Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
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C/NET
The Washington Post has dropped its paywall for readers seeking more information about the shootings Monday morning in the Washington Navy Yard, a military facility near Capitol Hill. At least 12 people were killed in the shooting, including a gunman, according to police.
A blue banner on the front door of the Post's Web site reads "Full access to washingtonpost.com is currently available without charge."
It's not the first time that a major publication has decided to remove a paywall in an effort to give more readers access to information in the wake of a tragedy. The New York Times and other newspapers removed their paywalls during Hurricane Sandy, and BostonGlobe.com and other publications suspended their paywalls following the Boston Marathon explosions.
There's been plenty of speculation about Jeff Bezos' plans for the Post, ever since the Amazon CEO announced his $250 million purchase of the newspaper last month. So far, Bezos has been mostly hands-off. In a memo to Post employees after the announcement, he wrote that he "won't be leading The Washington Post day to day" and that the "paper's duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners."
NPR
Go to White House website and search for "Obama," "shooting," and "statement," and you'll be faced with an unrelentingly grim list.
Newtown. Aurora. Oak Creek. Tucson. Fort Hood. And now, Navy Yard.
Since Obama took office in January 2009, his presidency has been shadowed by at least 19 mass shootings — those in which four or more people were killed.
Five of those shootings, now including Navy Yard, are among the top 10 most deadly massacres in the United States over the past three-plus decades.
The president addressed the shootings Monday morning, before the full deadly extent of the Navy Yard violence emerged, and made reference to the nation "confronting yet another mass shooting."
His words, offering comfort and support to families of the victims and promising a thorough investigation, had become all too familiar.
NY Times
WASHINGTON — At least 13 people, including one gunman, were killed, and the police were looking for other potential suspects, in a shooting Monday morning at a naval office building not far from Capitol Hill and the White House, police officials said.
One police officer was in surgery after being shot in an exchange of fire with a gunman, said Chief Cathy L. Lanier of the Metropolitan Police Department. The shootings took place at the Washington Navy Yard, in the southeast part of the city.
Senior law enforcement officials identified the gunman as Aaron Alexis, 34. He was identified through his fingerprints. As of Monday night, investigators were operating on the belief that Mr. Alexis acted alone, despite earlier statements from Washington law enforcement officials that there were two other gunmen.
Washington Post
The dead gunman in Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard is Aaron Alexis, 34, a Navy veteran who was discharged after he was arrested in a shooting incident—but was later hired by a government subcontractor.
Police said it was unclear if Alexis acted alone, or how he accessed the tightly guarded Navy Yard. As of Monday evening, authorities also are still searching for another person: a black man in his 40s with gray sideburns, wearing an olive-drab military-style uniform
Alexis, a native of New York City, worked for a company called The Experts, a subcontractor to Hewlett Packard on a federal contract to work on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet network, according to a statement from Hewlett Packard. It was unclear if Alexis was still employed by that subcontractor, or if his work took him to the Navy Yard.
Alexis died at the scene of Monday’s shooting, in which at least 12 other people died. D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray said no motive is known.
The Guardian
Thirteen people died after a gunman opened fire at a naval complex in the heart of Washington DC on Monday, in what became the worst attack on a military base in the US since the Fort Hood killings in 2009.
As authorities struggled to piece together the details of what happened at the Washington navy yard, Barack Obama lamented "yet another mass shooting" and called it a "cowardly act".
The FBI named the attacker as Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old former Navy aviation electrician's mate who was stationed in Texas until he left the military in 2011. Police records showed that he had been arrested at least twice in the past for gun-related incidents.
Alexis died after a sustained firefight with police and security staff, who found numerous casualties after responding to emergency calls. "There were multiple engagements with the suspect who was ultimately deceased," said Cathy Lanier, chief of police in Washington DC. "There is no question he would have kept shooting."
The FBI, which took the lead in the investigation, was determining how Alexis got into the navy yard: unconfirmed media reports have suggested that he may have used someone else's identification to get past security staff. About 3,000 people work at the complex, which houses the US naval sea systems command headquarters, responsible for buying, building and maintaining the US navy's ships, submarines and combat systems.
NPR
The sprawling Washington Navy Yard, scene of a deadly shooting Monday, is the Navy's oldest shore establishment and has long been considered the "ceremonial gateway" to the nation's capital.
Located on the banks of the Anacostia River and near the Washington Nationals ballpark in southeast D.C., it is home to several key commands, including the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which oversees ship and submarine construction and maintenance, and the Judge Advocate General's Corps, which is the Navy's legal arm.
The yard went into operation at the turn of the 19th century. Today, it employs about 3,000 people and is regarded as the "quarterdeck of the Navy" for its role as headquarters for the Naval District Washington.
According to the Navy, NAVSEA "is the largest of the Navy's five system commands. With a fiscal year budget of nearly $30 billion, NAVSEA accounts for one quarter of the Navy's entire budget."
"We engineer, build, buy and maintain ships, submarines and combat systems that meet the Fleet's current and future operational requirements," according to NAVSEA's website. It adds:
The Guardian
What was touted as a speech marking the fifth anniversary of the financial crisis became more of an all-purpose speech on everything the president is dealing with nowadays.
First a briefing on the Navy Yard shooting, then an update on Syria negotiations, followed by a few words about those crazy September days of five years ago. From there he listed executive actions and legislative measures ranging from mortgage refinancing programs to Dodd-Frank (especially the CFPB) to Obamacare.
If there was a single purpose to these remarks, it was to reinforce his postures leading up to congressional spending and debt ceiling debates. He is willing to negotiate on spending cuts for extraneous items, and believes the sequester must be replaced, but he sees no need to further gut spending on things like education or research. And, of course, he will not negotiate away his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act.
Most importantly, he reiterated that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling.
Al Jazeera America
A 24-year-old native of Syracuse, N.Y., became the first Miss America of Indian descent Monday night.
Pageant winner Nina Davuluri wants to be a doctor and is applying to medical school, with the help of a $50,000 scholarship she won as part of the pageant title.
Moments after winning, Davuluri described how delighted she is that the nearly century-old pageant sees beauty and talent of all kinds.
"I'm so happy this organization has embraced diversity," she said in her first news conference after winning the crown in Atlantic City, N.J. "I'm thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America."
Davuluri's win prompted congratulations and praise, but it also drew a stream of racist tweets following the announcement that questioned whether Davuluri is American enough to deserve the crown. Some slurred her as a "terrorist" or mockingly referred to her as "Miss 7-11."
"I have to rise above that," she said. "I always viewed myself as first and foremost American."
Al Jazeera America
Millions of Americans rely on bridges that some experts say are at risk of collapsing.
An Associated Press analysis of 607,380 bridges, based on the federal National Bridge Inventory, found that 65,605 were classified as "structurally deficient" and 20,808 as "fracture critical." Of those, 7,795 were both — a combination of red flags that experts say indicates significant disrepair and risk of collapse.
A bridge is deemed fracture critical when it doesn't have mutiple protections and is at risk of collapse if a single, vital component fails. A bridge is structurally deficient when it is in need of rehabilitation or replacement because at least one major component of the bridge has advanced deterioration or other problems that lead inspectors to deem its condition poor or worse.
The Skagit Bridge in Washington State, which collapsed earlier this year and reopened over the weekend, was listed as fracture critical. The I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis in 2007 had received a structurally deficient designation prior to collapsing.
Bloomberg
Former New York City Comptroller William Thompson withdrew from the mayoral race today and backed Public Advocate Bill de Blasio as the Democratic nominee, saying he wanted to avoid a runoff and preserve party unity.
“Bill de Blasio and I want to move the city forward in the same direction,” Thompson said at a news briefing on the steps of City Hall, where he was joined by de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo. “The best way to guarantee that we improve our schools, save our hospitals, create good jobs and protect our people and their rights is to come together.”
Bloomberg
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) has agreed to pay at least $750 million to resolve U.S. and U.K. regulatory probes of its record trading loss last year, people with knowledge of the negotiations said.
The bank is seeking to settle as many inquiries as possible before the third quarter ends Sept. 30, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake told investors last week that the quarter’s addition to legal reserves would “more than offset” about $1.5 billion of consumer reserve releases.
The bank’s bad bets on derivatives, placed by U.K. trader Bruno Iksil, prompted authorities on two continents to open investigations into the firm’s controls and disclosures last year as losses surpassed $6.2 billion. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority are among watchdogs planning to sanction the New York-based lender, the people said.
Bloomberg
U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a five-week high, after Lawrence Summers withdrew his bid to be Federal Reserve chairman and tensions over dealing with Syria’s chemical weapons eased.
Boeing Co. (BA) rallied 3.8 percent to pace gains among industrial shares after Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. raised its price target. PulteGroup Inc. and D.R. Horton Inc. climbed at least 4.2 percent as housing stocks surged. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. added 3.5 percent after JPMorgan Chase & Co. advised investors to buy the shares. Packaging Corp. of America jumped 8.9 percent after it agreed to buy Boise Inc. for about $1.27 billion. Apple Inc. (AAPL) fell 3.4 percent, continuing its slide since the latest iPhone was introduced last week.
NPR
This post was last updated at 2:12 p.m. ET.
Helicopters were back in the air on Monday over the 15 counties across Colorado's Front Range where historic flooding has killed at least six people, left hundreds more stranded and unaccounted for, and forced nearly 12,000 to evacuate their homes.
In a televised press conference, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said 21 helicopters were conducting "search and rescue missions," and other teams were trying to assess the damage to transportation infrastructure.
Bad weather grounded the helicopters Sunday, leaving many people still waiting for help or to be evacuated, our colleagues at KUNC report.
According to KUNC:
"The number reported missing has fluctuated. As of Sunday afternoon the estimate was 1,253 — with most of those being in Larimer County. Many areas, like Estes Park, were without phone or cell service but have slowly been regaining contact, leading to rapid changes in the unaccounted for.
Reuters
The Costa Concordia cruise liner on Monday inched slowly off the rock shelf where it has been stuck for more than 20 months, in a painstaking process to right the ship that looked set to continue late into the night.
As salvage teams concentrated on the biggest operation of its kind ever attempted, survivors of the January 13, 2012 disaster - when the ship carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew capsized off the Italian island of Giglio - thought of the 32 who died, including two whose bodies have yet to be found.
"Naturally, I think of those people who didn't make it and especially for those two families who are still waiting to find the remains of their loved ones," said Luciano Castro, a 49-year-old journalist who was on the ship when it sank.
"They must still be under the keel of the Concordia and I hope after this finally they will have a grave they can cry over."
The Guardian
The leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, has issued his first specific guidelines for jihad, urging restraint in attacking other Muslim sects and non-Muslims and in starting conflicts in countries where jihadis might find a safe base to promote their ideas.
The document, published by the Site monitoring service, provides a rare look at al-Qaida's strategy 12 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States and the nature of its global ambitions from north Africa to the Caucasus to Kashmir.
While al-Qaida's military aim remained to weaken the US and Israel, Zawahri stressed the importance of "dawa", or missionary work, to spread its ideas.
"As far as targeting the proxies of America is concerned, it differs from place to place. The basic principle is to avoid entering into any conflict with them, except in the countries where confronting them becomes inevitable," he said.
The Guardian
Egyptian authorities have finally recaptured a town in central Egypt that had been under the control of hardline supporters of ex-president Mohamed Morsi for more than two months, locals have told the Guardian.
Armed crowds in Delga, a remote town of 120,000 people in Egypt's Minya province, first scared away its meagre police force following Morsi's overthrow on 3 July. They then unleashed a campaign of terror on the town's Coptic Christian minority, who make up around a sixth of the local population.
Two earlier attempts to retake Delga failed, but in the early hours of Monday morning police launched a third and decisive assault, and have now re-entered the town, residents said by telephone.
Further assaults on up to 10 other towns in the region where Islamists have also weakened state control since July are also planned, Minya's governor, Salah Zeyada, said.
The Guardian
Hurricane Ingrid and tropical storm Manuel brought heavy rains to Mexico's Gulf and Pacific coasts on Sunday, causing flooding and landslides that killed 21 people.
Thousands of people sought emergency shelter as the two storms moved closer to land and caused rivers and streams to burst their banks.
The US National Hurricane Center said Manuel began to weaken as soon as it made landfall near the port of Manzanillo during the afternoon, but remained a threat to produce flash floods and mudslides. It was predicted to dissipate by Monday.
In the southern coastal state of Guerrero, authorities said a landslide on the outskirts of Acapulco buried a house and killed six family members. Three people were swept to their deaths by a river, also on the edge of the resort city. A collapsing wall killed one person in the city.
Elsewhere in Guerrero, six people died when their pickup truck skidded on a rain-swept highway in the mountains, and landslides killed two more people.
The rains damaged hundreds of homes and disrupting communications for several hours.
Spiegel Online International
The NSA monitors banks and credit card transactions -- sometimes in apparent violation of national laws and global regulations. The European SWIFT financial transaction network is being tapped on different levels, internal documents from the US spy agency show.
In the summer of 2010, a Middle Eastern businessman wanted to transfer a large sum of money from one country in the region to another. He wanted to send at least $50,000 (€37,500), and he had a very clear idea of how it should be done. The transaction could not be conducted via the United States, and the name of his bank would have to be kept secret -- those were his conditions.
Though the transfer was carried out precisely according to his instructions, it did not go unobserved. The transaction is listed in classified documents compiled by the US intelligence agency NSA that SPIEGEL has seen and that deal with the activities of the United States in the international financial sector. The documents show how comprehensively and effectively the intelligence agency can track global flows of money and store the information in a powerful database developed for this purpose.
Spiegel Online International
International sanctions are taking their toll on Iran's economy, and it now appears that new President Hassan Rohani could thus be willing to make concessions in the country's long-running standoff with the West over its nuclear program.
Nothing -- not even Syria's arsenal of chemical weapons -- is a source of such deep concern for the West and Israel as Iran's nuclear facilities, such as Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo. The installation at Fordo, not far from the holy city of Qom, is viewed as a particularly grave threat.
Researchers working underground there are using 696 centrifuges to enrich uranium to 20 percent. Afterwards, it only takes a relatively small step to create the material required to build nuclear bombs. Fordo, which didn't go into operation until late 2011, is reportedly the most modern plant in the Iranian nuclear program which -- despite all denials from Tehran -- the world believes is designed to give the Islamic Republic the ultimate weapon. What's more, Fordo is believed to be virtually indestructible. Even bunker-buster bombs would hardly be powerful enough to disable the facility -- the enrichment cascades lie 70 meters (230 feet) under the surface.
NPR
Chemical weapons were used in Syria "on a relatively large scale" on Aug. 21, says U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who issued a report by U.N. inspectors Monday. The attack killed civilians, "including many children," and constitutes a "war crime," Ban wrote. He expressed his "profound shock and regret" at the findings.
Ban received the report over the weekend from professor Ake Sellstrom of Sweden, who headed the inspection team in the incident that took place near Damascus. The secretary-general briefed the Security Council on the report earlier Monday.
In the report, Sellstrom wrote that "environmental, chemical and medical samples, we have collected, provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used" in several neighborhoods in the Ghouta area of Damascus.
Saying that the act violated a 1925 prohibition on the use of poison gas in warfare, Ban wrote, "The international community has a moral responsibility to hold accountable those responsible and for ensuring that chemical weapons can never re-emerge as an instrument of warfare."
BBC
The Man Booker Prize risks "losing its distinctiveness" if it opens up to American authors, some British writers have suggested.
The Sunday Times reported American writers will be eligible to enter for the first time from 2014.
At present the literary prize only considers works by writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe.
Booker organisers said "some changes to the rules" would be announced on Wednesday.
"The information which is currently in circulation is incomplete," said a spokesperson on Monday.
According to The Sunday Times report, "the organisers increasingly believe that excluding writers from America is anachronistic. The Booker committee believes US writers must be allowed to compete to ensure the award's global reputation".
The writer and broadcaster Lord Bragg was quoted as saying he was "disappointed... though not that surprised. The Booker will now lose its distinctiveness. It's rather like a British company being taken over by some worldwide conglomerate".
SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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ScienceBlog
Although there are a lot of video games out there that claim to help your brain, most have not been evaluated for this purpose. A new study at UCSF finds that playing a brain training game for one month can rejuvenate cognitive control for people in their 60s, 70s and 80s.
Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley worked with video game developers to create NeuroRacer, a game which has users perform two task simultaneously (using a joystick to navigate a car and hitting a button whenever the player sees a particular road sign).
After training, their multitasking ability improved beyond the levels of 20-year-olds. They also got better at remembering information and paying attention.
ScienceBlog
Phobias — whether it’s fear of spiders, clowns, or small spaces — are common and can be difficult to treat. New research suggests that watching someone else safely interact with the supposedly harmful object can help to extinguish these conditioned fear responses, and prevent them from resurfacing later on.
The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that this type of vicarious social learning may be more effective than direct personal experience in extinguishing fear responses.
“Information about what is dangerous and safe in our environment is often transferred from other individuals through social forms of learning,” says lead author Armita Golka of Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. “Our findings suggest that these social means of learning promote superior down-regulation of learned fear, as compared to the sole experiences of personal safety.”
C/NET
Google has purchased Bump, makers of smartphone apps for wirelessly sharing files, photos, and contacts, for an undisclosed sum. Bump CEO and co-founder David Lieb made the announcement in a blog post and tweet Monday morning. Google confirmed the buy to CNET.
Founded in 2008, Bump raised roughly $20 million in funding from a collection of renowned venture firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital before it was picked up by Google. A source told AllThingsD that the deal was valued between $30 million and $60 million.
"We strive to create experiences that feel like magic, enabled behind the scene with innovations in math, data processing, and algorithms," Lieb said. "So we couldn't be more thrilled to join Google, a company that shares our belief that the application of computing to difficult problems can fundamentally change the way that we interact with one another and the world."
C/NET
If you're spending long hours in a stressful job, you need a positive work environment.
One way to achieve that is office design.
It is possible that the director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, understands this fully. For he is said to have commissioned an Information Dominance Center visually stimulated by the Starship Enterprise.
According to Foreign Policy, a Hollywood set designer was commissioned.
He duly created an office in Fort Belvoir, Va., "to mimic the bridge of the Starship Enterprise from 'Star Trek,' complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed."
It is unknown whether there was also a man with specially enhanced pointed ears, there to listen in to the world's chatter.
However, Foreign Policy quotes one retired officer as saying: "Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard."
Naturally, this news has caused some consternation among mortals
BBC
After two months of solid driving, the Curiosity Mars rover has finally parked for a few days of intense science.
It will be studying the rocks under its wheels, trying to relate them to the outcrops seen earlier in the mission.
The Nasa robot will be using just its remote-sensing instruments. There is no expectation to drill.
Curiosity plans to make five such stop-overs as it pushes forward to the foothills of Mount Sharp, the big peak that dominates equatorial Gale Crater.
Project scientist Prof John Grotzinger told BBC News the rover would be at its current location for "a few sols only". A sol is a Martian day, which is 39 minutes longer than an Earth day.
The first waypoint will give researchers an opportunity once more to examine conglomerate, a rock type made up of small pebbles cemented together by finer material.