Overnight News Digest, aka OND, is a community feature here at Daily Kos. Each editor selects news stories on a wide range of topics.
The OND community was founded by Magnifico.
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Trial ordered for 2 California police officers in beating death of homeless man
By Michael Martinez, CNN
Santa Ana, California (CNN) -- A California judge ordered Wednesday that two Fullerton police officers stand trial in the beating death last year of Kelly Thomas, a homeless man with a mental illness.
Officer Manuel Ramos is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and Cpl. Jay Patrick Cicinelli is charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Walter Schwarm scheduled the next hearing in the case on May 22.
Schwarm's ruling came after a three-day preliminary hearing that ended Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Orange County coroner's pathologist Dr. Aruna Singhania answered questions from attorneys for Ramos and Cicinelli, who have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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Legendary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon dies
By Alan Duke, CNN
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Vidal Sassoon, the legendary hairstylist, died of "apparent natural causes" at his Los Angeles home Wednesday morning, a Los Angeles police spokesman said. He was 84.
Police were called to Sassoon's Bel Air home on Mulholland Drive at 10:30 a.m., spokesman Kevin Maiberger said.
"When officers arrived, there were family members at the residence," Maiberger said.
Sassoon, a British native, spent several years as a young boy in a London orphanage after his father left and his mother could not afford to care for him.
Later, after his mother dreamed of her son being in a barber shop, she apprenticed him to a local barber. That began a career that saw him develop two classic hairstyles of the 1960s -- the bob and the even shorter five-point cut -- along with an eponymous hair care line, a range of hair care tools, and a chain of salons.
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'Monster sunspot' spitting out flares
CNN's Sean Morris
After a very eventful March, April was fairly quiet in terms of solar activity. But with the arrival of a new sunspot region on the Earth side of the sun, solar activity could begin to heat up once again in May.
Researchers at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Laboratory called this new region a “monster sunspot.” This region, labeled AR 1476, is gigantic in terms of sunspot regions: It measures about 60,000 miles across.
Sunspots are temporary phenomena on the sun that appear darker than surrounding regions and are caused by intense magnetic activity. Most solar flares and coronal mass ejections originate in sunspot regions.
Large solar flares are usually associated with coronal mass ejections, which are huge masses of solar particles that are hurled into space by the sun at about 3 million miles per hour.
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Lugar's parting words: Part defense, part warning
By Dana Bash, Senior Congressional Correspondent
Indianapolis (CNN) -- As soon as 36-year Senate veteran Richard Lugar finished his concession speech Tuesday, he walked off the stage, out the back door and into his car.
But he left behind something unusual and -- in the annals of politics -- somewhat extraordinary.
Lugar had his aides distribute a prepared statement that was part detailed defense of his ill-fated and often maligned campaign strategy, and part stark warning to both parties about the divisive state of American politics -- starting with Richard Mourdock, the Republican who beat him.
"His embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party," Lugar wrote of Mourdock,
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Zuckerberg's hoodie rankles Wall Street
By Doug Gross, CNN
(CNN) -- Facebook has raked in billions and will make a splash when its stock hits the open market next week. So, what are folks on Wall Street concerned about?
Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie, apparently.
Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities, told Bloomberg that the Facebook CEO's decision to show up for a meeting with potential investors dressed down in his trademark casual outerwear suggests that he's too immature to run a massive corporation.
"He's actually showing investors he doesn't care that much; he's going to be him," Pachter said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "I think that's a mark of immaturity.
[...]
Needless to say, the tech world got a good laugh out of it all.
The Next Web led with this not-so-subtle headline: "Odd analyst mocks Zuck's hoodie, ironically sounding stupid in a suit while doing so."
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Piglets twirled, pigs kicked by farm workers, activist video shows
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com
Officials are investigating allegations of animal abuse at a Wyoming pig farm after undercover video showed workers kicking pigs and tossing and twirling piglets — incidents that even a co-owner of the farm said looked like major abuses that warranted firings.
The Wyoming Livestock Board is investigating Wyoming Premium Farms in Wheatland, Wyo., and Doug DeRouchey, a co-owner and manager of the farm, told NBC affiliate 9NEWS.com that an investigation was underway after the Humane Society of the United States released the video on Tuesday.
"There's probably possible major abuse," he said, "and that's a termination."
"We will not tolerate abuse," DeRouchey added. "It's just not tolerable. And we've had isolated incidents in the past — and we've terminated the people."
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Panel drops 2 controversial diagnoses in new psychiatric manual
By Benedict Carey
In a rare step, doctors on a panel revising psychiatry’s influential diagnostic manual have backed away from two controversial proposals that would have expanded the number of people identified as having psychotic or depressive disorders.
The doctors dropped two diagnoses that they ultimately concluded were not supported by the evidence: “attenuated psychosis syndrome,” proposed to identify people at risk of developing psychosis, and “mixed anxiety depressive disorder,” a hybrid of the two mood problems.
They also tweaked their proposed definition of depression to allay fears that the normal sadness people experience after the loss of a loved one, a job or a marriage would not be mistaken for a mental disorder.
But the panel, appointed by the American Psychiatric Association to complete the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., did not retreat from another widely criticized proposal, to streamline the definition of autism. Predictions by some experts that the new definition will sharply reduce the number of people given a diagnosis are off base, panel members said, citing evidence from a newly completed study.
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Charlotte protesters: Bank of America is 'worst of the worst
By Kari Huus, msnbc.com
Hundreds of protesters converged on the Bank of America shareholder meeting in Charlotte, N.C. on Wednesday, dozens of them entering the proceedings to criticize the behemoth financial institution’s policies on mortgages, worker rights, tax avoidance, banking fees, foreclosures and energy financing.
Organizers said there were so many reasons to dislike the bank that it was relatively easy to pull together a large group, some from as far away as Portland, San Francisco and New York.
"It was a convergence," said Jen Soriano, a member of UNITY Alliance, a group under the umbrella protest organizer called 99 Percent Power.
"Whether it is workers who have been laid off, homeowners and also tenants who have been evicted from foreclosed homes … or people who live in coal country in the Appalachia whose home in a broader sense are being destroyed by mountain top removal mining …," Soriano said. "Bank of America is pretty much the worst of the worst in terms of banks."
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Elusive growth overshadows UK plans for new laws
By Matt Falloon and Mohammed Abbas
(Reuters) - A coalition of UK Conservatives and Liberal Democrats proposed to streamline employment laws and reform business regulation in new legislative plans on Wednesday, but critics said ministers were shrinking from taking bolder action to drag the economy out of recession.
The broad parliamentary program, disclosed according to tradition by Queen Elizabeth, will also split banks into retail and investment arms, reform the upper house of parliament and the utility market and create a "green investment bank."
The coalition of Conservatives and Lib Dems, struggling after just two years in power to push through deep spending cuts with an economy back in recession, has come under fire for failing to kickstart growth and job creation.
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Russian Aircraft Vanishes From Radar During Promotional Flight
By ANDREW E. KRAMER and NICOLA CLARK
MOSCOW — The demonstration airplane for a Russian-made passenger jet — the first new model to be produced in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed — vanished on Wednesday during a 50-minute flight, in a crushing blow to a national aerospace industry eager for revival.
The Sukhoi Superjet 100 took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, carrying 50 people, including crew, journalists and airline representatives. It disappeared from radar screens and lost contact with ground controllers about 20 minutes later over the mountainous terrain of West Java, where thick fog prevented search parties from locating the plane on Wednesday.
The Superjet carried much of this country’s hope for reinvigorating an industry with a storied history of accomplishment. Its loss will deepen the malaise in an industry whose safety problems, breakdowns and lethal crashes have made it difficult to sell planes outside the former Soviet Union, Iran, Cuba and parts of Africa.
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Upstarts Continue to Hijack Votes in Germany
By MELISSA EDDY
KIEL, GERMANY — When the results in Germany’s most recent state election came down, the Pirate Party cued up what could be their new theme song: “We are the Champions” by the rock group Queen blared from the speakers as exit polls showed the young party entering the third regional legislature in three elections.
The 8.2 percent share of the vote the Pirates won on Sunday in Schleswig-Holstein, the largely rural, northernmost state, solidified the presence of the upstart party in Germany’s political landscape, proving its ability to attract voters beyond the Twittersphere who are fed up with a political bureaucracy they view as disconnected from the people.
The Pirates drew thousands of voters from the traditional center-right and center-left parties, an analysis of the results showed, in addition to about 10,000 voters who cast ballots for the first time. Their next challenge comes this Sunday, when an election will be held in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Although the Pirate Party, formed six years ago in Berlin, has dropped recently in the polls, it looks poised to earn enough ballots to clear the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the state legislature there as well.
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Russia’s Victory Day marked by persistence of protesters
By Kathy Lally
MOSCOW — Russia commemorated its World War II victory Wednesday, reminding its citizens of their capacity for suffering and sacrifice. With the weather brought to heel for the moment, 14,000 uniformed men marched smartly through Red Square, and President Vladimir Putin spoke of glory, triumph and grief.
But as the last tank rumbled off the square’s cobblestones and the marching band lowered the tubas and silenced the drums, the younger generation was working on its own version of history, determined to add the word “democracy” to the national narrative.
Since Sunday, police have steadily harassed demonstrators opposed to Putin. On Wednesday, protesters used a celebrating city as cover to elude their pursuers. They infiltrated a Communist parade, mingled with families strolling near the Kremlin and joined a city-sponsored festival in a park where riot police routed them the night before.
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Ecuador law would forgive debt on defaulted mortgages of first-time buyers
By Associated Press
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s legislature has passed legislation that would require banks to forgive any outstanding debt on mortgages for first-time home buyers of properties worth up to $146,000 if they default and forfeit a home.
The measure, aimed at discouraging a real estate bubble of the type that has caused so much pain in the United States and Europe, won praise from many Ecuadoreans on Wednesday. The country’s banking industry did not immediately comment.
Approved Tuesday evening by a 68-21 vote, the bill also covers loans by banks to first-time purchasers of automobiles that cost up to $29,200.
President Rafael Correa, a leftist economist whose social spending has made him enormously popular, praised the legislation but did not say whether he would sign it or possibly seek amendments.
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Mexican Crime Reporters Risk Becoming The Story
by John Burnett
Mexico is reeling from another round of brutal murders of journalists. Four journalists and photographers who covered the police beat have been killed in eastern Mexico's crime-ridden state of Veracruz.
There's a new call for the federal government to take measures to protect journalists in a country where more and more reporters censor themselves out of fear.
The ceremony to remember the most recent killings took place last weekend in Mexico City on the steps of the Monument of Independence between statues depicting peace and law.
As the names of murdered journalists were called, the emotional crowd responded: "He shouldn't have died."
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 45 journalists have been killed or disappeared in Mexico since 2006. Some press advocacy organizations put the number much higher. They are among the many victims in an organized crime free-for-all that has killed more than 50,000 Mexicans in that time period.
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U.K. To Overhaul 700-Year-Old House Of Lords
by The Associated Press
Britain's Conservative-led government plans to finally overhaul the centuries-old House of Lords and introduce direct elections for members.
Attempts to revamp the unelected 700-year-old upper chamber — which does not make laws, but can amend legislation — have frustrated British leaders for decades, with peers reluctant to agree to changes.
Queen Elizabeth II announced the government's new legislative program Wednesday in an opulent pageant of pomp and politics, saying the planned laws would introduce a smaller, mainly elected upper chamber. The chamber now has 782 members.
Following Britain's return to recession last month, she said Prime Minister David Cameron will prioritize work to repair the economy.
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Indian Court Blocks Exxon Valdez From Entering Scrap Yard
by Mark Memmott
One of the most infamous ships still sailing can't dock at its final resting place just yet.
India's Supreme court has ruled that the Exxon Valdez (now called the Oriental Nicety) cannot enter a scrap yard in the western state of Gujarat until its owners can prove the tanker has been cleaned of mercury, arsenic, asbestos, residual oil and other potential contaminants.
According to The Times of India, the ship's owners plan to appeal the court ruling.
It was on March 24, 1989, as you probably recall, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound. It spilled 11 million gallons of oil; an environmental disaster.
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