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.
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Stories and Headlines
- Acute myeloid leukaemia genes' role discovered
BBC - Three groups of mutations which cause acute myeloid leukaemia, a cancer of the white blood cells, have been identified by scientists.
The researchers suggest their work on mice, published in Nature Genetics, could lead to new treatments.
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- Scientists unveil 'world's first practical artificial leaf'
gizmag - (MIT's Dr. Daniel) Nocera's leaf is about the size of a poker card (but thinner), and is made of silicon, electronics, and nickel and cobalt catalysts – all materials that are relatively inexpensive and widely-available. Placed in a gallon of water in bright sunlight, it is said to be able to produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country for a day. It would be connected to a fuel cell located either on top of or beside the house.
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- Curry powder molecule 'is cheap sensor for explosives'
BBC - The main chemical in the curry spice turmeric could be the basis for cheap explosives detectors, say researchers.
The curcumin molecule is already well-known in medicine for its anti-cancer and anti-oxidant properties.
Now, research presented at the American Physical Society meeting suggests it could replace more complex solutions to spot explosives like TNT.
As it gathers molecules of explosive material in air, changes in its light-emitting properties can be measured.
This "fluorescence spectroscopy" is already employed in a wide array of sensing and analysis techniques.
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- Coming as Tourists, Leaving With American Babies
NYT - SAN GABRIEL, Calif. — The building inspectors and police officers walked into the small row of connected town houses here knowing something was amiss. Neighbors had complained about noise and a lot of pregnant women coming and going. And when they went into a kitchen they saw a row of clear bassinets holding several infants, with a woman acting as a nurse hovering over them.
For months, officials say, the house was home to "maternity tourists," in this case, women from China who had paid tens of thousands of dollars to deliver their babies in the United States, making the infants automatic American citizens. Officials shut down the home, sending the 10 mothers who had been living there with their babies to nearby motels.
"These were not women living in squalor — it was a well taken care of place and clean, but there were a lot of women and babies," said Clayton Anderson, a city inspector who shut down the house on March 9. "I have never seen anything like this before. We really couldn't determine the exact number of people living there."
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- Democrats in Indiana End Protest and Return
NYT - The political standoff over union rights and school vouchers in Indiana ended on Monday as House Democrats returned to the Capitol almost five weeks after they fled the state.
Whether it was an effective protest depends on whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. Democrats said they ended the walkout after Republicans agreed to make changes to several pieces of legislation. Republicans said the concessions were minor.
A major point of contention had been a bill that would prohibit any requirement that employees in private sector workplaces pay union dues or fees, but Republicans withdrew the measure last month.
Before returning to the House floor for an evening session, Representative B. Patrick Bauer, the minority leader, said Democrats had been successful in softening the worst parts of the Republicans' agenda.
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- Shoe thrower' targets Iraq's PM
aljazeera - The man known for throwing a shoe at former US president Bush campaigns against Nouri al-Maliki.
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- Walnuts are the healthiest nut, say scientists
BBC - Walnuts are the healthiest of all the nuts and should be eaten more as part of a healthy diet, US scientists say.
Scientists from Pennsylvania told the American Chemical Society that walnuts contain the highest level of antioxidants compared to other nuts.
Antioxidants are known to help protect the body against disease.
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More News
- US Army apologises over new Afghanistan abuse images
BBC - The US Army has apologised for any distress caused after new images of US troops posing with the bodies of Afghan civilians were published in a magazine.
In a statement, the US Army said the photos in Rolling Stone magazine were disturbing and contrary to its values.
Similar photos appeared in German paper Der Spiegel last week. The killings apparently took place early last year.
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- Carter in Cuba for meetings with Raúl, Ortega
Miami Herald - By Juan O. Tamayo
Former President Jimmy Carter arrived in Havana on Monday to discuss Raúl Castro's economic reforms and how to improve U.S.-Cuba relations, stymied by the imprisonment of U.S. government subcontractor Alan P. Gross.
Carter is the most important U.S. figure to visit Cuba, both under Fidel Castro's rule in 2002 and now under his younger brother Raúl. The older Castro has praised him as the president who tried hardest to normalize U.S. relations with Havana.
His first scheduled meeting, with leader of Cuba's tiny Jewish community, strengthened speculation that he will push Havana to free Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor serving a 15-year sentence.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/...
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- Obama Cites Limits of U.S. Role in Libya
NYT - WASHINGTON — President Obama defended the American-led military assault in Libya on Monday, saying it was in the national interest of the United States to stop a potential massacre that would have "stained the conscience of the world."
In his first major address since ordering American airstrikes on the forces and artillery of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi nine days ago, Mr. Obama said the United States had the responsibility and the international backing to stop what he characterized as a looming genocide in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
"I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action," Mr. Obama said.
But at the same time, he said, directing American troops to forcibly remove Colonel Qaddafi from power would be a step too far, and would "splinter" the international coalition that has moved against the Libyan government.
"To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq," Mr. Obama said, adding that "regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya."
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- Factory Explosion Follows Yemeni Forces' Pullout
NYT - SANA, Yemen — Yemen's political crisis deepened Monday when an explosion tore through a crowd of looters at an abandoned government weapons factory in the south, killing at least 110 people and underscoring an ominous collapse of authority after six weeks of rising protests. |
- The Innocence of the Liberal Hawk
The Nation - In the first flush of the occupation of Iraq, shortly after the statues were pulled down, Thomas Friedman wrote, "Whether you were for or against this war…you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth, and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went."
Flash forward eight years, and the Financial Times's Gideon Rachman writes, "For all the justified anxiety about the Libyan conflict, it is important to remember the potential gains. The first goal is humanitarian. The Gaddafi regime is extremely brutal and would have extracted a horrible revenge on the people and cities involved in the rebellion. If things go well, intervening in Libya might also help to turn the tide against the gathering forces of reaction in the Middle East. A democratic Middle East remains in the long-term interests of its people, and of the rest of the world."
The innocence of the liberal hawk is one of the few truly renewable resources America seems to have in abundance. Liberal hawks treasure their innocence but are also very careless with it, for they keep on losing it. And each time they misplace it, they manage to find it again just in time for the next bad idea.
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- The GOP's Plan to Fund Anti-Abortion Activists
The Nation - Congressional Republicans have made a big deal about slashing funds for Planned Parenthood and other family planning programs, claiming that these cuts are necessary to address the federal deficit. But one of those lawmakers has been pushing his own measure to provide additional federal funds to so-called crisis pregnancy centers—unregulated and uncertified clinics that try to deter women from seeking abortions.
A bill that Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) introduced in January would provide federal funds for the purchase of sonogram machines at organizations that counsel women against having an abortion (the American Independent reported on this bill last week). These crisis pregnancy outfits, sometimes called "pregnancy resource centers," are often run by religious groups; many have been found to provide women with false and misleading information to dissuade them from having an abortion.
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