Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7 and BentLiberal. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Guardian
Barack Obama delivered a grim warning to the nation's governors at the White House on Monday about the impact of across-the-board spending cuts if Congress fails to find a deal by Friday's deadline.
Obama urged the governors, many of them Republicans, to put pressure on their congressional colleagues this week. But a deal by Friday appears increasingly unlikely, with no negotiations even underway between the two sides.
With no deal in place, $85bn in spending cuts will begin to kick in, about half from the Pentagon and the rest from domestic spending. These will have knock-on effects on teaching jobs, health programmes, air travel and hundreds of other areas funded by the federal government.
Obama, addressing the governors in Washington for their annual conference, said: "The last thing you want to see is Washington get in the way of progress. Unfortunately, in just four days, Congress is poised to allow a series of arbitrary, automatic budget cuts to kick in that will slow our economy, eliminate good jobs and leave a lot of folks who are already pretty thinly stretched scrambling to figure out what to do."
Talking Points Memo
If it appears to you that Democrats are approaching the Friday sequestration deadline with greater poise than the GOP, you’re not mistaken.
Democrats enjoy a massive public relations advantage over the GOP. Voters are prepared to blame Republicans. The Democrats have an unusually steady message. Republicans are lurching from message to message as they try futilely to blame Obama for sequestration’s very existence, while contending that its consequences won’t be so dire (except when they contend it will hollow out the military) and to argue just as futilely that Obama’s revenue demand is an act of duplicity.
But Democrats are also confident because they have an institutional memory of winning a similar fight, when Republicans shut down the government in 1995.
“Before the government shutdown it was very much an open question in most people’s minds which party would win,” recalled Paul Begala, a Clinton White House veteran, and an insider at the time of the shutdown, in a telephone interview Friday. “Republicans were very confident at the time that the government would shutdown and people’s lives wouldn’t change. They were wrong. … [W]e all saw that theory proved in ‘95 and ‘96 and it’s going to happen again.”
US NEWS
Reuters
"Argo" stormed to Best Picture victory at the Oscars on Sunday on a night of surprises that ended in disappointment for frontrunner "Lincoln" and handed the most overall wins - four - to "Life of Pi."
It was the first time since "Driving Miss Daisy" in 1990 that a film won the top prize at the Oscars without its director also being nominated.
The honors for the Iran hostage drama marked a triumphant comeback into Hollywood's mainstream for director Ben Affleck, who failed to get a nomination in the directing category six weeks ago, and who struggled for years to rebuild his reputation after tabloid ridicule over his 2002-2004 romance with Jennifer Lopez.
Guardian
BP went on trial over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster on Monday, after the failure of efforts to reach a last-minute settlement.
US district judge Carl Barbier opened proceedings in New Orleans with a warning that it would be a "lengthy trial".
On Monday he was scheduled to hear several hours of opening statements by lawyers for the companies, federal and state governments and others who sued over the 2010 disaster that left 11 rig workers dead. Barbier was hearing the case without a jury.
The trial is designed to identify the causes of BP's well blowout and assign percentages of fault to the companies. That will help determine how much more each has to pay for their roles in the environmental catastrophe.
Months of negotiations have failed to produce a settlement that could have averted the trial.
Al Jazeera English
The US military has suspended all test flights for its F-35 fighter jet over potential engine problems, officials said.
Friday’s decision was described as a "precautionary measure" after a crack was discovered on a turbine blade in one F-35 engine at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
"It is too early to know the fleet-wide impact of this finding, however as a precautionary measure, all F-35 flight operations have been suspended until the investigation is complete and the cause of the blade crack is fully understood," programme spokeswoman Kyra Hawn said in a statement.
The suspension applies to all 51 jets in the F-35 fleet.
"We have to find out if this is an isolated incident or if it has design implications," Hawn said.
LA Times
A blizzard dumped mountains of swirling snow across parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Monday, then turned toward Kansas and other parts of the Midwest still reeling from a major storm last week.
Blizzard warnings and watches were posted for parts of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma through Monday evening as high winds blew large accumulations of snow in a wide band through the Southwest and Midwest.
The National Weather Service also warned of fierce thunderstorms along the Gulf Coast.
CNN
Watch an interview with Trayvon Martin's parents on 'Piers Morgan Tonight' CNN tonight 9pm ET.
(CNN) -- February 26, 2012.
That was the day two strangers -- Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager walking back with Skittles and an iced tea he'd picked up at 7-Eleven, and George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida -- met for the first and only time.
It's been nearly a year since Zimmerman shot Martin to death. The incident generated huge outrage across the country for months and led to a wide-ranging conversation about the state of U.S. race relations.
Zimmerman acknowledged shooting Martin but said it was in self-defense. Attorneys for Martin's family have accused Zimmerman of racially profiling Martin and shooting him "in cold blood."
Attention to the case has died down substantially in recent months, and you may have been focused on other things. Here are a few things you might not know about the case, which is scheduled for a June 10 trial.
WORLD NEWS
Spiegel
First the good news: Silvio Berlusconi didn't win the Italian election. But the bad news is disturbing enough. Center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani was unable to win control of the Senate, meaning that a stable government in Italy looks unlikely. The results for Europe could be devastating.
It was a nice moment, but it was short. The first exit polls from the election in Italy were greeted with relief in Brussels and Berlin on Monday; the stock markets in Milan, Frankfurt and London ticked upwards and the interest rates on Italian sovereign bonds dropped. Silvio Berlusconi had fallen short of his goal. His opposite, it seemed, had won the election, the center-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani. Half of Italy was pleased, as was the rest of the world.
Reuters
Major powers will offer Iran some sanctions relief during talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, this week if Tehran agrees to curb its nuclear program, a U.S. official said on Monday.
But the Islamic Republic could face more economic pain if it fails to address international concerns about its atomic activities, the official said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the central Asian state, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"There will be continued sanctions enforcement ... there are other areas where pressure can be put," the official said, on the eve of the first round of negotiations between Iran and six world powers in eight months.
A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who leads the talks with Iran on behalf of the powers, said Tehran should understand that there was an "urgent need to make concrete and tangible progress" in Kazakhstan.
Reuters
A senior cleric resigned under duress on Monday and Pope Benedict took the rare step of changing Vatican law to allow his successor to be elected early, adding to a sense of crisis around the Roman Catholic Church.
With just three days left before Benedict becomes the first pope in some six centuries to step down, he accepted the resignation of Britain's only cardinal elector, Archbishop Keith O'Brien, who was to have voted for the next pope.
O'Brien, who retains the title of cardinal, has denied allegations that he behaved inappropriately with priests over a period of 30 years, but said he was quitting the job of archbishop of Edinburgh.
He could have attended the conclave despite his resignation because he is still a cardinal under 80, but said he would stay away because he did not want media attention to be focused on himself instead of the process of choosing the next leader of the 1.2 billion-member Church.
Guardian
Beneath a starry sky and between the twin turrets of the eighteenth18th-century Old Fort on Stone Town's seafront, one of Africa's most prestigious and amiable music festivals, Sauti za Busara – "sounds of wisdom" in Swahili – was celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Its director, Yusuf Mahmoud, addressed the cosmopolitan crowd that had come to hear musicians from Mali and Senegal, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Tanzania. "Breaking down barriers between Muslims and Christians, black and white" was a major purpose of the festival, Mahmoud explained. His call for music to promote harmony was greeted with loud applause.
But before the four-day festival had concluded earlier this month a Catholic priest had been murdered and a church has since been torched in what are just the latest examples of similar attacks on the holiday island.
BBC
George Osborne has said the government must "redouble its efforts" to tackle UK debts despite the loss of the UK's AAA credit rating.
The chancellor said the downgrade was because of slow global growth and the difficult process of reducing debt, which he said must continue.
He was responding to an urgent Commons question from Labour, who say he is in "complete denial" about the situation.
Sterling fell to a two-and-a-half year low against the dollar before rallying.
The chancellor said there had not been "excessive market volatility" and the government would not deviate from its economic path.
Mr Osborne said he accepted the downgrade - made by ratings agency Moody's on Friday - and the reasons for it.
Burt he blamed the weak global outlook and the last Labour government's economic legacy and said the situation would be "much worse" if the coalition abandoned its efforts to reduce borrowing.
Spiegel
Since Germany's high court strengthened adoption rights for gay couples last week, the move has widely been seen as one that potentially opens the way toward the legalization of gay marriage. Based on the court's reasoning in that case, few can see why it would reject a forthcoming suit that questions the country's unequal tax rates for those in same-sex civil unions.
In response, high-ranking members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union signalled over the weekend that they might preemptively jettison a recent party platform decision to reject equal tax benefits for same-sex couples. But their comments have outraged more conservative members of the CDU and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who say such a move would threaten fundamental party values.
Al Jazeera English
Park Geun-Hye, the daughter of South Korea's late military ruler, has been sworn in as the country's first female president.
Monday's two-and-a-half hour inauguration ceremony included a 21-gun salute and a performance by Korean rapper Psy, whose song "Gangnam Style" was the global hit of 2012.
As leader of Asia's fourth-largest economy, Park, 61, faces significant challenges, including a nuclearised North Korea, a slowing economy and soaring welfare costs in one of the world's most rapidly ageing societies.
"North Korea's recent nuclear test is a challenge to the survival and future of the Korean people," Park said in her inauguration speech.
"I urge North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions without delay and embark on the path to peace and shared development."
Park had campaigned on a promise of greater, "trust-based" engagement with Pyongyang.
Observers say her hands have been tied by the international outcry over Pyongyang's recent nuclear test, which will have emboldened members of her ruling conservative party who oppose closer engagement.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH
BBC
The developers of an application called Vintage Camera say Facebook has unjustly banned users from uploading their photos to the social network.
The app, which works on Apple devices, provides various effects to make pictures look dated.
French studio Presselite, which developed the app, says it has more than seven million users worldwide.
Facebook told the developers the decision had been made following negative feedback from account holders.
The BBC has contacted Facebook but has not yet received a full comment.
After Presselight appealed against the ban, Facebook sent the company an email saying: "We've checked out the circumstances of your app's restriction, and we found that your app received strong negative feedback from users and their friends.
Spiegel
Very few companies in Europe are as strategically important as the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). It makes the Eurofighter jet, drones, spy satellites, and even the carrier rockets for French nuclear weapons.
Not surprisingly, the German government reacted with alarm last year when EADS managers reported that their company, which has its German administrative headquarters near Munich, was attacked by hackers. The EADS computer network contains secret design plans, aerodynamic calculations and cost estimates, as well as correspondence with the governments in Paris and Berlin. Gaining access to the documents would be like hitting the jackpot for a competitor or a foreign intelligence agency.
NPR
Hoping to reduce unnecessary antibiotics use, the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday issued new guidelines for how doctors should diagnose and treat ear infections.
Every year, millions of parents take their children to the pediatrician for ear infections, and most of them end up going home with antibiotics. In fact, ear infections are one of the most common reasons kids see doctors and the leading reason kids get antibiotics.
"Parents, if their child is up all night screaming and tugging the ear, they want something to make the child feel better," says Richard Rosenfeld of the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, who helped write the new guidelines.
C/NET
Elon Musk, speaking on Bloomberg TV, said "a lot" of people canceled orders for Tesla's Model S following a scathing New York Times review.
"It probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions, to the order of $100 million, so it's not trivial," Musk said. "I would say that refers more to the valuation of the company. It wasn't as though there were 1,000 cancellations just due to The New York Times article. There were probably a few hundred."
However, Musk did note that Tesla sees more new reservations for the Model S each quarter, indicating demand has been growing for the vehicle.
C/NET
Samsung will unveil its new Galaxy S4 smartphone at a launch event on March 14.
The news was tweeted by Samsung this morning via an invitation announcing the event, dubbed "Samsung Unpacked 2013 Episode 1." The tweet says Samsung wants people to "come and meet the next Galaxy," and further teases the new device with the numeral 4 in the phrase "Ready 4 the show." The current version of the company's signature smartphone is, of course, the Galaxy S3.
ScienceBlog
For older adults looking to sharpen their mental abilities, it might be time to log on to Facebook.
Preliminary research findings from the University of Arizona suggest that men and women older than 65 who learn to use Facebook could see a boost in cognitive function. Janelle Wohltmann, a graduate student in the UA department of psychology, set out to see whether teaching older adults to use the popular social networking site could help improve their cognitive performance and make them feel more socially connected.