Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7 and BentLiberal. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Bloomberg
An oil spill that polluted an Arkansas town is drawing new scrutiny to the risks of transporting fuel across a national labyrinth of pipelines as President Barack Obama weighs whether to approve Keystone XL.
Environmental groups point to the rupture of the Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) pipe on March 29 in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 22 miles northwest of Little Rock, as a reason why Obama should reject Keystone. Industry groups contend that pipelines remain the safest way to transport oil and other fuels, and that existing regulations are adequate.
“Without question, this underscores the risks of transporting this stuff,” Jim Murphy, senior counsel at the National Wildlife Federation, said in a phone interview.
The U.S. State Department is weighing whether to recommend that Obama approve the Keystone project. The agency is reviewing the plan because it crosses an international border. White House press secretary Jay Carney said today the White House takes the safety of the pipeline system “very seriously.” He said the Environmental Protection Agency is working with local officials and Exxon on the Arkansas spill.
US NEWS
Reuters
President Barack Obama will announce on Monday he has chosen White House economic adviser Brian Deese to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Deese, now deputy director of the White House's National Economic Council, would join Sylvia Mathews Burwell, a former Clinton administration official who later became president of the Walmart Foundation, whom Obama tapped to be director of OMB.
"From helping to navigate our rescue of a financial system on the brink of collapse to retooling a flatlining auto industry to crafting a policy to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable path, Brian Deese has proven an indispensable member of my economic team," Obama said in a statement, given to Reuters.
"He has a deep and intuitive understanding of economic and budgetary policy, and I am confident he will serve America well in this new role," Obama said.
Update: Obama chooses economic adviser Deese as deputy budget director confirming earlier Reuters story.
Reuters
Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against accused theater gunman James Holmes in the slaying of 12 moviegoers during a showing of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" last year, the district attorney said in court on Monday.
Holmes, 25, is accused of opening fire inside a suburban Denver theater during a midnight screening of the movie last July in what was one of the deadliest outbursts of gun violence in U.S. history.
Holmes is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in the shooting rampage, which also wounded 58 moviegoers. Another dozen people suffered non-gunshot injuries as they fled the Aurora, Colorado, cinema.
NPR
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could soon issue a final ruling that aims to force oil companies to replace E10, gasoline mixed with 10 percent ethanol, with E15.
This move could come just as widespread support for ethanol, which is made from corn, appears to be eroding.
Mike Mitchell was once a true believer in ethanol as a homegrown solution to foreign oil imports. He owns gas stations, and he went further than most, installing expensive blender pumps that let customers choose E15, E20 and all the way up to E85.
The result was a variation on the old adage, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
"We're environmental people and we kind of jumped on the bandwagon early, and it bit us," Mitchell says.
Many car companies, especially the Detroit Three, have been making vehicles that can use the higher blends of ethanol for more than a decade. They're called "flex-fuel" vehicles.
Bloomberg
After developing a chest cold and breathing problems last year, Susan Alexander went to First Choice ER, an independent emergency room in League City, Texas, drawn by its motto: “Real ER. Real Fast.”
Treatment was indeed speedy, about 20 minutes. It was also real expensive, Alexander said. The bill was about $2,000, or as much as five times what the 56-year-old nurse might have paid for similar care at a doctor’s office. The charges included a $1,518 “facility fee,” typically assessed by hospitals and their ERs to support the space, services and equipment needed to keep dozens to hundreds of beds available
Yet First Choice looks nothing like a hospital. It sits in a single-story commercial building that shares parking space with a hair salon and an energy company. Alexander was left with an out-of-pocket bill of about $700.
“I was astonished,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s a rip off.”
Bloomberg
The last time the U.S. Congress considered a broad revision to immigration laws was in 2007, when more than half of today’s House Republicans weren’t even elected.
That lack of experience explains why House leaders are taking a slower approach than Senate lawmakers on an issue that could roil a party base divided on providing a path to citizenship to the 11 million undocumented residents in the U.S.
The leadership is hosting “listening sessions” in the office of House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. With a wall-sized rendering of President George Washington’s Delaware River crossing in the room, lawmakers gathered last month for a power-point presentation on current immigration law and the government’s visa programs.
One of the most surprising notions for attendees was the fact that about 40 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. overstayed their visas rather than illegally crossing the border, according to a leadership aide familiar with the meetings who asked not to be identified to discuss details.
USA Today
Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware spoke on his basketball-playing future for the first time since suffering a gruesome leg injury that left teammates crying and the sports world shocked.
"This is a minor setback for a major comeback," Ware told the New York Daily News on Monday. "I have to have the right approach to it. (Doctors) told me things are gonna be good for me. This is not a lifetime injury where I can never play basketball again. ... But getting to where I want to be and where I need to be is gonna take some time."
The Guardian
A Texas prosecutor and his wife who were shot dead over the weekend may have been the targets of a white supremacist group, a US congressman said on Monday.
Republican Ted Poe speculated that the Aryan Brotherhood may have carried out the killings of Kaufman County district attorney Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65.
The couple were killed two months after Mark Hasse, the assistant district attorney for Kaufman County, was shot dead. Kaufman County was among a number of agencies to have brought a racketeering case against the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. In December the Texas department of public safety had warned the Brotherhood was "actively planning retaliation against law enforcement officials".
Interviewed by CNN on Monday, Poe said "I believe it is a group," when asked about the killing of the McLellands. "It could possibly be the Aryan Brotherhood," he said.
Poe, a former judge and prosecutor in Texas, did not elaborate, but stressed that only 13 prosecutors have been murdered in the United States in the past 30 years. He said the Texas killings were "specifically aimed at certain people in particular roles in law enforcement."
NY Times (subscription may be required)
A federal bankruptcy judge ruled on Monday that the city of Stockton, Calif., was eligible for court protection from its creditors, clearing the way for a battle over whether public workers’ pensions can be cut when the city they work for goes bankrupt.
After declaring Chapter 9 bankruptcy last year, Stockton eliminated tens of millions of dollars in city services and said it would cut back some municipal bond payments in a way unseen before in municipal bankruptcy. But bondholders objected to Stockton’s effort to protect pensions while forcing losses on investors.
Many states have statutes and constitutional provisions making it illegal to cut public workers’ pensions. Until now, there has not been a major test of those laws in bankruptcy — particularly not in California, where the big state pension system, known as Calpers, has been girding for battle on the issue, trying to avoid the precedent of a cutoff or shortfall in a city's pension contributions.
WORLD NEWS
Reuters
South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack, the new president in Seoul warned on Monday, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighter planes.
North Korea says the region is on the brink of a nuclear war in the wake of United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test and a series of joint U.S. and South Korean military drills that have included a rare U.S. show of aerial power.
The North, whose economy is smaller than it was 20 years ago, appeared to move on Monday to addressing its pressing need for investment by appointing a reformer to the country's ceremonial prime minister's job, although the move mostly cemented a power grab by the ruling Kim clan.
Spiegel
Should the Cypriot bailout become a model for the future? The mere suggestion sent markets tumbling last week. But increasing numbers of European politicians would like to see bank shareholders and investors bear a greater share of crisis risk. The EU may be changing its strategy.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem's original game plan was to just keep a low profile. When the 47-year-old Dutch finance minister became head of the Euro Group three months ago, the first thing he did was deactivate his Twitter account. In meetings of the finance ministers of the 17 euro-zone states, he let his counterparts do most of the talking. And whenever he appeared before reporters in Brussels afterwards, he would start with sentences like: "Maybe it's good, if I say something."
Spiegel
A life-size Barbie Dreamhouse is set to open in Berlin in May, and leftist activists are up in arms. They plan to protest the opening to draw attention to what they say is the wrong role model for girls.
Soon, Barbie will have a new home. A giant pink dollhouse is being erected near the elevated train tracks that cut through Berlin's famous Alexanderplatz square. When it opens to the public, the 2,500-square-meter (26,000-square-foot) plush world will be the first of its kind, a hands-on version of little girls' dreams, with a four-poster Barbie bed, a walk-in Barbie closet and a Barbie cupcake kitchen.
The Guardian
Detainees were taken to Camp Nama, a secret US detention centre at Baghdad international airport. Photograph: Khalid Mohammed/AP
British soldiers and airmen who helped to operate a secretive US detention facility in Baghdad that was at the centre of some of the most serious human rights abuses to occur in Iraq after the invasion have, for the first time, spoken about abuses they witnessed there.
Personnel from two RAF squadrons and one Army Air Corps squadron were given guard and transport duties at the secret prison, the Guardian has established.
And many of the detainees were brought to the facility by snatch squads formed from Special Air Service and Special Boat Service squadrons.
Codenamed Task Force 121, the joint US-UK special forces unit was at first deployed to detain individuals thought to have information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Once it was realised that Saddam's regime had long since abandoned its WMD programme, TF 121 was re-tasked with tracking down people who might know where the deposed dictator and his loyalists might be, and then with catching al-Qaida leaders who sprang up in the country after the regime collapsed.
Suspects were brought to the secret prison at Baghdad International airport, known as Camp Nama, for questioning by US military and civilian interrogators. But the methods used were so brutal that they drew condemnation not only from a US human rights body but from a special investigator reporting to the Pentagon.
Al Jazeera
Exclusive Al Jazeera report details world body's plans for troop deployment if Bashar al-Assad's regime falls.
Al Jazeera has learned that the United Nations is now considering all options, including a peacekeeping force, as part of its plan if Syria's government falls.
The UN always anticipated playing a humanitarian role.
HEALTH, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
NPR
Most people (including a lot of doctors) think of a stroke as something that happens to old people. But the rate is increasing among those in their 50s, 40s and even younger.
In one recent 10-year period, the rate of strokes in Americans younger than 55 went up 84 percent among whites and 54 percent among blacks. One in 5 strokes now occurs in adults 20 to 55 years old — up from 1 in 8 in the mid-1990s.
These are people like Melissa McCann, a nurse in Maine who spends most days on a helicopter, accompanying sick and injured patients to a distant hospital.
McCann had a stroke at age 37. It began with a weird sensation.
"I had a very euphoric feeling," she tells Shots. "It's hard to explain, but everything felt very cartoon-ish to me. It felt very bizarre."
Then she found she couldn't dial the number to respond to a page. Light began to hurt her eyes. She couldn't speak. Because she's a nurse, she realized she was having a stroke.
BBC
Climate change is expanding Antarctica's sea ice, according to a scientific study in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The paradoxical phenomenon is thought to be caused by relatively cold plumes of fresh water derived from melting beneath the Antarctic ice shelves.
This melt water has a relatively low density, so it accumulates in the top layer of the ocean.
The cool surface waters then re-freeze more easily during Autumn and Winter.
This explains the observed peak in sea ice during these seasons, a team from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) in De Bilt says in its peer-reviewed paper.
Climate scientists have been intrigued by observations that Antarctic sea ice shows a small but statistically significant expansion of about 1.9% per decade since 1985, while sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking over past decades.
The researchers from the KNMI suggest the "negative feedback" effect outlined in their study is expected to continue into the future.
Reuters
India's top court dismissed Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG's attempt to win patent protection for its cancer drug Glivec, a blow to Western pharmaceutical firms targeting India to drive sales and a victory for local makers of cheap generics.
The decision sets a benchmark for intellectual property cases in India, where many patented drugs are unaffordable for most of its 1.2 billion people, and does not bode well for foreign firms engaged in ongoing disputes in India, including Pfizer Inc and Roche Holding AG, analysts said.
It cements the role of local companies as big suppliers of inexpensive generics to India's rapidly growing $13 billion-a-year drugs market and also across the developing world.
CNET
Following weeks of scrutiny over its warranty policies in China, Apple now says it has improved services in the region.
That message came from the top, in an apology note from Apple CEO Tim Cook, posted in Chinese on Apple's Chinese site today.
In it, Cook apologized for a lack of communication on the matter, and said that the company is implementing improvements in three areas of its warranty policy and related services.
Those changes:
A new repair policy for the iPhone 4 and 4S that provides a new phone exchange or new parts replacement for a year after purchase, and extends warranties on those devices repaired within the last year.
New warranty explanation pages on Apple's Chinese site.
More training and policing of Apple Authorized Service Providers who are doing repairs.
CNET
Safari has won back some of the ground it lost recently to rival mobile browsers.
Apple's iOS browser captured 61.79 percent of all mobile browser Web traffic seen by Net Applications in March. That was a healthy rise from the 55.41 percent tracked in February.
Safari remained firmly in the lead last month, followed by the default Android browser in second place with a 21.86 percent share and Opera Mini in the third spot with 8.4 percent. But Safari has seen its share of Net Applications' Web traffic rocked by the competition.
After rising steadily in past years, Safari's share has been treading water over the past year or so. Its 61.79 percent share last month is just slightly higher than the 60.5 percent in March 2012.
Over the same time, mobile shares for the Android browser, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome have inched up. The trend isn't exactly shocking given the increasing popularity of Android and the launch of more Windows Phone handsets and Windows 8 tablets, both of which feature IE as the default browser.