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
Hong Kong: Fresh clashes as pro-democracy protests spread
Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong defied fresh volleys of tear gas early on Monday as authorities tried to quell spreading unrest.
Overnight, riot police advanced on crowds who ignored official warnings that the demonstrations were illegal.
Protesters are angry at Chinese government plans to vet candidates in Hong Kong's 2017 elections.
Hong Kong's chief executive reassured the public that rumours the Chinese army might intervene were untrue.
"I hope the public will keep calm. Don't be misled by the rumours," CY Leung said.
"Police will strive to maintain social order, including ensuring smooth traffic and ensuring public safety."
Thousands of protesters remained camped out around the government complex overnight, despite appeals for them to go home. Many have erected barricades.
BBC
Islamic State crisis: Obama says US underestimated threat
Check the photo of Obama at the link. He looks very old.
President Barack Obama has acknowledged that US agencies underestimated the threat posed by the Islamist insurgency in Syria.
In a frank TV interview, he said that al-Qaeda had been beaten in Iraq by US forces working with Sunni tribes.
But they took advantage of the power vacuum in neighbouring Syria to emerge as Isis, later called Islamic State.
Meanwhile, there has been fierce fighting to the west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
The BBC's Lyse Doucet in the city says Islamist militants were held off by government troops with the help of air strikes by the US-led coalition.
However, the insurgents have not retreated and some are less than 10km (six miles) from the city, she adds.
In an interview with the CBS TV programme 60 Minutes, Mr Obama said Syria had become a "ground zero" for militants who had been able to take advantage of the chaos there.
He reiterated that only part of the solution to defeating them would be military and that a political solution was also necessary.
CNN
15 people, many teenagers, wounded in Miami nightclub shooting
(CNN) -- Fifteen people, many of them teenagers and some as young as 11, were shot early Sunday morning at a Miami nightclub, Miami-Dade police reported.
Police spokeswoman Frederica Burden said the victims ranged in age from 11 to 25 and were taken to area hospitals.
Several victims were released from hospitals Sunday afternoon and a person who'd earlier been listed as critical was upgraded to critical but stable, police said in a news release.
It's not clear whether the nightclub catered to teenagers. No public safety officials have explained why so many youths 16 and younger were inside a nightclub after the midnight Miami-Dade County curfew.
Authorities said the shooting happened about 1 a.m. at The Spot nightclub at NW 64th Street and Seventh Avenue.
CNN affiliate WPLG said a large party was being held when shooting broke out. Witnesses told police they heard about 100 gunshots, WPLG reported.
Raw Story
Arrested Catholic Archbishop’s computer contained over 100,000 images of children
Vatican detectives analyzing a computer used a by an archbishop arrested earlier this week discovered over 86,000 pornographic photos and 160 sexually explicit video files of children, reports the International Business Times.
According to investigators, another 45,000 pictures had been deleted.
Former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, 66, was arrested at the Vatican earlier this week on charges that he paid to have sex with minors when he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic from 2008 to 2012.
Wesolowski is the first Vatican official to be arrested within the city state on charges of pedophilia.
The former archbishop was recalled to Rome by the Vatican last year while still a diplomat in Santo Domingo and relieved of his duties following accusations from Dominican media that he was paying for underaged sex partners.
Until earlier this week, he had been free to roam Rome, but is now being held in in a small room in the basement of the Collegio dei Penitenzieri, which hosts the Vatican’s court and military police.
USA Today
Flights still being canceled at Chicago O'Hare
Two days after a fire at an air-traffic control center crippled air service in and out of Chicago, airlines were still canceling hundreds of flights Sunday, and those that operated were experiencing delays.
Airport officials said that as of 8:30 pm CT Sunday, more than 550 flights had been canceled at Chicago O'Hare, the nation's second-busiest airport. Flights that were touching down and taking off were delayed half an hour on average. At the smaller Midway airport, a central portal for Southwest Airlines, 55 flights had been canceled by late afternoon, and flights were being delayed 30 minutes or more.
FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory said improvements were likely Monday but the system still would not be fully functional.
Despite the continuing problems, service had improved dramatically since Friday, when a contractor with the Federal Aviation Administration allegedly set a blaze at a regional radar facility that almost completely shut down air travel in and out of one of the nation's busiest travel hubs.
N Y Times
Fumbled Bid for Governor Imperils Ohio Democrats
DAYTON, Ohio — With a wounded candidate at the top of their ticket, Democrats in Ohio have been forced to adopt a Plan B as they seek to avoid a disastrous shutout in elections for governor and other statewide offices.
“Voting from the bottom to the top: That is the way we need to roll this year,” said Nina Turner, a candidate for secretary of state.
Translation: Ignore the contest for governor and concentrate on the down-ballot races for the five other statewide offices, where Democrats are challenging Republican incumbents.
Ms. Turner, a fiery state senator from Cleveland cited as a name to watch by MSNBC, was rallying party loyalists at Blind Bob’s, a bar in downtown Dayton. It was the kickoff of a tour by Democratic candidates across the length and breadth of Ohio, whose much bled-over terrain in presidential races is belied by solid Republican control of state government
N Y Times
At Madison Square Garden, Chants, Cheers and Roars for Modi
They wore his face on their chests, waved it on posters, chanted his name and quoted his slogans, 19,000 fans drawn to a single star. His image stared down from the big screen at Madison Square Garden and emerged on canvas in a live speed-painting onstage. And when the man himself emerged, the capacity crowd on Sunday in New York’s most storied arena roared as one, as if all the Knicks, all the Rangers, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen had suddenly materialized.
“Modi! Modi! Modi!” the audience chanted, drowning out the announcer’s attempt to introduce the man who needed no introduction: Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, whom 19,000 people had traveled from around the country and Canada to see speak on his first trip to the United States since being elected in May. The American tour has showcased Mr. Modi as a diplomat and world leader — he has addressed the United Nations General Assembly and will meet President Obama on Monday — but on Sunday, he was all celebrity, embracing the adulation of a diaspora that maintains strong ties to the motherland.
Guardian
Detroit demolishes its ruins: 'The capitalists will take care of the rest'
Shervonne Colvin is ecstatic. This spring, one streetlight was turned back on at the end of her block. Last month, almost one third of her block was razed to the ground by demolition trucks.
That would hardly excite most city dwellers, but Colvin doesn’t live in just any city. She lives in Detroit, where municipal neglect has become customary. Detroit has been the unwitting star of a photo subgenre christened “ruin porn”, with fans in all corners of the world – except in its native hometown. Two years ago – the same year Forbes named Detroit the most dangerous city in America – local media reported that abandoned homes had become dumping grounds for dead bodies.
Good riddance to that, say residents.
“It makes me feel like the city is doing something, that they are paying attention. For years we felt like we’d been forgotten. We were frightened to walk down the street. It felt like a third world country out here,” Colvin says.
For the first time in 15 years, the 54-year-old resident of north-west Detroit, a former educator and cosmetologist, says she feels like she is a part of the city again. Her block in northwest Detroit has been gone for years now. She says the only reason she has stayed is because her husband refuses to go.
The destruction of the houses on Colvin’s block is the result of a renewed city effort kicked off this spring to completely eradicate residential blight in Detroit over a period of five years, at a total estimated cost of just under $1bn. Each house demolition costs around $15,000 a pop.
So far, demolitions are happening at a speed of at least 200 houses a week. Even at that pace, it’s a crawl. There are over 40,000 houses and buildings that qualify for immediate blight removal.
This is so sad. We went out to look at some of these neighborhoods after Netroots and many of them were formerly lovely tree-shaded areas anyone would like to inhabit.
S F Gate
Recovery of bodies underway at Japanese volcano
TOKYO (AP) — Military and other rescue workers began airlifting more than two dozen bodies from the ash-blanketed peak of a Japanese volcano on Monday morning, as family members of the missing waited at a nearby elementary school.
At least 31 people are believed to have died. Four victims were flown down Sunday, and rescuers returned to 3,067-meter (10,062-foot) Mt. Ontake on Monday morning to recover the remaining 27.
Scenes broadcast live on Japanese TV station TBS showed soldiers carrying yellow body bags one-by-one to a camouflage military helicopter that had landed in a relatively wide-open area of the now bleak landscape, its rotors still spinning.
The first bodies were flown to a nearby athletic field, its green grass and surrounding forested hills contrasting with Mt. Ontake's ash-gray peak in the background, a reduced plume still emerging from its crater.
There, they were transferred to white police vans, while two dozen officers struggled to hold up long blue tarps under the spinning rotors, blocking the view from the media.
The four brought down Sunday have been confirmed dead, said Takehiko Furukoshi, a Nagano prefecture crisis-management official.
Business Insider
Old Energy Is Doing Everything It Can To Stop The Rise Of Solar
MADRID/SYDNEY (Reuters) - A year after Spain, the sunniest country in Europe, issued notice of a law forcing solar energy-equipped homes and offices to pay a punitive tax, architect Inaki Alonso re-installed a 250 watt solar panel on a beam over his Madrid roof terrace.
"The government wanted people to be afraid to generate their own energy, but they haven’t dared to actually pass the law," Alonso said as he tightened screws on the panel on a sunny summer day this month. He had removed solar panels from the roof last year.
"We're tired of being afraid," he said.
Halfway across the globe, in the "sunshine state" of Queensland, Australia, electrical engineer David Smyth says the war waged by some governments and utilities against distributed energy, the term used for power generated by solar panels, is already lost.
"The utilities are in a death spiral," he told Reuters by telephone while driving between a pub where he helped set up 120 solar panels to cut its A$60,000 ($53,000) annual power bill and a galvanizing plant which was also adding solar panels to reduce costs.
BBC
Eat your heart out, ladies.
Film star George Clooney marries in Venice
Hollywood star George Clooney has married human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice, in one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the showbusiness year.
A host of fellow stars descended on the Italian city's canals for the union between the film world's most eligible bachelor, 53, and Ms Alamuddin, 36.
The ceremony was celebrated in a hotel overlooking the famous Grand Canal.
Clooney's agent broke the news to journalists in a brief statement.
According to AP news agency, that will be the only communication on the wedding.
Clooney and his friends had sipped champagne before gliding up the Grand Canal on Saturday evening to the luxury Aman Hotel, waving to hundreds of well-wishers.
Guests include Cindy Crawford, Bill Murray, Matt Damon and the U2 singer Bono.
Check out the photo at the link. She's even more beautiful than he is handsome. YMMV.