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.
sfgate - Judge: Prop. 8 donors have no right to anonymity
(11-07) 15:57 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge says donors to the $40 million campaign that banned same-sex marriage in California aren't entitled to the anonymity that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted to minor parties operating in a hostile climate.
Only organizations like the Socialist Workers Party during the Cold War and the NAACP in the segregated South - "small, persecuted groups whose very existence depended on some manner of anonymity" - have been exempted from laws requiring that members and contributors be disclosed, U.S. District Judge Morrison England said Friday.
He said there is no evidence that the 7 million Californians who voted for Proposition 8 in 2008 could be considered a "fringe organization" with unpopular or unorthodox views, or that leaving donors in the public record would frighten away contributors to future campaigns.
Reuters - New Census data raise number of poor to 49 million
IThe number of poor Americans hit a record 49 million in 2010, or 16 percent, according to new data released on Monday that showed poverty rates for the elderly, Asians and Hispanics higher than previously known.
The figures were calculated by the Census Bureau under a broad new measure intended to supplement the official standard with a fuller picture of poverty in the United States. Results contrast with official poverty data, released in September, that put the number of poor Americans at 46.2 million.
The biggest rise occurred among people aged 65 and older who are being driven into poverty by out-of-pocket medical expenses, including premiums and co-pays from the federal government's Medicare program for the elderly.
Alternative energy companies form united front
In the debate over our energy future, solar, wind and electric car companies don't speak in a single, unified voice. Tom Steyer and Hemant Taneja want to change that.
They have formed an organization, called Advanced Energy Economy, that the two hope will grow into a nationwide chamber of commerce for alternative energy companies. The organization, which they will formally announce today, already has state and regional chapters representing 700 companies.
"There is no business voice for advanced energy, and there has to be," said Steyer, founder of the Farallon Capital Management hedge fund in San Francisco. "There has to be on a local level, and there has to be on a national level."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...
ap - Bolivia, US agree to restore full diplomatic ties after 3 years
Bolivia and the United States agreed Monday to restore full diplomatic ties three years after the Andean nation's leftist government expelled the U.S. ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Administration for allegedly inciting the opposition.
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The two nations signed a joint framework agreement in Washington that a U.S. official familiar with the document said seeks both to mend frayed relations and return ambassadors to the respective capitals as soon as possible.
The agreement's "objectives include strengthening and deepening" relations, according to a joint statement by the governments, including "supporting cooperative and effective action against illicit narcotics production and trafficking."
Reuters - Michael Jackson's doctor guilty of manslaughter
(Reuters) - Michael Jackson's personal doctor was found guilty on Monday of involuntary manslaughter in the singer's death following a six-week trial that captivated Jackson fans around the world.
Dr. Conrad Murray, 58, was led away in handcuffs after the Los Angeles jury reached a unanimous verdict. The doctor, who could face up to four years in prison, will be sentenced on November 29.
Dozens of fans outside the courtroom erupted in cheers and some burst into tears.
Reuters - Murdoch paper's private eye tracked militants
(Reuters) - Prominent Islamic militants in London were targeted by a private investigator working for Rupert Murdoch's now-closed News of the World tabloid, according to data obtained by Reuters.
The data, which was collected by British government investigators in 2006 as they looked into alleged media abuses, show that a News of the World journalist commissioned private investigator Steve Whittamore to gather data on Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada, two of London's most controversial militant clerics.
Mohammed al Massari, a Saudi dissident who lives in London, was also targeted in the same way, the data shows.
The information does not indicate whether the newspaper or private eye hacked into any of the militants' voicemails, an illegal tactic used by another detective employed by paper who was jailed in 2007 along with a reporter for hacking into the voicemails of celebrities and aides to Britain's royal family.
BBC - Giant asteroid to pass near Earth
An 400m-wide (1,300ft) asteroid will pass by the Earth on Tuesday, closer to it even than the Moon.
It poses no danger to the Earth and it will be invisible to the naked eye.
Asteroid 2005 YU55's closest approach, at a distance of 325,000km (202,000mi), will be at 2328GMT. It is the closest the asteroid has been in 200 years.
It is also the largest space rock fly-by the Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by such a large asteroid will be in 2028.
The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid is incredibly darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it races through our neighbourhood of the Solar System
nytimes - Murdoch-Owned Tabloid Had Lawyers Investigating Phone Hacking Followed
The News of the World hired a detective to spy on two lawyers representing victims in the News Corporation’s phone-hacking scandal, and the lawyers’ families, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group confirmed Monday.
¶The detective, Derek Webb, told the BBC that he was commissioned in 2010 to follow Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris, two lawyers representing multiple clients who alleged that The News of the World had illegally intercepted their voice mail messages.
nytimes - U.S. Clears Art Project by Christo in Colorado
DENVER — Federal regulators on Monday approved a $50 million installation of anchored fabric over the Arkansas River in southern Colorado by the artist Christo, whose larger-than-life vision has divided environmentalists, residents and politicians for years over questions of aesthetics, nature and economic impact.
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
The artist's drawing of the project, which will include eight suspended panel segments totaling 5.9 miles along a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River.
The project, “Over the River,” will include eight suspended panel segments totaling 5.9 miles along a 42-mile stretch of the river, about three hours southwest of Denver. Construction could begin next year, pending final local approvals, with the goal being a two-week display of the work as early as August 2014.
nytimes - Court Blocks Graphic Labels on Cigarette Packs
A federal judge on Monday blocked a Food and Drug Administration requirement that tobacco companies put big new graphic warning labels on cigarette packages by next September.
In a preliminary injunction, Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court in Washington ruled that cigarette makers were likely to win a free speech challenge against the proposed labels, which include staged photos of a corpse and of a man breathing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck.
The judge ruled that the labels were not factual and required the companies to use cigarette packages as billboards for what he described as the government’s “obvious anti-smoking agenda!”
The 29-page ruling was a setback for Congressional and F.D.A. efforts to bolster the warnings on tobacco packages. The agency has said they are the most significant change to health warnings in 25 years.
nytimes Opinion - America’s Unnecessary Secrets
The danger of excessive government secrecy is a lesson we should have learned over the last decade. Although the proper classification of information is vital to keeping the nation safe, “overclassification,” as the 9/11 Commission found, jeopardizes national security by inhibiting information sharing within the federal government and with state and local agencies.
Overclassification also corrodes the democratic process by leaving the public and even Congress to debate the issues of the day without full information — as happened, for example, in the lead-up to the Iraq war. And it forces the government to waste billions of dollars on security measures to protect information that doesn’t need protecting.
Unfortunately, overclassification continues to be rampant.
UPDATE:
Please check out the diary by catilinus
Standing by MB with the most hated of this land (Part I).
a nice take on a trip by some SFKossacks to visit immigrant farm workers in Watsonville (Santa Cruz County) California.