Welcome to Friday's Overnight News Digest. |
NATO launches major Afghanistan offensive
MARJAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S.-led NATO troops launched a major offensive on Saturday against the Taliban's last big stronghold in Afghanistan's most violent province, a test of President Barack Obama's troop surge strategy.
The assault, the first since the U.S. president ordered an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December, is the start of a campaign to impose government control on rebel-held areas this year, before U.S. forces start to withdraw in 2011.
"The offensive in Marjah has begun. Our company is preparing to secure key terrain to facilitate stability and security for the people of Marjah," Lt. Mark Greenlief of Bravo Company, First Battalion, Sixth Marines, told Reuters. |
Critics Blast Informant System Cloaked In Secrecy
Informants can get more attention in the movies than they do in the media — like Henry Hill, the real-life mobster turned FBI snitch who was immortalized in the 1990 gangster flick Goodfellas.
Hollywood told the lurid story of how Hill stayed inside the New York mob while supplying the FBI with damning evidence on his mafia bosses.
But in reality, things are rarely that transparent. |
Senate Confirms 2 Dozen Obama Nominees
AFP
WASHINGTON — Before leaving for the Presidents’ Day break, the Senate on Thursday night confirmed — by unanimous consent — more than two dozen of President Obama’s nominees to federal positions.
Mr. Obama and Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, had warned this week that the president might use the weeklong holiday break to make recess appointments, a threat underscoring his frustration with months of delays in confirming some key nominees. |
Toyota emphasizes U.S. presence to Congress
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp, facing scrutiny in Congress over safety recalls, is working overdrive to remind lawmakers of its U.S. presence and is getting help from states where it has plants.
The Japanese automaker has boosted lobbying in Washington ahead of two hearings in the House of Representatives during the last week in February and a third in the Senate scheduled for the first week in March.
The company mobilized two dozen workers from plants around the country to visit Capitol Hill this week. |
US refuses to cancel Obama's Dalai Lama meeting
WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday escalated a mounting row on multiple fronts with China, refusing Beijing's demand to cancel President Barack Obama's meeting next week with the Dalai Lama.
The deepening public spat over Tibet, a row over US arms sales to Taiwan, China's dispute with Google and trade and currency disagreements, come at a key diplomatic moment, as Obama seeks Chinese help to toughen sanctions on Iran.
The White House announced Thursday that Obama would hold his long-awaited meeting with the revered Dalai Lama at the White House next week, drawing an angry reaction from China and a demand for the invitation to be rescinded. |
Vice President Joe Biden in town for Patty Murray fundraiser
Vice President Joe Biden used a speech at a Seattle breakfast fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to praise Murray, defend the Obama administration and describe how Democrats will win in the November elections.
"We are creating jobs, our foreign policy is once again respected in the world, we are bringing our troops home from Iraq, we are once again leading the world," Biden said. "That's who we are as Democrats."
About 1,200 donors paid $150 to $2,500 to attend the event at the Westin Hotel on Fifth Avenue in Seattle, which was originally scheduled for November but postponed due to a funeral that day of a Seattle police officer. The event raised $500,000.
Citing her "absolute unvarnished integrity," Biden said Murray is an especially effective Senator. |
Patrick Kennedy's planned retirement deals Democrats another blow
The departure of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D) of Rhode Island, who is retiring at the end of the year, could leave the next Congress without a member of the Kennedy family for the first time in nearly half a century.
"We all know how difficult the past few years have been," Kennedy said in a video ad to air on Sunday – noting both the struggles of Rhode Island families, as well as his own loss in August of his father, Sen. Edward Kennedy.
"Now having spent two decades in politics, my life is taking a new direction,&rdqou; he said.
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Refugee crisis intensifies as fighting in Somalia continues
The Al Shabab Islamist militants today declared an "all-out war" against the embattled Somali government. Although the sentiment is nothing new, this rallying call comes as an indication that the violence that has wracked the capital Mogadishu will not subside any time soon.
Fresh clashes erupted today in the northern regions of Mogadishu. Ali Muse Sheik is the head of an ambulance service.
"Today we have taken 15 wounded people and the death toll is at least five people including a child boy who died after we have taken him to hospital." |
Greek austerity ‘comes before any bail-out’
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, enjoys overwhelming support across the German political establishment, and from ordinary voters, for taking a tough line in rejecting any early financial bail-out for the Greek economy.
All the big political parties back the government’s attitude, and the ruling coalition appears to be united in its policy. The only criticism from unnamed members of the liberal Free Democrats, the junior partners in the coalition, was that Ms Merkel is, if anything, being too generous.
While a senior government official insisted European Union leaders had not given Greece any firm promises of financial assistance, he said they had signaled the possibility of help once the government of George Papandreou had implemented a tough and sustainable austerity program. |
Who owns your cells? New book tackles thorny issue
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - No one cares about the untold numbers of cells our bodies slough off every day. But imagine that someone got hold of your cells -- and the DNA they contain -- and used them to cure a disease, or somehow managed to make a lot of money off of them. Should you be proud? Could you claim royalties?
In short, who owns your cells once they leave your body?
That was never a question Henrietta Lacks had the chance to face. A poor African-American tobacco farmer born in 1920, Lacks is the subject of Rebecca Skloot's new book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (Crown, February 2010). |
Shuttle heat shield cleared; crew to open new module
The shuttle Endeavour's heat shield - the protective tiles on the ship's belly and the critical carbon composite nose cap and wing leading edge panels - has been cleared for re-entry after a detailed analysis of post-launch imagery and sensor data, NASA officials said Friday.
"The team has completed their analyses ... and we determined that Endeavour is cleared for entry," said LeRoy Cain, chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team. "All the TPS (thermal protection system) is cleared and the vehicle is safe for deorbit, re-entry and landing."
Only three "areas of interest" were identified during the analysis and Cain said none of them posed any additional risk. |
Venezuela tries to make it rain
Flying high over Venezuela’s southeastern territories, a plane banks and fires into a mass of clouds.
Venezuela is not at war with the skies but with a severe drought that has caused an electricity crisis and forced the government to resort to unconventional methods to make it rain.
The government began "bombing clouds," or cloud seeding, late last year after it emerged that the country was facing a dire water shortage.
Using technology borrowed from Cuba and Chile, the idea is to fire a mixture of silver iodide, dry ice and salt into vertically growing cumulonimbus clouds to encourage raindrops to join together. |
Video: Laser Jet Blasts Ballistic Missile in Landmark Test
The American military has been working since 1996 on a tricked-out 747 that could blast ballistic missiles out of the sky with a ultra-powerful laser. After 14 years of promising "the American people their first light saber," the Missile Defense Agency finally pulled it off Thursday night at 8:44 p.m
It’s one of a number of steps forward for real-life ray guns in the past year or so. "Solid state" electric lasers finally hit what’s commonly considered battlefield strength. A laser-equipped Air Force gunship disabled a truck with its energy beam. A ground-mounted ray gun blasted drones out of the sky. But all of those energy weapons were weak — and the engineering challenges limited — compared to last night’s shoot-down. |
'Making Toast': Simple Gestures For Moving On
A little over two years ago, a 38-year-old pediatrician named Amy Solomon collapsed on her treadmill at home. She died of what was discovered to be a rare, undiagnosed heart defect.
The day she died, Amy's parents — Roger and Ginny Rosenblatt — drove from their house on Long Island to their daughter's home in Bethesda, Md. The Rosenblatts have been there ever since, helping their son-in-law take care of three children, who were 6, 4, and 1 when their mother died.
Now, Roger Rosenblatt has written about this reconfigured family in an exquisite, restrained little memoir filled with both hurt and humor. |
When Cabin Fever Strikes, Goodbye V-Day Romance
Emily Wylie lives and writes in New York City. She is looking into Vitamin D, light therapy and, of course, apology cards once the Valentine's shelves clear next week.
I hate everything right now — not just the usual things like litterbugs and wet cat food, but also weird things I used to like, like the color of my bedroom walls and TV and the city I live in and my husband and child. Wading back home through the post-blizzard gazpacho, I'm suddenly dreading the bodies that will crowd my apartment in a few hours, their hearts beat-beating not Valentine-y love but a fleshy tattoo more like the one that drove Poe's murderer crazy in "The Tell-Tale Heart." |
Bingaman Says Snowmaggedon ‘Makes It More Challenging’ To Argue Global Warming Is Dangerous
"Snowmageddon." "Snowpocalypse." "SnOMG." These popular depictions of the record snowstorms that have crippled the Mid-Atlantic region demonstrate that the American public knows the weather is disastrously out of control. Instead of galvanizing Congress to take action to stop the manmade disruption of our climate, these storms are being used by Washington pundits to excuse inaction. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the chair of the Senate energy committee, is turning to these killer storms to justify his resistance to passing strong climate legislation, telling the Hill’s Alexander Bolton that "the blizzards that have shut down Congress have made it more difficult to argue that global warming is an imminent danger" |
UN Launches Climate Financing Group to Disburse Billions to World's Poor
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced plans today to create a powerful new climate change entity that will help mobilize billions of dollars to help the poorest nations battle climate change.
In December, wealthy countries agreed to provide $30 billion in "fast-start" financing from 2010 to 2012 as part of the Copenhagen Accord, struck in the eleventh hour of the Denmark talks. They also agreed to a goal of ramping up that sum to $100 billion by 2020.
So far, none of the fast cash has been disbursed and country-level pledges remain vague. |
Former mayor receives two year sentence for underwear theft in England
A man who was formerly a mayor of a village in Lancashire, England has been jailed for two years after being found guilty after admitting four charges of burglary.
59-year-old Ian Stafford, a bachelor, was formerly the mayor of the village of Preesall, however he had to resign from his position in 2009 after being arrested for burglary. His crimes would involve going into houses of people who had entrusted house keys to him as he was employed by them as a handyman or a gardener. He then searched through drawers for underwear before carrying out sex acts and stealing or replacing the underwear, and then leaving the properties. He also stole some garments. The burglaries took place in the villages of Stalmine and Poulton-le-Fylde between the dates of January 1 and June 26 in 2009.
One person became suspicious and installed a hidden camera inside her bedroom. As a result, a 14 minute DVD was recorded which shows the former mayor walking naked from the waist downwards. The DVD was passed on to the police. Police officers later raided Stafford's residence and found the underwear, which had been marked with the names of the owners. The underwear is said to have been worth up to £900 (US$1407). |
School bans Valentines Day cards
Ashcombe Primary School in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, has told parents that cards declaring love can be "confusing" for children under the age of 11, who are still emotionally and socially developing.
In his February newsletter, Peter Turner, the head teacher, warned that any cards found in school would be confiscated.
He wrote: "We do not wish to see any Valentine’s Day cards in school this year. Some children and parents encourage a lot of talk about boyfriends and girlfriends." |
Fashion firm stages reverse striptease
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish fashion label Noir presented its autumn/winter 2010 all-black collection at the Copenhagen Fashion Week on Thursday evening, with the models dressing on stage before a surprised audience.
The Noir models strode onto the catwalk wearing nothing but black lingerie and then dressed each other to the sultry music of songs such as "Fever."
Noir designer and founder Peter Ingwersen said the idea was to stage a reverse striptease show.
"I wanted to show the most tasty way of getting dressed, but as aesthetically as possible," Ingwersen told Reuters at the fashion week, which runs until Sunday. |