OND Editors OND is a community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
OND Editors 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.
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Al Jazeera America
Deal salvaged at UN climate talks in Peru
Climate negotiators salvaged a deal in Lima early Sunday that sets the stage for a global pact in Paris next year, but rejected a rigorous review of the greenhouse gas emissions limits deemed too weak by activists to stave off further temperature increases.
More than 30 hours behind schedule, delegates from more than 190 countries agreed on what information should go into the pledges that countries submit for the expected Paris pact.
They argued all day Saturday over the wording of the decision, with developing nations worried that the text blurred the distinction between what rich and poor countries can be expected to do.
The final draft alleviated those concerns with language saying countries have "common but differentiated responsibilities" to deal with global warming.
"As a text it's not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties," said Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who was the conference chairman and had spent most of the day meeting separately with delegations.
The momentum from last month's joint U.S.-China deal on emissions targets faded quickly in Lima as rifts reopened over who should do what to fight global warming. The goal of the talks is to shape a global agreement in Paris that puts the world on a path to reduce the heat-trapping gases that scientists say are warming the planet.
Al Jazeera America
Many missing in deadly Indonesia landslide
A landslide in Indonesia triggered by torrential rains has left at least 20 people dead, destroyed 105 houses and left at least 88 people missing, officials say.
Rescuers struggled on Saturday to reach those missing after the mudslide buried houses in a hilly district on the country's main island of Java the previous night.
Hundreds of rescuers, including police, soldiers and residents, were digging through the debris with their bare hands, shovels and hoes for the people still missing.
They were later helped by tractors and bulldozers arriving in the district.
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said the rescue efforts were going slowly because the area was still very unsafe.
"It has been raining non-stop for two days, and that is the reason this huge chunk of mountain came down - a whole village has been wiped away," our correspondent said.
"Around 700 rescue workers and volunteers are in the area, but work is painstakingly slow. They can only use manual equipment.
Al Jazeera America
Palestine to push UN to end Israel occupation
Palestinian officials are to present a draft resolution to the UN Security Council seeking a two-year deadline for Israel to end its occupation, an official has said.
"The Palestinian leadership took a decision to go to the Security Council next Wednesday to vote on their project to end the occupation," senior Palestine Liberation Organisation member, Wassel Abu Yussef, told the AFP news agency on Sunday after a meeting in Ramallah.
The Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment ahead of Monday's meeting in Rome between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Jordan last month circulated a draft Palestinian text setting November 2016 as a deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation.
But the text ran into opposition from the US, which has veto power, as it set a two-year timetable for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the West Bank.
Netanyahu rejected all talk of withdrawing from east Jerusalem and the West Bank within two years on Sunday, saying pulling out now would bring "Islamic extremists to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem."
Al Jazeera America (The man has totally lost it.)
Cheney says CIA interrogators were heroes
Former US vice president Dick Cheney has defended America's now-banned programme that tortured al-Qaeda suspects, describing the CIA operatives who ran it as heroes.
"I'm perfectly comfortable that they should be praised, they should be decorated," former president George W Bush's right-hand man told NBC television's "Meet the Press" programme on Sunday, adding, "I'd do it again in a minute."
His remarks came days after the US Senate released a long-awaited investigation into enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA to question terror suspects post 9/11.
In excruciating detail, the report described crude torture methods including waterboarding, hanging people for hours from their wrists and locking them in tiny coffin-shaped boxes.
The report questioned the effectiveness of such techniques, which it determined were actually counterproductive for getting actionable intelligence. The report said the methods used were "brutal".
Cheney strongly disagreed with the findings of the report.
"It worked. It absolutely worked," he said on Sunday.
CNN Link has autoplay.
OPEC isn't scared of $40 oil
OPEC won't rush to cut oil production even if prices fall as low as $40 per barrel, one of the cartel's members said Sunday.
The energy minister for the United Arab Emirates told Bloomberg at a Dubai conference that the middle eastern oil producers believe "the market will stabilize itself."
"We are not going to change our minds because the prices went to $60 or to $40," Suhail Al-Mazrouei said.
Even as it has watched prices dip, OPEC declined to cut back on production at its November meeting. Some observers had expected a production cut to boost the price of crude.
Oil prices have tumbled 40% this year and are now trading below $60 per barrel, a five-year low. Gas prices have come down, too -- the U.S. nationwide average was $2.60 on Sunday. In some parts of the country, gas is below $2.
N Y Times
In Final Spending Bill, Salty Food and Belching Cows Are Winners
WASHINGTON — Health insurance companies preserved their tax breaks. Farmers and ranchers were spared having to report on pollution from manure. Tourist destinations like Las Vegas benefited from a travel promotion program.
Also buried in the giant spending bill that cleared the Senate on Saturday and is headed to President Obama for his signature were provisions that prohibit the federal government from requiring less salt in school lunches and allow schools to obtain exemptions from whole-grain requirements for pasta and tortillas.
The watered-down standards for school meals were a setback for the first lady, Michelle Obama, who had vowed to fight “until the bitter end” for tougher nutrition standards. But they were a victory for food companies and some local school officials, who had sought changes in regulations that are taking effect over several years.
When an omnibus spending bill pops onto the floor of the House or the Senate in the waning days of a congressional session, some lawmakers invariably express surprise and outrage at special-interest provisions stuffed into the package.
Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio and a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, criticized the $1.1 trillion spending measure as “a Christmas tree bill,” decorated with “dangerous and unwelcome, nongermane riders.”
One good item was slipped into the bill.
Congress Passes Historic Medical Marijuana Protections In Spending Bill
Congress dealt a historic blow to the United States' decades-long war on drugs Saturday with the passage of the federal spending bill, which contains protections for medical marijuana and industrial hemp operations in states where they are legal.
The spending bill includes an amendment that prohibits the Department of Justice from using funds to go after state-legal medical cannabis programs. If the bill is signed into law, it will bring the federal government one step closer to ending raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, as well as stopping arrests of individuals involved with pot businesses that are complying with state law.
“When the House first passed this measure back in May, we made headlines; today we made history," Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), who in May introduced the medical marijuana protections amendment with co-sponsor Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), told The Huffington Post regarding the bill's passage.
"The federal government will finally respect the decisions made by the majority of states that passed medical marijuana laws," Farr added. "This is great day for common sense because now our federal dollars will be spent more wisely on prosecuting criminals and not sick patients.”
Raw Story
Texas lawmakers propose ‘sales tax holiday’ for firearms purchases
SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Several proposed new gun laws await the new Texas legislature when it opens next month, including one to allow open carrying of handguns in public and another providing a sales tax holiday for firearms purchases.
The Republican-dominated legislature will become even more conservative due the party’s landslide win in the November election, with many members pledging to expanding firearms rights in the state often seen as an incubator of conservative policies nationwide.
Proposed measures would ban cities and counties from restricting gun rights and try to have any new federally imposed restrictions on firearms declared illegal in Texas. Lawmakers are also looking to prohibit schools from punishing students who fashion their breakfast pastries into the shape of a gun.
“We have so many gun bills that have been filed that we can’t have anything but an open carry law passed next year,” said C.J. Grisham, founder of the activist group Open Carry Texas.
The group has been pushing for the unlicensed open carrying of handguns, pointing to laws in Texas and elsewhere that allow for the unlicensed open carrying of long guns such as rifles.
Raw Story
GOP governor forces school districts to partner with ‘faith-based’ groups for taxpayer-funded program
A newly launched mentoring program funded with taxpayer dollars requires Ohio school districts to partner with a faith-based organization and a business in order to have access to the money, reports Cleveland.com.
The mentoring program, championed by Republican Governor John Kasich, provides $10 million to Ohio schools to work with at-risk students, however school districts are discovering a religious requirement inserted into the program.
Any school district that wants state money from the program must partner with both a church and a business, or with a faith-based organization and a non-profit set up by a business to do community service. Failure to incorporate a faith-based group will leave a school district out in the cold.
United Way of Greater Cleveland President Bill Kitson, who sat on Kasich’s advisory panel for the program, explained there are no exceptions, “You must include a faith-based partner.”
Buddy Harris, a senior policy analyst for the Ohio Department of Education, told a gathering of church and non-profit representatives that each application must include a school district — or charter school — plus a business and a place of worship or a faith-based organization in its partnership. Other non-profits can be involved, he said, but only if they include all three of the other groups.