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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
Deadly storm and tidal surge batter northern Europe
Hurricane-force winds and tidal surges have killed at least seven people in northern Europe, flooded parts of Hamburg and left thousands of homes without electricity.
The storm, called Xaver, blew a tree on to a car in Poraj, northern Poland, killing three people inside.
The storm also caused two deaths in the UK, one in Sweden and one in Denmark.
Dozens of flights have been cancelled, hitting travellers at Berlin Tegel, Copenhagen and smaller airports.
Many rail and ferry services were also cut in Germany and Scandinavia.
There is severe disruption in southern Sweden, with all rail services cancelled in the Skane region. Planes have been grounded at Sturup airport and Gothenburg's Landvetter airport, Radio Sweden reports.
BBC
Bob Dylan's Fender Stratocaster sells for nearly $1m
The electric guitar played by Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival has been sold at auction in New York for a record $965,000 (£591,000).
The Fender Stratocaster had been in the possession of a New Jersey family for 48 years after he left it on a plane.
The pilot's daughter had it authenticated on a television programme on US broadcaster PBS.
The festival in Newport, Rhode Island, is often cited as the performance where Dylan "went electric".
Dylan's move "changed the structure of folk music", Newport Folk Festival founder George Wein, 88, told the Associated Press news agency.
"The minute Dylan went electric, all these young people said, 'Bobby's going electric. We're going electric, too.'"
But at the time, the three-song set drew boos from the crowd, who had come expecting Dylan's traditional acoustic folk performance.
CNN
American Airlines, US Airways to form largest air carrier Monday
A deal to form the world's largest airline is set to be inked Monday.
The merger of American Airlines and US Airways is expected to form an air travel giant larger than the current industry leader, United Continental Holdings (UAL, Fortune 500).
The deal cleared a series of legal hurdles, including an antitrust lawsuit this fall from the Justice Department and a last-minute challenge from a consumer group.
The airlines and Justice Department settled the antitrust suit last month, and the Supreme Court declined late Saturday to take up the challenge that the merger will lead to higher airfare and fewer choices for passengers.
CNN/Money
Boost for trade as global deal struck
They're saying Trillion.
The first major global trade deal in nearly 20 years was struck Saturday as 160 countries agreed on measures that could boost the world economy by as much as $1 trillion.
The deal was struck at a summit on the Indonesian island of Bali. At the heart of the 'Bali Package' is an agreement to simplify customs procedures and speed up the flow of goods. It's the most significant multilateral trade pact since the World Trade Organization was formed in 1995.
The package could cut the costs of trade by 10-15%, according to the OECD, by slashing paperwork and easing border delays and transit bottlenecks.
Developing nations could save as much as $445 billion a year, and over time the deal could generate bigger benefits for the global economy by increasing trade flows, revenue collection, and boosting investment.
N Y Times
Near a Vote, Volcker Rule Is Weathering New Attacks
Even as five regulatory agencies prepared to vote Tuesday on a regulation that seeks to rein in risk-taking on Wall Street — an effort known as the Volcker Rule — lawyers and lobbyists were gearing up for another round of attacks against it.
In recent letters and meetings with financial regulators, lobbyists for Wall Street banks and business trade groups issued thinly veiled threats about challenging the Volcker Rule in court, people briefed on the matter said. The groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are hinting that they could use litigation to either undercut or clarify the rule, which is intended to bar banks from trading for their own gain and limit their ability to invest in hedge funds.
The rule, a cornerstone of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and a barometer for the overall strength of the regulatory overhaul, is aimed at preventing future trading blowups on Wall Street.
BBC
Ukraine's capital Kiev gripped by huge pro-EU demonstration
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in the Ukrainian capital Kiev seeking the resignation of the government for refusing a deal on closer ties with the European Union.
Protesters, who oppose a customs union with Russia, toppled a statue of Lenin and smashed it with hammers.
President Viktor Yanukovych has said he shelved the EU deal after Russian opposition.
Protest leaders have given him 48 hours to dismiss the government.
As darkness fell, protesters were blockading key government buildings with cars, barricades and tents.
Witnesses said a group of protesters toppled the statue of Soviet leader Lenin at the top of Shevchenko Boulevard using metal bars and ropes. Then they began smashing it up with hammers.
L A Times
Icy weather turns fatal; more than 2,000 flights canceled
A series of snowy and icy storms swept through the southern and northeastern United States over the weekend, leaving at least five people dead and causing the cancellation of thousands of flights -- including more than 1,000 just at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Sunday.
Some parts of north Texas received as much as four inches of sleet and ice -- a treacherous situation for drivers and travelers.
At least three storm-related deaths were reported in the Dallas area Saturday and Sunday, according to police reports reviewed by the Dallas Morning News. A 26-year-old man died after his car hit an icy patch and slammed into a tree; a 75-year-old woman died after slipping on some ice in her yard; and a woman in her mid-40s was found dead in a parking lot, possibly due to exposure to the cold, police said.
L A Times Science
Giant alien world discovered where it should not exist
A massive planet found orbiting a star at a staggeringly great distance is smashing some long-held theories of planetary formation, researchers say.
The planet, according to a study published online Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is unlike anything in our own solar system.
Eleven times more massive than Jupiter, planet HD 106906 b orbits a single sun-like star at a distance of 60 billion miles - about 650 times the distance Earth is from our own sun.
"This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see," said study coauthor Vanessa Bailey, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Arizona.
Researchers estimate the planet is very young, just 13 million years old, and the residual heat from its formation can be seen from Earth as infrared energy. Researchers used infrared cameras and the Magellan telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile to capture images of the planet.
S F Gate
US vet held in N. Korea says he was comfortable
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A day after arriving home to California, the 85-year-old U.S. veteran detained for weeks by North Korea said Sunday that he was well-fed and kept comfortable in a hotel room, not a jail cell.
Merrill Newman spoke briefly with the Santa Cruz Sentinel (http://tinyurl.com/... ) outside his vacation home steps from the beach in Santa Cruz, a coastal community about 75 miles south of San Francisco. Newman and his wife also live about 45 miles north in a Palo Alto retirement home.
He was detained in late October at the end of a 10-day trip to North Korea, a visit that came six decades after he oversaw a group of South Korean wartime guerrillas during the 1950-53 war.