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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New York Times
SEPANG, Malaysia — Mohammad Mallaeibasir said his goodbyes to his childhood friend from Iran at the sprawling international airport here last March 7. Parting was easy then. Both he and his friend were teenagers with their whole lives, and presumably many reunions, ahead of them.
But the friend was a passenger aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 bound for Beijing, which disappeared from ground controllers’ screens less than an hour after takeoff and veered far-off course, prompting a vast search operation that, nine months later, has yet to locate the jet or anyone who was on it. On Sunday night, Mr. Mallaeibasir received a message on Facebook from his friend’s mother, asking him about a recent article on the aircraft, as she continues trying to learn what happened to her son.
Al Jazeera America
A passenger jet that disappeared over Indonesian waters amid thick storm clouds and strong winds is likely “at the bottom of the sea,” an Indonesian official said Monday as hopes faded for the families of the 162 people on board the missing plane.
The search for AirAsia Flight 8501 — which lost contact with air traffic control Sunday — resumed at daybreak after being mostly suspended overnight, with aircraft and ships scouring the Java Sea near the equator. But as family members waited for news, the outlook was increasingly grim.
"Based on the coordinates given to us and evaluation that the estimated crash position is in the sea, the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea," said Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency.
Daily Times of Pakistan
KUALA LUMPUR: As AirAsia Bhd grapples with its first airliner disaster since its founding a dozen years ago, Asia’s biggest budget carrier will have little margin for error given tough competition and thin profits in the sector.
Even before an Indonesia AirAsia flight went missing on Sunday night with 162 on board, presumed to have crashed off the Indonesian coast, affiliates in Thailand and the Philippines as well as its long-haul unit were posting losses while its Indonesian unit eked out only a tiny profit in the latest quarter.
Several analysts believe the incident could deter some passengers from using the airline, at least in the short term, with an outsized impact on its bottom line.
“Given the thin margin nature of the airline business, our calculations suggest that a 1 percent decline in IAA (Indonesia AirAsia), Malaysia AirAsia and Thai AirAsia’s 2015 passenger traffic will result in a 13 percent reduction to AirAsia’s 2015 net profit,” CIMB analysts Raymond Yap and Jian Bo Gan said in a report.
Reuters
Countries around Asia on Tuesday stepped up the search for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people that is presumed to have crashed in shallow waters off the Indonesian coast, with Washington also sending a warship to help find the missing jet.
Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, told local television the search area between the islands of Sumatra and Borneo would be expanded. Authorities would also begin scouring nearby islands as well as coastal land on Indonesia's side of Borneo.
So far the focus of the search has been the Java Sea.
There have been no confirmed signs of wreckage from the Airbus A320-200 operated by Indonesia AirAsia, which disappeared in poor weather on Sunday morning during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
McClatchy
TALLAHASSEE Jeb Bush never wavered in his support for the Common Core state standards — not even after the education benchmarks became a target for Tea Party groups decrying federal overreach in education.
That may hurt the former Florida governor, who has said he is considering a run for the White House.
Bush would find himself in a crowded field of Republican candidates, some of whom — along with ardent conservatives nationwide — have stepped up their attacks on the Common Core.
Speaking this week on Fox News Sunday, conservative syndicated columnist George Will said Bush has “four strikes against him — Common Core, immigration, his name and the big sign on his back that says establishment choice.”
Al Jazeera America
A bill that would allow New Jersey municipalities to sell their public water utilities to private, for-profit corporations without putting the measure to voters is awaiting Gov. Chris Christie’s signature.
Until now, any municipality in New Jersey that sought to sell off its water system to a private bidder had to hold a public vote. But a bill passed with bipartisan support by the state’s Senate last week would allow municipalities with aging and deteriorating water systems to put their systems up for sale without holding a referendum.
While supporters of the bill say privatizing water systems could save municipalities money, it allows companies to factor the purchase price of the systems into the rates they charge customers, meaning taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook for the sale of their water systems.
Many New Jersey municipalities have turned to privatization as a way to get quick cash infusions for their deteriorating water systems. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the state would need $41 billion over the next 20 years to repair its water, stormwater and wastewater systems.
Spiegel Online
US and British intelligence agencies undertake every effort imaginable to crack all types of encrypted Internet communication. The cloud, it seems, is full of holes. The good news: New Snowden documents show that some forms of encryption still cause problems for the NSA.
When Christmas approaches, the spies of the Five Eyes intelligence services can look forward to a break from the arduous daily work of spying. In addition to their usual job -- attempting to crack encryption all around the world -- they play a game called the "Kryptos Kristmas Kwiz," which involves solving challenging numerical and alphabetical puzzles. The proud winners of the competition are awarded "Kryptos" mugs.
The Guardian
Barack Obama pledged to spend 2014 wielding his pen to write executive orders circumventing Congress; now he has warned that 2015 will require him to “pull out his veto pen”, to prevent Congress from overriding his wishes.
In an uncompromising interview released on Monday, the president said he expected that the Republican takeover of the Senate would cause him to spend much of his last two years in office blocking attempts to unpick his domestic reforms.
“I haven’t used the veto pen very often since I’ve been in office, partly because legislation that I objected to was typically blocked in the Senate even after Republicans took over the House,” Obama told NPR, in a conversation recorded before he left for a Christmas vacation in Hawaii.
Reuters
A fifth person has died of injuries following severe storms in southeastern Mississippi that also damaged hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses, local authorities said on Monday.
Mickey Hudson, 71, died on Saturday morning in Alabama from a pulmonary embolism, said Norma Williamson, coroner in Marion County, Mississippi, where Hudson was injured during last week's tornadoes.
Hudson was driving through the county when the twisters hit on Dec. 23, blowing out the windows on his vehicle, she said.
He opted to continue to his destination in nearby Alabama, Williamson said, where he later sought medical attention.
Reuters
The U.S. population is seen at 320.09 million people as of Jan. 1, up 0.73 percent from a year earlier, the Census Bureau said on Monday.
The Census Bureau said in a statement that the figure represents an increase of about 11.35 million people, or 3.67 percent, since the last population count on April 1, 2010.
"In January 2015, the U.S. is expected to experience a birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person to the U.S. population every 33 seconds," the Census Bureau said.
NPR
Each December, economists make predictions. And each new year, they get hit by unexpected events that make them look more clueless than prescient.
This year's bolt out of the blue was the plunge in oil's price, which no one saw coming.
Still, top economists' forecasts did get a lot right for 2014. One year ago, most were predicting healthy growth, tame inflation, low interest rates, rising stock prices and declining unemployment — and that's just what we got.
Now they are looking ahead, and once again, their forecasts are brimming with good cheer. These are among the most common predictions for 2015:
GDP will keep growing quickly. The gross domestic product — a measure of all U.S. goods and services — has been on a tear. The Commerce Department's latest revision shows GDP advancing at an astonishing 5 percent over July, August and September.
BBC
President Barack Obama has said race relations in the US are better now than when he took office, despite nationwide protests over police actions.
Mr Obama told broadcaster NPR in a wide-ranging interview that he thinks "the issue has surfaced in a way that probably is healthy".
Demonstrations have followed the killing by police of several unarmed black men and boys in 2014.
On Sunday, New York City's police chief said officers feel under attack.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said rank-and-file officers and much of America's police leadership are feeling pressure "from the federal government at the highest levels".
"See us. See the police. See why they have the anxieties and the perceptions they have," he told US broadcasters.
Reuters
U.S. investigators believe that North Korea likely hired hackers from outside the country to help with last month's massive cyberattack against Sony Pictures, an official close to the investigation said on Monday.
As North Korea lacks the capability to conduct some elements of the sophisticated campaign by itself, U.S. investigators are looking at the possibility that Pyongyang "contracted out" some of the cyber work, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the investigation.
The attack on Sony Pictures is regarded to be the most destructive ever against a company on U.S. soil because the hackers not only stole huge quantities of data, but also wiped hard drives and brought down much of the studio's network for more than a week.
Reuters
The U.S. military launched an air strike in Somalia on Monday targeting a senior leader of the al Qaeda-aligned al Shabaab militant group, the Pentagon said.
"The strike took place in the vicinity of Saakow, Somalia," Defense Department spokesman Mark Wright said in a statement. "At this time, we do not assess there to be any civilian or bystander casualties.
Reuters
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio drew heckles and boos along with applause when he addressed graduating police cadets on Monday, two days after thousands of uniformed officers turned their backs on him at a slain policeman's funeral.
With the city a focal point in a national debate over the killings of unarmed black men by white police, the mayor has been struggling to mend the most toxic rift in decades between City Hall and the country's biggest police force.
Some booed as the mayor began his speech before 884 graduating cadets at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden arena. He warmly praised the police department.
"You will confront all the problems that plague our society," de Blasio told the new officers. "Problems that you didn't create."
A heckler cried out, "You created them!"
The Guardian
Steve Scalise, the Republican majority whip in the House of Representatives and one of the most senior conservatives in Washington, appeared to acknowledge having previously spoken at a white supremacist conference backed by former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Scalise, a Louisiana congressman, was recently promoted to number three in the House Republican party hierarchy. On Monday, his office put out a statement regarding a 2002 event organised by a group called European-American Unity and Rights Organization (Euro) at which he reportedly spoke, but claimed he was unaware of its views and said he does not share them.
The Guardian
A 33-hour-long operation to save almost 500 passengers and crew from the stricken Norman Atlantic ferry wrapped up on Monday night amid fears that the final death toll could prove much higher than the ten fatalities confirmed by the Italian and Greek coastguards.
Italy’s defence minister, Roberta Pinotti, said 427 people had been rescued from the ship, which caught fire early on Sunday. The manifest contained 478 names, apparently leaving 43 unaccounted for.
Maurizio Lupi, the Italian transport minister, said several of the people who were saved did not figure on the list, suggesting even more could have died. Prosecutors who opened two inquiries into the disaster in the ports of Brindisi and Bari were reportedly putting the number of missing at 38.
The long hours during which the ferry was adrift and ablaze in the Adriatic brought out heroism and baseness alike: at one extreme, the Italian and Greek helicopter rescue crews who worked through the night battling winds gusting up to 40 knots (46mph); at the other, men alleged to have barged ahead of – and in some cases assaulted – women in an effort to be rescued first.
DW
The IMF has said it won't finish Greece's latest bailout review until a new government is formed, after a snap election was called for late January. Authorities say the temporary suspending of aid won't hurt the economy.
The International Monetary Fund said on Monday that financial aid to Greece was being suspended until a new government is formed.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had earlier announced his intention to request early general elections, after he failed in a third attempt to get his candidate for president, Stavros Dimas, approved by parliament. Such a situation automatically triggers the dissolution of parliament under Greece's constitution.
The IMF said the holdup of its rescue program would not impact Greece's finances in the short term.
DW
resident of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Hans-Werner Sinn, has rebuked a study's claims that immigrants are bringing money to Germany. The top economist said Germany is a "magnet for unqualified immigrants."
n a guest contribution to the Monday edition of the German Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, the president of the Munich-based research institute claimed that Germany's current immigration policy had several failures.
"Immigration as it currently stands is going wrong," Hans-Werner Sinn wrote.
According to researchers at the Ifo Institute, a study carried out by the Bertelsmann Foundation did not take expenses into account. The study, which was released in late November, came to the conclusion that foreigners living in Germany contributed in 2012 22 billion euros ($26,863) to the welfare state.
At the time of its release, the study caused somewhat of a stir in the media as it contradicted popular assumptions among the German population regarding the cost of migration.
Al Jazeera America
It has been one year since three Al Jazeera journalists were arrested in Egypt in a case that has sparked international outrage.
Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste were arrested in Cairo on Dec. 29, 2013 under false charges of aiding the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and spreading false news. In June, Greste, an Australian, and Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian, received seven-year jail terms, while Mohamed, an Egyptian, was sentenced to 10 years.
On Thursday, an appeal for the three jailed journalists will be heard at Egypt’s Court of Cassation. The court will look at the process behind the original trial, an action that Al Jazeera has always maintained was flawed. The court can either dismiss the entire case, uphold the verdict and the sentence, or order a new trial.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is able to issue a presidential pardon, but he maintains that he will not interfere in the judicial process. The Egyptian government has defended the jailing of the journalists, arguing that it was not a political decision and that it is now up to the appeals process to determine what should happen next.
The Guardian
Special security forces in Sweden are hunting suspected arsonists after fires at two mosques.
The blazes follow a period of increased tension in the country, as politicians struggle to stem the rise of the anti-immigrant far right.
The Säpo were called in after a blaze at a mosque in the southern town of Eslöv in the early hours of Monday morning. It followed a similar incident on Christmas Day in Eskilstuna, near Stockholm, in which five people were injured when a fire broke out during prayers.
“It’s probably Islamophobia,” an Eslöv imam, Samir Muric, told Swedish media. “I live close and do not feel safe anymore.”
Elvir Gigovic, chair of the Muslim Council of Sweden, said there had been a spate of “systematic” attacks on Muslims this year, many of which were marked by their violence and severity.
Reuters
Iraqi security forces and pro-government militias took control of large parts of the Tigris River town of Dhuluiya north of Baghdad on Monday from Islamic State fighters, police and army sources said.
The assault, which began on Sunday and ran into Monday, enabled militia fighters and Iraqi army and federal police to break the militants' siege of the town 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad.
Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, backed by U.S.-led air strikes, has been trying to push back Islamic State since it swept through mainly Sunni Muslim provinces of northern Iraq in June, meeting virtually no resistance.
BBC
A healthcare worker who has just returned from West Africa has been diagnosed with Ebola and is being treated in hospital in Glasgow.
The woman, who arrived from Sierra Leone on Sunday night, is in isolation at Glasgow's Gartnavel Hospital.
All possible contacts with the case are being investigated, including on flights to Scotland via Heathrow.
The woman will be transferred to specialist high level isolation in London as soon as possible.
At a news conference in Glasgow, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stressed that the risk to the general public was very low.
She added that the patient was thought to have had contact with only one other person since arriving in the city, but that all passengers on the flights the woman took will be traced.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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The Guardian
Google’s Gmail was blocked in China after months of disruptions to the world’s biggest email service, with an anti-censorship advocate suggesting the country’s “great firewall” was to blame.
Large numbers of Gmail web addresses were cut off in China on Friday, according to GreatFire.org, a China-based freedom of speech advocacy group. Users said the service was still down on Monday.
“I think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google’s presence in China and even weaken its market overseas,” said a member of the group who uses a pseudonym. “Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.”
Google’s Transparency Report, which shows real-time traffic to Google services, displayed a sharp dropoff in traffic to Gmail from China on Friday.
Reuters
Crude oil prices tumbled on Monday, with Brent and U.S. crude hitting their lowest levels since May 2009, reversing early gains on selling by investors convinced that supply disruptions in Libya would not offset a global supply glut.
Prices rose early on concerns about the damage in Libya, after an oil official said the country's two largest ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, were being kept shut. But prices retreated as investors concluded that disruptions in Libya will not remove much supply from the global market.
“Every time the market tries to pick itself up, it’s just another wave of selling,” said Gene McGillian, senior analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. He said the market's concerns about oversupply are not going away.
NPR
What do Lady Gaga and Rihanna have in common with Founding Father George Washington? Whiskey.
Yes, our first commander in chief distilled the popular spirit. And these pop icons are helping to fuel a new female-driven whiskey renaissance.
Lady Gaga, according to the Irish Mirror, has described Jameson whiskey as a love interest. Rihanna sings about the spirit. Actress Christina Hendricks is featured in an ad for Johnnie Walker Black Label. And check out the bravado of the gun-toting, whiskey-drinking female bot in the posters for Samuel L. Jackson's forthcoming spy thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service.
"When it comes to whiskey, it seems like nobody can quite get enough of it," says Becky Paskin, editor of The Spirits Business magazine in London.
NPR
When Priscilla Graham-Farmer went to get her hair done in Newark, N.J., recently, she noticed the elevator in the building was broken, so she took the stairs. And that's when Graham-Farmer saw him: a young guy sprawled out, not breathing.
"He was literally turning blue," she says. "And everybody was walking over him."
But Graham-Farmer stopped. And looked closer. She saw that he had a needle and some cotton balls. The guy had clearly overdosed.
"I'm screaming in the hallway," Graham-Farmer remembers. "Nobody's answering."
Though she lives in New Jersey, Graham-Farmer is a caseworker at a drug treatment center in New York City. And in her car, she had the silver bullet remedy for exactly this sort of crisis: a naloxone kit (or Narcan, the brand name it's best known by). Naloxone is a drug that reverses the effects of an overdose of heroin, OxyContin, Vicodin and other opioids. The drug blocks the physical effects of opioids — ending the high, and stopping the depression of the respiratory system that can be their deadly side effect. Graham-Farmer carries her Narcan kit wherever she goes.
NPR
If you've ever listened to karaoke at a bar, you know that drinking can affect how well someone can sing. Christopher Olson and his colleagues at Oregon Health and Science University recently set out to find if the same was true for birds, specifically zebra finches.
"We just showed up in the morning and mixed a little bit of juice with 6 percent alcohol, and put it in their water bottles and put it in the cages," Olson told All Things Considered's Arun Rath. "At first we were thinking that they wouldn't drink on their own because, you know, a lot of animals just won't touch the stuff. But they seem to tolerate it pretty well and be somewhat willing to consume it."
NPR
Before turning the page on 2014, All Things Considered is paying tribute to some of the people who passed away this year whose stories you may not have heard — including Dr. Marion Downs.
As recently as the early 1990s, if you were born deaf, nobody would know for years. Parents were left to realize that something was amiss when their toddlers were not learning to talk or communicate at a normal pace. A diagnosis that late meant many deaf children never fully developed the ability to use language.
Today, things are drastically different for hard-of-hearing children, thanks to the efforts of a remarkable woman named Dr. Marion Downs.
NPR
"There's .... too many of them," a Y-Wing pilot says, as Imperial ships overwhelm the Rebel fleet in the climactic space battle in Return of the Jedi.
This scene is important because we've just learned that the Rebels have been lured to the forest moon Endor by the Emperor — it's a trap! — and also for another reason: this is the first line spoken by an Asian character in the original Star Wars movies.
Later comes the final line spoken by an Asian character in those films: "I'm hit!" Then, a shower of sparks, and the cockpit bursting into flame faster than you can say "Jek Porkins." Total time onscreen: approximately four seconds. (Brief, but enough to yield a Halloween costume idea, at least.)
NPR
This is the time of year when it's not uncommon to see big trucks barreling down highways and streets spreading road salt.
Steve Corsi, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says that translates into high levels of chloride concentrations for rivers like the Milwaukee in Wisconsin or 18 other streams near urban areas in Illinois, Ohio, Colorado and several other states.
"At many of the streams, concentrations have now exceeded those that are harmful to aquatic life," he says.
Corsi says that's especially true during the winter. He and other scientists analyzed chloride levels dating back to 1960 but primarily from the 1990s to 2011. The number of times they found toxic levels of chloride doubled over the two decades.
C/NET
The year kicked off with a bang when T-Mobile CEO John Legere crashed an AT&T party at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- and was summarily thrown out. The subsequent buzz propelled his Uncarrier press conference -- the first of eight such events held this year.
But T-Mobile wasn't alone in stepping up. Sprint replaced longtime CEO Dan Hesse with Brightstar founder Marcelo Claure, who quickly introduced a series of new plans and promotions to win back customers. With two players getting more aggressive, larger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T had no choice but to respond.
C/NET
There's been talk for a while that Microsoft will make some big changes to Internet Explorer in the Windows 10 time frame, making IE "Spartan" look and feel more like Chrome and Firefox.
It turns out that what's actually happening is Microsoft is building a new browser, codenamed Spartan, which is not IE 12 -- at least according to a couple of sources of mine.
Thomas Nigro, a Microsoft Student Partner lead and developer of the modern version of VLC, mentioned on Twitter earlier this month that he heard Microsoft was building a brand-new browser. Nigro said he heard talk of this during a December episode of the LiveTile podcast.