuclear agreement with Iran as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to prevent development of a bomb and bring longer-term stability to the Middle East. He insisted the U.S. would stand by Israel if it were to come under attack, but acknowledged that his pursuit of diplomacy with Tehran has caused strain with the close ally.
“It's been a hard period,” Obama said in an interview with Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times published Sunday night. He added that it is “personally difficult” for him to hear his administration accused of not looking out for Israel's interests.
Now in his seventh year in office, Obama cast the Iran talks as part of a broader foreign policy doctrine that sees American power as a safeguard that gives him the ability to take calculated risks.
“We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk,” he said, citing his overtures to Cuba and Myanmar as other examples of his approach.
Spiegel Online
People in the West tend to have a monolithic view of Iran. But there's a lot more to the country than the mullah-led theocracy, and it often gets ignored. And national pride is alive and well.
Which government cabinet is home to more ministers with doctorates from American universities than Barack Obama's administration? The correct answer is that of of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And, no, that list does not include President Hassan Rouhani. He got his doctorate at the University of Glasgow law school.
There are few countries in the world that are subjected to as much Western prejudice and misunderstanding as Iran. I have known the country since the era of the shahs and I have visited it more than a dozen times in the past four decades, including a recent visit.
BBC
President Barack Obama has moved to reassure Israel that the US remains its staunchest supporter, amid Israeli fears over last week's outline agreement on Iran's nuclear programme.
He said Iran and the rest of the region should know that "if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there".
Critics have accused the president of conceding too much ground to Iran and endangering Israel's security.
But in an interview with the New York Times, Mr Obama firmly denied this.
"I would consider it a failure on my part, a fundamental failure of my presidency, if on my watch, or as a consequence of work that I had done, Israel was rendered more vulnerable," he said.
NPR
President Obama says it would be a "fundamental misjudgment" to condition a nuclear deal with Iran on the country's recognition of Israel.
Obama made the comments Monday during an interview with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep.
Steve spoke at length with Obama about a framework deal struck by Iran and world powers that would curb parts of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the loosening of some international sanctions.
Israel has vehemently opposed such a deal and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been publicly critical of the parameters set by the agreement, saying they would "threaten the survival of Israel."
New York Times
JERUSALEM — Clearly unsatisfied with assurances from Washington, Israel on Monday listed specific requirements that it said it wanted in any final deal with Iran over that country’s nuclear program.
Israel’s public diplomacy has so far focused on what many have said was an unrealistic demand for the complete dismantlement of Iran’s potentially military nuclear infrastructure. Softening that position, Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, presented a list of desired modifications for the final agreement, due to be concluded by June 30, that he said would make it “more reasonable.”
Those changes, the Israeli government says, are necessary to close dangerous loopholes in the preliminary framework agreed between Iran and world powers including the United States in Lausanne, Switzerland, last week.
Los Angeles Times
A top Saudi envoy appeared to give the White House support Monday for the nuclear framework deal with Iran, apparently bringing a powerful regional ally into the fold as the White House seeks to shore up regional support.
Adel Jubeir, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, said Monday that he is optimistic the deal will be concluded to place strict limits on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and conduct other nuclear activities for at least a decade.
“We hope there will be a deal based on the principles that the U.S. government has articulated to us,” he told reporters.
Salon
Throughout his career, but especially in the time since President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed himself to be something most politicians are not: a terrible bullshitter.
I don’t mean “terrible” in a normative sense, though he often deploys bullshit for ends that I find morally abhorrent. I mean “terrible” in the sense of lacking skill. Even if you adjust your measurements to reflect his profession (where bullshit is nearly omnipresent), Netanyahu’s phoniness is obvious. It’s a strange thing to say about the second-longest serving PM in Israel’s history, I grant, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s absurdly easy to tell when “Bibi” is full of it.
Let’s take the multiple appearances he made this weekend on American television, for example. During his time on both NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week,” Netanyahu repeated the argument he made during his farcical speech before (most of) the Congress earlier this year. Evidently, the fact that the outline of an agreement negotiators unveiled last week is broadly seen as better than expected has not caused him to reevaluate his position.
The Guardian
Just days after becoming the world’s oldest documented person, 116-year-old Gertrude Weaver died on Monday in Arkansas.
Weaver became the oldest person in the world after the death of a 117-year-old Japanese woman last week, according to records kept by the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group. Weaver was born in 1898.
The Williams Funeral Home confirmed Weaver died just after 10am on Monday at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Centre in Camden, about 100 miles south-west of Little Rock.
The mayor of Camden, Marie Trisollini, chatted with Weaver last week when the supercentenarian’s roommate celebrated her 100th birthday.
The Guardian
The University of Virginia fraternity chapter at the center of Rolling Stone magazine’s retracted article A Rape on Campus said on Monday that it planned to sue the magazine for what it called “reckless” reporting that hurt its reputation.
Stephen Scipione, the president of UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter, told CNN Money that the fraternity – or all-male university society – is pursuing “all available legal action against the magazine, a day after a team from the Columbia University graduate school of journalism concluded the magazine failed to follow basic journalistic safeguards in publishing the story.
The Guardian
The LGBT equality movement pocketed a major victory last week when religious freedom legislation perceived as “anti-gay” sparked a national uproar, forcing the governors of Indiana and Arkansas to defy social conservatives by rejecting discrimination against LGBT people.
Both have since amended their religious freedom legislation to clarify that it does not authorize businesses to discriminate against gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.
The swift and overwhelming backlash that helped modify the religious freedom bills – spurred in particular by tech and business leaders – revealed a new front in the broader US culture wars over LGBT rights. Even as marriage equality emerges a winner in the national battle, other hard-won LGBT rights are being attacked under the guise of religious liberty.
Reuters
Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev "wanted to punish America" when he killed three people and injured 264 with a pair of homemade bombs at the 2013 race, a federal prosecutor said on Monday.
In closing arguments before a jury decides whether Tsarnaev, 21, is guilty of the April 25 bombing and of fatally shooting a police officer three days later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty described the attack as deliberate and extremist.
"The defendant thought that his values were more important than the people around him. He wanted to awake the mujahedeen, the holy warriors," Chakravarty said. "He wanted to terrorize this country. He wanted to punish America for what it was doing to his people."
Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who moved to the United States about a decade before the attack, could be sentenced to death if the jury that heard 16 days of testimony against him finds him guilty.
NPR
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his son Jeb Bush Jr. have responded to a news report that the likely Republican presidential candidate self-identified as Hispanic in a 2009 voter-registration application.
...
The New York Times reported the story today, citing Bush's application it obtained from the Miami-Dade County Elections Department. A spokeswoman for Bush could not explain the characterization to the newspaper.
Bush, the brother of a former president and the son of another, hails from one of the country's most-prominent political and business families. Indeed, Burke's Peerage, a directory of royalty, lists the Bush family's connections to European royal families.
NPR
Since August, several U.S cities have been at the center of protests about policing and race. Activists in Ferguson, Mo., demonstrated for months in the aftermath of the shooting death of Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old killed by a white police officer last summer. They also have demanded resignations and pushed for new laws in what organizers say is the start of a national movement for justice.
On a crisp, sunny Saturday afternoon, about 100 people gathered at a school next door to Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson. The church has been a gathering spot and safe haven for activists in the St. Louis region.
"The responses that we've seen over the last seven months wouldn't have happened without you actually being willing to be in the streets, without you being willing to be intentionally involved in movement-building," says 41-year-old Montague Simmons, head of the Organization for Black Struggle. It was one of the main groups coordinating protests in the aftermath of Brown's death.
CNN
Facebook may soon need to add "Just got served divorce papers" to its list of relationship statuses now that a New York judge has said the social media site is an acceptable way for a Brooklyn woman to serve her husband with a summons for divorce.
Ellanora Arthur Baidoo has been trying to divorce her husband for several years, according to her attorney, Andrew Spinnell.
But, Spinnell said, he and his client haven't been able to find Victor Sena Blood-Dzraku to serve him the papers. Baidoo has been able to reach her husband by phone and "he has told her that he has no fixed address and no place of employment," according to court documents.
"He has also refused to make himself available to be served," the document said.
Reuters
U.S. media company Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) said it will undertake a restructuring, including cutting jobs, abandoning some acquired titles and reorganizing three of its domestic network groups into two new organizations, to drive growth.
The owner of movie studio Paramount Pictures and cable networks such as MTV and Comedy Central said it will take a related pre-tax charge of about $785 million in the quarter ended March 31.
Viacom also halted its $20 billion share buyback program due to the restructuring and the spending on acquisitions anticipated in the current fiscal year.
The company's shares fell 1.6 percent after the bell on Monday.
Viacom said the new structure would realign sales, marketing, creative and support functions and increase efficiencies in program and product development.
NHK World News
A major logistical artery connecting Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam has been completed with the opening of a new bridge over the Mekong River.
Several thousand people attended a ceremony marking the completion of the 2.2-kilometer bridge on Monday in southern Cambodia.
Attendees included Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Japanese state minister for transport Akihiro Nishimura.
One of the longest bridges in Cambodia was financed by grant aid from Japan.
Hun Sen hailed the bridge as valuable infrastructure that connects the three members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to other parts of Asia.
Cambodians and Japanese living in Cambodia invited as representatives crossed the bridge to mark its opening.
DW
Kenya has carried out air strikes on al-Shabab Islamist militants in neighboring Somalia. This was the first major military response to last week's attack on a university that killed almost 150 people.
News agencies on Monday cited Kenyan military spokesman Colonel David Obonyo who said that his country's air force had launched strikes on al-Shabab camps in Gondodowe and Ismail in a region of Somalia located near the Kenyan border.
"We bombed two Shabab camps in the Gedo region," Obonyo said. "The two targets were hit and taken out, the two camps are destroyed."
He also denied that the strikes were a direct response to Thursday's attack on the Garissa College University last Thursday.
DW
Riyadh has asked Islamabad to contribute aircrafts, warships and soldiers to its Yemen offensive. Meanwhile, Pakistani legislators have advised the government to remain non-partisan in the Middle Eastern conflict.
Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Monday that Saudi Arabia had formally asked Pakistan to join the coalition against Yemen's Shiite Houthi rebels, who have captured a number of key Yemeni cities including the capital Sanaa and the southern port city of Aden.
"Saudi Arabia has asked for combat planes, warships and soldiers," Asif told the South Asian country's joint parliamentary session on Monday.
Riyadh and its Middle Eastern allies launched air strikes against the Houthi forces in Yemen on March 26, claiming it was "defending the legitimate government" of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of backing Houthi militias, an allegation Tehran vehemently denies.
Al Jazeera America
If a shadowy Chinese billionaire has his way, the fishermen’s shacks that dot the shores of Brito, on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, will soon be barreled over. Waves of multiton trenchers and dredging machines will enter the mouth of the Brito River and churn their way inland before entering Lake Nicaragua, Central America’s largest and most biodiverse reservoir. Then they will slice their way through the rain forests, wetlands and indigenous communities that typify the country’s east, until they reach Rio Punta Gorda, on the Caribbean coast.
Finally, they will have given birth to the 172-mile Nicaragua Interoceanic Grand Canal — what has been billed as the largest engineering endeavor in history.
Spiegel Online"In the beginning, we thought they might bomb us for one or two nights. But it keeps getting worse!" says Ranim. In the background, the thump of the anti-aircraft batteries can be heard, occasionally interrupted by the thundering explosions of bomb detonations. Sometimes, the attacks last from early evening to midnight, they say over a Skype connection that repeatedly crashes. At other times, the bombing begins later and only ends at dawn.
On recent evenings, as Western foreign ministers negotiated fervently with the Iranian leadership in Lausanne, Switzerland, two young women in the Yemeni capital of Saana spent their time gazing fearfully into the darkening night sky. Nina Aqlan, a well-known civil rights activist, and her friend Ranim were on the lookout for Saudi Arabian fighter jets. Ranim was staying with Aqlan because her own apartment stands next to the headquarters of the Political Security Organization, Yemen's domestic intelligence agency. The building is considered a potential target for the Saudis and their allies.
The Guardian
Air India has grounded two of its pilots after a dispute between the pair just before takeoff, the airline has said.
The captain and first officer came to blows in the cockpit as they were preparing the passenger plane for departure from the Rajasthan city of Jaipur to Delhi on Sunday night.
The first officer was irritated by his superior’s request to write down critical information for the flight, such as the number of passengers on board, takeoff weight and fuel uptake, the Times of India reported.
“The co-pilot took offence at this and reportedly beat up the captain,” the newspaper said, quoting unnamed sources. “In the larger interest of the airline, the commander decided to go ahead with the flight and flew to Delhi,” the paper added.
The Hindustan Times also said there had been a fight between the two, according to its sources.
Reuters
Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) said on Monday it was not required to inform German aviation authorities about Andreas Lubitz's former depression because he qualified as a pilot before stricter reporting rules went into effect in 2013.
Lubitz, a co-pilot at Lufthansa's budget division Germanwings, is believed to have deliberately crashed a plane into the French Alps and killed 150 people.
The question of what Lufthansa knew about any psychiatric problems may be a factor in its liability in the crash. Germany's Allianz estimates that insurers will end up paying $300 million in claims and costs related to the crash.
Lubitz broke off pilot training for several months in 2009. When he resumed his training, he told the Lufthansa pilot instructors by email he had overcome a period of severe depression. He was first certified to fly commercial planes in 2012.
Reuters
A day before his surprise election victory last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood against the backdrop of a construction site in Har Homa, a towering settlement in the occupied West Bank, and pledged to go on building.
The next week, however, his office ordered local authorities to put the brakes on plans to erect hundreds of new homes at Har Homa, a settlement Netanyahu authorized in 1997 during his first term in the face of fierce international opposition.
It was an example of the tightrope Netanyahu walks between his political allegiances and the international community, whose faith in his commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians - including a halt to settlement-building - is wearing thin.
About to begin his fourth term, likely this time at the head of a heavily right-leaning coalition, Netanyahu will be watched closely, at home and abroad, for any moves on settlements, after he ruled out any future Palestinian state before the poll.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Al Jazeera America
Jintana Kaewkao, a 53-year-old activist, shop-owner and mother of three, arrived at the district government office on March 12 ready for a fight.
With local tensions rising over the planned construction of a steel manufacturing plant amid the wetlands and coconut trees of this seaside community of Bangsaphan, Thailand, more than 30 villagers had assembled in the morning heat. Most were women; some had toddlers in tow. They were ready to register their concerns over potential pollution, and a local conglomerate’s questionable land acquisitions, with the district leader.
As usual, they were waiting for Jintana, a charismatic environmental crusader from the neighboring village of Ban Krut, to lead the way.
She didn’t disappoint. Informed that the top district official had stood the villagers up, she marched up the stairs of the building and demanded a meeting with his deputy. Jintana playfully lectured the government official, explained the intricacies of land title law to the villagers, and won a promise of a new meeting later in the month.
Al Jazeera America
ARVIN, California – Californians who grumble about not being able to water their lawns everyday during the fourth year of a historic drought should swing by this small town in southern Kern County.
Drought or no drought, residents of this rural community can’t drink water from the tap and can’t even use it for cooking because high levels of arsenic — known to cause cancer — become even more concentrated when water is boiled.
“They worry about little things,” said Salvador Partida, president of the Committee for a Better Arvin, of the rest of the state. “We’re worried about not being able to drink the water.”
Last week Gov. Jerry Brown ordered the State Water Resources Control Board to enact mandatory cuts in water use by 25 percent. But more than 1 million California residents who live in mostly rural areas have unreliable access to safe drinking water, according to the Community Water Center, a non-profit group that advocates affordable and clean water for all Californians. For them, the ongoing drought that is ravaging the state's water supply is merely a sideshow.
NPR
Humans have had such a huge impact on the Earth that some geologists think the human era should be enshrined in the official timeline of our planet.
They want to give the age of humans a formal name, just as scientists use terms like the Jurassic or the Cretaceous to talk about the age of dinosaurs.
But some researchers think that formally establishing an "Anthropocene" — as many call it — as part of the geologic time scale would be a big mistake.
The debate is heating up as a working group is getting closer to making recommendations to the scientific organization that decides such things — the International Union of Geological Sciences. The working group's interim report is expected by next year.
NPR
Pesticide-free? Nurtured with organic fertilizer? No antibiotics?
Ask any shopper, and you're bound to find mixed answers for what an organic label means.
Now, an association is trying to draw funding from something called a "checkoff" to pay for consumer advertising and research. For a checkoff to work, each farmer pays a small amount. For example, a penny-per-bushel of wheat or a dollar per cow would generate millions of dollars in pooled funding that could pay for splashy ad campaigns.
Think "Pork: The Other White Meat" and "Got milk?" — both of those projects were funded by checkoff funding.
NPR
It's a warm afternoon in Miami, and 35-year-old Emanuel Vega has come to Baptist Health Primary Care for a physical exam. Dr. Mark Caruso shakes his hand with a welcoming smile.
Vega, a strapping man with a thick black beard, is feeling good, but he came to see the doctor today because his wife thought he should. She even made the appointment. It is free to him under his insurance policy with no copay, as most preventive care is under the Affordable Care Act.
Vega is one of more than 44 million Americans who is taking part in a medical ritual — visiting the doctor for an annual physical exam. But there's little evidence that these visits actually do any good for healthy adults.
NPR
Christina Costanzo was 32 when she had her first heart attack. It all started on a Friday.
"I had chest pain. I had pain in my jaw, pain going down my left arm. I had some shortness of breath," Costanzo recalls.
But Costanzo who is a nurse practitioner in New Haven, Conn., didn't realize right away that these were symptoms of a heart attack. She figured this was just her body reacting to stress, and she didn't want to overreact.
"I didn't want to go to the ER and wait for hours only to be told that there was nothing wrong with me," she says. "So I waited till Monday and I saw my primary care."
It was only then that Costanzo discovered she had had a heart attack — a big one.
Costanzo's story isn't unique.
NPR
Oh, those goats? I got them from Amazon!
The online giant is testing out a "Home Services" line. You can get a TV mounted on your wall. You can find a plumber. And you can rent a herd of goats to chomp on unwanted vegetation in your yard.
I typed my Maryland zip code into "Hire a Goat Grazer." Sorry, "no providers available." It turns out that Amazon is wrangling goats only in the Seattle area right now, although a spokesman promises that more cities will be added.
As a goat admirer and editor of a blog called "Goats and Soda," I wanted to learn more about the grazing habits of goats — especially their alleged immunity to poison ivy. For enlightenment, I turned to Jean-Marie Luginbuhl, professor of crop science and animal science at North Carolina State University.
Climate Central
There’s no way to drive around it: Commuting to work behind the steering wheel emits carbon dioxide and contributes to climate change.
Dense cities are pretty good at keeping those tailpipe emissions low when measured on a per-person basis because many commuters often use trains and buses to get to work.
Less dense cities, on the other hand, see more people driving to work from distant suburbs, usually leading to more tailpipe emissions.
A Boston University study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that a major push in cities like Denver to build dense housing, better transit systems and more bike lanes in their urban core doesn’t necessarily lead to lower per-capita CO2 emissions. That’s because suburbs continue to sprawl and residents there still drive to work.