Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
The OND is published each night around midnight, Eastern Time.
The originator of OND was Magnifico.
Current Contributors are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, JML9999 and NeonVincent who also serves as chief cat herder.
Stories and Headlines
Keystone has had many good diaries written about it on dkos, but it's nice to see the NY Times do a story on it:
- TransCanada in Eminent Domain Fight Over Pipeline
nytimes - A Canadian company has been threatening to confiscate private land from South Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico, and is already suing many who have refused to allow the Keystone XL pipeline on their property even though the controversial project has yet to receive federal approval.
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A government official with knowledge of the permitting process who would address the issue only on condition of anonymity said, “It is presumptuous for the company to take on eminent domain cases before there is any decision made.”
Landowners have begun joining forces and challenging the company’s assumption that it can legally seize land.
“With so many unanswered questions about the safety of this project, perhaps it’s time for the U.S. to hit the brake pedal,” Mr. Thompson wrote in testimony for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in May. “And perhaps it’s time that our government starts placing the concerns of American citizens over and above those of a foreign corporation.”
Mr. Thompson said he intends to fight to keep the pipeline, 36 inches in diameter, off his land. Eminent domain laws generally allow for the confiscation of private property if taking it is judged to serve a larger public good. These kinds of laws differ slightly from state to state as do the processes by which pipelines are approved and licensed. As a result, there is both debate and confusion over whether TransCanada has the right to use the courts to demand easements from property owners in advance of final approval for the project.
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- Elouise Cobell, 65, Dies; Sued U.S. Over Indian Trust Funds
nytimes - Elouise Cobell, a heroine to American Indians for leading a 15-year legal battle that ended with the federal government’s agreeing to pay $3.4 billion in compensation for mismanagement of Indian trust funds since the late 1800s, died on Sunday in Great Falls, Mont. She was 65 and lived on the Blackfeet reservation near Browning, Mont.
The cause was cancer, said Bill McAllister, a spokesman for the plaintiffs in what was one of the largest and most complicated class-action lawsuits ever brought against the United States. More than 300,000 members of many tribes will receive payments under the settlement.
Ms. Cobell, whose Indian name was Yellow Bird Woman and who was a great-granddaughter of a renowned tribal leader, Mountain Chief, was the lead plaintiff in Cobell v. Salazar.
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When the settlement was announced, Mr. Obama hailed it as an “important step towards a sincere reconciliation” between the federal government and Indians, many of whom, he said, considered the protracted lawsuit a “stain” on the nation.
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- Greece heads for standstill before austerity vote
(Reuters) Greece's two main unions, representing about half the four million-strong workforce, are preparing for one of the biggest protests since the crisis began two years ago, likely to hit food and fuel supplies, disrupt transport and leave hospitals run by skeleton staff.
The strike is set for Wednesday and Thursday to coincide with the vote in parliament, expected to take place in two stages on both days.
Memories are fresh of battles between riot police and stone-throwing protesters at anti-austerity demonstrations in June and sporadic incidents were reported on Monday with a petrol bomb hurled at a garbage truck in a northern suburb of Athens.
Trailing badly in opinion polls, (Prime Minister George) Papandreou has defied a wave of protests, pledging to push through a deeply unpopular package that includes tax rises, pay and pension cuts, job layoffs and changes to collective pay deals.
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- Visits to emergency rooms rise as insurance lost
sfgate - New hospital data show an increase in emergency room visits, a jump physicians attribute to both a swelling of demand for services and improvements that allow emergency departments to treat patients faster.
Visits to emergency departments rose by almost 10 percent in 2009, the largest increase since the government started tracking the figures in the early '90s, according to preliminary estimates being released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. hospital visits jumped to more than 136 million in 2009, the most recent year available, from 123.8 million in 2008.
Emergency physicians, who are gathering this week for an annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians in San Francisco, say emergency medicine is playing a growing role in American health care. At least in the short term, the increased demand for their services appears to be a sign of the tough economic times.
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- EPA: California waters show widespread pollution
sfgate - Recent tests have found more toxic material, bacteria and pollution in California rivers, streams, bays and lakes than has ever been documented before, according to the federal agency. The study shows a 170 percent increase in the number of waterways showing toxicity in 2010 compared with 2006, the last time the study was done. Less than half of the state's lakes, bays and estuaries are meeting water quality standards. "Unfortunately, the grade is not getting better. It's getting worse. At the moment it is a failing grade," said Jared Blumenfeld, the administrator for the EPA's Pacific Southwest region. "The public needs to use the information to make sure state, local and regional governments fix these eminently fixable problems."
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- New Yorkers support anti-Wall Street protests: poll
(Reuters) - Anti-Wall Street protests have won broad support among New York City voters, who would overwhelmingly favor tougher regulations on the financial industry, new poll results showed on Monday.
Sixty-seven percent of those who responded to a Quinnipiac University survey said they agreed with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are upset that banks were allowed to earn huge profits after being bailed out during the recession, while average Americans remained under financial strain.
An even wider margin, 87 percent, agreed with the protesters' right to camp out in Lower Manhattan, as long as they obeyed the law.
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- Student-Loan Debt Among Top Occupy Wall Street Concerns
By Mary Pilon, Wall Street Journal
Student-loan debt has continued to grow despite a financial crisis that constrained credit elsewhere, and the increasing burden amid high unemployment is driving at least part of the protests among the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Last year, Americans began to owe more on their student loans then their credit cards, with student debt reaching the $1 trillion mark. Many have flocked to higher education during the down economy, only to find themselves still unemployed or underemployed.
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forgivestudentloandebt.com: Forgive Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy
- Schooling the next generation of the super rich
Reuters - Oct. 17 - Private bankers are increasingly courting the sons and daughters of the super rich as they seek to win a share of the $5 trillion it is estimated will be passed down to the next generation by 2020.
Reuters Video
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- Citigroup Earnings Rise 74% to $3.8 Billion
NYT - With a big push from a one-time accounting gain, Citigroup on Monday squeezed out its seventh consecutive quarterly profit, but it faces significant challenges to growth.
Citigroup announced a third-quarter profit of $3.8 billion, or $1.23 a share, beating analyst consensus estimates of 81 cents a share. That represented a 74 percent increase from a year ago, when the bank announced a quarterly profit of $2.2 billion, or 72 cents a share.
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- America's child death shame
BBC - Sixty-six children under the age of 15 die from physical abuse or neglect every week in the industrialised world. Twenty-seven of those die in the US - the highest number of any other country.
Even when populations are taken into account, Unicef research from 2001 places the US equal bottom with Mexico on child deaths from maltreatment.
In Texas, one of the states with the worst child abuse records, the Dallas Children's Medical Center is dealing with a rising number of abused children and increasing levels of violence
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- Women seen key to solving hunger issues in Africa
By Christine Stebbins, Reuters
Women from Kenya to Liberia now plant and tend the key food crops like corn, sorghum, millet, sweet potatoes, casaba and peas. More than half of Africa's farmers are women, with most tending crops on small plots of land they can't own.
Cocoa plants are seen in a farm in Bonoua
in the east of Ivory Coast July 11, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Luc Gnago
"A better sense of land tenure rights for women is needed. That's a big handicap. If you don't have assurance that you're going to use a piece of land for several years, why would you invest in improving that piece of land?" Ngongi said.
A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations circulated at the Des Moines meetings said if women had the same access to production resources as men, they could increase yields on farms by 20 to 30 percent.
The biggest obstacle women face is discrimination, experts and officials said. But women in Africa receive also little agricultural training and do not have rights to land.
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- Analysis - Iran-U.S. tension rising ahead of elections
By Fredrik Dahl
VIENNA (Reuters) - A U.S. push to isolate Iran looks unlikely to make Tehran back down over its nuclear programme and other disputes, setting the scene for sharpening rhetoric and rising tension at a time when the two foes are preparing for elections.
U.S. President Barack Obama, seeking a second term next year, says the Islamic republic will face the harshest possible sanctions for an alleged plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington and has not ruled out military action.
And the U.N. atomic agency is expected to publish intelligence data next month likely to strengthen suspicions that Iran may be working to develop nuclear bombs, providing the West with additional arguments to punish Tehran.
Iran, which holds a parliamentary election in March followed by a presidential ballot in 2013, angrily rejects both the allegations - that it planned to kill Saudi Arabia's envoy to Washington and that its atomic activities have military aims.
"It is difficult to see any movement from either side to improve relations during the next year and a half," said a senior Western diplomat in Tehran.
"On the contrary, a hardening of the positions of both countries is to be expected because they stand to gain most from this in terms of domestic politics."
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- FBI’s DNA database upgrade plans come under fire
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website
A major upgrade of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) DNA database system has come under fire from members of the forensic science community.
The Codis system is used to generate the genetic profiles stored in the US national DNA database.
The FBI wants to expand the number of genetic markers used by Codis to classify individual DNA profiles.
But a former science chief at the bureau says the plan is not being driven by scientists' needs.
(science 5 image by Andrey Kiselev from Fotolia.com)
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- Van Gogh did not kill himself, authors claim
BBC - Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith say that, contrary to popular belief, it was more likely he was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had "a malfunctioning gun".
Bedroom in Arles, First version, October 1888.
Oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
The authors came to their conclusion after 10 years of study with more than 20 translators and researchers.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam called the claim "dramatic" and "intriguing".
In a statement, however, curator Leo Jansen said "plenty of questions remain unanswered" and that it would be "premature to rule out suicide".
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- 9-9-9: Herman Cain's tax plan exists in another world
latimes - When Herman Cain first revealed his "9-9-9" tax plan, it sparked instant speculation that the former pizza chain executive might have been applying pizza marketing techniques to his campaign for president.
But then the Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel discovered another possible inspiration: The video game SimCity4.
The game allows players to create virtual cities and build the rules for their virtual societies. The default tax plan bears a striking resemblance to Cain’s 9-9-9 plan: a 9% housing tax, a 9% commercial tax and a 9% industrial tax. (Cain’s plan would impose a 9% personal income tax, a 9% business tax and a 9% sales tax.)
The similarity was met with enthusiasm by the game’s maker, Electronic Arts, which is now offering it at a special sale price of $9.99, Terkel reported Monday.
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