Overnight News Digest
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall, and JML9999, side pocket/Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, and Oke. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Let's start out with something upbeat.
BBC
Middle East: Korean pop 'brings hope for peace'
There's a new product raising hopes of peace in the Middle East, it seems: South Korean pop music.
While Israeli and Palestinian negotiators make renewed efforts to find common ground for a lasting peace, youngsters in the region are reportedly taking their minds off the conflict with "K-pop". Researchers at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, reckon the Hallyu phenomenon - interest in South Korean popular culture - is taking off in Israel and beginning to have an impact in the Palestinian territories, reports Calcalist newspaper.
Who could have imagined?
BBC
Lebanon: Syrian conflict 'causes tourism slump'
Its beaches, bars and Roman ruins have historically been a draw - particularly for wealthy Arabs - but July's visitor numbers were down 27% on the previous year, Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud told Reuters news agency. Visitor figures were already down 25% on the two million of 2010 - the year before Syria's uprising - when tourism accounted for a fifth of Lebanon's economic output, the agency says. However, the industry's been further hit by Gulf countries imposing bans on entering the state amid heightened security fears.
BBC
Ariel Castro 'hell' house demolished in Cleveland
The house in Cleveland, Ohio, where Ariel Castro held three women in brutal captivity for years has been torn down.
At about 07:30 local time (11:30 GMT), a wrecking machine smashed through the house to begin the demolition.
Castro, 53, a former school bus driver, was sentenced to life in prison last week after pleading guilty to dozens of rape, kidnapping and other charges.
He abducted Michelle Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, from Cleveland streets between 2002-04.
Authorities say he kept the women chained for long periods in the house, beating and starving them and forcing one of them to miscarry several pregnancies.
CNN
Marijuana stops child's severe seizures
Charlotte Figi, 6, has Dravet Syndrome, a rare, severe form of epilepsy
Doctors tried everything they couldthithink of to get her daily seizures to stop
The family decided to try a special type of medical marijuana low in THC
Her parents say Charlotte is now thriving and seizures have been reduced to one a day
USA Today
Sharknado report
Dead shark found in NYC subway car
NEW YORK (AP) — Did a fan of "Shark Week" get carried away?
New York City's transit authority says a conductor found a small dead shark aboard a subway train in Queens on Wednesday.
The conductor asked passengers to leave the car and closed it off. The train continued to the end of the line, and then a supervisor placed the shark in a garbage bag and put it in the trash.
New York Times
Early Film by Orson Welles Is Rediscovered
In 1941, Orson Welles made his debut as a feature film director with “Citizen Kane,” a fact well known to everyone who has ever taken Film 101.
But neither was “Kane” Welles’s first professional encounter with the cinema. That happened three years before his Hollywood debut, in the form of about 40 minutes of footage intended to be shown with “Too Much Johnson,” a revival of an 1894 farce that Welles intended to bring to Broadway for the 1938 season of his Mercury Theater.
Reuters
Japan says Fukushima leak worse than thought, government joins clean-up
(Reuters) - Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tonnes a day, officials said on Wednesday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up.
The revelation amounted to an acknowledgement that plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has yet to come to grips with the scale of the catastrophe, 2 1/2 years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami. Tepco only recently admitted water had leaked at all.
As Berlusconi star fades, daughter Marina tipped as new leader
(Reuters) - Although he has vowed to fight on, Silvio Berlusconi's conviction for tax fraud has fuelled speculation that his eldest daughter Marina, head of his $6.6 billion business empire, could take his place as leader of the center-right in Italy.
Loyalists in his People of Freedom (PDL) party insist that the 76-year old Berlusconi remains firmly in charge and will continue his 20-year leadership of the center-right.
McClatchy
In the parched West, New Mexico is the driest of the dry
By JULIE CART | Los Angeles Times
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, N.M. — Scientists in the West have a particular way of walking a landscape and divining its secrets: They kick a toe into loamy soil or drag a boot heel across the desert's crust, leaning down to squint at the tiny excavation.
Try that maneuver in New Mexico these days and it yields nothing but bad news in a puff of dust.
L A Times
I don't want to be too flip about this story:
Sun's magnetic field is about to flip: What it means for Earth
The sun's enormous magnetic field is about to flip, and the effects of this massive realignment will be felt throughout the solar system, including here on Earth.
But don't expect anything too crazy to happen. Chances are you've experienced a major solar magnetic flip already, probably without even realizing it.
The sun flips its magnetic field once every 11 years, at the same time it reaches solar maximum, when sun spots and solar flares are at their height.
L A Times
California Gov. Brown struggles to shore up support for water plan
Brown has staked much on a $24-billion plan to resolve California's decades-long fight over moving water from the north, where most of the state's rain and snow falls, to thirsty cities and farms in the south and the Central Valley. Winning would break a stalemate that has bedeviled the state for more than a generation and reverse one of the biggest defeats Brown suffered decades ago during his previous stint as governor.
But his project cannot move forward without the federal government's blessing. And in the trenches of the federal bureaucracy, his adversaries have proved tenacious and powerful.