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.
OND is a regular 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.
Special thanks to JekyllnHyde for the OND banner.
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Spiegel Online
Syriza's victory in Greece makes it clearer than ever that a new approach is needed in Europe. Chancellor Merkel, in particular, must show flexibility in the search for compromise with Greek Prime Minister Tsipras. If they can't agree, Europe is in trouble.
Angela Merkel, it is often said, has a terrific feel for her people. That's why she is revered by German voters and that's why she wins elections. But what is true in Germany does not apply in Greece. The victory of Alexis Tsipras in elections one week ago is also a defeat for the German chancellor. The Greeks have elected a radical government in order to free themselves from German pressure.
AFP via Yahoo News
London (AFP) - Greece's radical new leaders on Monday embarked on a campaign to win support from European governments and investors in their bid to renegotiate a massive 240-billion-euro ($270 billion) bailout.
US President Barack Obama gave them a boost on Sunday by warning Europe against "squeezing" Greece but Britain's finance minister on Monday said a standoff over Greece posed a major risk for the world economy.
Varoufakis also held talks with City of London bankers hosted by US giant Merrill Lynch, with a Greek government source saying he wanted to encourage investment and reassure bondholders.
DW
Greece's prime minister has ruled out seeking aid from Russia as he seeks better financial bailout terms. Both he and his finance minister are on a tour of European capitals but, so far, Berlin is not among them.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday made his first official trip abroad since taking office a week ago, meeting with his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Nicos Anastasiades in Nicosia. This is to be followed by stops in Rome, Paris and Brussels between now and Wednesday, as he seeks to build support for his left-led government's anti-austerity course.
In Cyprus, Tsipras was visiting a country with which Greece not only has close ties, but has also struggled to implement austerity measures to meet the term of its own bailout package. He used the visit to pitch his plan for economic recovery, centered on negotiating new terms of its 240-billion-euro ($270 billion) bailout to make it easier to pay back what it owes, telling a press conference that this was necessary to create growth in Greece's economy.
Reuters
Greece sought to reassure international investors on Monday that it was not in a Wild West-style standoff with European partners over a new debt agreement, although sparring partner Germany gave no ground after a tough first week.
Spurning neckties, new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his pugnacious finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are touring European capitals in a diplomatic offensive to replace Greece's bailout accord with the European Union, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund, known as the "troika".
Varoufakis said he was confident he could reach a negotiated settlement soon, telling Britain's Channel 4 news it was time to stop Greece being a "festering wound" on Europe and dismissing a suggestion the ECB could block a new deal.
BBC
The European Commission says the controversial EU-IMF troika supervising Greek finances could be replaced.
The troika is a group of auditors representing the Commission, the European Central Bank and IMF.
They carry out regular checks to see if Greece is sticking to its commitments under the EU-IMF bailout agreement.
Greece's new left-wing government does not accept the troika's agenda. Instead it aims to renegotiate the bailout, to get a huge reduction in Greece's debt.
At a news conference on Monday, the Commission chief spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, quoted a pledge by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to replace the troika.
"In the future, we should be able to replace the 'troika' with a more democratically legitimate and more accountable structure, based around European institutions with enhanced parliamentary control both at European and at national level," Mr Juncker said in his mission statement last year.
New York Times
As Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey waited to depart on a trade mission to Israel in 2012, his entourage was delayed by a late arrival: Mr. Christie’s father, who had accidentally headed to the wrong airport.
A commercial flight might have left without him, but in this case, there was no rush. The private plane, on which Mr. Christie had his own bedroom, had been lent by Sheldon G. Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and supporter of Israel. At the time, he was opposing legislation then before the governor to legalize online gambling in New Jersey.
Mr. Christie loaded the plane with his wife, three of his four children, his mother-in-law, his father and stepmother, four staff members, his former law partner and a state trooper.
King Abdullah of Jordan picked up the tab for a Christie family weekend at the end of the trip. The governor and two staff members who accompanied him came back to New Jersey bubbling that they had celebrated with Bono, the lead singer of U2, at three parties, two at the king’s residence, the other a Champagne reception in the desert. But a small knot of aides fretted: The rooms in luxurious Kempinski hotels had cost about $30,000; what would happen if that became public?
McClatchy
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will propose a $3.99 trillion federal budget Monday that would tax trillions of cash kept offshore by U.S. business and use the proceeds to help finance a massive rebuilding of roads, bridges and mass transit at home.
The proposal to tax offshore accounts to pay for a sweeping infrastructure building plan is among the highlights of a budget proposal Obama will use to urge a fundamental shift of the nation’s wealth, taxing the wealthy to help the poor and middle class who have stagnated even as the economy has rebounded.
“This budget shows what we can do if we invest in America's future and commit to an economy that rewards hard work, generates rising incomes, and allows everyone to share in the prosperity of a growing America,” the budget will say. “It lays out a strategy to strengthen our middle class and help America's hard-working families get ahead in a time of relentless economic and technological change.”
Al Jazeera America
The uniformed leaders of the U.S. military have had a testy relationship with President Barack Obama since he took office in 2009, with a number of relatively public spats revealing discord over how his administration has approached the use of military force. So it might be assumed that when a politician confronts Obama, portraying his policies on threats overseas as naive, many in the senior uniformed ranks would nod in silent affirmation. But that’s not what has happened since House Speaker John Boehner invited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Obama’s Iran policy in Congress. Instead the speech, planned for next month, has rallied senior military figures behind the president, with some warning that there’s a limit to what U.S. military officers consider acceptable criticism of the commander in chief.
...
.... But a senior Joint Chiefs of Staff officer who regularly briefs the U.S. high command was willing to speak bluntly in exchange for anonymity. “There’s always been a lot of support for Israel in the military,” the officer said, “but that’s significantly eroded over the last few years. This caps it. It’s one thing for Americans to criticize their president and another entirely for a foreign leader to do it. Netanyahu doesn’t get it. We’re not going to side with him against the commander in chief. Not ever.”
Al Jazeera America
The northeastern United States braced for the second major snowstorm in a week on Monday after a huge winter system dumped more than a foot of snow in the Chicago area, closing schools from the Midwest to New England.
Chicago Public Schools, the country's third-largest public school system, along with districts in Detroit, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, canceled classes for Monday as the National Weather Service issued storm warnings and watches continued from western Iowa into upper New England.
A winter storm warning was in effect for New York City starting at 7 p.m. Sunday and was expected to remain in effect until Monday evening. Mayor Bill de Blasio said residents should be ready for a snowy and icy commute but his warning did not reach the level of last week's caution before a storm billed as "historic" in potential.
The Guardian
Police in west Georgia have expanded their search for a 26-year-old man accused of killing five people, including his wife and members of her family, after their bodies were discovered inside their Troup County family home on Saturday.
Local police named the murder suspect as Thomas Jesse Lee, described as a white male, about 6ft 3in tall, with blue eyes, red hair and a beard. Lee could be driving an olive green Mazda Tribute, according to statement issued by Troup County police.
Sheriff James Woodruff of Troup County told the Associated Press that the five victims had been dead for three days at the time they were discovered, after a concerned employer reported one of the victims missing.
“If this happened Wednesday night and he left immediately, he’s got five days that he could be anywhere,” Woodruff said on Monday.
The Guardian
Nissan
This is an ad about cars, and fatherhood, and maleness, and is disappointing. Nissan had been trailing this series all week – the Japanese car giant (© all tabloid newspapers) hadn’t made a Super Bowl commercial in 18 years, and they were bigging up the #withdad hashtag on social media. Maybe they shouldn’t have bothered.
I mean, it looks very slick. It’s the story of a father, and his “journey” with his son, from cradle to teenager. The dad is a race car driver, so he’s often away from home, with his hot rods, and he feels guilty about leaving his boy. (Harry Chapin’s Cats in the Cradle is the accompanying music.)....
NPR
We've heard a lot lately about the relationship between cops and communities of color, especially in New York City, where a grand jury will hear evidence about the death of an unarmed black man who was shot by a rookie police officer in November.
Protests erupted across the country after a grand jury in Staten Island decided not to indict a white police officer in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man. Now the grand jury investigating the death of Akai Gurley will inevitably be under extra scrutiny.
Friends and family say Gurley was a good guy whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Reuters
Oil prices rose in volatile trading on Monday, with some investors betting a powerful rally from Friday had put a bottom to the seven-month long rout on the market even as others remained pessimistic.
Benchmark Brent and U.S. oil futures swung in a band of about $4 a barrel, one of their widest in weeks, as near-term technical signals indicated further gains while fundamental data continued to weigh on the market.
The spread between the two oils widened to above $5 a barrel, its biggest since November.
Traders said oil services company Genscape estimated a stock build of 2.3 million barrels in the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point for U.S. crude last week, adding to already record-high inventories in the country.
Reuters
The United States Department of Justice has decided not to prosecute News Corp (NWSA.O) or its sister company Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA.O) after completing an investigation of scandals in Great Britain involving phone hacking and alleged bribery of public officials.
The end of the probe, disclosed by News Corp in a regulatory filing on Monday, comes after the U.S. government spent years combing through thousands of e-mails from News Corp's servers.
A U.S. law enforcement official confirmed to Reuters that the case, which included an investigation of possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, had been closed by the Justice Department. News Corp was notified about the decision on Jan. 28.
The FBI was not immediately available to comment.
The Guardian
The White House is threatening to block any attempt by Congress to restore the “sequester” budget cuts this year as it argues it is time to move from an austerity-driven focus on reducing government debt, and do more to tackle income inequality instead.
Amid growing global debate over the wisdom of austerity economics, Barack Obama made clear in his own proposed budget on Monday that he believes the US should not be attempting to eliminate its deficit entirely and would only shrink debt as a proportion of the overall economy over the coming years.
But the administration’s proposals are largely symbolic without approval from lawmakers and officials made clear that the president would veto any version of the 2016 budget drafted by the Republican-controlled Congress that sought more aggressive cuts in spending.
NHK News
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says Japan is not considering providing logistic support to the US-led coalition that is conducting air strikes against Islamic State militants. But he says Japan will expand its humanitarian support for refugees in the Middle East.
Abe was speaking in a Diet committee session on Monday. He said something must be done to put a stop to rising extremism. He said the Islamic State militants must be prevented from gaining control over wider areas with their brutal acts.
The prime minister said there is no conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. He said the religion is actually at the forefront of the fight against Islamic State militants.
Abe said Japan is providing assistance to 10-million refugees.
NHK News
The United Nations Security Council has strongly condemned the apparent killing of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
The council issued a press statement on Sunday after a militant group claiming to be Islamic State posted an image on the Internet showing Goto's killing.
It called the killing a heinous and cowardly murder and said it demonstrated the brutality of the Islamic State militants.
The Council members urged, under international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, all member states to cooperate with Japan so the perpetrators are held responsible.
The council added the barbaric acts carried out by Islamic State have made stronger its members' resolve to fight extremists.
DW
The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), aided by the US-led airstrikes, has made significant advances against "Islamic State" (IS) in the area surrounding the city of Kobani after driving the group from the city last week, the Kurdish militia and a monitoring group confirmed Monday. A string of villages fell to the YPG as IS withdrew.
IS "is in a state of complete collapse at present and cannot hold ground," Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, told news agency Reuters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that the jihadists were putting up very little resistance in the face of the Kurdish advance, and it was possible they would retreat even further.
Rami Abdulrahman, head of the SOHR, said that having lost 2,000 fighters in the struggle for Kobani, IS was unable to open new fronts. "I expect a continued retreat in the Kobani rural area," Abdulrahman told the media, "after that, there might be clashes in the outskirts of Raqqa."
McClatchy
BERLIN — Eighty years ago, Jael Botsch-Fitterling’s parents decided something was very wrong in Germany, the nation they called home. Chancellor Adolf Hitler had just named himself fuhrer, and anti-Semitism was becoming national law. Her parents and other relatives packed up and fled.
Because of that move, six years later she was born in Jerusalem in what was then Palestine. When she was 7, the land beneath her feet became Israel, making her one of the original Jews in a new Jewish homeland. All because her parents had sensed in time that Germany was becoming very dangerous for Jews.
Then, in the 1950s, they trusted their instincts again and returned to Germany. Botsch-Fitterling has never left.
But today, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris, she’s been thinking about that first decision to leave – thinking about it quite a bit, in fact.
The Guardian
The high-stakes poker game over east Ukraine continued on Monday, with US officials floating the idea of sending lethal military assistance to the government in Kiev, while Russia-backed separatists announced a plan to mobilise a 100,000-strong army.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, is due in Kiev on Thursday, and while no major announcements are expected this week he will use the visit to take the temperature in the Ukrainian capital as the US administration weighs up the move.
Lt Col Vanessa Hillman, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the administration’s focus remains on pursuing a solution through diplomatic means, but added: “We are always evaluating other options that will help create space for a negotiated solution to the crisis.”
The Guardian
Dominique Strauss-Kahn , the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has appeared in court in Lille charged with aiding and assisting the prostitution of seven women.
Dressed in a black suit, Strauss-Kahn sat, arms folded, in the front row of the courtroom, alongside 13 others, 12 of whom also face pimping charges, including a former senior police chief and two businessmen alleged to have provided the one-time presidential hopeful with prostitutes for orgies in Europe and the US.
Strauss-Kahn stood, hands clasped, to hear the charge against him – “aggravated pimping”, described as aiding and abetting prostitution, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The case threatens to expose the double-life of Strauss-Kahn, once tipped to be the next Socialist president of France, but now a political pariah. The case against him is that, while head of the IMF in Washington, he had group-sex with prostitutes brought to him in Europe and the US, organised by French businessmen friends who wanted to curry favour with him.
NPR
Peter Greste went out for a run at his Egyptian prison Sunday when the warden called him over.
He "told me that, you know, it's time to pack your stuff," Greste, an Australian who spent more than a year in an Egyptian prison, told his employer, Al-Jazeera. "I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You're going.' I said, 'Well, where? To another prison?' He said, 'No, no, no. The embassy is coming. They'll be here in an hour. Get your stuff and go.' "
Al Jazeera America
Bangladesh has become synonymous with cheap, ready-made garments and the high human cost of fast fashion. In the underground leather tanneries of Dhaka, few safeguards exist for workers. Industrial chemicals are devastating public health and the environment, including the world’s largest river delta.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Al Jazeera America
Large-scale human testing of two potential Ebola vaccines got underway in Liberia's capital city of Monrovia on Monday, part of a global effort to prevent a repeat of the epidemic that has claimed nearly 9,000 lives in West Africa.
The studies in Liberia are taking place after smaller-scale tests determined that the vaccines were safe for human use. By comparing them now with a dummy shot, scientists hope to learn whether they can prevent people from contracting the deadly virus that has killed about 60 percent of those hospitalized for it.
Yet despite the trials' promise, authorities still must combat fear and suspicion that people could become infected by taking part. Each vaccine uses a different virus to carry non-infectious Ebola genetic material into the body and spark an immune response.
On Sunday in one densely populated neighborhood of Monrovia, musicians sang songs explaining the purpose and intent of the trial in a bid to dispel fears.
The Guardian
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, in Britain on a shadow campaign tour, dressed up in a lab coat while visiting a manufacturer of vaccines in Cambridge on Monday. But in public remarks on the environment, Ebola and now vaccines, the potential presidential hopeful has never looked less like a scientist.
In a visit to MedImmune, Christie called for “balance” between public health and parental discretion in setting vaccinations policy. The view seemed to contradict an appeal by President Barack Obama a day earlier for all parents to have their children vaccinated, with fears growing of a national measles outbreak following a spike in cases in recent weeks.
The Guardian
For more than three decades Kevin Zeese has been a burly, vociferous presence on the front lines of protest movements. The 59-year-old Baltimore native has organised protests against the Iraq war, run for the Senate on the Green Party ticket, and campaigned for drug law reform since the 1970s. Now he’s fighting to save the idea of an open internet. Never has he seen the arguments over such a hot-topic issue shift so quickly in his direction.
Last May, Zeese was thrown out of an Federal Communications Commission (FCC) meeting, as the regulator looked set to pass new rules that among other things would have allowed cable companies to create and charge extra for “fast lanes” and end net neutrality – the principle that all traffic should be treated equally online.
NPR
On a mountaintop in Chile, excavators have just started work on a construction site. It will soon be home to a powerful new telescope that will have a good shot at finding the mysterious Planet X, if it exists.
"Planet X is kind of a catchall name given to any speculation about an unseen companion orbiting the sun," says Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Penn State University.
For more than a century, scientists have observed various things that they thought could be explained by the presence of an unknown planet lurking at the edge of our solar system.
NPR
People in Cambodia experience what we Americans call depression. But there's no direct translation for the word "depression" in the Cambodian Khmer language. Instead, people may say thelea tdeuk ceut, which literally means "the water in my heart has fallen."
Anxious or depressed Haitians, on the other hand, may use the phrase reflechi twop, which means "thinking too much." And in parts of Nepal and India, people use the English word "tension."
Mental distress is a universal condition. The World Health Organization has made global access to mental health care one of its key goals.
But just as words for depression and anxiety get lost in translation, so can treatments.
Simply setting up mental health clinics identical to the ones we have here in the U.S. isn't necessarily going to help anyone, says Dr. Devon Hinton, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, who works with Southeast Asian populations in the U.S. and abroad.
NPR
When Florida workers promoting President Obama's health law marketplace want instant feedback on how they're doing, they go to an online "heat map." The map turns darker green where they've seen the most people and shows bright red dots for areas where enrollment is high.
"The map shows us where the holes are" and which communities need to be targeted next, said Lynn Thorp, regional director of the Health Planning Council of Southwest Florida. She hands out information about the health law's marketplace at rodeos, farmers markets, hockey games and almost any place where people gather.
The mapping strategy is one reason why a Republican-controlled state like Florida, whose leaders have criticized the health law at practically every turn, is leading the nation in signing people up for private Obamacare health plans.
NPR
A cereal rye cover crop grows (at left) in a field where corn was recently harvested. Cover crops can capture nutrients such as nitrate and prevent them from polluting nearby streams.
Three weeks ago, Sara Carlson was driving to her job in Ames, Iowa, when she turned on the radio and heard me talking about nitrates in Iowa's water.
"And I was like, 'I really hope he nails this,' " she says.
This topic is Carlson's specialty. She works with a group called Practical Farmers of Iowa. These farmers are devoted to farming in ways that protect the environment.
This puts Carlson right in the middle of the unusual confrontation that had provoked my report. The Des Moines Water Works says it will go to court to stop farmers from releasing so much nitrate pollution into nearby rivers, which are the source of the city's water.
NPR
Mike Quaglia was 42 when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which gradually robs its victims of their ability to move normally. For the next seven years, his condition deteriorated despite medication.
"I was at a point where I was either going to give up and let the Parkinson's take over, or I was going to decide to fight back," Quaglia says.
Fight back he did — literally. Last February he stumbled on a program called Rock Steady Boxing. That's right: It teaches Parkinson's patients how to box.
The Guardian
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is planning tough new rules for regulating the internet that will treat high-speed internet as a public utility, like electricity or water.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the FCC’s long-awaited proposed new rules for internet regulation will be released to the agency’s five commissioners on Thursday.
In November, President Barack Obama called for the “strongest possible” rules to protect net neutrality – the concept that all traffic should be treated equally online. According to the Journal, the FCC has heeded his call.