As your faithful scribe, I welcome you all to another edition of Overnight News Digest.
I am most pleased to share this platform with jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall, JLM9999 and side pocket. Additionally, I wish to recognize our alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, and ScottyUrb along with annetteboardman as our guest editor.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Lead Off Story
Refuees Arrive In Cebu To Flee Misery In Typhoon-hit Tacloban City
When two Philippine Air Force C-130s arrived at the typhoon-wrecked Daniel Romualdez airport in Tacloban City just after dawn yesterday, more than 3,000 people who had camped out hoping to escape the devastation surged onto the tarmac past a broken iron fence. Only a few hundred made it aboard; the rest were left in a shattered, rain-lashed city short of food and water and littered with uncounted bodies.
Just a dozen soldiers and several police held the crowd back. Mothers raised their babies high above their heads in the rain, in hopes of being prioritized. One woman in her 30s lay on a stretcher, shaking uncontrollably.
“I was pleading with the soldiers. I was kneeling and begging because I have diabetes,” said Helen Cordial, whose house was destroyed in the storm. “Do they want me to die in this airport? They are stone-hearted.”
“We need help. Nothing is happening,” said Ariston Balute, an 81-year-old who also didn’t get a flight. “We haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.” Her clothes were soaked from the rain, and tears streamed down her face.
newsinfo.inquirer.net
[Cebu Daily News]
World News
Friends And Foes Alike Pay Tribute To Retiring Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
THE political battle scars were on full display as Kevin Rudd ended a political career which united and divided in equal measure.
He will return to his family after 15 brutal years in parliament in which he handed Labor one of their greatest ever victories in 2007 only to be made political road kill by his own colleagues three years later.
The Rudd-Gillard era of Labor division will end this week as Mr. Rudd leaves parliament for the final time.
As he shed tears, political allies and foes praised possibly his greatest legacy, the apology to the Stolen Generation.
news.com.au
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Union: McBride Nomination A Disgrace
Johannesburg [South Africa] - Trade union Solidarity has condemned as a disgrace the nomination of Robert McBride as the new head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).
"McBride's nomination is another disgrace to the already beleaguered SA Police Service," the union said in a statement.
General secretary Flip Buys said taxpayers were tired of their money being used for
"[...]repeated inappropriate appointments". "Taxpayers have to stand by powerlessly and watch cadre deployment being put before effective service delivery."
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa announced on Tuesday that Cabinet had approved the nomination of the former Ekurhuleni metro police chief as head of IPID
news24
U.S. News
Senate Democrats Unveil Pro-Choice Bill
Last week, Senate Republicans introduced a national abortion ban that would chisel away at the constitutional rights guaranteed under Roe v. Wade. Now, their Democratic colleagues are striking back with some abortion-related legislation of their own. On Wednesday, a group of pro-choice senators plan to introduce the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013, a measure intended to stem the barrage of state-level restrictions on reproductive rights.
Despite the fact that Roe is still technically the law of the land, state legislatures have still managed to attack abortion access from all angles. Ever since the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision gave states the power to regulate abortion to protect the “health of the mother,” anti-choice lawmakers have rushed to enact several different types of restrictions that supposedly achieve this end. Those state laws — which include forced ultrasound requirements, mandatory waiting periods, restrictions on the administration of the abortion pill, and burdensome clinic regulations — have continued to mount. According to the Guttmacher Institute, this strategy peaked in 2011, when lawmakers enacted a record-breaking 92 new abortion restrictions at the state level.
Now, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a group of Democratic lawmakers wants to change that. According to Roll Call, which obtained a copy of the legislation, the new bill would preempt state’s efforts to indirectly restrict abortion by requiring new laws to be medically necessary. The measure emphasizes that new abortion regulations shouldn’t decrease access to abortion services or require doctors to go against their best judgment.
While the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013 wouldn’t immediately supersede the existing state restrictions, it would set the stage for court challenges to officially overturn them.
thinkprogress
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4 Marines Killed In Accident At Camp Pendleton In California
Four U.S. Marines were killed Wednesday during an operation to clear a range of unexploded ordnance at Camp Pendleton, a Marine official said.
The accident happened at 11 a.m. during a range maintenance operation at the San Diego County coastal base.
The Marines were clearing the range of unexploded ordnance, and it was not a live firing range, said a Marine official with knowledge of the incident who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The identities of the dead were withheld pending notification of relatives. No further details were released.
ctvnews
Science and Technology
Vast Antarctic Iceberg 'Could Threaten Shipping'
The team of scientists from Sheffield and the University of Southampton will use data from a number of satellites, including the German TerraSAR-X, which first alerted researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute to the July calving.
PIG is described as the longest and fastest flowing glacier in the Antarctic, with vast icebergs being calved from ice shelf every 6-10 years. Previous notable events occurred in 2007 and 2001.
Scientists first noticed a spectacular crack spreading across the surface of the PIG in October 2011.
As well as tracking the movement of the iceberg, Prof Bigg explained that the team also planned to predict its path through the Southern Ocean.
bbc
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Clinical Depression May Accelerate Aging Process
Severe depression doesn't just affect the mind, it may also attack the body on a cellular level by speeding up the aging process, according to a new study.
[...]
Specifically, study authors said that after examining the white blood cells of more than 2,400 Dutch study participants, they found that people with clinical depression had shorter telomeres than their healthy peers.
Telomeres are strands of protective DNA that cap the tips of chromosomes within a cell. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres get a little bit shorter. Eventually the telomeres become so small that the cell begins to shut itself down.
Scientists have also linked shortened telomeres to various age-related health problems like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer and mental decline. Now, researchers believe they are linked to depression as well.
latimes
Society and Culture
Forget The 50 States; The U.S. Is Really 11 Nations, Author Says
For hundreds of years, this nation has been known as the United States of America. But according to author and journalist Colin Woodard, the country is neither united, nor made up of 50 states. Woodward has studied American voting patterns, demographics and public opinion polls going back to the days of the first settlers, and says that his research shows America is really made up of 11 different nations.
"Yankeedom" in the Northeast and industrial Midwest was founded by Puritans and residents there have always been comfortable with a government that regulates and moderates. The communities of the Deep South in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and other states were founded by former West Indian plantation owners who wanted to recreate the society they were used to: government based on the sacrosanct rights of a few wealthy elite. "Greater Appalachia," extending from West Virginia in a wide band to the northern half of Texas, was settled by people from Northern Ireland, England and Scotland. Those people were openly antagonistic to the so-called "ruling oligarchies" and upper classes, so they opposed the slave plantation economy, but they also distrust government.
Woodard says that while individual residents will have their own opinions, each region has become more segregated by ideology in recent years. In fact, he says the mobility of American citizens has increased this partisan isolation as people tend to self-segregate into like-minded communities.
"This isn't about individual behavior, it's about the characteristics of the dominant cultures of these various regions. And you can, as an individual, like or hate the sort of surrounding assumptions where you live," Woodard says. "But that force that you feel that's there, and those sort of assumptions and givens about politics, and culture, and different social relationships — that's the forces of dominant culture that go back to the early colonial period, and the differences between various colonial clusters and their founders."
npr
Well, that's different...
New Hampshire Man Takes Vanity Plate Debate To States Top Court
A New Hampshire man who last year changed his name to "human" has gone to the state's top court to defend his right to a vanity plate that insults police: COPSLIE.
The man formerly known as David Montenegro argued in state Supreme Court on Thursday that denying him the plate is a violation of his right to free speech.
The man, an unemployed accountant, made his request for the COPSLIE vanity plate in 2010, but was instead given one bearing his alternative choice of GR8GOVT.
"The Division of Motor Vehicles has a regulation which prohibits vanity license plates containing messages which the DMV believes a reasonable person would find offensive to good taste. That regulation does not meet constitutional standards," human told a local CBS affiliate after the hearing.
reuters
Bill Moyers and Company:
John Nichols and Robert McChesney
and
Heidi Boghosian