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 editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Latest news at 5 Pacific, I'll update as I get more info.
BBC
Missing Malaysia plane: Malaysia requests countries' help
Some 25 countries are now involved in a vast search operation for the missing airliner that disappeared over a week ago, Malaysian officials say.
The search area - from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean - takes in large tracts of land and sea.
An already complex search operation has become even more difficult, Malaysia's acting transport minister says.
Crew, passengers and ground staff are being investigated after it was confirmed the jet was commandeered.
Investigators are trying to obtain more radar and satellite data from any of the countries that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have passed over, with its 239 crew and passengers.
The leaders of several Asian countries have been briefed by the Malaysia government in what acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has described as a new phase of the search.
I saw this in the diary by Christian Dem in NC, in the comments.
Mike O'Neill @MovieMinuteMike
Follow
BREAKING A Greek tanker says it found suitcases floating in the Straits of Malacca. Finally an answer? #mh370 http://bit.ly/...
9:09 AM - 16 Mar 2014
Haven't seen it mentioned since.
Zerohedge
Missing Malaysian Flight Mystery Deepens: Pilot Investigated, Foul Play Suspected
This is a very complete description of what we know, with diagrams, etc.
It has been over a week since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared without a trace, and the world is nowhere closer to finding either where the airplane and its 239 passengers and crew are to be found, nor what actually happened. Instead, what initially was speculation about a midair disintegration, and subsequently suggested a potential case of airplane terrorism gone wrong, has now transformed into a theory that the pilot and/or crew may have been engaged in "foul play", especially since it appears that based on tracking data, that the plane flew for nearly seven hours after someone "skilled" purposefully shut down its communications and tracking beacon: possibly indicative of a stealthy midair hijacking.
BBC
Crimea referendum: Voters 'back Russia union'
Some 95.5% of voters in Crimea have supported joining Russia, officials say, after half the votes have been counted in a disputed referendum.
Crimea's leader says he will apply to join Russia on Monday. Russia's Vladimir Putin has said he will respect the Crimean people's wishes.
Many Crimeans loyal to Kiev boycotted the referendum, and the EU and US condemned it as illegal.
Pro-Russian forces took control of Crimea in February.
They moved in after Ukraine's pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after street protests.
Al Jazeera America
China retail giant Alibaba to file US IPO
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, one of the world’s biggest Internet companies, said Sunday that it will go public on a U.S. stock exchange, a move analysts predict could raise up to $15 billion.
The announcement confirming plans for an IPO in the U.S. ended months of speculation over where the company would list its shares after talks for a Hong Kong stock sale fell apart last year.
Hangzhou, China-based Alibaba has said that more than $150 billion worth of merchandise changes hands on its online platforms each year, more than Amazon and eBay combined.
The company was founded in 1999 by former English teacher Jack Ma, whose 17 employees worked out of his apartment to link Chinese suppliers with retailers abroad. It grew into an online retail behemoth, with offices around the world and more than 20,000 employees, controlling around 80 percent of China’s e-commerce.
Al Jazeera America
New England confronts heroin epidemic
At the age of 26, Brian Hamlin was flying high. A former standout wide receiver at Curry College in Milton, Mass., with two Division III conference championships under his belt, he had become a star in the corporate world, too, and was making six figures selling software.
Hamlin was also addicted to painkillers, a sickness he’d first caught after being prescribed Vicodin and Percocet for football injuries at 19. “I would close deals, large deals, under the influence,” said Hamlin, now 32. “If I was under the influence of opiates, anything I did was great.”
But when the recession hit in 2008, Hamlin was laid off, and his addiction prevented him from finding work. Without the money to support the painkiller habit, he turned to heroin — a habit he could support with petty crime. He overdosed multiple times. His mother once found him passed out on the bathroom floor with a needle sticking out of his arm.
Al Jazeera America
Officials: Herders kill more than 100 in Nigeria land conflict
Gunmen killed more than 100 people in attacks on three villages in central Nigeria, an area where longstanding disputes over land, religion and ethnicity often erupt into violence, two local government officials said Sunday.
"We have at least 100 dead bodies from the three villages attacked by the gunmen" from Friday night through Saturday, said Yakubu Bitiyong, a lawmaker at the Kaduna state parliament.
Police confirmed the raids blamed on herdsman from the predominantly Muslim Fulani tribe late on Friday on the villages of Ugwar Sankwai, Ungwan Gata and Chenshyi, in Kaduna state, but declined to give a death toll.
Hundreds have been killed in the past year in clashes pitting the cattle-herding Fulani people against mostly Christian settled communities like the Berom in Nigeria's volatile "Middle Belt," where its mostly Christian south and Muslim-majority north meet.
The unrest is not linked to the insurgency in the northeast by Boko Haram, an Al-Qaeda-linked group that wants to impose Shariah law in northern Nigeria.
However, analysts say there is a risk the insurgents will try to stoke central Nigeria's conflict. Most of the Islamist sect's attacks are contained further north, but it did claim a 2011 Christmas Day bomb attack at a church in Jos.
N Y Times
Army General Reaches Deal on Sex Counts
RALEIGH, N.C. — The senior Army officer prosecuted in the military’s most closely watched sexual assault case, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, has agreed to plead guilty to sharply reduced charges, including that he disobeyed a commander’s order, misused his government charge card and mistreated his former mistress, a captain.
In exchange for those pleas, prosecutors will dismiss far more serious charges against General Sinclair, including that he twice forced the captain into oral sex and threatened to kill her and her family.
General Sinclair is expected to enter the pleas, outlined in a document endorsed by both sides and distributed by the defense team, in military court at Fort Bragg, N.C., as soon as Monday morning. Once his sentence is decided, possibly later this week, the problem-fraught two-year case will finally draw to a close.
Editorial comment: Pig.
CNN
North Korea fires short-range rockets, sources say
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea has fired 25 short-range rockets from its east coast into open water, in what appears to be a "provocative" action, a South Korean Ministry of National Defense spokesman said Sunday.
"We evaluate it as a firing demonstration in response to the joint drill between South Korea and the U.S. We are currently additionally analyzing its intention," said spokesman Kim Min-Seok, warning, "North Korea should halt any actions that can stir military tension and create uneasiness to the neighboring countries."
South Korean officials said earlier that the North had fired only 10 rockets.
The rockets appear to FROGs, which stands for "Free Rockets Over Ground." They were developed in the Soviet Union before the advent of missiles, Kim said.
"It does not have a guidance system and is (a) free-fall system. North Korea had developed it in the '60s," the spokesman said.
USA Today
Asteroid to dim a bright star for some in Northeast
Weather permitting, millions of people in the northeastern USA could witness a rare and eerie sight next week: a space rock blotting out one of the brightest stars in the sky.
The Rhode Island-sized space rock will extinguish the light from the star Regulus just after 2 a.m. ET Thursday for as long as 14 seconds. This blockage-by-space rock will be the most visible such event in North America, an unprecedented marvel that those with no astronomical knowledge can observe.
What's more, anyone with even modest gear "can contribute real science," says Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine. "You can give one additional data point for determining the character of this asteroid that will be known for all time and history." An observer armed with a digital SLR camera can collect high-quality data, but even someone with just a stopwatch, video camera or no equipment at all can provide useful information.
Rawstory Can I say Breaking?
Have U.S. scientists found the Big Bang’s biggest secret and the final key to relativity?
There is intense speculation among cosmologists that a US team is on the verge of confirming they have detected “primordial gravitational waves” – an echo of the big bang in which the universe came into existence 14bn years ago.
Rumours have been rife in the physics community about an announcement due on Monday from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. If there is evidence for gravitational waves, it would be a landmark discovery that would change the face of cosmology and particle physics.
Gravitational waves are the last untested prediction of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. They are minuscule ripples in the fabric of the universe that carry energy across space, somewhat similar to waves crossing an ocean. Convincing evidence of their discovery would almost certainly lead to a Nobel prize.
“If they do announce primordial gravitational waves on Monday, I will take a huge amount of convincing,” said Hiranya Peiris, a cosmologist from University College London. “But if they do have a robust detection … Jesus, wow! I’ll be taking next week off.”