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.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
The Guardian
A top American intelligence official has said “no direct evidence” had yet emerged pointing to terrorism being involved in Saturday’s crash of a Russian Metrojet airliner in Egypt’s Sinai desert that killed all 224 people on board.
But adding to the continuing cloud of mystery around the incident – whose causes are not known – James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, said a terrorist attack could still not be ruled out.
Clapper’s comments came amid a day of contradictory statements as claims by the airline’s operator that a technical fault could not be blamed were slapped down as premature by a senior Russian aviation official.
DW
James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, said on Monday that although there was no evidence a terrorist attack was behind the Russian plane crash it remained a possible cause.
"We don't have any direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet," Clapper said in Washington. "It's unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out."
He added that although the "Islamic State" has a presence in Sinai he didn't believe the terrorist organization has the capability to shoot down the aircraft at 30,000 feet.
The "Islamic State" affiliate in the Sinai claimed responsibility on Saturday for the crash but the claims have not been validated. Russian and Egyptian officials have dismissed the claim.
Al Jazeera America
As investigators began to analyze the flight recorders of the Russian jet that crashed in the Egyptian desert, the airline, Russian officials, and aviation and security experts put forward different possible explanations for the crash that killed all 224 people on board.
A source in the committee analyzing the flight recorders told Reuters that the jet was not struck from the outside and the pilot made no distress calls before it disappeared from radar.
James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, meanwhile, said he could not rule out that the plane, which was carrying Russians from the Sharm El-Sheikh resort to St. Petersburg in Russia, was brought down by a local affiliate of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL.)
Reuters
The Russian plane that crashed in Egypt was not struck from the outside and the pilot did not make a distress call before it disappeared from radar, a source in the committee analyzing the flight recorders said on Monday.
The source declined to give more details but based his comments on the preliminary examination of the black boxes recovered from the Airbus A321 which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday killing all 224 people on board.
The Egyptian government said the black boxes were being examined by Egyptian and Russian experts along with German and French specialists from Airbus and from Ireland where the aircraft was registered. It said the search was continuing across the 9-sq-km crash site. Security sources said intelligence agencies had obtained a copy of the passenger list.
BBC
The Russian airline Kogalymavia has blamed "external influence" for Saturday's Sinai plane crash which killed 224 people.
A senior airline official said: "The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external influence."
An investigation by aviation experts using data from the aircraft's "black boxes" has yet to give its conclusions.
The head of Russia's Federal Aviation Agency said it was premature to speculate on the cause of the crash.
"This kind of talk is... not based on any proper facts," Aleksandr Neradko said on Russian TV.
Al Jazeera America
Supreme Court justices signaled concern Monday over the actions of a Georgia prosecutor who disqualified all the black prospective jurors from the death penalty trial of a black teenager accused of killing an elderly white woman.
During opening arguments, at least six of the nine justices indicated that they believed black people were improperly singled out and kept off the jury. Jurors eventually sentenced defendant Timothy Tyrone Foster to death in 1987 in the case, a review of which came before the Supreme Court on Monday.
Justice Elena Kagan said Foster's case seemed as clear a violation "as a court is ever going to see" of rules the Supreme Court laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
Foster could win a new trial if the Supreme Court rules his way. He has spent nearly 30 years on Georgia's death row for the 1986 murder of a white woman, Queen White.
Al Jazeera America
NEW YORK — Across from the New York Stock Exchange, a porter in a pressed black tunic sidesteps the traders and tourists walking on the cobblestones of the street whose name signifies the financial artery of the U.S. economy. The imposing neoclassical building behind him is the property of a shell company linked to a Chinese business mogul who, according to a 2014 U.S. Treasury decision, is barred from doing business in the United States.
An Al Jazeera investigation reveals that 23 Wall Street is owned by a company tied to Xu Jinghua, dubbed China’s “middleman” in Africa by The Financial Times because of his decades-old efforts to procure African oil supplies for the country. An April 17, 2014, Treasury announcement said Xu had been barred from doing business in the U.S. because of what Treasury alleged was his “undermining [of] democratic processes and institutions in Zimbabwe, facilitating public corruption by Zimbabwean senior officials through illicit diamond deals and providing financial and logistical support to the government of Zimbabwe” and its private sector allies. Zimbabwe has faced international sanctions over the authoritarian rule of its President Robert Mugabe, who has been in office for the past 35 years.
Al Jazeera America
The trial of a white former suburban Detroit police officer accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Floyd Dent in January is scheduled to begin this week.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Monday, and Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Vonda Evans said opening statements could begin on Wednesday in a case that made national headlines after Inkster police officer William Melendez was caught on a police dashboard-camera punching Dent in the head during a traffic stop.
Al Jazeera America
Many sexually assaulted teens seeking emergency room care don't receive recommended tests and prevention treatments for pregnancy and venereal disease, according to a new study published on Monday in Pediatrics.
Testing and treatment rates varied widely among 38 children's hospitals studied, from zero teens treated to almost 90 percent tested.
Subpar treatment puts teens at risk for infections including HIV, chlamydia and gonorrhea, along with unwanted pregnancies.
The results highlight a need for better awareness of testing and treatment guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study authors said. Their report is based on 2004-13 data on almost 13,000 teens treated.
The Guardian
There are few areas of bipartisan consensus in the 2016 presidential election. Criminal justice has emerged as one. Republicans and Democrats are agreed: reform needs to happen.
A landmark US Senate deal on criminal justice, which seeks to overhaul federal sentencing laws, could soon get a vote.
However, as the Black Lives Matter movement seeks a greater role in shaping the conversation around a justice system that disproportionately affects African Americans, candidates are reacting in decidedly different ways on the campaign trail.
How each party responds both rhetorically and substantively to such activists, who have taken to the streets across the country in protest of police brutality and racial profiling, could shape turnout among black voters in November next year.
Comments from Chris Christie in Iowa on Saturday illustrated the struggle among Republicans. Echoing a controversial statement he has made before, the New Jersey governor told caucus-goers in the early voting state many such activists “advocate for the murder of police officers”.
The Guardian
Barack Obama will announce a series of executive actions to help current and former prisoners re-enter society on Monday, as the president continues his campaign to wind down the war on drugs and reform a “broken” system.
Obama’s plans include millions of dollars in education grants for current prisoners, new policies to help former inmates find housing, a “clean slate clearing house” to help former prisoners clear their records where possible, and a call to Congress to “ban the box” – the space on a job application that asks about criminal backgrounds.
Obama is expected to unveil the plans at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, the hometown of Democratic senator Cory Booker, one of the leaders of a bipartisan push for criminal justice reform.
Reuters
U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said on Monday that there would be more demonstrations of the United States’ commitment to the freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea.
“That’s our interest there… It's to demonstrate that we will uphold the principle of freedom of navigation," Rhodes said while speaking at event in Washington.
Rhodes’ comments come after a U.S. guided-missile destroyer sailed close to one of Beijing’s man-made islands in the South China Sea last week.
NPR
After a Sunday night meeting, in which the Republican campaigns largely agreed on a framework to negotiate as a group with TV networks for upcoming debates, the Trump campaign has decided it will negotiate independently.
"Just like the CNBC debate, we will negotiate with the media," Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski told NPR. "We're going to make sure we're going to work with the networks to make sure the candidate's interest is at the forefront to negotiate the best deal."
The Guardian
Airbnb’s San Francisco headquarters has been occupied by protesters as the debate over affordability of the city’s housing reached fever pitch ahead of a crucial local vote on 3 November.
Protesters were campaigning in support of Proposition F, which proposes tighter restrictions on short term rental properties, and gathered outside the office of vacation rental company Airbnb, which has been a flashpoint for the Prop F debate.
About 75 people carrying signs, banging drums and chanting “Stop the evictions, stop the greed” took over the lobby of the building in San Francisco’s Soma district.
Organizers of the protest said they wanted to hold Airbnb accountable for the effect its platform has on local communities.
Reuters
President Barack Obama announced new measures to smooth the integration of former criminals into society but his visit to New Jersey on Monday irked the state's governor, a struggling Republican presidential candidate.
Obama, a Democrat who has made criminal justice reform a top priority of his final years in office, praised organizations in Newark for their efforts to help those who have served prison terms to reintegrate into civilian life.
"We've got to make sure Americans who have paid their debt to society can earn their second chance," Obama said in a speech at Rutgers University in Newark, a city of about 280,000 that has grappled for decades with poverty and high rates of violent crime.
NHK
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye have held their first-ever summit in Seoul.
The one-on-one talks lasted for nearly 2 hours. The two leaders agreed to seek a resolution regarding the issue of those referred to as comfort women through ongoing talks.
South Korea's presidential office says Park raised delicate topics, including the issue of comfort women. Park says the subject is the biggest obstacle for improving relations and that she wants it to be settled soon in a way that is acceptable to South Korean people and victims.
Abe and Park also agreed that Japan, South Korea and the US should cooperate to deal with North Korea's nuclear development.
NHK
Turkey's ruling party is certain to form a single-party government after winning a majority in the country's general election on Sunday.
Turkish media reports the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, won 316 seats in parliament. That's well over the majority.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a speech in front of his party's headquarters in Ankara that the result is a victory for Turkey's democracy and its people. He said the party will continue to run the country on its own.
In the last election in June, AKP failed to retain its majority for the first time. After coalition talks with the opposition broke down, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to call another vote.
DW
The conservative half of Germany's coalition government has come up with new ideas for dealing with the refugee influx. But their "position paper" is vague, say critics - and is focused on shutting off Germany.
The "ultimatum" from the conservative wing of the government's coalition came and went at the weekend, but the "crisis summit" on Germany's refugee influx did not yield any new decisions.
Instead, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and her Bavarian allies the Christian Social Union (CSU) made a priority of repairing the ugly political rift that had opened up between them at the end of last week , when the CSU mischievously tried to pressure the chancellor by raising the prospect of breaking the 75-year marriage between the two parties.
DW
The Vatican has said a high-ranking official is suspected of leaking classified information to the media. It marks the second time in several years such a scandal has rocked the institution.
A priest was one of two people arrested on Monday in connection with the apparent security breach, the Vatican said.
Spanish priest Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and laywoman Francesca Chaouqui were held under suspicion of leaking the sensitive material to two Italian journalists. Both were members of a commission set up by Pope Francis to examine reforms related to Vatican bureaucracy.
Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui were arrested over the weekend for questioning. Chaouqui was released on Monday after cooperating with authorities.
The Vatican's announcement comes the same week the two Italian journalists are each slated to publish a book containing sensitive information regarding the Church.
Spiegel Online
Early one morning at the beginning of October, Alfons Diekmann is standing at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport. He is wearing his comfortable travel pants and carrying a shoulder bag filled with only the essentials. "And what if they shoot you down?" his wife had asked.
But Diekmann decided to make the trip anyway, from Vechta, an administrative district in northern Germany, to Iran. His two egg-laying farms in Damme, in the southern Oldenburg region of northwestern Germany, produce 310,000 eggs a day. "When I started going to school, I couldn't even speak High German," he says, referring to the standard form of German spoken in Germany. Like other country boys, he says, he only spoke Low German, a dialect used in some parts of the northern end of the country. Diekmann was the youngest of nine children. His mother died when he was 10. "That made me strong. I wanted to succeed."
The Guardian
Northern Ireland’s assembly voted narrowly in favour of gay marriage equality but the largest party in the devolved parliament, the Democratic Unionists, have since vetoed any change in the law.
Four independent unionist assembly members joined nationalists and others with 53 votes in favour of same sex marriage – just one vote ahead of the main unionist parties who oppose any reform.
But the motion in the regional parliament fell after the DUP used a “petition of concern” to argue that the law change that would allow same-sex couples to marry in Northern Ireland did not command sufficient cross-community support.
Reuters
Iran said on Monday it would quit Syria peace talks if it found them unconstructive, citing the "negative role" of Saudi Arabia, in the latest twist in a spat between the regional rivals that bodes ill for efforts to ease turmoil across the Middle East.
Increasingly bad-tempered exchanges between the conservative Sunni-ruled kingdom and the revolutionary Shi'ite theocracy have dampened hopes of improved ties after the adversaries sat down for their first meeting to discuss the Syria war last week.
"In the first round of talks, some countries, especially Saudi Arabia, played a negative and unconstructive role … Iran will not participate if the talks are not fruitful," ISNA cited deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Climate Central
Governments around the world will this year raise around $22 billion from schemes putting a price on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions such as taxes or emissions trading systems, a report on Wednesday showed.
The role of carbon pricing, in efforts to curb rising emissions blamed for global warming, has gained prominence this year after several multinational companies including oil majors said such a price is needed to spur investment in low-carbon energy.
The figure is up 46 percent from an estimated $15 billion raised in 2014, the report by industry group the Climate Markets and Investment Association (CMIA) showed.
"Revenues from carbon pricing appear likely to continue to increase around the world, and continuing debate will be needed about how these funds should best be used in future," it said.
ScienceBlog
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a nanoscale machine made of DNA that can randomly walk in any direction across bumpy surfaces. Future applications of such a DNA walker might include a cancer detector that could roam the human body searching for cancerous cells and tagging them for medical imaging or drug targeting.
The study by researchers Cheulhee Jung, Peter B. Allen and Andrew Ellington, published this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, developed DNA machines that were able to walk, unprogrammed and in different directions, over a DNA-coated surface.
ScienceBlog
Your current printer prints only twenty pages per minute. Wanting to save time, you buy a new printer that prints fifty pages per minute. But do you really save time? Probably not, says a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research. According to the study, productivity metrics such as pages printed per minute often fool consumers, who usually have incorrect notions about the effect of productivity increases on how much time they will save.
“It’s true that the faster something works, the more time the consumer will save,” write the authors of the study, Bart de Langhe (University of Colorado) and Stefano Puntoni (Erasmus University).
C/NET
The lore of Apple's success goes something like this. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple in a Silicon Valley garage, with the crazy goal of building the first personal computer for regular people. Eight years later, Jobs introduces the Macintosh, shocking the world with its intuitive, iconic interface and creating a cult following. After his exile from Apple, Jobs returns to reinvent and popularize the digital music player, smartphone and tablet. Apple literally changes how we interact with the world.
But that story often leaves out all the others, including dozens of women, involved in Jobs' first big bet, 1984's Macintosh. Like everyone else on the original Mac team, these 20-somethings put in grueling hours to create a machine that could live up to the vision of Apple's brilliant and volatile leader.
C/NET
Most people go to Las Vegas to gamble, party or see a show.
On a warm winter's day in January 2014, Ron Louks journeyed to Vegas to gamble. But he wasn't there to try his luck at the tables. He was there, on one of his first days on the job as head of BlackBerry's smartphone business, to bet on the company's future.
After landing in the desert city at the start of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, Louks checked in with BlackBerry CEO John Chen and then set off for his first and most important appointment. Tellingly, it wasn't with a wireless carrier or one of BlackBerry's manufacturing partners. It was with Google.
"Android, in our mind, was a long time coming," Louks said in an interview last week.
Specialized insects that rely on a single food source, like an acorn weevil, may be very sensitive to warming temperatures
New York Times
The Natural History Museum of Denmark has studied the insect population on its rooftop for 18 years, tracking 1,543 species of moths and beetles and more than 250,000 individuals. In a study appearing in The Journal of Animal Ecology, museum researchers conclude that warming temperatures are affecting specialized insects that rely on a single food source.
NPR
If you travel for work — and you're tired of living out of a suitcase, renting rooms and sharing bathrooms with grungy roommates — there's a man in Austin, Texas, who has a possible solution. Call it a long shot. But basically, he's building tiny self-contained apartments that move when you do.
Jeff Wilson gives me a tour of the first prototype. He's the mastermind behind the Kasita ("little home" in Spanish — only with a "k" instead of a "c").
It's a steel box, about 10 by 20 feet. It's different from typical mobile homes in two ways: It's made for downtown, not the outskirts of a city. And it's swank: dishwasher, washer/dryer and a subwoofer in the floor — because we can't live without a good sound system. "It's essential," Wilson says. "Absolutely."
NPR
The online federal insurance marketplace opened for business Sunday. It's the third year of open enrollment for these subsidized plans, established by the Affordable Care Act. Many Texans still oppose the law, even though the state is home to the most uninsured people in the country.
For the moment, Texas Republicans still consider the Affordable Care Act to be political kryptonite. Sen. Ted Cruz continues to criticize it. Attorney General Ken Paxton just filed another lawsuit attacking part of it. Gov. Greg Abbott has said he won't consider the Medicaid expansion, because he considers Medicaid a dysfunctional entitlement program that should not be allowed to expand.
But the story on the local level is different. Harris County is home to Houston, where Judge Ed Emmett, a moderate Republican who is chief executive for the county, has supported it for years. The CEO of the taxpayer-supported Harris Health System, George Masi, says he needs the revenue that Medicaid expansion would bring. He's had to lay off more than 100 employees and cut back on charity care.
NPR
Chipotle Mexican Grill is temporarily closing more than 40 restaurants in and around Seattle and Portland, Ore., as health officials investigate an E. coli outbreak that has gotten at least 22 people sick.
USA Today reports:
"Since Oct. 14, three people in Clackamas and Washington counties in Oregon, both in suburban Portland, have fallen ill, said Jonathan Modie, Oregon Health Authority spokesman. And 19 cases in Clark County, which contains Vancouver, Wash., just north of Portland; Cowlitz County, north of Vancouver; King County, where Seattle is the largest city; and Skagit County about 50 miles north of King County, also have been reported.
"About a third of the victims have been hospitalized, he said. No one has died from the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli bacteria, the most common in food-borne outbreaks.
The flooded Battery Park Tunnel in New York City following Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.
Climate Central
LaGuardia Airport is about to be rebuilt in New York City, but by the end of the century, fish could be swimming where airplanes once parked at the terminal. That’s because sea levels in the area could rise by as much as 6 feet over the next 75 years, according to new predictions released by the state of New York.
New York State environment officials announced Friday that they’re creating new sea level rise regulations that will help coastal communities build more resilient homes and other buildings that will be better able to withstand storm surges and other flooding made worse by rising seas driven by climate change.
The new regulations will require developers in New York City, along Long Island and on the shores of the Hudson River to prepare for sea levels that could rise between 15 and 75 inches by 2100. At the far end of that scale, many of the areas hit hard by Hurricane Sandy — the Rockaway Peninsula and the shores of Staten Island, for example — could be underwater.
The Guardian
A sharp rise in death rates among white middle-aged Americans has claimed nearly as many lives in the past 15 years as the spread of Aids in the US, researchers have said.
The alarming trend, overlooked until now, has hit less-educated 45- to 54-year-olds the hardest, with no other groups in the US as affected and no similar declines seen in other rich countries.
Though not fully understood, the increased deaths are largely thought to be a result of more suicides and the misuse of drugs and alcohol, driven by easier access to powerful prescription painkillers, cheaper high quality heroin and greater financial stresses.
Vox
The company trying to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline has given up all hope that President Obama will approve the project — and wants a final decision delayed until after the next election.
On Monday, TransCanada asked the US government to temporarily halt its review of the $8 billion pipeline, which, if built, would bring 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada and North Dakota down to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists have long opposed this project, and President Obama has dithered over a final decision for years (since it crosses national borders, his administration has final say).