Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
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BBC
Ukraine crisis: US senators urge arms 'to fight Russia'
Leading American senators have called for the US to send weapons to help Ukraine fight what they say is "a Russian invasion".
Robert Menendez, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Russia's President Vladimir Putin must face a cost for his "aggression".
Senator John McCain said: "This is not an incursion. This is an invasion."
Earlier, Mr Putin called for talks to discuss the matter of "statehood" for eastern Ukraine.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in April following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula a month before. Some 2,600 people have died since April.
Pro-Russian separatists have been gaining ground on Ukrainian forces in recent days, in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and further south around the port of Mariupol.
Speaking on CNN, Mr Menendez, a Democrat, said: "We should provide the Ukrainians with the type of defensive weapons that will impose a cost upon Putin for further aggression
BBC
Iraqi forces 'reach besieged Amerli'
Iraqi forces have reached the besieged town of Amerli in northern Iraq, where thousands have been trapped by jihadists, military officials say.
The apparent breakthrough came amid fresh US air strikes on Islamic State (IS) positions. Fifteen IS fighters are said to have been captured.
The UK, France and Australia joined the US in dropping humanitarian aid.
Some 15,000 minority Shia Turkmen in Amerli have been surrounded by Islamic State militants for two months.
Military sources told the BBC's Jim Muir, who is a few miles from Amerli, that the Iraqi Army and volunteer militia entered the town on Sunday and had broken the siege.
However Amerli remains dangerous because of roadside bombs left behind by IS militants, our correspondent says.
Al Jazeera America
Libya militia group 'secures' US embassy in Tripoli
A militia group has "secured" a U.S. Embassy residential compound in Libya's capital, more than a month after American personnel evacuated from the country over ongoing fighting, one of its commanders said Sunday.
An Associated Press journalist walked through the compound Sunday after the Dawn of Libya, an umbrella group for Islamist militias, invited onlookers inside. Some windows at the compound had been broken, but it appeared most of the equipment there remained untouched. The journalist saw treadmills, food, televisions, and computers still inside.
A commander for the Dawn of Libya group, Moussa Abu-Zaqia, said his forces had entered and been in control of the compound since last week, a day after they seized control of the capital and its strategic airport after weeks of fighting with a rival militia. Abu-Zaqia said the rival militia was in the compound before his troops took it over.
A video posted online showed men playing in a pool at the compound. In a message on Twitter, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones said the video appeared to have been shot in at the embassy's residential annex.
She also said it appeared the compound was being "safeguarded" and was not "ransacked."
Al Jazeera America
San Bernardino blues: Bankrupt city flailing amid financial overhaul
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A loan and pawnshop business and empty storefronts line D Street, the five-lane artery leading to City Hall. Nearby, a Radisson Hotel and the adjoining San Bernardino Convention and Visitors Bureau stand empty, both shuttered for a few years.
On a recent afternoon, a young woman at a bus stop repeatedly shouted out across the lightly traveled road, “Can I have 40 cents?” An elderly woman pulling a cart asked passersby to spare a dollar.
There is no thriving downtown in this Southern California city, which has the dubious title of being the poorest of its size in the state. There hasn’t been one in years, but the dismal state of the city’s core is a constant reminder of a larger problem. San Bernardino, the state’s 17th-largest city, with almost 214,000 residents, is bankrupt.
It’s been a little over two years since San Bernardino filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which gives the city protection from creditors while it reorganizes to make the city solvent. The process has been brutal, especially with a city charter provision that makes it difficult to negotiate lower benefits for police and firefighters. The city was projecting a $45 million deficit when it sought refuge in bankruptcy.
“We’re mediating with our major creditors to agree to payments at reduced rates,” said city attorney Gary Saenz.
The city is now considering raising its 8.25 percent sales tax, which is already higher than the state average, and instituting development impact and franchise fees.
Raw Story
Rep. Mike Rogers: Hundreds of US foreign fighters in Syria pose ‘very serious threat’ to US
Hundreds of U.S., British and Canadian citizens who have trained with Islamic State fighters trying to carve out their own state in Iraq and Syria pose a “very serious threat” to the United States, a top Republican lawmaker said Sunday.
Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, urged the Obama administration to aggressively prosecute U.S. citizens who had trained overseas as it weighed options for how to respond to escalating violence by Islamic State militants in Iraq.
He said an attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels in May had shown a new push by extremist groups to carry out attacks on Western targets, and growing efforts to recruit backers on social media.
“I’m very concerned because we don’t know every single person who has gone and trained and learned how to fight,” Rogers told “Fox News Sunday.”
The United States carried out three air strikes on Saturday against Islamic State fighters near the besieged Shi’ite town of Amerli in northern Iraq and airdropped more than hundred additional bundles of humanitarian aid to civilians trapped there, the Pentagon said.
Raw Story
Number of dead health workers climbs as Ebola epidemic continues to spread
Nigeria on Sunday confirmed a fresh case of Ebola in a doctor whose husband died from the virus, adding to a growing list of healthcare workers in West Africa hit by the epidemic.
The woman’s husband was also a doctor and died in the city of Port Harcourt on August 22 after treating a patient who had contact with a Liberian man who brought the virus to Nigeria in late July.
She was in stable condition at an isolation unit in the financial capital, Lagos, said Sampson Parker, the health commissioner of Rivers State, of which Port Harcourt is the capital.
Nigeria’s medics have paid a heavy price in the outbreak: of the six people who have died from the disease in Africa’s most populous nation, two have been doctors and two others nurses.
Another doctor and a pharmacist were put into isolation at a unit outside Port Harcourt, Parker said.
“They have not been confirmed (as having Ebola) and we are awaiting the result of investigation,” he told a news conference.
The World Health Organization has voiced concern about the number of healthcare workers hit by the Ebola outbreak: more than 120 health workers have died and over 240 others infected so far.
The disease has killed a total of 1,552 people and infected 3,062 as of August 26, according to WHO figures.
Raw Story
Ebola virus evolving — sometimes in a single person — as it spreads across West Africa
Scientists tracking the spread of Ebola across West Africa released Thursday 99 sequenced genomes of the deadly and highly contagious hemorrhagic virus in the hopes the data may accelerate diagnosis and treatment
As a sign of the urgency and danger at hand, five of the nearly 60 international co-authors who helped collect and analyze the viral samples have died of Ebola already this year, said the report in the journal Science.
More than 1,552 people have been killed and 3,000 infected in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, according to the World Health Organization’s latest toll.
Never before has there been an Ebola outbreak so large, nor has the virus — which was first detected in 1976 — ever infected people in West Africa until now.
“We’ve uncovered more than 300 genetic clues about what sets this outbreak apart from previous outbreaks,” said Stephen Gire, a research scientist in the Sabeti lab at the Broad Institute and Harvard University.
N Y Times
One Judge to Decide the Future of Detroit
DETROIT — In a trial set to open in the federal courthouse here on Tuesday, nothing short of this city’s future is at stake.
If Judge Steven W. Rhodes approves a blueprint drawn up by Detroit officials to eliminate more than $7 billion of its estimated $18 billion in debts and to invest about $1.5 billion into the city’s now dismal services, it will mark the beginning of the end of the nation’s largest-ever municipal bankruptcy. The outcome will set this troubled city’s new course for the coming decades, perhaps longer.
In deciding whether the city’s plan is equitable, feasible and in the best interest of creditors, Judge Rhodes will send significant messages beyond Detroit about the rarely tested powers and limits of municipal bankruptcy, at a time when many cities are struggling with underfunded pensions, neglected infrastructure and declining industries
N Y Times
Desperately Dry California Tries to Curb Private Drilling for Water
FRESNO, Calif. — The small prefab office of Arthur & Orum, a well-drilling outfit hidden in the almond trees and grapevines south of Fresno, has become a magnet for scores of California farmers in desperate need of water to sustain their crops. Looking at binders of dozens of orders for yet-to-be-drilled wells, Steve Arthur, a manager, said, “We’ve got more stacked up than we’ll do before the end of the year.”
California’s vicious, prolonged drought, which has radically curtailed most natural surface water supplies, is making farmers look deeper and deeper underground to slake their thirst. This means the drought is a short-term bonanza for firms like Arthur & Orum, which expects to gross as much as $3 million this year.
But in a drought as long and severe as the current one, over-reliance on groundwater means that land sinks, old wells go dry, and saltwater invades coastal aquifers. Aquifers are natural savings accounts, a place to go when the streams run dry. Exhaust them, and the $45 billion annual agricultural economy will take a severe hit, while small towns run dry.
Yet for a century, farmers believed that the law put control of groundwater in the hands of landowners, who could drill as many wells as deeply as they wanted, and court challenges were few.
That just changed. The California Legislature, in its closing hours on Friday, passed new and sweeping groundwater controls. The measures do not eliminate private ownership, but they do establish a framework for managing withdrawals through local agencies.
N Y Times
Tony Stewart Returns to Sprint Cup Series and Lots of Support
HAMPTON, Ga. — For Tony Stewart, pent-up racing emotion that had accumulated over three weeks was unleashed in a comparative eye blink.
In Stewart’s first Nascar Sprint Cup race since his car fatally struck a driver at a short track in Canandaigua, N.Y., he burst from the No. 12 starting position into fourth place within 17 laps and remained in the leader’s shadow for more than a third of the Oral-B USA 500 on Sunday evening.
Then a near run-in with Kyle Busch sent his car scraping against the wall in the 122nd lap, and a blown right front tire about 50 laps later caused another brush with the barrier. With sparks flying from the No. 14 vehicle’s underside, Stewart steered into the garage. The crew could not salvage the car, ending Stewart’s night prematurely and disappointing his fans who were giddy over the comeback.
Major news from Raw Story
Bavarian bakers threaten strike during Oktoberfest, pretzel shortages loom
Bakers in Bavaria are threatening to go on strike during Germany’s famed Oktoberfest over a pay dispute, depriving beer festival-goers of their traditional salty pretzel accompaniment, a report said Sunday.
“If we don’t get any further by mid-September, we’ll strike in the bakeries,” Focus news magazine quoted deputy regional president of the NGG gastronomy union Mustafa Oz as saying, in its Monday edition.
“Then there’ll be a lack of pretzels and bread rolls” at the Oktoberfest, he added.
The union is negotiating on behalf of 48,000 employees of the bakery sector in southern Bavaria state but so far the proposals by employers have fallen far short of their call for a 6.5-percent wage hike.
The 181st edition of the world-famous Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich begins on September 20, and is expected to draw millions of visitors for a celebration of beer, lederhosen, dirndl dresses and oompah music.
Millions of litre-sized Mass glasses of frothy beer help wash down traditional foods such as pretzels, pork and dumplings.