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.
Reuters
New York City's plan to ban large sugary drinks from restaurants, movie theaters and other establishments was invalidated by a judge on Monday, the day before the new law was to take effect.
State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling in Manhattan called the regulation "arbitrary and capricious" and declared it invalid after the American Beverage Association and other business groups had sued the city challenging the ban.
The decision was a blow to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had touted the ban as a way to address what he has termed an obesity "epidemic." Beverage manufacturers and business groups had called the law an illegal overreach that would infringe upon consumers' personal liberty.
"We plan to appeal the decision as soon as possible, and we are confident the Board of Health's decision will ultimately be upheld," Michael Cardozo, the city's chief lawyer, said in a statement.
The ban had prohibited the city's food-service businesses from selling sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces (47 cl), though city officials had said they would not begin imposing $200 fines on offending businesses until June.
US NEWS
NPR
In the West, fights over water last a long time.
It's been almost 100 years since William Mulholland stood atop an aqueduct along the Owens River and said, "There it is, take it." He was referring to a diversion channel that started piping water to Los Angeles from 200 miles away. That water allowed L.A. to become the metropolis it is today.
But it also meant that the Owens River no longer flowed into the massive Owens Lake, which quickly dried up and became one of the biggest environmental disasters in the nation.
Now, Los Angeles is back in court over its obligations to control dust pollution at Owens Lake.
A Dried-Up Lake Turned Salt Flat
At the end of a bumpy road skirting the barren edge of the dry Owens Lake bed, highway signs become teachers about this harsh environment: that way to Furnace Creek, straight ahead to Stove Pipe Road, then Death Valley beyond. The wind has left small sand dunes on the road. Even in winter, the high desert sun is punishing, but you can see for miles.
And it's not hard to spot the white speck of Marty Adams' helicopter coming into view on the southern horizon. Owens Lake is four hours away from L.A., unless you have a chopper — then the journey takes about an hour and a half. Friendly, polished Adams is given an aerial tour of Owens Lake, near the Sierra Nevada Mountains, hundreds of times.
Reuters
Two American soldiers were killed in a so-called insider attack when a person in an Afghan military uniform turned his weapon on U.S. and Afghan forces at a joint base in the restive east of the country, coalition forces said on Monday.
Three policemen and two Afghan army officers were also killed in the attack, said a senior police official.
The attack took place as a deadline expired for U.S. special forces to quit the eastern province of Wardak, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused them and Afghans working for them of overseeing torture and killings in the area.
An Afghan interior ministry official said the attack occurred in Jalriz district of Wardak. It was not immediately clear if it was directed at U.S. special forces.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who left Afghanistan early on Monday after a three-day visit, raised the sensitive issue of Wardak when he met Karzai.
Bloomberg
A New Jersey State Police sergeant who escorted a high-speed caravan of sports cars to Atlantic City pleaded guilty to charges he altered the license plates of his vehicle to avoid detection.
Nadir Nassry, 47, a police officer for 26 years, agreed to forfeit his job, as did a second trooper, Joseph Ventrella, 29, who had joined the escort at Nassry’s request, Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa said in an e-mailed statement. Prosecutors will recommend Nassry receive a probationary term at his sentencing hearing scheduled for April 29, Chiesa said.
“These troopers violated” policing standards “and betrayed the public’s trust, undermining public safety and the reputation of the force,” Chiesa said in the statement. “They are justly paying a high price for their poor judgement.
Bloomberg
By the time Astra Augustus left Virtua Memorial Hospital in New Jersey after the last of four surgeries, she’d run up about $255,000 in bills.
Virtua sued last month after she fell behind in her $400-a- month installment plan. While the nonprofit hospital had been generous, she said, the debt is still overwhelming for someone with a monthly income of $2,200.
At first, Augustus said, she thought she was lucky. Virtua gave her a charity discount, to $30,530. Then she got statements from the doctors who treated her in the hospital, adding $18,000. “I didn’t know who to pay first,” Augustus said.
Guardian
Harvard University's administrators have issued a semi-apology to 16 resident deans for failing to inform them that their official email accounts had been secretly searched in an attempt to identify the source of a leaked document relating to a student cheating scandal.
In a two-page statement released on Monday by Harvard, senior administrators wrote that they "apologize if any resident deans feel our communication at the conclusion of the investigation was insufficient". The statement stressed that the email search was conducted to ensure the "integrity of our faculty-legislated processes and the privacy of our students".
The partial apology comes in the wake of a furious response by Harvard deans and faculty members after it was revealed over the weekend that the university had conducted a search of the administrative email accounts of the 16 resident deans as part of a leak inquiry. The inquiry was carried out without informing the deans, either before or after it was completed.
Al Jazeera
American Catholics say the clergy child sexual abuse scandal is the biggest problem confronting the church today. That’s one finding of a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted in February. The survey also shows large majorities feel Pope Benedict XVI and American bishops have done a poor job of handling the crisis and in dealing with sexual abusers in the clergy.
No one knows precisely how many boys and girls have been sexually molested by priests; one estimate says at least 100,000 children were abused in the United States alone.
Adrian Ramirez, a 38-year-old married father of two who lives in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, spoke to Al Jazeera about the sexual abuse that blighted his childhood and affected his adult life.
From the age of 11 Ramirez was brutally and repeatedly raped- hundreds of times over the course of two years.
The abuser was a man studying for the priesthood who had been placed in charge of youth activities in the parish.
"I’m constantly reliving it," he says quietly. "After the youth groups he would rape me in his car. He would…even at church he would do it—in the pews. He would say, 'imagine it’s God touching you.' Who does that to a kid, you know? I was 12-years-old and I’m like, 'Really? God is saying this is OK?'"
LA Times
The border barriers rise out of the Pacific Ocean, climb craggy California peaks, streak across Arizona desert valleys and meander through cattle ranches and fields of sorghum and citrus in South Texas.
Tall steel fencing separates border communities. Camera towers and bright rows of stadium lights aim at smugglers' enclaves in Mexico. Migrants seeking out traditional crossing routes find them blocked, and many give up.
But migrants still get across, by seeking out the one road or one mountain range or one desert trail beyond the reach of the U.S. Border Patrol.
WORLD NEWS
Spiegel Online
As expected, the Hungarian parliament on Monday evening passed a package of constitutional amendments that legal experts say are an affront to democracy. Berlin, Brussels and Washington all voiced their concern in the run up to the vote. Leaders in Budapest, however, were unphased.
Hungarian President János Áder arrived in Berlin on Monday for what might look merely like a standard bilateral meeting between two EU leaders. But the relationship between the European Union and Hungary is anything but normal these days. Budapest, after all, bid farewell on Monday to many of the values that define the 27-member club.
Spiegel Online
Needy families and individuals in the European Union are becoming increasingly reliant on charity organizations like the Red Cross for basic needs like food, water and shelter. While Germany is relatively unaffected, unemployment and austerity in countries like Spain are making the problem even more severe.
Two-thirds of national Red Cross societies within the European Union have begun distributing food aid, according to the head of the aid groups' international organization -- a sign that the economic crisis in Europe is having an alarming effect on poverty.
Yves Daccord, Director-General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said on a visit to New Delhi on Monday that the scope of food distribution had not been at its current level since the end of World War II.
Reuters
Cardinals held final discussions on the troubled state of the Roman Catholic Church on Monday, the day before they seclude themselves from the world to elect a new pontiff, with no clear frontrunner in view.
Stunned by the abdication last month of Pope Benedict, the red-hatted cardinals have met repeatedly this past week, sketching out the qualities of the man they need to lead a Church plagued by scandals of sex abuse and mismanagement.
"Last time around there was a man of stature, three or four times that of any other cardinal," French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin told reporters, in a reference to Germany's Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected pope within 24 hours in 2005.
"That is not the case this time around. Therefore, the choice has to be made among one, two, three, four ... a dozen candidates. We still don't really know anything. We will have to wait for the results of the first ballot."
Guardian
India's home minister has admitted a "serious security lapse" after the man accused of leading five others in the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapist in Delhi in December was found dead on Monday morning in the high security prison where he was being held during his trial.
Sushilkumar Shinde, the minister of home affairs, promised an inquiry after the apparent suicide of Ram Singh, who was found hanged by his own clothes and a prison blanket at 5am, officials at Delhi's Tihar jail said.
Singh, 34, was on trial with five others at a specially established fast track court in Delhi and faced the death sentence for his part in the gang rape and murder, which took place on the bus he drove for a living.
The Indian government has been repeatedly criticised for its handling of the case and its aftermath. The trial opened last month but has recently suffered delays. Reporting of proceedings has been banned by authorities.
Kiran Bedi, a former director of the jail and now an activist, told Associated Press prison officials had a moral and legal obligation to ensure Singh's safety, and she expressed surprise that authorities had not been monitoring him with cameras. "You are duty bound to protect the lives of the prisoners," she said.
Guardian
Exactly two years after its north-east coast was wrecked by a deadly tsunami, Japan marked the moment that the most powerful earthquake in its recorded history triggered deadly waves that killed almost 19,000 people, while the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, promised to speed up reconstruction of flattened communities.
In Tokyo and along the tsunami-battered coastline people gathered at memorial services to remember those who died after a magnitude earthquake struck offshore at 2:46pm on 11 March 2011.
Millions across the country stopped work or paused on the street to observe a moment's silence, while the emperor, Abe and relatives of the dead were among 1,200 who attended a ceremony at the capital's national theatre. "I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible," Emperor Akihito said.
Rin Yamane, 18, who lost her mother in the tsunami, said: "Young people from the disaster-hit areas will act so that the disaster will not be a painful memory but a memory that leads to the future."
Al Jazeera
The UN has condemned an online video that appears to show two Fijian men being tortured by officials, calling on the Pacific nation's military government to bring the attackers to justice.
The army, which seized power in a 2006 coup, must launch an impartial investigation into the video, a spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement dated March 8 and released on Monday.
"We are shocked by the content of a video which has emerged over the past few days on social networks and the internet showing the apparent torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of two handcuffed men," he said.
"While the circumstances surrounding the video have not yet been ascertained, the acts being carried out in it are clearly illegal, and we condemn them in the strongest terms."
The graphic footage posted on YouTube shows one handcuffed man being savagely beaten with batons and metal bars, and another being set upon by a dog as the animal's handler encourages it.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH
NPR
If you've had wrist and shoulder pain from clicking a mouse, relief may be in sight. This spring, a new motion sensing device will go on sale that will make it possible for the average computer user to browse the Web and open documents with a wave of a finger.
The Leap Motion Controller is on display at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, for the first time. It's one of the most talked about startups at the conference, where some 26,000 people have gathered to see emerging tech companies.
I went to have a look at the controller, which was sitting about a foot and a half away from a big iMac computer, and was connected with a USB cord.
There was a game of Fruit Ninja up on the screen. I put my fingers above the controller, and I could move a cursor around and blow up pieces of fruit with it. Impressive — but this motion controller can be used for more than just games.
"Out of the box, you'll be able to control your computer very simply. You'll be able to browse the Internet and scroll," says Michael Zagorsek, Leap Motion's vice president of marketing. "So a lot of the things people are used to, they can now do in the air without touching anything."
Guardian
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the potential to cause untreatable infections pose "a catastrophic threat" to the population, England's chief medical officer warns in a report calling for urgent action worldwide.
If tough measures are not taken to restrict the use of antibiotics and no new ones are discovered, said Dame Sally Davies, "we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar to the early 19th century at some point".
While antibiotics are failing, new bacterial diseases are on the rise. Although the "superbugs" MRSA and C difficile have been reduced to low numbers in hospitals, there has been an alarming increase in other types of bacteria including new strains of E coli and Klebsiella, which causes pneumonia.
These so-called "gram negative" bacteria, which are found in the gut instead of on the skin, are highly dangerous to older and frailer people and few antibiotics remain effective against drug-resistant strains.
As many as 5,000 patients die each year in the UK of gram negative sepsis – where the bacterium gets into the bloodstream – and in half the cases the bacterium is resistant to drugs.
It's not exactly a revelation to say Apple executives are fond of secrets. While that sense of mystery may work marketing magic with consumers, many Mac Pro customers in the professional world would very much appreciate it if Apple would cut it out with the cloak-and-dagger stuff.
At a starting price of $2,499, the Mac Pro is one of Apple's most expensive products. It's still the go-to workhorse for creative types who work in film, photography, print, and architectural jobs. But many of them are losing patience with Apple following a series of erratic product updates and poor communication about future plans, and there's only a vague indication their concerns will be addressed anytime soon.
"Pro users aren't the kind of people that hang on rumors," said longtime video producer Lou Borella, the creator of a Facebook group called "We want a new Macpro," which was started last May and has since received more than 19,300 likes. "If you're not going to release on a yearly cycle, let us know. You're not going to lose us. You're
going to lose us because you're not saying anything."
That waiting game reached a tipping point last year, when after nearly two years between upgrades, Apple finally updated the Mac Pro with newer technology. For some, what Apple delivered was too little, too late.
CNET
I've been having nightmares lately.
Usually, my nightmares involve short people stabbing me in the thigh with sprinter's spikes and calling me awful names. Yes, like "Charlie."
However, lately, I've been wandering the streets in my nightmares, wearing Google Glass and causing serious civic damage.
The problem, you see, is that I already wear prescription glasses. So every time I see promotional puffery for Google's informational eyewear, I try to work out how I could put them on over -- or, perhaps, under -- my own glasses.
My suspicions were aroused further by the idea that I'd never seen Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin wear any other glasses besides these madly scientific ones.
Swallowing what remains of my pride, I contacted Google and whispered: "Look, I wear specs. Do you have Google Glass specs for spec wearers?"
BBC News
Dell has agreed to open up its books to the scrutiny of Carl Icahn.
The activist investor, who owns a substantial stake in the US computer maker, opposes plans by founder Michael Dell to buy out his eponymous firm.
Mr Icahn has signed a confidentiality agreement with the firm to gain access.
He has joined other shareholders in opposing the proposed $24.4bn (£16.3bn) buyout, demanding instead that Dell pay a special $9 dividend, equivalent to about two-thirds of its market value.
Mr Icahn has offered to provide more than $5bn in loans towards the cost of financing the dividend.
NewScientist
Albert Perry carried a secret in his DNA: a Y chromosome so distinctive that it reveals new information about the origin of our species. It shows that the last common male ancestor down the paternal line of our species is over twice as old as we thought.
One possible explanation is that hundreds of thousands of years ago, modern and archaic humans in central Africa interbred, adding to known examples of interbreeding – with Neanderthals in the Middle East, and with the enigmatic Denisovans somewhere in southeast Asia.
Perry, recently deceased, was an African-American who lived in South Carolina. A few years ago, one of his female relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for genealogical analysis.
Geneticists can use such samples to work out how we are related to one another. Hundreds of thousands of people have now had their DNA tested. The data from these tests had shown that all men gained their Y chromosome from a common male ancestor. This genetic "Adam" lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago.
NewScientist
We are already aware that our every move online is tracked, aggregated and analysed. But you couldn't have known how much Facebook can learn about you from the smallest of social interactions – a "like".
Researchers from the University of Cambridge designed a simple machine-learning system to predict Facebook users' personal information and traits based solely on which pages they had liked. "We were completely surprised by the accuracy of the predictions," says Michal Kosinski, lead author on the paper in PNAS (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1218772110).
Kosinski and his colleagues built the system by scanning likes for a sample of 58,000 volunteers, and matching them up with other profile details such as age, gender and relationship status. He also matched up those likes with the results of personality and intelligence tests the volunteers had taken. The team then used their model to make predictions about other volunteers, based solely on their likes.