Overnight News Digest
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall,side pocket,Man Oh Man and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, and Oke. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Biden, at Iowa fundraiser, accentuates his record with ObamaBBC
Mexico hit by severe storms on east and west coasts
At least 19 people have been killed in Mexico as a hurricane and a tropical storm converge on the country.
Two days of torrential rains and high winds have caused floods and landslides in several states.
Hurricane Ingrid is expected to make landfall on Mexico's Gulf coast on Monday, while Tropical Storm Manuel approaches from the Pacific.
The severe weather led to the cancellation of Independence Day celebrations in many Mexican towns.
Thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes.
BBC
Japan halts last nuclear reactor at Ohi
Japan is shutting down its last functioning nuclear reactor, with no timetable for a restart
Reactor 4 at Ohi in western Japan will stop generating electricity in the early hours of Monday.
Analysts say Japan will be without nuclear power until December at the earliest, the longest shut-down since the 1960s.
The Japanese public turned against nuclear power after the meltdowns at the Fukushima plant in 2011.
Before the accident, which was caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami, nuclear plants supplied about 30% of Japan's power.
BBC
Colorado flooding rescue operation continues
The US state of Colorado is continuing a large-scale rescue operation after severe flooding left five dead and hundreds unaccounted for.
Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate from affected communities.
The National Guard has been deployed to one town to supply food and water while inhabitants await rescue.
Although flood waters are now subsiding, more rain has been forecast and authorities have warned of more possible flash flooding.
A spokesman for Boulder County said that 200 people were still unaccounted for, but said that some of them may simply be out of contact with family and friends, or awaiting rescue.
BBC Nature News
Hot summer helps boost butterflies
Just today I noticed that our garden was filled with several types of butterflies.
UK butterfly numbers have benefitted from the long spells of warm weather this summer, according to a nationwide survey.
The annual Big Butterfly Count attracted a record 46,000 participants who spotted a total of 830,000 insects.
The small white was at the top of the list of sightings, followed by the large white and the peacock.
Conservationists described the results as a relief following the washout summer of 2012
BBC
Costa Concordia salvage operation set to begin
One of the one of the largest and most daunting salvage operations ever attempted is set to begin with an attempt to pull the shipwrecked Costa Concordia vessel upright.
The Italian Civil Protection agency said the sea and weather conditions were right for the attempt.
Engineers have never tried to move such a huge ship so close to land.
Thirty-two people died when the cruise ship hit rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio in January 2012.
It has been lying on its side ever since.
Salvage workers are attaching giant metal chains and cables to the ship, which weighs more than 114,000 tonnes and is roughly the length of three football fields.
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L A Times
Amid slow economic recovery, more Americans identify as 'lower class'
Chris Roquemore once thought of himself as working class. But it's hard to keep thinking that, he said, when you're not working.
The 28-year-old father said he sparred with his supervisors at a retail chain about taking time off after his mother died — and ended up unemployed. Since then, Roquemore has worked odd jobs and started studying nursing at Long Beach City College, trying to get "a career, not a job." All those changes, in turn, changed the way he thought of himself.
Roquemore is among the small but surging share of Americans who identify themselves as "lower class." Last year, a record 8.4% of Americans put themselves in that category — more than at any other time in the four decades that the question has been asked on the General Social Survey, a project of the independent research organization Norc at the University of Chicago.
L A Times
Don't worry; be happy.
Israel has 80 nuclear warheads, can make 115 to 190 more, report says
JERUSALEM-- Israel has 80 nuclear warheads and the potential to double that number, according to a new report by U.S. experts.
In the Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, proliferation experts Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris write that Israel stopped production of nuclear warheads in 2004.
But the country has enough fissile material for an additional 115 to 190 warheads, according to the report, meaning it could as much as double its arsenal.
Previous estimates have been higher but the new figures agree with the 2013 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute yearbook on armament and international security
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L A Times
Will he or won't he?
Biden, at Iowa fundraiser, accentuates his record with Obama
INDIANOLA, Iowa — Vice President Joe Biden affixed himself to President Obama's record Sunday in a possible nod toward a third White House bid, saying the middle-class recovery would be the bellwether for the administration's success.
Speaking at an annual political gathering that draws the state's Democratic stalwarts, Biden repeatedly cited what he called his "seamless" partnership with Obama, accentuating an aspect of his resume that didn't exist in 1988 and 2008, when he previously sought the presidency.
When he was selected to join the 2008 presidential ticket, Biden said, he asked Obama "only one question. Was he committed, as he said he was, to rebuilding the middle class?"
USA Today
First Take: Summers done in by two sets of critics
For Larry Summers, two camps of rivals apparently proved to be one too many.
Everyone knew liberals didn't want the former Treasury secretary to be President Obama's pick to chair the Federal Reserve. They were sore about his remark as Harvard's president that women were less likely to excel at science. And they were suspicious of his role in Clinton-era financial deregulation -- especially the decision barely to regulate financial derivatives at all. That loosed a monster called the credit-default swap that forced the $85 billion bailout of AIG five years ago this weekend, and nearly brought down all of Wall Street with it.
NPR
Cold War Flashback? Vienna Villa Alleged To Be NSA Post
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A stately villa in a leafy district of the Austrian capital is at the center of a ruckus over whether the NSA is snooping on the city's residents, with allegations flying that the building serves as a sophisticated U.S. intelligence listening post.
"Both the U.S. and Austrian governments deny reports claiming to expose a major surveillance operation by the National Security Agency from within the towers of the sprawling manor. They say the building is nothing more than an 'Open Source Center' evaluating information freely available in newspapers and on the Internet — albeit one run by the CIA."