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.
BBC
BIS: Central banks warned of 'false sense of security'
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has warned that ultra-low interest rates have lulled governments and markets "into a false sense of security".
The Basel-based organisation - usually dubbed the "central banks' central bank" - urged policy makers to begin to normalise rates.
"The risk of normalising too late and too gradually should not be underestimated," the BIS said.
Markets have rallied since January.
The FTSE all-world share index is up 5% so far this year, while the Vix, a measure of implied US market volatility known as the "fear index" , is at a seven-year low.
Growth has disappointed even as financial markets have roared: The transmission chain seems to be badly impaired”
"Overall, it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets' buoyancy and underlying economic developments globally," the BIS said in its annual report.
It said that low interest rates had helped increase demand for higher risk investments on stock markets as well as in property and corporate bonds markets
BBC
UK interest rates 'could return to 5% in long term'
Interest rates could rise to 5% in "the very long term", a senior Bank of England figure has said.
Sir Charlie Bean, deputy governor for monetary policy, called it "reasonable" to think rates would return to pre-recession levels in 10 years or more.
The rate was cut when the financial crisis hit the UK from 2007, and it has remained at 0.5% since March 2009.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said it could now rise, possibly to a "new normal" of 2.5% by 2017.
In an interview with Sky News, Sir Charlie, who will step down from his Bank of England role on Monday, was asked if the interest rate could return to 5% within 10 years.
"That may well be so. I wouldn't want to say it will be back there in 10 years," he said.
"It might be reasonable to think that in that very long term you would go back to 5% but it's probably quite a long way down the road."
BBC
Sarajevo marks 100 years since Archduke Franz Ferdinand shooting
Bosnia has commemorated 100 years since the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the act that triggered World War One.
Cultural and sporting events, including a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, marked the occasion in the city.
Gavrilo Princip, who shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, continues to be a divisive figure in Bosnia.
The shots fired by the Bosnian Serb on 28 June 1914 sucked Europe's great powers into four years of warfare.
Bosnia's Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks are still divided over the role Princip played in bringing tensions to a head in Europe in 1914, with counter-commemorations organised by Bosnian Serbs.
In Austria, Franz Ferdinand's great-granddaughter and family held events at the family castle at Artstetten, near Vienna, where he is buried.
More on the above story, in detail,
here.
Al Jazeera America
The Clintons' web of wealth (This was listed under "opinion" but I thought it was interesting)
“Is Hillary our Mitt Romney?” asked MSNBC’s Krystal Ball in a recent segment of her TV show. Ball’s statement came on the heels of several comments by Clinton that made her seem completely out of touch with ordinary Americans — that she is not “truly well off,” that she and her husband were compelled to give speeches for six figures apiece because they were “dead broke” upon leaving the White House.
Indeed, considering that Bill and Hillary Clinton have made more than $100 million since leaving the White House in 2000, it’s not surprising that many Americans see the former first couple as hopelessly detached from the problems of ordinary Americans despite presenting themselves as going through the very same struggles as other Americans.
“We had no money when we got there [to the White House],” explained Hillary Clinton in comments to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. “And we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education. It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it’s been amazing to me. He’s worked very hard.”
Yet many Americans have also worked very hard, and they have not amassed the same kind of wealth as the Clintons, with multiple homes and over $100 million of earned income in the past decade. But underneath the social distance their wealth creates, there is a much deeper and more troubling truth. The real scandal is not that the Clintons are so wealthy but how they got that wealth.
Al Jazeera America
After decades of delays, the second-most popular bridge for suicide in the world is set to receive mesh barriers
California state officials approved a funding plan on Friday to install a mesh barrier beneath San Francisco's historic Golden Gate Bridge to help prevent suicides.
“It has been an uphill fight," said state assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who has fought for over a decade to secure funding for the barrier. “But here we are, almost shovel ready.”
The project will cost $76 million to complete. Of that amount, $7 million will come from a state tax enacted by voters on those who make more than $1 million a year, and is earmarked for mental-health services. The rest will be paid for with federal funds that recently became available and local money from the bridge district.
The plan to create suicide barriers on the bridge, where 1,600 people have leapt to their deaths since the span opened in 1937, was a subject of controversy for decades, with opponents arguing the mesh would mar the structure's beauty.
In 2008, the bridge's board voted to install a stainless steel net, rejecting other options, including raising the 4-foot-high railings and leaving the world-renown span unchanged.
Two years later, they certified the final environmental impact report for the net, which would stretch about 20 feet wide on each side of the span. Officials said it would not mar the landmark bridge's appearance.
But funding for the project remained a major obstacle until two years ago when President Barack Obama signed into law a bill making safety barriers and nets eligible for federal funds.
Raw Story
Magnitude-5.2 earthquake shakes New Mexico and Arizona
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake near the border of Arizona and New Mexico rattled a significant swath of the U.S. Southwest late Saturday but caused no major damage or injuries, the United States Geological Survey said.
The earthquake was centered about 31 miles (50 km) northwest of the city of Lordsburg, New Mexico, and could be felt some 150 miles (240 km) west in the city of Tucson, Arizona, and 300 miles east (480 km) in Roswell, New Mexico, the USGS and local media reported.
The quake hit at 9.59 p.m. local time at a depth of about 3 miles (5 km) and was followed by two small aftershocks, the USGS said.
It knocked pictures from walls and caused light fixtures to swing, local media reported. It also prompted scores of people across the region to call 911.
In the southeastern Arizona town of Thatcher, residents saw roads and structures swaying.
“It just kept shaking and shaking, and I grabbed the arm of the girl next to me,” Jennifer Taylor, a dispatcher for the Graham County Sheriff’s Office, told KPHO-TV. “We went out to the patio and looked up and our radio tower was shaking.”
Raw Story
North Korea confirms second missile test this week
North Korea confirmed Monday its second missile test in recent days, with leader Kim Jong-Un overseeing the drill just days before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits South Korea.
The South Korean military said Sunday’s test was of two short-range Scud missiles with a range of about 500 kilometres (300 miles).
A despatch by the North’s official KCNA news agency was unclear about the type of missile, mentioning, “tactical rockets” and “precision-guided missiles”.
A few days earlier, a similar despatch had hailed the test of a new “cutting-edge” guided missile as a “breakthrough” in the North’s military capability.
Pyongyang has in the past made extravagant claims about its ballistic missile capability, and experts are divided as to how far the country has gone in developing its missile systems under UN sanctions.
North Korea carries out regular missile tests, sometimes for technical reasons but often as a show of force to register its displeasure with events elsewhere.
N Y Times
New N.S.A. Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable
FORT MEADE, Md. — The newly installed director of the National Security Agency says that while he has seen some terrorist groups alter their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the damage done over all by a year of revelations does not lead him to the conclusion that “the sky is falling.”
In an hourlong interview Friday in his office here at the heart of the country’s electronic eavesdropping and cyberoperations, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who has now run the beleaguered spy agency and the military’s Cyber Command for just short of three months, described the series of steps he was taking to ensure that no one could download the trove of data that Mr. Snowden gathered — more than a million documents.
But he cautioned that there was no perfect protection against a dedicated insider with access to the agency’s networks.
USA Today
Report: Blackwater 'above the law' in Iraq
A State Department investigator warned officials in 2007 that Blackwater security contractors in Iraq "saw themselves as above the law,'' yet their investigation of the company's activities was abandoned, the New York Times reports.
In a story based on State Department documents, the newspaper reported Sunday evening that a 2007 inquiry into the security contractor's operations in Iraq was halted after Blackwater's top manager there threatened the government's chief investigator.
The manager threatened "that he could kill'' the chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,'' according to the newspaper's account of the department documents.
The report comes as four guards once employed by Blackwater are on trial in Washington in connection with a 2007 shooting at Baghdad's Nisour Square that left 17 civilians dead. The Times said the investigator's warning came just weeks before the Nisour Square deaths.
C/Net
California governor signs bill legalizing Bitcoin, other digital currencies
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Saturday that legalizes the use of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, reversing what backers called an outdated prohibition against use of alternative currencies.
The bill, dubbed AB 129, ensures that various forms of alternative currencies such as digital currencies, coupons, and points are legal for use to purchase goods and services in the state. The new law repeals a provision in existing state law that prohibits anything but US currency being used for commerce.
Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, the bill's author, said earlier this month that the new law reflects the growing popularity of alternative forms of currency.
"In an era of evolving payment methods, from Amazon Coins to Starbucks Stars, it is impractical to ignore the growing use of cash alternatives," Dickinson said a statement earlier this month. "This bill is intended to fine-tune current law to address Californians' payment habits in the mobile and digital fields."
The move should help smooth the sometimes rocky relationship Bitcoin has had with the state. The Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to promoting best practices for the virtual currency, was ordered last year to cease operations in the state or face hefty fines. The California Department of Financial Institutions, which oversees banks, credit unions, and other financial organizations operating in the state, accused the foundation of "engaging in the business of money transmission without a license or proper authorization."