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
Germany wins World Cup
Germany were (sic) crowned world champions for the fourth time as Mario Gotze's extra-time winner beat Argentina in the 2014 World Cup final.
Gotze demonstrated perfect technique and commendable calm to chest down Andre Schurrle's pass and sweep in a left-foot finish with the prospect of a penalty shootout only seven minutes away.
Argentina, with skipper Lionel Messi looking subdued despite flashes of his talent, could not respond and Germany claimed their first World Cup since they beat the same opponents in Rome 24 years ago.
The success means Joachim Low's side have become the first European team to win the trophy in South America.
Gonzalo Higuain wasted Argentina's best chance in the first half while Germany defender Benedikt Howedes hit the post with a header seconds before half-time.
BBC
Thousands flee northern Gaza after Israeli warnings
Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing northern parts of Gaza after Israel warned it was targeting the area in its campaign to stop rocket attacks.
The UN says 17,000 people have sought refuge in its facilities as Israeli air strikes continue for a sixth day.
Israeli forces have raided a suspected rocket-launching site in Gaza in their first reported ground incursion.
At least 172 Palestinians have been killed since Israel's offensive began, according to health officials in Gaza.
The dead are said to include 17 members of one family who died in an Israeli missile strike on Saturday evening.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants and "terror sites", including the homes of senior operatives. However, the United Nations has estimated that 77% of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians.
The UN Security Council called for a ceasefire and peace talks on Saturday.
Al Jazeera America
RAFAH — Khader Khader had less than one minute to evacuate his home.
At 7am on Friday, the 55-year-old was sleeping under the staircase with his five children, when he heard his neighbor scream, "Dr Khader, evacuate! They are going to bomb my house!"
At that moment, Khader's seven-year-old son, Mohammed, tucked his tiny fingers into his father’s trousers and froze, unable to move. Quickly getting everyone out of bed, the family ran out of the yellow villa — which Khader spent years saving money to build and only moved into two years ago — just as the first Israeli missile, a warning shot, screeched by.
"We ran anywhere we could, away from the house so as not to get hurt or killed," Khader recalled, his voice shaking.
They crammed into the car and reached the top of the street before the second missile, fired from an Israeli F-16, hit the neighborhood. Khader's home was not the target, but his neighbor's house was. "My children are traumatized from the bombing – what did they do to deserve this?" Khader, a respected university professor of linguistics, said.
His children, aged between seven and 16, have yet to return to see the damage. "The trauma is so immense that they fear coming back to their home, where we escaped by a miracle," he told Al Jazeera
.
Al Jazeera America
One in 50 clerics are pedophiles, Pope Francis said.
One in 50 clerics are pedophiles, Pope Francis said in an interview published Sunday, in which he also hinted that the mandate of priestly celibacy may one day be lifted.
Francis condemned child sex abuse as a "leprosy" in the Church and cited his aides as saying that "the level of pedophilia in the Church is at two percent." That figure includes priests "and even bishops and cardinals," Italy's La Repubblica daily quoted Francis as saying.
The figure represents around 8,000 priests out of a global number of about 414,000, according to the latest statistics from the Vatican.
Pope Francis also promised "solutions" to the issue of priestly celibacy, the Italian publication reported, raising the possibility that the Catholic Church may eventually lift a ban on married priests.
Asked by the paper whether priests might one day be permitted to marry, Francis noted that celibacy was instituted "900 years after Our Lord's death" and that clerics can marry in some Eastern Churches under Vatican tutelage.
"There definitely is a problem but it is not a major one. This needs time but there are solutions and I will find them," Francis said, without giving further details.
The Guardian (Could his name be real?)
California man accused of starting Bully wildfire and marijuana cultivation
A 27-year-old man who was allegedly at an illegal marijuana plot is suspected of starting a wildfire that has burned more than 4.5 square miles of forested land in northern California.
The man, whose name was given as Freddie Alexander Smoke III, was arrested Saturday and accused of recklessly causing a fire and with marijuana cultivation, both felonies, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said on Saturday.
The agency said he was delivering material to the pot site in Shasta County when the exhaust from his truck ignited dry grass.
The so-called Bully fire has since grown to nearly 3,000 acres, officials said. More than 1,000 personnel are involved in fighting the blaze, which was just 10% contained Saturday night.
The wildfire had prompted evacuations and road closures, but CalFire said all residents have been allowed to return home and all roads have been open to them.
Still, the fire is threatening 15 homes and about 50 other structures.
In central California, a wildfire has burned nearly two square miles (1,200 acres) of a remote wilderness area of the Sequoia National Forest and was just 5% contained as of Saturday night.
The Guardian
Doubts over ice wall to keep Fukushima safe from
damaged nuclear reactors
In fading light and just a stone's throw from the most terrifying scenes during Japan's worst nuclear accident, engineers resumed their race against time to defeat the next big threat: thousands of tonnes of irradiated water.
If all goes to plan, by next March Fukushima Daiichi's four damaged reactors will be surrounded by an underground frozen wall that will be a barrier between highly toxic water used to cool melted fuel inside reactor basements and clean groundwater flowing in from surrounding hills.
Up to 400 tonnes of groundwater that flows into the basements each day must be pumped out, stored and treated – and on-site storage is edging closer to capacity. Decommissioning the plant will be impossible until its operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] addresses the water crisis.
Last month workers from Tepco and the construction firm Kajima Corp began inserting 1,550 pipes 33 metres vertically into the ground to form a rectangular cordon around the reactors. Coolant set at -30C will be fed into the pipes, eventually freezing the surrounding earth to create an impermeable barrier.
"We started work a month ago and have installed more than 100 pipes, so it is all going according to plan to meet our deadline," Tadafumi Asamura, a Kajima manager who is supervising the ice wall construction, said as workers braved rain, humidity and radiation to bore holes in the ground outside reactor No 4, scene of one of three hydrogen explosions at the plant in the early days of the crisis.
Business Insider
Elon Musk Is In The Wrong Business
Elon Musk owns a car company, a solar company, a space exploration company, and has invested in an artificial intelligence company.
So how could he possibly be in the wrong business?
By not focusing more exclusively on the potentially explosive technology underlying two of the four firms: batteries.
In an interview with Bloomberg's Barry Ritholz, bond investing guru Jeff Gundlach says Musk should double down on the battery technology that powers Teslas and which allows homeowners to create their own miniature power plants when coupled with solar panels.
"I just think that the battery technology that Tesla has developed is so far ahead of everybody else that it could really have broad uses," Gundlach said. "If I was running GM, or BMW or Ford, I would be open to the idea of just buying the batteries from Tesla."
Ritholz pointed out that Mercedes' new B class electric vehicle will feature a Tesla battery and drive train, to which Gundlach responded by calling on Musk to make similar overtures to other car manufacturers.
"If I was Elon Musk, I might got to all the other auto companies and say, I'll make you a deal: I'll get out of the car business, but let's set up a long-term deal on you buying my batteries."
Business Insider
Here's The First 'Homeland' Season 4 Teaser Trailer
Showtime just released the first teaser trailer for season four.
When we last left Carrie (Claire Danes), she was pregnant with Brody's child and appointed station chief of the CIA in Istanbul.
Showrunner Alex Gansa has said there will be some big changes next season. The show will start out six months after the season three finale and will welcome a new cast of characters.
The new season will closely follow Carrie as an officer overseas.
"Homeland" will return to TV this fall.
Science Daily
Smell and eye tests show potential to detect Alzheimer's early
A decreased ability to identify odors might indicate the development of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, while examinations of the eye could indicate the build-up of beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer's, in the brain, according to the results of four research trials reported today at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference® 2014 (AAIC® 2014) in Copenhagen.
In two of the studies, the decreased ability to identify odors was significantly associated with loss of brain cell function and progression to Alzheimer's disease. In two other studies, the level of beta-amyloid detected in the eye (a) was significantly correlated with the burden of beta-amyloid in the brain and (b) allowed researchers to accurately identify the people with Alzheimer's in the studies.
S F Gate
Swimmer reaches Golden Gate from Farallones
Joseph Locke slipped into the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean just off the Farallon Islands under a midnight sky. He emerged 14 hours later past the Golden Gate Bridge, exhausted, mildly hypothermic and with a place in the record books.
Locke, a 45-year-old financial analyst from Mill Valley, on Saturday became just the second person to swim the roughly 30 miles from the Farallones to the bridge, a draining stretch of chilly, often rough water that has been described as like the English Channel - but with sharks. He did it in record time.
Allowed to wear only a swim cap, goggles, trunks and grease, Locke crossed the ocean stretch without touching his support boat or another person. His team threw bottles of liquid nutrients to him every 30 minutes or so during a journey past pods of jellyfish and an overly friendly harbor seal - but, thankfully, no sharks.
When he finally swam under the bridge at about 2 p.m. Saturday on his seventh attempt at the crossing, Locke said he had one thought: "Get me the hell out of here."
"It was a struggle to get under the bridge," said Locke, who at one point had contemplated swimming all the way to Aquatic Park. "Stuff was hurting, stuff was cramping up. Fourteen hours is a long time in salt water."
S F Gate
Washington fire holds steady; more storms expected
ENTIAT, Wash. (AP) — A wildfire burning on about 34 square miles of grass, brush and timber in central Washington did not grow on Saturday, but officials worry that storms forecast to arrive Sunday evening could cause explosive growth.
The Mills Canyon Fire, burning near Entiat (EHN'-tee-aht), was 25 percent contained on Sunday, said spokesman Vladimir Steblina of the Pacific Northwest Incident Management Team.
Residents of several dozen homes have been told to evacuate. People living in another 500 homes have been warned to be prepared to leave, if the fire gets closer.
The National Weather Service says thunderstorms with dry lightning were expected in the area around 8 p.m.
"When the winds start swirling around, you get really erratic winds," Steblina said. "We might end up with extreme fire growth around the thunder cells."
About 781 firefighters, assisted by eight helicopters were battling the fire on Sunday, concentrating on the north and south lines.
In addition to the blaze, firefighters are battling extreme heat. The high in nearby Wenatchee reached 106 degrees on Saturday. Fire officials were expecting temperatures above 90 again on Sunday.