As your humble scribe, I welcome you all to another edition of Overnight News Digest.
I am most pleased to share this platform with jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall, JLM9999 and side pocket. Additionally, I wish to recognize our alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, and ScottyUrb along with annetteboardman as our guest editor.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Lead Off Story
President Rouhani: Iran Won’t Develop Nuclear Arms
In another sign that Iran and America’s ice-cold relationship is beginning to melt, Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani says his administration “will never develop nuclear weapons.”
Rouhani told NBC News’ Ann Curry in Tehran on Wednesday that he has the “full authority to make a nuclear deal with the West” and everything is on the negotiating table. Rouhani’s exclusive sit down with Curry was his first international interview in eight years.
There have been several new developments hinting Iran is interested in improving its relationship with the West. Next week, Rouhani will come to New York to speak for the first time at the United Nations. Rouhani’s remarks also come as President Obama confirmed the two have exchanged letters. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said this week that he is in favor of “flexibility” in talks with the west over the country’s nuclear program.
The Iranian president said the tone of the letters were “positive and constructive” and could be “tiny steps for a very important future.” He said Obama congratulated him for winning his June election.
msnbc.com
World News
Brazil's Rousseff Targets Internet Companies After NSA Spying
Angered by reports that the U.S. government spied on her and other Brazilians, President Dilma Rousseff is pushing new legislation that would seek to force Google, Facebook and other internet companies to store locally gathered data inside Brazil.
The requirement would be difficult to execute, technology experts say, given high costs and the global nature of the Internet. Still, Rousseff's initiative is one of the most tangible signs of a backlash following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency monitored emails, phone calls and other communications abroad.
The legislation, which is being written by a lawmaker in Rousseff's left-wing Workers' Party and is scheduled to be completed next week, would force foreign-based internet companies to maintain data centers inside Brazil that would then be governed by Brazilian privacy laws, officials said.
Internet companies operating in Brazil are currently free to put data centers wherever they like. Facebook Inc, for example, stores its global data in the United States and a new complex in Sweden.
reuters
U.S. News
American Farmers Say They Feed The World, But Do They?
When critics of industrial agriculture complain that today's food production is too big and too dependent on pesticides, that it damages the environment and delivers mediocre food, there's a line that farmers offer in response: We're feeding the world.
[...]
Charlie Arnot, a former public relations executive for food and farming companies, now CEO of the Center for Food Integrity, says it's more than just a debating point. "U.S. farmers have a tremendous sense of pride in the fact that they've been able to help feed the world," he says.
[...]
For instance, Chinese pigs are growing fat on cheap soybean meal grown by farmers in the U.S. and Brazil, and that's one reason why hundreds of millions of people in China are eating much better than a generation ago — they can afford to buy pork. So American farmers who grow soybeans are justified in saying that they help feed the world.
But Mellon [Margaret Mellon is a scientist with the environmental advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists] is right, too, Barrett [Christopher Barrett is an economist at Cornell University] says. The big crops that American farmers send abroad don't provide the vitamins and minerals that billions of people need most. So if the U.S. exports lots of corn, driving down the cost of cornmeal, "it induces poor families to buy lots of cornmeal, and to buy less in the way of leafy green vegetables, or milk," that have the key nutrients. In this case, you're feeding the world, but not solving the nutrition problems.
npr.org
Science and Technology
The 20 Big Questions In Science
From the nature of the universe (that's if there is only one) to the purpose of dreams, there are lots of things we still don't know – but we might do soon. A new book seeks some answers.
1 What is the universe made of?
Astronomers face an embarrassing conundrum: they don't know what 95% of the universe is made of. Atoms, which form everything we see around us, only account for a measly 5%. Over the past 80 years it has become clear that the substantial remainder is comprised of two shadowy entities – dark matter and dark energy. The former, first discovered in 1933, acts as an invisible glue, binding galaxies and galaxy clusters together. Unveiled in 1998, the latter is pushing the universe's expansion to ever greater speeds. Astronomers are closing in on the true identities of these unseen interlopers.
2 How did life begin?
Four billion years ago, something started stirring in the primordial soup. A few simple chemicals got together and made biology – the first molecules capable of replicating themselves appeared. We humans are linked by evolution to those early biological molecules. But how did the basic chemicals present on early Earth spontaneously arrange themselves into something resembling life? How did we get DNA? What did the first cells look like? More than half a century after the chemist Stanley Miller proposed his "primordial soup" theory, we still can't agree about what happened. Some say life began in hot pools near volcanoes, others that it was kick-started by meteorites hitting the sea.
3 Are we alone in the universe?
Perhaps not. Astronomers have been scouring the universe for places where water worlds might have given rise to life, from Europa and Mars in our solar system to planets many light years away. Radio telescopes have been eavesdropping on the heavens and in 1977 a signal bearing the potential hallmarks of an alien message was heard. Astronomers are now able to scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for oxygen and water. The next few decades will be an exciting time to be an alien hunter with up to 60bn potentially habitable planets in our Milky Way alone.
theguardian
Society and Culture
Darwin’s Doubt – A Review
A pro-ID reader has graciously sent me a copy of Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design by Stephen Meyer with the understanding that I will read and report on it. I’ll remind everyone that I made several predictions about the book. Since I made my predictions, my understanding of the book has changed. It is, apparently, almost purely about the Cambrian Explosion and why this is evidence of special creation. Make no mistake about it, ID is special creation with ”certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.”
Now this review will take a while. First, I’m traveling for the next two weeks. A week in Denver, unfortunately not for fun, but for work. Then a week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My ability to review the book will be limited due to this (sorry). Unfortunately, I can’t read (or do much of anything) on aircraft. I have vertigo and a airplane trip puts me out for a while.
The second part is that I fully intend to (somehow) acquire the references (if any) used by Meyer. I’ll review them to see if Meyer reports them accurately and if the same conclusion is drawn. It’s not that I don’t trust Meyer… well… OK… it’s that I don’t trust Meyer. The people from the Discovery Institute are consummate charlatans. I’ll be perfectly honest, there isn’t anything in this book that shows evolution is wrong or that ID has any supporting evidence. If there was, they would publish and then they wouldn’t shut up about it.
This is just a book to lead the lay-person to the conclusion that science can’t explain everything. I may sound biased, and I am, a bit. The DI doesn’t do science. Meyer doesn’t do science. Behe has tried to redefine science. Dembski doesn’t do science. How can one refute science when one does not do science? That all being said, I will try my best to be scrupulously fair. I will let you, my readers, decide if I’m being fair or biased. I will also ask that anyone willing to help me acquire research papers send me a message from my contact page. I would be grateful.
www.skepticink.com
Well, that's different...
The Country Life: Fake 'Dominatrix' Lures Slaves for Farm Work
To sadomasochists keen on fresh air and the country life, it must have seemed like a dream come true. A 35-year-old woman advertizing herself as a dominatrix promised strict discipline to paying clients on her farm in the northeast of Austria.
Some 15 men responded to the advert posted in the Internet, and two or three took up the offer. "They didn't get what they bargained for," a spokesman for the Lower Austria police told SPIEGEL ONLINE, confirming reports in the Austrian media in recent days.
Instead of savoring the sweet pleasure of pain, the men found themselves consigned to farm labor such as chopping wood in the nude and mowing the lawn while wearing black fetish masks on the farm near the town of St Pölten. In effect, they were paying for the privilege of doing farm work.
spiegel.de
Bill Moyers and Company:
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Dave Zirin