Just a Star Wars myth reminder: The good wins in the end, with a cost.
Live News During the OND:
CURIOSITY LIVE BLOG
Welcome to Sunday OND, tonight's edition of the daily feature. The Overnight News Digest crew consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors jlms qkw, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir and ScottyUrb, guest editors maggiejean and annetteboardman, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent.
You are all welcome to read and comment, share links and news, and spend some time winding down this evening with the day's news.
Last week's news: Congress is useless.
Next week's news: Maybe we will see Mitt's tax returns or learn about his giant IRA ?
WAR
Kiwis killed in Afghanistan named
The Defence Force has named the two soldiers killed in Afghanistan on Saturday.
Lance Corporal Pralli Durrer and Lance Corporal Rory Malone were killed when they went to the aid of ambushed Afghan police in Bamiyan province.
Six other soldiers from New Zealand's Provincial Reconstruction Team were injured.
Corporal Malone was from Auckland and Corporal Durrer from Christchurch. They were from different patrols.
The two dead men were both shot, but not in sniper fire.
The most seriously injured New Zealander was shot in the neck.
He would need a critical care unit to travel with him to Germany when he was stable enough, General Jones said.
Hamid Karzai backs parliament over security shakeup
Afghanistan faces a period of damaging uncertainty after President Hamid Karzai bowed to parliament's surprise decision to unseat his two top security officials, but said they would stay in their jobs indefinitely while he looked for replacements.
The coming shakeup at the defence and interior ministries has the potential to complicate the ongoing handover of security from Nato to Afghan forces, unbalance a cabinet stacked with powerful rivals, and stir up western fears about loss of influence.
Western officials have long argued Afghanistan needs to move away from the politics of personality, and strengthen its institutions. But while that process is still going on, diplomats warn the country may struggle to replace the men who have been in charge of building up the army and police for several years.
"Afghan Parliament vote of no confidence in Ministers of Defence & Interior … could have significant consequences for transition," the head of the UK's civilian mission in Helmand province, Catriona Laing, warned on Twitter.
Saddam 'buttock' sale: Two men released without charge
Two men arrested on suspicion of illegally importing a piece of a bronze Saddam Hussein statue from Iraq have been released without charge.
Jim Thorpe, 67, and Nigel Ely, 52, had been questioned about plans to sell the bronze piece of buttock.
They were arrested in January after the Iraqi government asked Derbyshire police to investigate.
A police spokesman said the piece of statue had not been recovered and there was "doubt about its authenticity".
Meanwhile (please see sarcasm here),
12 die after explosions in Baghdad & Kirkuk.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS (Non-Olympic)
The White Correspondent’s Burden
In 1906, the readers of The New York Times opened their papers to a story about the Bronx Zoo’s latest attraction: Ota Benga, a 22-year-old Mutwa from today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Ota Benga let some of the savage nature of the African forest come out yesterday,” began the story, in which Benga is drenched with a hose in the zoo’s monkey cage.
Today, the “savage nature” of Africa is still on display, in American headlines: “Uganda’s rebels in murderous spree,” “Congo a country of rape and ruin” “Africa’s Forever Wars.” Sometimes the savagery doesn’t come from the “savages” themselves. It comes from poverty—“NIGERIA: Focus on the scourge of poverty”—or disease—“AIDS at 30: Killer has been tamed, but not conquered.” Other times, all the savagery blends together: “Starving Babies, Raped Mommies, Famine in Africa—Do you care?”
All I can imagine from these headlines is that Africa—all 54 countries, all 11.7 million square miles of it—must be a very deadly place.
But I’ve lived there. It’s not. Or rather, it can be, in certain places, at certain times. Far more often, and across most of the continent, it isn’t. Not even in its most infamous “war-torn” countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Goma, part of a region the United Nations’ special representative on sexual violence in conflict Margot Wallström two years ago dubbed “the rape capital of the world,” I went to an impromptu hip-hop show, full of dancing Congolese. In Kinshasa, nearly a thousand miles away on the other side of the country, I met an oboist for the city’s symphony orchestra.
Sudan and South Sudan oil deal applauded
The breakthrough was announced early on Saturday, when lead negotiator Thabo Mbeki told reporters that "the oil will start flowing", at a meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
The council had met to discuss how to solve the crisis between the two countries after they had failed to reach an agreement on security and oil before a United Nations Security Council deadline expired on August 2.
"The two parties have agreed on all of the financial arrangements regarding oil," Mbeki, who is a former South African president, said.
"We now have to agree on when the oil companies should prepare for resumption of production and export."
The AU-led negotiations have been ongoing since Juba gained independence from Sudan in July 2011. South Sudan took 75 per cent of the region's oil resources when it seceded, while Sudan stayed in possession of the processing and exporting facilities.
In late January, South Sudan shut down oil production after Sudan confiscated $815m worth of South Sudanese crude, which it claimed was in lieu of unpaid fees.
In May, the UN ordered under threat of sanctions that the two sides cease hostilities, withdraw forces from the disputed Abyei border region and agree on oil fees in three months.
Oooh, I may be on a roll: Third good news story.
Vera's Kidney, Walter's Money: Desperation, Greed and the Global Organ Trade
At first glance, the story of Walter and Vera would seem to be an account of two adults who wanted to improve their situations and, driven by both hope and hopelessness, made a deal with each other. But a closer look at their story reveals the structure of international gangs that profit from the desperation of human beings. The market is worth billions, based as it is on the tens of thousands of seriously ill people like Walter around the world. In many cases, they don't have enough time to wait until their names move to the top of long waiting lists.
Further Up the Waiting Lists
A recent scandal involving a transplant surgeon in the German city of Göttingen shows how easily matters of life and death can lead to criminal activity. Presumably to improve his patients' survival odds, but also to secure lucrative surgeries for the university hospital where he worked, the surgeon allegedly manipulated patient laboratory results so that they would be moved further up the waiting lists.
Criminal organ trafficking rings have an even easier time of it because there is a practically limitless supply of people like Vera Shevdko: poor, unknowledgeable and willing to sell parts of their bodies for a few thousand euros. Of course, organ traffickers do their best to remain in the background when presenting their cynical business model to surgeons and middlemen. Their illicit activities are rarely exposed, and convictions are even less common.
But, in the case of the Medicus Clinic in Priština, the criminal network is now well documented. Tall and lanky, with piercing eyes, Canadian prosecutor Jonathan Ratel came to Kosovo in 2010 to aid in the development of a constitutional system within the framework of the European Union Rule of Law (EULEX) mission. It wasn't long before Ratel had turned his attention to the illegal activities of organ traffickers at the Medicus Clinic.
India’s love of appliances boosts power consumption
Every evening before Indian executive Sushmita Rao leaves her Delhi office, she phones her maid to switch on the air conditioner so her apartment is refreshingly cool when she reaches home.
“I work in an air-conditioned office and I suffocate if my place isn’t cool,” said Rao, one of hundreds of millions of Indians who went without electricity last week in the world’s worst-ever blackout.
The monster grid failure was blamed on greedy states consuming more than their allotted power quotas as they sought to meet spikes in demand.
Part of the demand surge comes from Indians’ adopting electricity-guzzling lifestyles which adds to the strain on the grid from industrial users and businesses in Asia’s third-largest economy.
“As India’s middle class broadens, there’s a heavier burden on energy demand as people buy appliances for a better quality of life,” Will Pearson, global energy analyst at London-based Eurasia Group, told AFP.
Experts warn blackouts like those that knocked out power to one half of India’s 1.2 population last Monday and Tuesday, could be the way of the future unless the government fixes the creaking electricity sector.
Does culture matter for economic success?
“Culture makes all the difference,” said Mitt Romney at a fundraiser in Israel last week. He was comparing the country's economic vitality with Palestinian poverty.
Certainly, there is a pedigree for this idea. Romney cited David Landes, an economics historian. He could have cited Max Weber, the great German scholar who first made this claim 100 years ago in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
The problem is that Weber singled out two cultures as being particularly prone to poverty and stagnation. They were China and Japan. But these have been the world's fastest-growing large economies over the past five decades.
Over the past two decades, the other powerhouse has been India, which was also described for years as having a culture totally incompatible with economic success, hence the phrase “the Hindu rate of growth,” to describe the country's once-moribund state.
WalMart leads call for higher pay in Bangladesh
WalMart, Nike, Gap and other international clothing brands whose businesses have been hurt by worker unrest in Bangladesh have taken the unprecedented step of urging the government to mitigate "industry disruptions and worker grievances" as these are now impacting their ability to "direct businesses to Bangladesh".
The warning by 19 big brands, which also included JC Penney and Marks & Spencer, came a month after violent clashes over pay demands closed more than 300 factories and an ominous caution by US Ambassador to Bangladesh Dan W Mozena's that "a storm is coming for Bangladesh".
Any move by international buyers to source goods from elsewhere would threaten a central pillar of the Bangladesh economy at a time when the garment industry is enjoying a huge boom - growing 40% in the 12 months to June 2011 - thanks to the relocation of factories from China and elsewhere under pressure of rising wages and other costs. The industry contributed about 78% of the country's US$22.9 billion total exports in that year and 13% of the gross national product. The big brands alone source around $3.8 billion annually from Bangladesh.
^^^^^^^
A year on, oil still poisons Ogoniland
A bright yellow sign above the well in this sleepy Nigerian village says 'caution: not fit for use', and the sulphurous stink off the water that children still pump into buckets sharply reinforces that warning.
"Can you smell it? Don't get any in your mouth or you'll be sick," said Victoria Jiji (55), as she walked past the bore hole in her home village of Ekpangbala, one of several in Ogoniland, southeast Nigeria, whose drinking water has turned toxic.
Prosperity has flowed from Ogoniland, one of Africa's earliest crude oil producing areas, for decades. But it has flowed to the big oil companies and to Nigerian state coffers. Locals have long complained that precious little goes their way.
A landmark UN report on August 4 last year slammed multinational oil companies, particularly leading operator Royal Dutch Shell, and the government, for 50 years of oil pollution that has devastated this region of the Niger Delta, a fragile wetlands environment.
Because Big Oil can't afford to have better clean-up operations.
Bolivia seizes silver and indium mine operated by Canadian firm
Mining Minister Mario Virreira on Thursday said a decree had been issued authorizing the state to “control from now on activities related to exploration and planning” at the mine located in south-western Bolivia.
Bolivian officials denied the government had ever signed an agreement with South American Silver to operate the mine in the community of Malku Khota, located about 340 kilometres south of La Paz.
“It is clear that Bolivia, as a state, has no direct contact with South American Silver,” Virreira said.
AROUND THE COUNTRY
Killings mark 5th mass murder in state since 2004
The killings Sunday at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek are the fifth mass murder in Wisconsin since 2004.
The previous mass murders are:
Nov. 21, 2004: Six people were killed when Chai Soua Vang, a 35-year-old Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, shot eight people while deer hunting east of Birchwood in northern Wisconsin. A truck driver from St. Paul, Minn., Vang was sentenced to six consecutive life terms in prison, plus 165 years in confinement, on Nov. 9, 2005.
Mass killings seems to be 5+. I know in mining, it's not a disaster until there's 5 dead miners.
How the NRA Blocks Gun Research
How much firepower does the gun lobby have? Consider this: since the mid-90s, the NRA has "all but choked off" money for research on gun violence, according to a story today in the New York Times. "We've been stopped from answering the basic questions," said Mark Rosenberg, the former director of the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used to be the leading source of financing for firearms research. Thanks to the gun lobby's obstruction, questions like whether more guns actually make communities safer, whether the ready availability of high-capacity magazines increases the number of gun-related deaths, or whether more rigorous background checks of gun buyers make a difference, remain maddeningly unanswered.
Just in case you wondered.
Advocates: Don't Execute Mentally Retarded Man
A state senator joined anti-death penalty advocates on Friday in calling on Texas to halt next week's execution of Marvin Wilson, whose lawyers argue he is mentally retarded.
“Unfortunately, Texas continues to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court’s categorical ban on the execution of offenders with mental retardation by developing its own set of determining factors for who will be exempt from execution," state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said in a press release.
Wilson, who was convicted of shooting to death 21-year-old Jerry Robert Williams of Beaumont nearly 20 years ago, is set to die on Tuesday. His lawyers have appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the standard Texas courts use to determine mental retardation is unreasonable and asking the court to clarify how states should gauge mental competency for execution.
Photographer captures proposal, finds couple through social media
"So we went for a walk and we were chatting, at the right moment I got down on one knee and proposed to her, asked if she would marry me and thankfully she said yes," Bush said. "We hugged and kissed and but went on home. We thought that was it, really."
Only they weren't quite alone. Photographer Patrick Lu was riding his bike nearby when he saw the couple and decided to capture the special moment.
"I was really far away and I needed to get closer without disturbing them so I just sort of slowly went up and got as close as I could and took some pictures, basically," Lu said. "The way I sort of take pictures nowadays is that a lot of people don't know I'm taking pictures of them, I just try to be as non-obtrusive as possible."
This is my token happy ending story.
Critics: Romney didn’t engineer Olympics turnaround by himself
But critics note that while Romney likes to take credit for turning around the 2002 Winter Olympics, which had been savaged by an international bribery scandal, the federal government pumped more than $340 million into Utah, funding about 18 percent of the Games’ overall cost. If money for rebuilding Interstate 15 in Utah and adding light rail are included, the federal total rounds up to $1.3 billion.
"Not only has Mitt Romney blatantly taken the president’s words out of context, he has done so with brazen hypocrisy," says Ty Matsdorf, a senior adviser with the pro-Obama American Bridge 21st Century super PAC. "Romney claims the Olympics as one of his successful turnarounds, but what he fails to mention is he was only able to do this with a billion-dollar check from taxpayers — a far cry from doing it on his own."
Romney’s campaign biography says that he "salvaged the 2002 Winter Olympic Games from certain disaster" and touts his revamp of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and ability to oversee an unprecedented security mobilization for the Games, which occurred less than six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"No matter how well we did cutting costs and raising revenue, we couldn’t have Games without the support of the federal government," Romney says in his first book, Turnaround.
Getting a reprieve: Young illegal immigrants see first signs of Obama’s deferred action program
A month ago, Gabriela Tepe was almost out of hope. An immigration appeals court told the 21-year-old Oklahoma State University student that she and her 20-year-old brother, Angel, would need to leave the country by July 3 or face deportation. The siblings, who have lived in Oklahoma City since they were 4 and 2 years old, would be celebrating the Fourth of July in Guatemala, a country they don't even remember.
On June 15, Tepe saw on the news that President Barack Obama had announced that his administration would no longer deport illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who had been brought to the country as children, graduated from high school and committed no serious crimes. "They are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one—on paper," Obama said then, adding that this class of immigrants had no control over their guardians' decision to bring them to the country illegally.
HERE IN UTAH
Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster: 5th Anniversary
Trent Nelson, Salt Lake City
Remembering Crandall Canyon
Drive up the road to the Crandall Canyon Mine and you’ll see abandoned buildings, silent conveyors and the gaping, dark portal that leads to the tomb of six good men.
Then walk up the winding path to nine black stone monuments — six markers for the men who died first, and three benches for those killed while trying to find them.
Monday is the fifth anniversary of the Aug. 6, 2007, implosion, which was caused by shearing away at the huge coal columns that supported about 1,700 feet of mountain above. The next collapse would come 10 days later.
Many of the families who lost their husbands, fathers and sons have left Utah’s coal country, but some remain. For those, the country’s social fabric, and the all people who live and work there, remain a comfort.
Safety measures still developing five years after Utah mine disaster
Safety measures still developing five years after Utah mine disaster
U. of U. will get mining center; MSHA adopts stricter standards.
Two mine-safety initiatives spurred by the 2007 Crandall Canyon disaster have come to fruition almost five years later.
Locally, the state Board of Regents formally signed off last month on the creation of a Center for Mining Safety and Health Excellence at the University of Utah. The center is designed to enhance safety through advocacy, education, research and consultation.
Nationally, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) also announced in July that it was adopting stricter standards for evaluating roof-control plans for excavating weight-bearing pillars of coal in mines deep underground.
On Aug. 6, 2007, a six-man team of miners was "pulling pillars," as the practice is called in miner lingo, when the walls of the Crandall Canyon mine imploded on them. Not knowing whether the crew had survived the collapse, rescuers dug frantically for 10 days to reach them. But their efforts were terminated when a second implosion killed three rescuers and injured six others.
Official now says company has no plans to re-open Crandall Canyon Mine
A Murray Energy Corp. official said Saturday the company has no current plans to re-open the Crandall Canyon Mine, where six miners and three rescuers remain buried from a collapse in 2007.
The announcement followed a report Friday citing a Bureau of Land Management official who said the company had expressed interest in re-opening at a future, unspecified time.
The company was asked Thursday to respond to information that Murray Energy was maintaining the lease and government officials believed the company intended to open the sealed mine at some future date.
The company responded in an email: "We have no comment at this time."
First District candidate is one of 10 female vets running for office
A candidate for Utah’s First Congressional District was featured on Fox News Network Saturday morning.
Donna McAleer is running as a Democrat against Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) in the general election. She is a West Point graduate and an Army veteran. She says her experience in the military adds an important dimension to her candidacy.
This district is +Rxx (double digits). Good for her anyway.
Former internees help break ground for Utah museum to remember Topaz camp
On Sept. 11, 1942, in an arid desert area 16 miles northwest of Delta, the Topaz Internment Camp opened in the wake of World War II.
The Japanese American internment camp would process 11,000 internees and hold about 8,300 before closing three years later on Oct. 31, 1945.
Saturday, the Topaz Museum Board, a non-profit volunteer organization, held a groundbreaking ceremony kicking off the construction of the Topaz Museum and Education Center in Delta.
"We think it was an important part of American history that is little known," said board president Jane Beckwith. "So we look at ourselves as educators who are trying to remember the story so that it doesn't happen again."
OTHER
Marilyn Monroe, from the LA Times
Garrett Reid, son of Andy, found dead
Also, the NFL season started today, with non-union referees.
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The true story of Sikhs
Pat Bagley - Salt Lake Tribune - July 22, 2012