Overnight News Digest, aka OND, is a community feature here at Daily Kos. Each editor selects news stories on a wide range of topics.
The OND community was founded by Magnifico.
Welcome to all, join us in the comment section to share a news articles and jump into the community chat.
Whitney Houston Leaves Everything to Her Daughter
AP
Whitney Houston left everything to her 19-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina.
The pop superstar's will doesn't mention specific assets, but leaves all of her furnishings, clothing, personal effects, jewelry and cars to her surviving children. Bobbi Kristina was her only child.
Inside Edition first reported the will, filed in Atlanta, on Wednesday.
Houston's money will be put in a trust. Bobbi Kristina will get part of it upon turning 21, more of the money at age 25 and the balance at age 30. Houston's trustees can give her money from the trust for various purposes, including tuition, to buy a home and to start a business.
|
Lipstick-sized inhalable caffeine target of FDA warning
By Anna Yukhananov
WASHINGTON — U.S. regulators warned the maker of inhalable caffeine product AeroShot Pure Energy over false or misleading labeling, and for contradictory statements about using the product with alcohol.
The Food and Drug Administration said Breathable Foods Inc labeled AeroShot as both inhaled and ingestible, which is contradictory and could be unsafe.
The warning letter posted online Tuesday by the FDA comes after U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer urged the agency to review the safety and legality of the breathable caffeine.
"Caffeine is not normally inhaled into the lungs and the safety of doing so has not been well studied," the FDA said in a news release. While the company said AeroShot particles are too big to enter the lungs, it did not have research to back up its claim, the FDA said.
|
Journal disavows study linking abortion, mental health
Reuters
NEW YORK — A leading psychiatry journal has distanced itself from a controversial study that it published in 2009 which suggested a link between abortion and mental illness, including such severe forms as post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, and drug addiction.
In an unusual commentary, one of the Journal of Psychiatric Research's editors-in-chief and a co-author warned that the 2009 paper, which has been widely cited by legislators and advocates to argue that abortion raises a woman's risk of mental illness and to push for laws requiring providers to tell women that, in fact "does not support assertions that abortions led to psychopathology."
Led by Priscilla Coleman, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, the study used data from the Harvard-based National Comorbidity Survey, which assesses the prevalence of mental illness in the United States. She and her co-authors concluded that there is a link between past abortions and mental illness.
|
Some tossed by twisters live to tell about it, but how?
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com
Jamal Stevens, 7, is among the few who can say they survived being picked up and tossed around by a twister -- last Friday he was sucked out of his bed and flung onto a grassy strip along an interstate behind his home. But how could Jamal or anyone survive such an extreme event?
"It is puzzling because one or two people in a place will be killed while others live, and it often seems to be luck," acknowledges Tom Schmidlin, a Kent State University professor who has studied tornado injuries.
Luck does seem to have a lot to do with it, in that one or more factors have to go your way to survive. It can happen, but chances are very, very remote.
"It's a lot like flipping a coin and have it land perfectly on its edge," says Jason Persoff, a University of Colorado doctor and -- on the side -- storm chaser.
|
Women in Texas Losing Options for Health Care in Abortion Fight
By PAM BELLUCK and EMILY RAMSHAW
Leticia Parra, a mother of five scraping by on income from her husband’s sporadic construction jobs, relied on the Planned Parenthood clinic in San Carlos, an impoverished town in South Texas, for breast cancer screenings, free birth control pills and pap smears for cervical cancer.
But the clinic closed in October, along with more than a dozen others in the state, after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.
|
EU Eyes Quotas For Women On Company Boards
Gabriele Seinhauser, Associated Press
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is moving closer to introducing mandatory quotas for the number of women on company boards after businesses failed to make sufficient progress in gender equality over the past year.
The EU's Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, said Monday that at the current rate it would take more than 40 years for women to hold 40 percent of board positions in Europe's publicly traded companies.
"One year ago, I asked companies to voluntarily increase women's presence on corporate boards," Reding said. "However, I regret to see that despite our calls, self-regulation so far has not brought about satisfactory results."
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said that over the past 12 months only 24 companies had signed a pledge to ensure that 30 percent of their board positions are held by women by 2015. By 2020, that figure should increase to 40 percent.
At the moment, only one in seven — or less than 14 percent of — board members at Europe's biggest companies are women, the Commission said. That's up only slightly from just under 12 percent in 2010 and despite the fact that 60 percent of university graduates are now women.
|
UK pants label: Give laundry to 'your woman'
CNN
A firestorm set off in a pair of men's trousers has left a British apparel company deflecting allegations of sexism and denying that it thinks laundry is strictly a woman's job.
It's not every day that clothing care instructions spark controversy. But that's what happened after British journalist Emma Barnett picked up her boyfriend's pants while tidying the house.
Underneath the usually customary "machine wash warm" instructions, the tag offered a less appropriate option: “OR – GIVE IT TO YOUR WOMAN, IT’S HER JOB.”
Barnett tweeted an image of the tag on Monday, prompting an immediate outcry on social media and demands to out the company, Madhouse.
|
Time running out for Korean 'comfort women'
By Paula Hancocks, CNN
Seoul (CNN) -- Waiting more than 60 years for an official apology has taken its toll on Kim Bok-dong.
The 87-year old says she is tired and her health is failing but she continues to fight for recognition from the Japanese government for being used as a sex slave by their military during World War II.
There were believed to be around 200,000 so-called "comfort women," mostly Korean. Many have since passed away, but those still alive want individual compensation for their treatment.
"When I started, the Japanese military would often beat me because I wasn't submissive," Kim says.
"Every Sunday, soldiers came to the brothel from 8am until 5pm, on Saturday from noon until 5pm, plus weekdays. It was very hard to handle. I couldn't stand at the end of the weekend. Since I had to deal with too many soldiers, I was physically broken."
|
Women Bearing the Brunt of Austerity in Britain
By BETH GARDINER
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND — Sometimes Jennifer Bradshaw dreams of a job in finance, and last year she thought about going back to school to become a nurse. She would do anything, she said, that would give her the chance to get ahead — and to meet the bills that seem to weigh more heavily on her family every month.
As it is, she works 16 hours a week in a clerical job at a local supermarket, and her earnings go to paying off loans she and her fiancé are carrying. She would love to go full time, working days instead of evenings and getting a handle on their spiraling debt.
But with three young sons and a fourth child on the way, she cannot take on day work, at the supermarket or anywhere else, without more child care.
That, said Ms. Bradshaw, 28, feels like an impossible dream. She is dreading the phone call telling her she is about to lose the care she already has.
|
Mexican judge seeks to free jailed French woman
By Ioan Grillo
(Reuters) - A Mexican Supreme Court judge has proposed freeing a French woman serving a 60-year prison sentence for kidnapping, though his motion needs the backing of at least two others on a five-member panel determining her fate.
Judge Arturo Zaldivar said in his motion that Florence Cassez, 37, was denied her rights, not given a fair trial, and that witness statements used to convict her of kidnapping and other crimes in 2008 were unreliable.
The case has caused tension between France and Mexico.
Zaldivar's motion centers on a filmed recreation showing police freeing kidnapping victims and arresting Cassez and others who were portrayed as members of a gang called the Zodiacs. The video was shot after her arrest in Mexico City in late 2005 and aired on television as a real raid.
|