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
Gaza conflict: US and UN condemn school shelling
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the attack, which killed 16, was "outrageous". Israel said that its military was responding to mortar rounds launched from near the school.
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Spokesman Chris Gunness told the BBC that Israel had been told 17 times that the school was housing displaced people, saying the attack caused "universal shame".
Mr Ban later said: "I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable, and it demands accountability and justice.
"Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children."
More than 3,000 civilians had sought shelter at the school.
Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said: "This is a moment where you really have to say: 'Enough is enough.'"
bbc
World News
Nigeria Kano Blast: Boko Haram Blamed For Six Deaths
At least six people have been killed in a suicide bombing at a college in northern Nigeria's biggest city, Kano, witnesses say.
The female bomber is reported to have blown herself up as students queued to check their names on an admission list. Meanwhile the government says a 10-year-old girl with a suicide belt has been arrested in a neighbouring state.
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The college bombing was the fifth attack in Kano since Sunday.
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At least three of the attacks were carried out by female bombers, in what BBC Nigeria analyst Aliyu Tanko describes as a new trend in the insurgency. It is unclear whether the group is recruiting female bombers or forcing kidnapped girls to carry out suicide missions, he says.
Boko Haram is holding more than 200 girls that its gunmen abducted during a raid in April on a boarding school in Chibok town in the northern state of Borno.
bbc
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Anti-Jewish Slogans Return To The Streets In Germany As Protests Sweep Europe
Before the start of a pro-Palestinian rally — one of the scores being staged almost daily here since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza — an organizer on a bullhorn yelled out the do’s and don’ts as ordered last week by the Berlin police.
No burning the Israeli flag. No shouts of “Death to Israel.” And absolutely no repeating the slogan “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone” — a rhyming chant in German that had become increasingly common at pro-Palestinian rallies here before being nipped in the bud by German authorities.
Some demonstrators may have said such things, conceded Leila El Abtah, a 29-year-old protester who is the daughter of a Palestinian father and a German mother. But, she insisted, even thoughtful criticism against Israel is being misinterpreted here as hate speech. “There are more of us speaking out about Israel now,” she said. “Because of what happened during Hitler’s day, it is making Germans nervous.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is echoing on the streets of Europe, sparking a rash of protests — both peaceful and violent — and ratcheting up tensions across the continent. Last Saturday in London, 45,000 protesters gathered outside the Israeli Embassy, chanting, “Free Palestine.” In France, a nation already facing an uptick in anti-Semitic violence before the Israeli strikes on Gaza, pro-Palestinian youths last week looted and set fire to Jewish businesses in a suburb of Paris. French authorities have banned anti-Israel protests, but thousands of young demonstrators have defied it, engaging police with rocks and bottles.
Yet perhaps nowhere are the deeds of protesters sparking more discomfort than here in Germany, where the most radical protest chants are rattling through the streets of Berlin like disturbing ghosts of the past.
wapo
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Sanctions Seen Damaging Russia If Not Lifted Quickly
U.S. and European sanctions against Russia’s energy and finance sectors are strong enough to cause deep, long-lasting damage within months unless Moscow persuades the West to repeal them by withdrawing support for Ukrainian insurgents.
The U.S. and European Union released details Wednesday of new sanctions aimed at hurting Russia’s economy without doing undue damage to their own trade interests, punishment for alleged Russian support for Ukrainian rebels and Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
The sanctions go further than earlier penalties — which had largely targeted individuals — by broadly limiting the trade of weapons and of technology that can be used in the oil and military industries. The EU also put its capital markets off-limits to Russian state-owned banks.
The bloc blacklisted three more companies and eight additional individuals, bringing the total to 95 people and 23 entities that have been hit with EU-wide asset freezes and travel bans. They include three close associates of President Vladimir Putin: his former judo partner, Arkady Rotenberg, and the two largest shareholders of Bank Rossiya: Yuri Kovalchuk and Nikolai Shamalov.
Experts said the sanctions wouldn’t have a tremendous impact in the short term, but if left in place for months will stifle development in the Russian economy and sap its financial sector. Already, economists have revised downward their predictions for Russian growth this year, with some saying the country will go into recession.
japantimes
U.S. News
Air Force Plans Shift To Obtain High-Tech Arms
In an acknowledgment that the military may be pricing itself out of business, the Air Force on Wednesday called for a shift away from big-ticket weapon systems that take decades to develop and a move toward high-technology armaments that can be quickly adapted to meet a range of emerging threats.
An Air Force strategic forecast, looking 20 years into the future and spurred in part by looming budget constraints, also calls for a faster pace, with lower price tags, in developing both airmen and the technology they use, warning that the current way of acquiring warplanes and weapons is too plodding.
The report, described as a “call to action” by Secretary Deborah Lee James of the Air Force, limits itself to how the country’s most tech-heavy military service can adapt to looming threats and budget constraints. But it is also a warning to and an admission from the entire Defense Department that with military compensation and retirement costs rising sharply, the country may soon be unable to afford the military it has without making significant changes to the way it does business.
“To boil this down, we have to buy things very differently and develop and employ our people differently,” said Maj. Gen. David W. Allvin, one of the authors of the report. “We have to behave more like an innovative 21st-century company.”
Between 1998 and 2014, annual compensation costs per active-duty service member increased by 76 percent, to $123,000, while the overall defense budget increased by 42 percent — yet, since 2010, the base Defense Department budget, not including spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been declining, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. So far, the military has dealt with the sharp increase in personnel costs by cutting the number of service members, and has managed to keep expensive weapons acquisition and technology at the same percentage of the overall budget — around 30 percent — as personnel and maintenance and training.
nyt
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Half Of Air Traffic Controller Job Offers Go To People With No Aviation Experience
More than half of the latest batch of air-traffic controller job offers nationwide went to people with no aviation experience as part of a program designed to expand hiring among the general public, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday.
About 22,500 people without an aviation background initially applied. Of those, 837 were offered jobs. The remainder of the roughly 1,600 new controller slots went to more traditional applicants, including military veterans with aviation experience and accredited aviation school graduates.
The hiring breakdown marks a major shift in FAA recruitment strategy, which is now geared toward trying to keep ahead of a wave of controller retirements while also attracting more minorities and women to the nation’s largely white and male controller work force in airport towers and radar facilities, officials have said.
FAA officials defended the switch Wednesday, saying the process that includes a personality test-like biographical assessment helped the agency “select from a larger pool of qualified applicants than under past vacancy announcements” and reduced testing and training costs.
“The bio-data assessment served its intended purpose of screening a large pool of applicants into a smaller group of the best candidates,” an FAA statement issued Wednesday said.
Controller applicants who are hired go through 17 weeks of training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City and three years of on-the-job training to achieve full certification, the FAA said. The FAA is generally able to shave about five weeks off the training for graduates of the college program.
chitrib
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Last Crew Member Of Enola Gay Dies In Georgia
The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of World War II and forcing the world into the atomic age, has died in Georgia. Theodore VanKirk, also known as "Dutch," died Monday of natural causes at the retirement home where he lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia, his son Tom VanKirk said. He was 93.
VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history. He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets' fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No. 13.
The mission went perfectly, VanKirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. As the 9,000-pound bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" fell toward the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives.
They didn't know whether the bomb would actually work and, if it did, whether its shockwaves would rip their plane to shreds. They counted — one thousand one, one thousand two — reaching the 43 seconds they'd been told it would take for detonation and heard nothing.
"I think everybody in the plane concluded it was a dud. It seemed a lot longer than 43 seconds," VanKirk recalled.
Then came a bright flash. Then a shockwave. Then another shockwave.
The blast and its aftereffects killed 140,000 in Hiroshima.
kcstar
Science and Technology
Scientists Caution Against Exploitation Of Deep Ocean
The world's oceans are vast and deep, yet rapidly advancing technology and the quest for extracting resources from previously unreachable depths is beginning to put the deep seas on the cusp of peril, an international team of scientists warned this week.
In an analysis in Biogeosciences, which is published by the European Geosciences Union, the researchers outline "services" or benefits provided by the deep ocean to society. Yet using these services, now and in the future, is likely to make a significant impact on that habitat and what it ultimately does for society, they point out in their analysis.
"The deep sea is the largest habitat on Earth, it is incredibly important to humans and it is facing a variety of stressors from increased human exploitation to impacts from climate change," said Andrew Thurber, an Oregon State University marine scientist and lead author on the study. "As we embark upon greater exploitation of this vast environment and start thinking about conserving its resources, it is imperative to know what this habitat already does for us."
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The deep sea is important to many critical processes that affect Earth's climate, including acting as a "sink" for greenhouse gases -- helping offset the growing amounts of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. It also regenerates nutrients through upwelling that fuel the marine food web in productive coastal systems such as the Pacific Northwest of the United States, Chile and others. Increasingly, fishing and mining industries are going deeper and deeper into the oceans to extract natural resources.
"One concern is that many of these areas are in international waters and outside of any national jurisdiction," noted Thurber, an assistant professor (senior research) in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. "Yet the impacts are global, so we need a global effort to begin protecting and managing these key, albeit vast, habitats."
sciencedaily
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NASA May Put A Greenhouse On The Red Planet
At long last Earthlings may be on the verge of colonizing another planet—but those first Terran ambassadors will be plants, not humans.
NASA is expected to announce within days whether they will attach a one-liter “greenhouse” to its next Mars rover to be launched in 2020. A similar greenhouse would take a voyage to the moon with any team that manages to land a robot there by 2015 to snag Google’s Lunar X PRIZE. These experiments could illuminate whether human colonization of the moon or Mars could be possible.
NASA’s proposed Mars Plant Experiment, or MPX, aims to answer two questions: Can plants germinate and grow in Martian gravity? And can they thrive while being bombarded by cosmic rays? To find out, investigators would attach a small, clear cube filled with carbon dioxide to the rover’s shoulder, says Heather Smith, a deputy principal investigator for MPX. Inside would be 250 seeds of the Arabidopsis plant, a fast-growing cousin of mustard chosen because it has been studied exhaustively by scientists. After the rover lands the seeds would be soaked with water; heaters and LEDs would regulate their temperature. Over the next 10 to 15 days, via sensors and cameras, the world could observe the first beings we know of to be born, live and die on another planet.
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These wouldn’t be the first plant experiments in space: Humans have been putting seeds on rockets since the 1940s. In 1973 NASA sent rice seeds into orbit on the Skylab space station to measure how light and microgravity affected their growth. In 1995 scientists grew and reproduced wheat on Russia’s Mir space station; two years later they cultivated and harvested it. The International Space Station has been home to a small experimental garden called the Lada Validating Vegetable Production Unit for more than a decade. It appears to relax and comfort the space crew, but the plants are clearly under stress: A recent genetic study discovered that plants grown in space have twice the mutations as they do on Earth.
Plants grown in microgravity struggle to orient their roots and stems, but it’s unknown how that would play out in low gravity. Mars and the moon have roughly one third and one sixth of Earth’s gravity, respectively, perhaps enough to cue the plants to orient correctly, notes NASA senior scientist Chris McKay, a principal investigator in the MPX and LPX. “Plants don’t like zero gravity. Humans don’t like zero gravity. Not even cockroaches like zero gravity,” McKay says. “But we have no idea if the same is true for low gravity.”
scientificamerican
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Wild Monkeys Near Fukushima Have Low Blood Cell Counts
Radiation exposure may have altered the health of wild monkeys in Japan.
Monkeys living near the Fukushima nuclear power complex have low levels of radioactive cesium in their muscles and fewer blood cells than monkeys living farther away from the disaster site, according to a new study. The plant suffered a meltdown following the massive 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Though the health implications for the monkeys are unclear, the authors say the finding could help predict the effects of radiation on other primates, including humans. The results appear July 24 in Scientific Reports.
Researchers led by Shin-ichi Hayama of the Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo, collected blood and muscle samples from 61 Japanese macaques, Macaca fuscata, living in Fukushima City. The site is about 70 kilometers northwest of the power plant. The researchers also collected samples from 31 monkeys in Shimokita Peninsula, about 400 kilometers north of the complex.
Compared with Shimokita monkeys, which had no detectable cesium in their muscles, Fukushima monkeys had lower red and white blood cell counts, and less of the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin.
Though the two groups of monkeys seemed equally healthy, researchers speculate that lower blood cells counts could weaken their defenses against disease.
sciencenews
Well, that's different...
Wait -- What?
Kimberly Williams, 46, was convicted in April in Will County, Illinois, of beating dominatrix Theresa Washington with a baseball bat. Williams conceded to the judge that she had hired Washington, but only because she wanted a "slave" to take pictures of her naked while she did housework. Instead, she said, Washington became aggressive, declared herself a "master" and dragged Williams around by the hair. Furthermore, according to Williams, Washington's transformation happened abruptly after a phone call Washington made to "someone she met on the dating site Christian Mingle."
newsoftheweird
Bill Moyers and Company:
The Conscience of a Compassionate Conservative
The president of the American Enterprise Institute says free enterprise is good for the poor – and good for the soul.