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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
Bowe Bergdahl release: US parties clash on Afghan deal
The main US political parties have clashed over the deal to swap five Guantanamo Bay detainees for a Taliban-held soldier, with Republicans warning it could put American lives at risk.
Senator John McCain said the detainees, who were transferred to Qatar, were some of the "highest high-risk people".
Afghanistan also attacked the deal, saying handing prisoners to a third country was against international law.
Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, 28, was handed to US forces in Afghanistan on Saturday.
In an emotional address on Sunday, his father, Robert Bergdahl, said he was proud how far his son was willing to go to help the Afghan people, but warned that his recovery would take a long time.
He said they had not yet spoken to the soldier, who is in a good condition and currently undergoing medical care at a US military hospital in Germany
BBC History moving at a rapid pace,it seems
Lady Mary Soames, Winston Churchill's daughter, dies
Lady Mary Soames, Winston Churchill's last surviving child, has died at the age of 91, her family have announced.
She died on Saturday at her home after a short illness.
She was the youngest of the five children of the wartime prime minister and his wife Clementine.
Prime Minister David Cameron described her as "a wonderful, warm-hearted woman who could always put others at ease" and said he and his wife Samantha "felt privileged to know her".
One of her sons, the Conservative MP and former minister Nicholas Soames, said: "She was a truly remarkable and extraordinary woman, who led a very distinguished life."
Born Mary Spencer-Churchill, she served in the auxiliary territorial service during World War Two, manning anti-aircraft batteries in London, Belgium and Germany.
BBC Even the 1%ers don't live forever.
Philadelphia Inquirer's Lewis Katz dies in plane crash The co-owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lewis Katz, has been killed in a plane crash near Boston.
The businessman was on board a private jet that burst into flames as it was trying to take off on Saturday night from Hanscom Field airport.
All seven passengers on the aircraft were killed. The cause of the crash is being investigated.
Mr Katz and his partner acquired full control of the Inquirer last week, promising to revive the newspaper.
He was also the co-owner of the Philadelphia Daily News and the news website, Philly.com.
A report on the Philadelphia Inquirer's website quotes Bill Marimow, the paper's editor, describing Mr Katz as "an exceptional man, whose presence enriched the lives of everyone he came in contact with".
"We've lost a great friend," he was quoted as saying.
Last week, Mr Katz and his partner, Harold HF Lenfest, paid $88m (£36m; 44m euros) to buy out the other owners of the company that operates the Inquirer.
Al Jazeera America
Nigerian vigilantes aim to rout Boko Haram
Maiduguri, Nigeria - Nigerians living in the northeastern city of Maiduguri go about their lives under the daily threat of attacks from the notorious rebel group Boko Haram.
Once described as the "home of peace" by locals, Maiduguri - the capital of Borno state - is now better known as the epicentre of deadly attacks and abductions that have killed thousands of Nigerians in schools, churches, mosques and markets.
According to Amnesty International, more than 1,500 people have been killed in northeastern Nigeria since the start of 2014. This month alone, more than 450 civilians have been killed in attacks, and hundreds of abducted schoolgirls remain missing.
In response to Boko Haram's attacks, a vigilante group in Maiduguri calling itself the Borno Youth Association of Peace and Justice - also known as the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) - was formed by local residents to protect their town and neighbouring villages.
"I joined the Civilian Joint Task Force June 12 last year," said Shehu Abdul Gani, a 35-year-old civil servant who worked in the local government in the town of Bama before it was bombed on May 7, 2013. "At that time Boko Haram were living in the same environment as us," he said. "We would see them carrying guns. They would come out and kill our brothers and sisters any time. My brother was killed. They came into our house and shot him in the evening time. I was sitting right next to him. When I remember this incident, I don't have mercy for them ... We are chasing them with our sticks and cutlasses - we are going to chase them out of Nigeria."
Al Jazeera America
Too crowded where you live?
Bonanza, pop. 1: Looking for a pulse in Colorado's smallest city
BONANZA, Colo. — At first glance, this high-altitude city in the Colorado Rockies, 9,400 feet above sea level and overlooking the sweeping plateau of the San Luis Valley, doesn’t look abandoned. Most Colorado ghost towns are little more than old piles of weathered lumber and hints of foundation, but here, houses tucked into the wooded cleft of the small vale formed by Kerber Creek are, for the most part, colorful and well kept. The yards are clear and the dirt roads are evenly graded. Near the city’s one crossroad, there’s a volunteer firehouse flying the U.S. flag and a community bulletin board next to a row of mailboxes.
But the houses and the driveways are all empty. To someone standing by a car at the crossroads, honking the horn in the futile hope of rousing any sign of life, Bonanza can feel like the setting of a Steven King novel. The loneliness is complete. Everyone is gone.
Well, almost everyone. Bonanza is one of the oldest existing municipalities in Colorado and indisputably its smallest, with a population of one full-time resident.
That population’s name is Mark Perkovich.
Daily Kos
This is a link to Houndog's energy diary from tonight.
Solar Energy
The first quarter of 2014 was another big one for the U.S. solar industry, with 74 percent of all new electricity generation across the country coming from solar power. The 1,330 megawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV) installed last quarter bring the total in the U.S. up to 14.8 gigawatts of installed capacity — enough to power three million homes, according to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
In addition to being the largest quarter ever for concentrating solar power, a method of large-scale solar generation that uses a unique ‘salt battery’ to allow the solar plant to keep producing power even when the sun goes down, it was also the first time in the history of SEIA’s reports that residential solar installations surpassed commercial in the same time period. 232 MW of residential PV were installed in the first quarter, compared to 225 MW of commercial solar.
Raw Story
2012 GOP threat: Sgt. Bergdahl swap will be Obama, Democrats’ ‘Willie Horton moment’
Republicans are outraged that President Barack Obama authorized a prisoner exchange with the Taliban for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — who has been held captive since 2009 — and that they plan to use the exchange against Democrats in the upcoming election.
The news of the prisoner exchange — in which Sgt. Bergdahl was swapped for Afghan detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay — surprised many Republicans because, they claim, it violated a law Obama signed last year requiring the defense secretary to notify congressional committees 30 days before arranging for a transfer of prisoners.
When he signed the law, however, President Obama issued a signing statement in which he contended that the notification requirement was an unconstitutional infringement on his powers as commander-in-chief.
Raw Story
Gun-rights group organizing delegates to open carry assault rifles at Texas GOP convention
A controversial Texas gun group has called on activists make the Texas Republican Party convention the next front in their battle for the right to openly carry assault-style rifles as many places as possible.
Last week, the gun-rights group Open Carry Tarrant County sued City of Arlington for changing a city ordinance that made it more difficult for its members to approach motorists with pocket-sized copies of the Constitution while they were carrying rifles.
In a recent Facebook posting, the group attempted to call attention to its cause by organizing Republican delegates to bring long guns and black powder revolvers to the Texas Republican Party convention later this week.
“All delegates, I urge you to open-carry the whole time,” Open Carry Tarrant County coordinator Kory Watkins wrote. “I will be a delegate with my AK 47. Thomas Jefferson would be proud.”