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 with guest editors annetteboardman and Chitown Kev. 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
Americans eager to hear Pope Francis liberalize tenets of the Catholic Church “risk being very disappointed” by his historic visit to the United States, the archbishop of Philadelphia told the Guardian ahead of the pope’s stay in his city.
In an interview, Archbishop Charles Chaput said that although the pope’s plain-spoken style contrasts with that of his predecessors, the church’s teachings have not changed. “His vocabulary and emphases are different, like his personal style of leadership,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean a change in content. People risk being very disappointed if they imagine it does.”
Chaput is no stranger to the culture wars – he is an outspoken proponent of immigration reform and a critic of abortion – he also repeated a criticism of Barack Obama’s administration that he made earlier this year: “The current White House is the least friendly to religious freedom in our history.”
McClatchy DC
WASHINGTON Religion matters less and less in American politics today.
Candidates thrive when they preach tolerance. Voters want politicians with strong religious beliefs, but they don’t necessarily have to share those beliefs. People welcome the visit of Pope Francis to the country’s most venerated government institutions, with little talk that his unprecedented address to a joint meeting of Congress has improper religious overtones.
That’s why, when Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said the United States should not elect a Muslim president, he ignites a bipartisan firestorm. He’s going against the American mainstream.
"What we’ve seen is actual denominational affiliation doesn’t matter as much as it used to," said Daniel Cox, research director at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute.
NPR
President Obama is taking some heat over who's been invited to attend Pope Francis' large arrival ceremony at the White House this Wednesday. The list includes the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, an activist nun and a transgender activist — guests the Vatican reportedly objected to, according to the Wall Street Journal.
And the Obama administration also has critics on this side of the pond — the latest is presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
...
White House spokesman Josh Earnest responded to the criticism Monday, saying "there is no theological test that was administered prior to giving out tickets to stand on the South Lawn Wednesday morning."
An estimated 15,000 invitations have been issued for the event, which will take place on the South Lawn of the White House. The Obama administration issued some invitations itself but also partnered with faith organizations including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Archdiocese of Washington and Catholic Charities.
Earnest declined to respond directly to Huckabee's "anti-Christian" claim but said more generally that
"The president's approach is to welcome the pope warmly to the United States and to eagerly anticipate and participate in a discussion about their shared values.
New York Times
In New York, Roman Catholic officials have walked Pope Francis’ expected path through the National September 11 Memorial and timed it at five to seven minutes.
In Washington, studios for television news anchors are being erected on the roofs of the Catholic University of America.
In a quiet corner of Philadelphia, the buzzing epicenter of papal-preparation madness, there stands, carefully guarded, a lectern newly wrought of burnished black walnut, the product of thousands of dollars in labor and materials, that is just a stand-in for the one the pope will use.
Even the humble chair the pope will sit in at Madison Square Garden, built largely of plywood by immigrant day laborers in a two-car garage, caused a few headaches.
Steve Cohen, the production designer for the Garden Mass, said that when he heard about the chair, he thought, “This is all fine and good, but it’s got to work and it’s got to be comfortable and it’s going to be seen by a billion zillion people.”
Taking no chances, he arranged for a backup chair from a scenery company. He drove up to the garage workshop in Port Chester, north of the city, to see the laborers’ work. (To his relief, he said, it was “absolutely amazing.”)
Reuters
A narrow majority of Americans have a positive view of Pope Francis, who makes his first visit to the United States this week, with more than one of four neutral on the Roman Catholic pontiff, according to a poll released on Monday.
Some 51 percent of respondents to an MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll said they had a positive view of the Argentina-born leader of the world's 1.2 billion-member Catholic Church. Just 9 percent reported a negative view of the pope, with 27 percent of the 1,689 adults polled Aug. 26 through Sept. 9 saying they had a neutral view on him.
...
Some 49 percent of poll respondents said they wanted to hear Francis address social and economic issues, while 36 percent said he should focus on religion and faith. The poll had a margin of error of 2.4 percent.
The Guardian
The former owner of a US peanut company was sentenced to 28 years in prison for his role in a salmonella outbreak that killed nine people and made hundreds ill, a rare instance of a prison sentence in a food contamination case.
Stewart Parnell, 61, who once oversaw the Peanut Corporation of America, and his brother, Michael Parnell, who was a food broker on behalf of the company, were convicted on Monday on federal conspiracy charges in September 2014 for knowingly shipping salmonella-tainted peanuts to customers.
Contamination at the company’s plant in Blakely, Georgia, led to one of the largest food recalls in US history and forced the company into liquidation.
Reuters
Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin abruptly pulled out of the 2016 U.S. presidential race on Monday, doomed by a lightning-quick collapse from serious contender to a candidate struggling to raise money and his profile.
Walker, reading a statement in the Wisconsin capital of Madison, decried the negative tone of the Republican campaign in remarks seemingly directed at New York billionaire Donald Trump.
He called on some of his rivals for the Republican nomination to join him in exiting the race to give voters a chance to rally around a front-runner that can win the November 2016 presidential election.
Walker harked back to the late Republican President Ronald Reagan as a model for the party because "he was an optimist."
"Sadly the debate taking place in the Republican Party today is not focused on that optimistic view of America. Instead it has drifted into personal attacks," he said.
McClatchy DC
The Obama administration on Friday moved to further change U.S.-Cuba trade rules, ushering in what experts called a major development that would significantly open the door to expanded business on the island.
The rules will be formally published and take effect Monday. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said they underscore “the administration’s commitment to promote constructive change for the Cuban people.”
“A stronger, more open U.S.-Cuba relationship has the potential to create economic opportunities for both Americans and Cubans alike,” he added in a statement. “By further easing these sanctions, the United States is helping to support the Cuban people in their effort to achieve the political and economic freedom necessary to build a democratic, prosperous and stable Cuba.”
The rules amend existing ones to boost engagement between American and Cuban people, accelerate the free flow of information to and from Cubans, and ramp up independent economic activity generated by Cubans.
Al Jazeera America
Seattle teachers have approved a three-year labor contract between the union and its school district, officially ending a weeklong strike that included a series of marathon bargaining sessions and delayed the start of school for 53,000 students.
Rank-and-file teachers and support staff in the 5,000-member union, the Seattle Education Association, “overwhelmingly approved” the accord that consists of pay raises totaling 9.5 percent over the life of the contract, according to union spokesman Rich Wood.
If union members had voted to reject the agreement, the strike would have resumed.
The walkout began Sept. 9 in Washington state's largest school district and was suspended pending the outcome of Sunday's vote by the 5,000-member union. The sides had reached a tentative agreement last week, allowing the first day of school to begin Thursday.
The Guardian
Imagine, I thought, how this must translate for young black girls who are watching.
When Davis said “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there” I was immediately reminded of a quote from 17-year old Lanika, who I interviewed for my book Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America, and who talked with me about her experience as a black girl studying ballet in Birmingham, Alabama:
I’m going to tell you, though, even the tights are pink – the color is actually called European pink and is meant to blend in naturally with the white girls’ skin. But when I put those pink tights on, you can see my brown skin coming through. I told my ballet teacher that I wasn’t even tryin’ to wear pink tights because they are not made for me to wear. How am I gonna put those tights on and pretend that my skin doesn’t show through?
The Guardian
For the first time, the United States may accept a United Nations condemnation of the US trade embargo against Cuba without a fight, the Associated Press has learned.
US officials tell the AP that the Obama administration is weighing abstaining from the annual UN general assembly vote on a Cuban-backed resolution demanding that the embargo be lifted. The vote could come next month.
No decision has yet been made, said four administration officials who were not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive internal deliberations and demanded anonymity. But merely considering an abstention is unprecedented. Following through on the idea would send shock waves through both the United Nations and Congress.
It is unheard of for a UN member state not to oppose resolutions critical of its own laws.
Reuters
White House plans to allow thousands more refugees into the United States faced stiff opposition on Monday in the U.S. Congress, where Republican lawmakers demanded the right to review, and reject, the effort, citing fears of terrorism.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday announced an increase of 15,000 per year for the next two years in the number of refugees the country takes in. He did not say how many would be from Syria.
Under current law, Congress does not have to approve the Democratic administration's plan. But the House of Representatives and Senate, both controlled by Republicans, would have to appropriate money to pay for any additional effort.
That would not be easy. Many lawmakers, including some Democrats, worry that Islamist fighters posing as refugees might sneak into the country.
NPR
A leading Muslim civil rights organization has called on Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson to suspend his campaign.
"We ask Mr. Ben Carson to withdraw from the presidential race, because he his unfit to lead," Nihad Awad, the president and founder of the Council On American-Islamic Relations, said at a Monday press conference.
Of course, this comes a day after Carson said he would not want an American of the Muslim faith to become president.
"I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that," Carson told Meet the Press.
Awad said Carson's views are inconsistent with the Constitution. He held up a large print-out of Article VI that reads in part: "... No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
NPR
A wildfire burning in Northern California has destroyed 162 more homes, making it the fourth worst fire in California history.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the fire was 69 percent contained but it was still threatening thousands of other structures.
...
"The tally brought the total number of homes destroyed in two wildfires burning in Northern California the past two weeks to nearly 1,600, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. Those fires killed five people, and on Sunday authorities announced that a body was found near the source of a new wildfire in Monterey County that destroyed or damaged 10 homes....
AFP
Her back hunched over, Nepali villager Sanchimaya Thami strained to make the last stretch of a five-hour trek to deliver critical relief supplies to other victims of April's devastating earthquake.
The 36-year-old is one of some 10,000 survivors of the disaster hired as porters to bring food, medicines and shelter materials to remote Himalayan villages cut off by the 7.8-magnitude quake that hit on April 25, killing nearly 8,900 people.
"I used to be a farmer, but now I have no farm, it's all gone," Thami told AFP, as she recounted the impact of the quake and massive aftershock that followed in May, which wiped out her village of Bigu in northeastern Dolakha district.
"We had no food to eat, we had nowhere to live -- it took about a week before help arrived," Thami said as she dropped off a 30-kilogramme (65-pound) sack of lentils for her fellow villagers.
DW
The EU has urged a speedy implementation of economic reforms in Greece after the election win of Alexis Tsipras. But there has been some questioning of his choice of coalition bedfellows.
The European Union on Monday congratulated Greek Prime Minister-elect Alexis Tsipras on his victory in elections a day previously, but also said Greece should waste no time in implementing economic reforms attached to its international bailout.
"The Commission congratulates Alexis Tsipras for his victory," European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters in Brussels.
"The new government will now have the mandate to carry out those reforms... There is a lot of work ahead and no time to lose," he added.
DW
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Moscow's weapon deliveries to Syria. The leaders focused on how to keep their armed forces out of each other's way.
At a meeting in Moscow on Monday, Netanyahu and Putin decided they would coordinate their military actions in Syria to avoid accidentally trading fire.
"My objective was to prevent misunderstandings between IDF [Israel Defense Forces] units and Russian forces," Netanyahu told reporters, adding that he and Putin had "agreed on a mechanism" to prevent such events.
Earlier, the Israeli prime minister had said it was important to remove misunderstandings between the two countries forces. Israeli planes have, on occasion, bombed neighboring Syria after suspecting Assad's forces of delivering weapons to the anti-Israeli Hezbollah, which is based in neighboring Lebanon and has Iran's support.
Al Jazeera America
VUKOVAR, Croatia — Robert Martinkovic, a burly former soldier from eastern Croatia, knows enough about war to never wish it upon anyone else. During the Croatian War of Independence, which lasted from 1991 to 1995 and saw Croat forces fight Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, he was wounded three times leading a reconnaissance unit that lost eight of its men in some the conflict's toughest battles.
Twenty years on, Martinkovic now sees tens of thousands of refugees passing through a still battle-scarred eastern Croatia, where vivid memories of their own war are inspiring local people to help these victims of distant conflicts.
“Yesterday, locals came down here with 20 cars full of food and water,” Martinkovic said, as he helped fellow volunteers clear a makeshift transit camp near the Croatia-Serbia border for refugees, predominantly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “We understand completely what this means for this people — what it means to be a refugee.”
Spiegel Online
Germans long knew their chancellor as a rational, deliberate decision maker. But in the refugee crisis, a new Merkel has emerged, driven by empathy. Increasingly, it is looking like the emotion-driven Merkel is prone to error.
We can do it. That's the message Chancellor Angela Merkel has been giving her country ever since she pledged in late August to provide refuge to anyone coming from Syria in addition to others seeking protection from violence and warfare. The initial euphoria in the country was significant, with tens of thousands of everyday Germans joining the army of helpers to try and cope with the huge influx of needy refugees.
NPR
This is the story of the United States, the atom and Iran.
It's the story of a historic nuclear agreement — a story we may be tempted to think we know. After all, Congress just finished a chaotic debate that ended when lawmakers failed to block the deal. There was no solemn national moment of decision — no up-or-down vote, as with a treaty or a war.
But this was just the latest twist in a long and complex tale that dates back more than a half-century.
"The Iranian nuclear program has deep roots. In fact, it is four years older than President Obama," says Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst for Iran. Vaez grew up in Iran, which means the nuclear program is a personal story for him.
"It started in 1957," he says, "and ironically, it is a creation of the United States. The U.S. provided Iran with its first research reactor — a nuclear reactor, a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor that is still functioning and still operational in Tehran."
Los Angeles Times
The message to Burkina Faso’s coup leaders on Monday could not have been clearer: Protesters burned tires and set up roadblocks as they rejected a deal that would give amnesty to those who had ousted a transitional government just weeks before an election.
Opposition to last week's coup was conveyed in one extraordinary scene, posted on Facebook, in which hundreds of young men on motorcycles with their horns blaring ushered one of several army convoys heading to the capital, Ouagadougou. The military threatened to confront the more powerful presidential security regiment that carried out the uprising.
Soon after, the coup leader, Gen. Gilbert Diendere, appeared to give ground. He apologized to the nation and the international community in a statement late Monday and said he was willing to relinquish power once there was an agreement reached to end the crisis.
New York Times
September 17, 2015
Fear of attacks by Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group of northern Nigeria known for its deadly marauding and kidnappings, has uprooted a half-million children in the past five months, Unicef said in a report released Thursday.
The newly displaced bring the total number of children who have fled from Boko Haram militants in Nigeria and neighboring countries to 1.4 million, said the report by Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
The report’s findings suggested that efforts by Nigeria’s new president, Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected partly on a pledge to eradicate Boko Haram, were not going as well as he has asserted. Mr. Buhari said last week that military forces were gaining the advantage on Boko Haram, which has been waging a campaign of bombings, burnings, abductions and plundering for years through swaths of northern Nigeria, and more recently in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Climate Central
Landfills may be emitting more methane than previously reported because the Environmental Protection Agency may be drastically underestimating how much garbage is being deposited in landfills across the U.S., according to a new Yale University study.
Banana peels, coffee grounds, plastic bottles and other detritus tossed in the garbage usually ends up in a landfill and emits methane as it decomposes. Methane is a greenhouse gas up to 35 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a driver of climate change over the span of a century, and landfills are the United States’ third largest source of methane emissions, according to the EPA. The Obama administration is focusing on cutting methane emissions as part of its Climate Action Plan.
DW
VW’s manipulated emissions tests are making headlines in the US. That’s putting VW CEO Martin Winterkorn in a bad light after he’s made the US market his personal management priority, says DW's Thomas Neufeld.
As early as the start of last year, the powerful head of VW’s works council Bernd Osterloh called VW’s US business a "catastrophe." He was talking about poor sales in the US and the company’s Wolfsburg-based management’s inability to respond appropriately to the problem. But he didn’t know how right he was. It took the US Environmental Protection Agency’s investigation to vindicate him.
In 2013, Winterkorn responded firmly and perceptively by replacing the head of VW of America. But then he committed a strategic error. By this time, he had already made the US market his personal management priority. And he’s presented himself as a fastidious, detail-obsessed engineer. The technical world is Winterkorn’s world, and he imagined itself its ruler – as he did the company which doubled its yearly production to 10 million cars under his leadership. Now he has to admit that he’s lost control.
Al Jazeera America
PUERTO MALDONADO, Peru — When the raiders arrived one humid afternoon last May, Cesar Suracayo was standing on his raft in the southern Amazon, mining gold from the river bottom with a 4-inch hose. The hose was attached to a brain-rattling Chinese motor loud enough to overpower the calls of birds in the forest, so loud that Suracayo didn’t hear the engines heading his way. By the time he saw the two launches, flying the Peruvian flag and packed with rifle-toting marines, they were almost on top of him.
A tall man in his mid-30s with deep brown skin and an aquiline nose, Suracayo has spent 15 years on the rivers of Peru’s lawless southern Amazon, filtering river mud for flecks of gold. On a good day, he could make hundreds of dollars — enough to support a middle class life in nearby Puerto Maldonado, the capital of the Madre de Dios region. So when the Peruvian state began cracking down on gold mining in the area, in particular along the Tambopata National Reserve, across the river from where Suracayo lived and worked, he kept mining illegally. He felt secure doing this: Usually friends downriver sent word when the marines were heading toward him, buying him time to hide equipment.
Reuters
Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) shares plunged by nearly 20 percent on Monday after the German carmaker admitted it had rigged emissions tests of diesel-powered vehicles in the United States, and U.S. authorities said they would widen their probe to other automakers.
German officials, alarmed at the potential damage the scandal could inflict on its car industry, urged Volkswagen to fully clear up the matter and said it would investigate whether emissions data had also been falsified in Europe.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday the world's biggest carmaker by sales used software for diesel VW and Audi branded cars that deceived regulators measuring toxic emissions and could face penalties of up to $18 billion.
The scandal reverberated on Monday with the White House saying it was "quite concerned" about the reports of VW's conduct. And the U.S. Department of Justice started a criminal probe of the effort to game the emissions tests, Bloomberg News reported.
NPR
Americans are starting to pay more attention to moringa these days. Some are touting this tropical tree as the newest and greatest superfood. And all the excitement is understandable: Moringa leaves and seed pods are packed with protein and vitamins. Its nutritional value rivals that of milk, yogurt and eggs.
But people in Asia and Africa have been eating it for years. In India, we call moringa the drumstick tree — for its long, drumstick-like seed pods. It's easy to come by in Mumbai, where I grew up. My mother would use the young, tender pods to make this amazing lentil stew called sambhar.
C/NET
Updating your iPhone is like doing your taxes. You just gotta get it done.
On Wednesday, Apple released iOS 9, the latest version of the code that powers iPhones and iPads. It has new features like better battery life, advanced search functions and enhanced transit information in its Maps app.
The reason to update, however, is two key security improvements: stronger pass codes and additional security for logging in. As an enticement, it works with any iPhone or iPad made in the last three years. And it's free.
Apple's users should jump at the opportunity. Like desktops and laptops, smartphones are vulnerable to all sorts of hacks. Nearly all devices powered by Google's Android software, for example, could be taken over by hackers who send a simple text message.
C/NET
MONTEREY, California -- The Ferraris arrived in the still, chill air of dawn.
Volunteers pointed the drivers to different parts of the golf course. Four seaters (called 2 + 2s) built before 1964 were directed to the middle of the fairway. Sleek, sloopy "Dinos" formed a curve around an area staked out just for them, while newer Testarossas headed up the hill. In all, about 250 Ferraris were arranged along the undulating slope.
We were in Monterey, California, for the Ferrari Club of America's Annual International Meet, a three-day event hosted by the car club's local Pacific region.
Most of the Ferraris assembled at the Nicklaus Club - Monterey golf course were built between 1950 and 1995. Some were here simply to be admired. Others were here to be judged in a Concours d'Elegance competition, where cars were rated on their authenticity and condition. Besides the concours, (pronounced "con-COR," in both singular and plural) the event included rallies through scenic Big Sur and stomach-lurching drives on the nearby Laguna Seca racetrack.