Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
(graphic by palantir)
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.
nytimes: Food Crisis as Drought and Cold Hit Mexico
MEXICO CITY — A drought that a government official called the most severe Mexico had ever faced has left two million people without access to water and, coupled with a cold snap, has devastated cropland in nearly half of the country.
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Among the more seriously affected communities are tribal areas of the Tarahumara indigenous community in the Sierra Madre, in the north. Known for endurance running and self-reliance, the Tarahumara are among Mexico’s poorest citizens. When false reports of a mass suicide brought on by hunger surfaced recently, journalists and aid organizations poured in to shed light on the situation.
“I think it has really become extreme poverty,” says Isaac Oxenhaut, national aid coordinator for the Mexican Red Cross. Mr. Oxenhaut recently visited the Indian communities where, he said, the land was too dry to grow any crops the Tarahumara usually depend on for their livelihood. “They don’t have anywhere to harvest absolutely anything,” he added.
nytimes: Colorado Lawsuit Challenges Wisdom of Ballot Box
DENVER — Few elected officials would ever dare say, at least within earshot of a microphone, that voters making public policy decisions through ballot-box referendums are less capable or wise than legislators deliberating under a capitol dome.
But now a federal lawsuit challenging Colorado’s 20-year-old taxpayer-controlled state budgeting process, known by its acronym, Tabor, is speaking truth to power, plaintiffs say, and challenging the assumption that voters always know best.
“For a long time people have been tweaking Tabor around the edges and avoiding a direct assault,” said Michael F. Feeley, an attorney who is representing the group of 33 plaintiffs — mostly current and former state legislators, local county and municipal officials and educators. “But now there’s political will, political courage and enough legal firepower to say, ‘enough’s enough — we’ve got to fix this.’ ”
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The deeper intellectual wellspring, though, harks back to the definitions of what a representative democracy is supposed to be, as articulated by the nation’s founding framers, especially James Madison, the fourth president.
nytimes: Second Year In, Republican Governors Moderate Tone
A year after a coterie of new Republican governors swept into the statehouses and put in place aggressive agendas to cut spending and curb union powers, sparking strong backlashes in many places, many of them are adopting decidedly more moderate tones as they begin their sophomore year in office.
The efforts to weaken unions have not ended — witness the recent events in Indianapolis, where the longtime Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, supports making Indiana the first state in the industrial Midwest with so-called right-to-work legislation. But many of the new Republican governors who swept into office last year, taking aim at collective bargaining rights, are striking less confrontational notes as they begin the new year, at least judging by what they have been saying in their State of the State addresses.
A gradually improving economy has eased some of the pressure for steep spending cuts. Many state lawmakers face re-election this year, and in many states they are showing little appetite to face the kind of uproar that greeted efforts to curb collective bargaining rights in states like Ohio and Wisconsin last year. And with a presidential campaign unfolding, some Republicans worry that overreaching at the local level, particularly in swing states, would make it harder for them to win in November.
BBC:FBI plans social network map alert mash-up application
The FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material "scraped" from social networks.
It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up technology".
The bureau has asked contractors to suggest possible solutions including the estimated cost.
Privacy campaigners say they are concerned that the move could have implications for free speech.
BBC:Skin transformed into brain cells
By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News
Skin cells have been converted directly into cells which develop into the main components of the brain, by researchers studying mice in California.
The experiment, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, skipped the middle "stem cell" stage in the process.
The researchers said they were "thrilled" at the potential medical uses.
Far more tests are needed before the technique could be used on human skin.
BBC: Obama confirms Pakistan drone strikes
US President Barack Obama has confirmed that unmanned drones regularly strike suspected militants in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Mr Obama called the strikes a "targeted focussed effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists".
The US does not routinely speak publicly about drone operations.
Mr Obama made his comments during an hour-long video "hangout" on Google's social network, Google+, which was also streamed live on YouTube.
Renewable energy deals hit record high in 2011-PwC
By Nina Chestney
LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Global renewable energy deals climbed 40 percent to a record high of $53.5 billion last year from $38.2 billion in 2010, as solar, wind and energy efficiency overtook hydropower as the main deal drivers for the first time, a report said on Monday.
Historically, hydro power has dominated renewables deal flow, but deals worth $1 billion or more in wind, solar, biomass and energy efficiency have outnumbered hydro by seven to one, the PriceWaterHouse Coopers report said.
The renewables market is maturing, fuelling more consolidation, and a rethink of the role of nuclear in many countries after the Japanese nuclear crisis last year provided an extra boost to renewables generation in certain markets.
nytimes green blog: Europe Zeroes In on Shipping Emissions
By JAMES KANTER
New rules to limit pollution from ships are set to start moving through the European Parliament on Tuesday, with the specter of potential environmental contamination from a stricken cruise ship lending momentum to the debate.
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Burning heavy fuel oil releases sulfur dioxide, which can contribute to acid rain and leads to the formation of small particles that can cause respiratory disorders.
Environmental groups say that heavy fuel oil takes longer than lighter marine diesel to evaporate and dissipate.
Much of the oil on board the Costa Concordia, when cold, is as thick as crude oil or bitumen. Salvage teams hope to apply heat to make it less viscous before pumping it out of the vessel’s fuel tanks.
sfgate: Gingrich's link to Reagan comes under scrutiny
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, January 30, 2012
Washington -- No Republican has claimed the mantle of the late president, former California governor and GOP icon Ronald Reagan with more unabashed relish than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
"We created 16 million jobs," Gingrich claimed in South Carolina this month. "I helped Gov. Reagan become President Reagan," he told Floridians last week. Gingrich said his wife, Callista, considers herself "a cross between Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush with just a slight bit of Jackie Kennedy tossed in."
The claims have been so frequent, and so bold, that they have become an issue in the pivotal GOP presidential primary in Florida on Tuesday. They have also provoked a ferocious battle among conservatives over Gingrich's claims to a central role in the "Reagan Revolution" that gave birth to modern conservatism.
Alarmed by the possibility of a Gingrich victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, several conservative leaders and former Reagan officials have denounced Gingrich's claims as fantasy. Defending himself in Thursday's GOP debate in Jacksonville, Gingrich cited a 1995 speech by Nancy Reagan saying her husband had passed the conservative torch to him.
baycitizen.org: Techies over 40 struggle to get work in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley may be booming again, but times are still tough for the 200 out-of-work professionals who crowd into Sunnyvale’s City Hall every Thursday morning.
Most of them hold advanced degrees in engineering and have more than a decade of experience in the technology sector. They fill all of the seats in the City Council chamber and spill out into the aisles.
They are members of Pro Match, a government-financed support group and “interactive career resource center” for educated older workers who have suddenly, and usually involuntarily, found themselves on the job market. Most have been out of work for months.
The job market “is not the same as it was years ago,” said Massimo Sutera, 45, a microprocessor engineer who was laid off last year when his firm, Zoran Corporation, a video chip maker, was acquired by the British firm C.S.R., which promptly scaled back its Sunnyvale operations, discontinuing its investment in digital television systems-on-a-chip. “It’s a mess.”
While Web-based companies like Facebook and Google are scouring the world for new talent to hire, older technology workers often find that their skills are no longer valued.
Part of the problem, analysts said, is that many of the companies shedding jobs are technology manufacturers, while most of the companies that are hiring are Internet-based.
sfgate (AP): Ill. nuclear reactor loses power, venting steam
A nuclear reactor at a northern Illinois plant shut down Monday after losing power, and steam was being vented to reduce pressure, according to officials from Exelon Nuclear and federal regulators.
Unit 2 at Byron Generating Station, about 95 miles northwest of Chicago, shut down at 10:18 a.m., after losing power, Exelon officials said. Diesel generators began supplying power to the plant, and operators began releasing steam to cool the reactor from the part of the plant where turbines are producing electricity, not from within the nuclear reactor itself, officials said.
The steam contains low levels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, but federal and plant officials insisted the levels were safe for workers and the public.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared the incident an "unusual event," the lowest of four levels of emergency.
BBC Twitter to selectively 'censor' tweets by country
Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis.
In its blog, Twitter said it could "reactively withhold content from users in a specific country".
But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Previously when Twitter deleted a tweet, it would disappear worldwide.
Extra:
Feds: Megaupload user data could be gone Thursday
By JOSHUA FREED, AP Business Writer
Federal prosecutors say data from users of Megaupload could be deleted as soon as Thursday.
U.S. prosecutors blocked access to Megaupload and charged seven men, saying the site facilitated millions of illegal downloads of movies, music and other content.
The company says its millions of users stored their own data, including family photos and personal documents. They haven't been able to see their data since the government raids earlier this month, but there has been hope they would be able to get it back