Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
The OND is published each night around midnight, Eastern Time.
The originator of OND was Magnifico.
Current Contributors are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, JML9999 and NeonVincent who also serves as chief cat herder.
Stories and Headlines
- Hillary Clinton says African leaders should abandon Gaddafi
(newstimeafrica.com) - U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has urged African leaders to abandon Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and embrace democratic reforms, before cutting short her Africa trip as a volcanic ash cloud closed in. Clinton, the first U.S. secretary of state to address the 53-member African Union, said unreformed African leaders were themselves at risk from the same tide of democracy sweeping the Middle East, proclaiming “the status quo is broken and the old ways of governing are no longer acceptable.” ”It is true that Gaddafi has played a major role in providing financial support for many African nations and institutions, including the AU,” Clinton said in her speech at the AU’s headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. ”But it has become clear that we are long past the time when he can remain in power.”
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Shortly after Clinton’s AU speech, aides said her pilots had advised that an approaching ash cloud risked stranding her in the Horn of Africa if she did not depart swiftly. Eritrea’s long-dormant Dubbi volcano erupted at around midnight on Sunday after a series of earthquakes ... |
- Ex-BART cop Mehserle released from jail
(06-13) 08:52 PDT LOS ANGELES --
Former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle was released from a Los Angeles jail early today after completing his time for involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed passenger on New Year's Day 2009.
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Mehserle, 29, was sentenced to two years for shooting Oscar Grant in the back while the 22-year-old Hayward man lay face down on the platform at Oakland's Fruitvale BART Station after being pulled from a train.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...
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- Thick snowpack holds water — and potential peril
By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
From the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades to the northern Rockies, much of the West's high country remains buried under a thick snowpack that is filling reservoirs and engaging dam operators in a nerve-racking balancing act as they watch for jumps in temperature that could turn all those scenic piles of white into raging floodwaters.
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The first week of June in California, snow depths of 7 feet or more were not uncommon at high elevations. Sensors on Lower Lassen Peak in the Feather River watershed recorded a whopping 24 feet.
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- Quick ruling expected on gay jurist in Proposition 8 case
LA Times - A federal judge weighing whether another jurist should have recused himself from the Proposition 8 case because he was in a long-term same-sex relationship took the question under review Monday after three hours of arguments by lawyers.
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[U.S. District Chief Judge James] Ware did not disclose how he would rule, but many of his comments during arguments suggested he would rule that retired Judge Vaughn R. Walker was not required to step aside when he was assigned to hear the Proposition 8 challenge. |
Here's a more detailed articleon the same subject.
- More than 10,000 have fled Syria: UN
AFP via Khaleej Times Online, 13 June 2011, 9:10 PM
UNITED NATIONS — More than 10,000 Syrians have fled into neighboring countries to escape a deadly government crackdown on opposition protests, the UN said Monday.
There are 5,000 people in Lebanon and at least 5,000 in Turkey, said UN humanitarian affairs spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker. Turkey’s Anatolia news agency on Monday estimated there are now more than 6,800 Syrians who have crossed into Turkey.
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- Tunisian ex-president to be tried
(BBC) Tunisia's ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia in January, is to go on trial in absentia on 20 June.
Announcing the date, interim Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi said Saudi Arabia had not replied to requests to hand him over.
Charges range from conspiring against the state to drug trafficking.
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- Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times
June 13, 2011
Reporting from Washington—
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.
For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error.
hat tip: mcjoan
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- Italy nuclear: Berlusconi accepts referendum blow
BBC - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has accepted the rejection of his nuclear power plans and other policies in a popular referendum.
He said the Italian people had made their opinion "clear" and government and parliament must now "respond fully".
Mr Berlusconi had wanted to restart nuclear plants shut in the 1980s.
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Also see New York Times: Italian Voters Come Out to Overturn Laws and Deliver a Rebuke to Berlusconi
- Obama Suggests That Weiner Step Down
NYT City Room Blog - President Obama said on Monday that if he were in Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s position, “I would resign,” according to NBC, which conducted an extensive interview with him.
He called Mr. Weiner’s conduct “highly inappropriate” and said that the New York Democrat had “embarrassed himself” and his family.
The president, however, stopped short of specifically demanding that Mr. Weiner leave the House
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- Germany Recognizes Libyan Rebel Government
(nytimes.com) - BERLIN — Germany, which declined to participate in the NATO air campaign against Libya, on Monday recognized the opposition National Transitional Council as the legitimate representative of Libya, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said during a visit to the rebel capital of Benghazi.
The announcement by Mr. Westerwelle comes after weeks of hesitation by Germany over which rebel leaders or movements, if any, it would recognize as an alternative to the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
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- In 5-4 Vote, Supreme Court Limits Securities Fraud Suits
NYT - WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a mutual fund’s investment adviser may not be sued for securities fraud over misstatements in fund prospectuses.
The 5-to-4 decision split along ideological lines. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that only the fund itself could be held liable for violating a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that makes it unlawful for “any person, directly or indirectly” to “make any untrue statement of material fact” in connection with buying or selling securities.
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- Turkey Scrambles to Accommodate Syrian Refugees
HATAY, Turkey — There was a growing urgency for tents and supplies as heavy rains fell on this border region where thousands sought refuge as the Turkish authorities rushed to open three more camps for those who fled a Syrian government crackdown that bombarded villages and burned fields to put down an armed uprising.
An estimated 7,000 refugees fled the military crackdown, with about 5,000 making it to camps set up in Turkey, leaving thousands more to improvise shelter in open fields, some on this side of the border, others still on the Syrian side, witnesses said.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
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The Nation: Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
As we debate an exit from Afghanistan, it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave.
This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe—where the US has a veritable empire of bases.
According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad—over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually—and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.
In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases “constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory.” He notes a “bloated and anachronistic” Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany.
“It makes as much sense for the Pentagon to hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to maintain a fleet of horses and buggies,” writes Gusterson.
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More News
- Laser is produced by a living cell
(BBC) - A single living cell has been coaxed into producing laser light, researchers report in Nature Photonics.
The technique starts by engineering a cell that can produce a light-emitting protein that was first obtained from glowing jellyfish.
Flooding the resulting cells with weak blue light causes them to emit directed, green laser light.
The work may have applications in improved microscope imaging and light-based therapies
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- Asteroid Vesta comes into focus
BBC - The Dawn spacecraft is starting to get an eye-full of the Vesta asteroid.
The probe expects to reach the 530km-wide body in late July, whereupon it will go into orbit around the rock.
Vesta is what scientists term a protoplanet - a body that never acquired the proportions of "grown-up" planets such as Earth and Mars.
It is nonetheless an impressive object - the second most massive asteroid in the belt of rocky debris that orbits between Mars and Jupiter.
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- Bangladesh plans special force to protect tigers
BBC - Bangladesh is setting up a special force to save the critically endangered Royal Bengal Tiger and other animals.
The 300-member force will be deployed mostly around the Sundarbans mangrove forests, one of the last refuges of the tigers.
The decision came months after they seized three tiger skins and a large quantity of bones, the biggest haul of illegal tiger parts in decades
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- Adoptions Rise by Same-Sex Couples, Despite Legal Barriers
NYT - Growing numbers of gay couples across the country are adopting, according to census data, despite an uneven legal landscape that can leave their children without the rights and protections extended to children of heterosexual parents.
Same-sex couples are explicitly prohibited from adopting in only two states — Utah and Mississippi — but they face significant legal hurdles in about half of all other states, particularly because they cannot legally marry in those states.
Despite this legal patchwork, the percentage of same-sex parents with adopted children has risen sharply.
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