Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man with guest editors annetteboardman and Chitown Kev. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
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
Angela Merkel relishes her reputation as queen of Europe. But she hasn't learned how to use her power, instead allowing a bad situation to heat up to the boiling point. Her inability to take unpopular stances badly exacerbated the Greek crisis.
Angela Merkel was already leaving for the weekend when she received the call that would change everything. The chancellor had just had a grueling day, spending all of it in meetings with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras -- sometimes as part of a larger group, and others with only him and French President François Hollande.
They discussed debt restructuring and billions of euros in additional investments. When it comes to issues important to him, Tsipras can be exhaustingly stubborn. In the end, though, Merkel was left with the feeling the EU summit was the milestone that could quite possibly mark a turn for the better.
Reuters
France and Germany told Greece to come up with serious proposals in order to restart financial aid talks, raising pressure on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to compromise a day after his country voted overwhelmingly against more austerity.
After a meeting in Paris, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Athens must move quickly if it wants to secure a cash-for-reform deal with international creditors and avoid crashing out of the euro.
Raising the stakes on the Greek leader ahead of a euro-zone summit on Tuesday, the European Central Bank decided to keep a tight grip on funding to Greek banks, which have been closed for more than a week to avoid a massive outflow of money that could lead to their collapse.
Al Jazeera America
ATHENS — As it became clear Sunday night that nearly two-thirds of Greek voters had given a thumbs-down to the deal offered by the country’s creditors, the main square in Athens, Syntagma, erupted into an impromptu celebration. Crowds cheered and waved Greek flags. Some danced.
But Monday morning, Greeks woke up with a hangover, so to speak. The jubilation evident in the square just the night before gave way to the harsh reality that a solution for Greece’s financial crisis is nowhere in sight.
The country still has to negotiate with its creditors, banks are closed, and no one knows for sure when they will reopen. For now, people cannot take out more than 60 euros a day, or about $67, and even those with cash stashed safely in deposit boxes aren’t sure they can get to their money anytime soon. Adding to people’s confusion, the country’s pugnacious finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis — one of the architects of the vote — abruptly resigned Monday morning, even though the vote went the way the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wanted.
NPR
Greeks waved flags and danced in the streets after they overwhelmingly voted to reject further austerity measures from their international creditors. But now comes the reckoning, as Greece faces the realities of an economy out of money and creditors out of patience.
Here are some of the fundamental questions:
When will the banks reopen?
There's no firm date yet. The banks have now been closed a week and look likely to remain shuttered for at least a few more days. The Greeks are allowed to withdraw only 60 euros ($66) a day from ATMs. But even this won't be sustainable without new infusions of cash.
DW
Both France and Germany have urged Greece to put forward serious proposals that would allow financial aid talks to resume. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said there is an urgent need to lift capital controls.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Athens would have to move quickly to secure a deal that would keep Greece in the eurozone.
Merkel, who held talks with Hollande at the Elysee Palace, said the conditions for a bailout package had not yet been met."That is why we are now waiting for very precise proposals from the Greek prime minister, a program that will allow Greece to return to prosperity," said Merkel. The chancellor, who said Greece should put its proposals on the table this week, claimed eurozone countries had already shown "a lot of solidarity with Greece".
The Guardian
Ian Traynor in Brussels
Monday 6 July 2015 15.10 EDT Last modified on Monday 6 July 2015 19.55 EDT
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Germany and France scrambled to avoid a major split over Greece on Monday evening as the eurozone delivered a damning verdict on Alexis Tsipras’s landslide referendum victory on Sunday and Angela Merkel demanded that the Greek prime minister put down new proposals to break the deadlock.
As concerns mount that Greek banks will run out of cash, and about the damage being inflicted on the country’s economy, hopes for a breakthrough faded. EU leaders voiced despair and descended into recrimination over how to respond to Sunday’s overwhelming rejection of eurozone austerity terms as the price for keeping Greece in the currency.
Tsipras, meanwhile, moved to insure himself against purported eurozone plots to topple him and force regime change by engineering a national consensus of the country’s five mainstream parties behind his negotiating strategy, focused on securing debt relief. Tsipras also sacrificed his controversial finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, in what was seen as a conciliatory signal towards Greece’s creditors.
McClatchy
WASHINGTON Sen. Barbara Boxer and fellow California Democrat George Miller and their spouses used to spend weekends together, just a pair of couples taking a break from the pressures and strains of Capitol Hill.
But while Miller, who spent four decades in the House of Representatives before retiring last year, and the others relaxed over beers, Boxer would be sketching plans for the coming week’s political battles.
“She’s on the case all the time,” Miller said. “She’s always organizing.”
Indeed, even as the clock ticks down on Boxer’s 24-year Senate career – she announced in January she would not run for re-election next year – she’s not fading into the Senate’s ornate woodwork.
Al Jazeera America
While it appears there is broad support in the South Carolina Legislature to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol, the depth of that support will get its first test this week as lawmakers return to Columbia to come up with a specific plan.
The General Assembly returns Monday to discuss Gov. Nikki Haley's budget vetoes and what to do with the rebel flag that has flown over some part of the Statehouse for more than 50 years.
Several bills have been filed, but details such as when to bring down the flag that currently flies on a pole by a monument to Confederate soldiers in front of the legislature, whether to put another flag in its place and what kind of ceremony should mark the removal aren't specified.
The Guardian
It may not be just the debate stage Donald Trump bumps other Republican candidates off next month – he may keep their TV ads from being aired as well.
The businessman and TV star is a billionaire, and can fund his own campaign. Other candidates need to find billionaires of their own to fund them via Super Pacs, independent campaign-funding organizations made possible by two court rulings in 2010.
Most GOP candidates are delegating many of their key campaign functions to Super Pacs, which are not subject to campaign finance restrictions, but Trump’s effort is being funded entirely by the real estate mogul’s personal fortune.
This means Trump enjoys key advantages under federal communications law, which gives political campaigns special privileges over all other potential television advertisers – including Super Pacs, which are not considered political campaigns under federal law and whose commercials are no different legally from those for soap, laundry detergent or beer.
The Guardian
Ten people, including a seven-year-old boy, were killed in shootings in Chicago over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Police superintendent Garry McCarthy acknowledged that his department’s decision to increase the police presence in the city by 30% in anticipation of holiday violence had not prevented the killings – and called for more restrictive gun laws. Last year 14 people were killed in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend.
“If you think that putting more cops on the street would make a difference, then take a look at the fact that we put a third more manpower on the street for this weekend,” McCarthy said.
“What’s the result? We’re getting more guns. Well, that’s great,” he said. “It’s not stopping the violence. And it’s not going to stop the violence until criminals are held accountable and something is done to stem the flow of these guns into our city.”
Abby Wambach embraces her wife, Sarah Huffman, immediately following USA’s 5-2 win over Japan on Sunday. Photograph: Bob Frid/EPA
The Guardian
If the image of Brandi Chastain – kneeling, jersey in hand, her arms lifted in victory after sealing World Cup victory in 1999 – marked a change in US soccer, then Abby Wambach, one of the game’s greatest players, running to the stands to kiss her wife after helping the team win on Sunday marked a change in America.
Fans reacted to the celebratory embrace between Wambach and her wife, Sarah Huffman, after the US’s 5-2 defeat over Japan with the hashtag #LoveWins, which was adopted after the US supreme court affirmed the legal right of same-sex couples to marry. Or, as one user put it, “just another American couple celebrating”.
The Guardian
As the Grateful Dead played Friday, a film camera swooped through the front row of the audience and projected on large screens what it saw: rows of people recording on their smartphones.
The distraction of constant connectivity didn’t exist in 1995 when the Grateful Dead, possibly the most American of American bands, played their final show at Soldier Field in Chicago with founder and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. Things have changed. These three Fare Thee Well shows, which concluded on Sunday once again at Soldier Field, were billed as a celebration of the band’s 50-year anniversary, and indeed the weekend’s success was a testament to the music’s enduring cultural currency. More than 210,000 tickets were sold and the band earned about $50m, according to reports. All three nights broke attendance records for the venue, with Sunday’s tally of 71,000 people the highest in its 91-year history.
Reuters
Authorities gave the all clear at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in suburban Washington, the biggest military hospital complex in the world, after a report of a gunshot triggered a lockdown on Monday, the U.S. Navy said.
Police found no sign of a gunshot or injuries at the sprawling 243-acre (98-hectare) campus in Bethesda, Maryland, the Navy said on its Twitter feed. A call to police reporting the sound of a gunshot triggered the lockdown of the Bethesda, Maryland, site and a massive security response.
Officers cleared the 20-story building where the gunshot was reported and found nothing, the Montgomery County Police Department said on Twitter.
NPR
The Rio Grande Valley of Texas is a world apart, isolated by empty ranch land to the north, the Gulf to the east, and Mexico to the south. A million-and-a-half people live there amid dazzling wealth and stark poverty.
But federal authorities say "the Valley" is steeped in corruption of every stripe: drug smuggling, vote stealing, courthouse bribery, under-the-table payoffs and health care fraud. Late last year, the feds launched the Rio Grande Valley Public Corruption Task Force to clean up South Texas.
It's housed in the FBI building, a three-story, bunker-like edifice in an office park across the street from public housing in McAllen, Texas.
"The public's perception is that the problem is inordinately grave and that it is worse here than other places," says FBI supervisory special agent Rock Stone. "We're being very vocal and very public about the fact that [public corruption] is wrong, it is immoral, and you're betraying the public's trust."
Reuters
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who has been sentenced to death, filed a motion in federal court on Monday seeking a new trial, according to court records.
The preliminary motion for a new trial cited a lack of evidence in his trial this spring, according to documents filed in federal court in Massachusetts.
Tsarnaev was convicted in April of killing three people and injuring 264 in the bombing near the finish line of the world-renowned Boston Marathon in 2013, as well as fatally shooting a police officer three days later.
The same jury voted for execution by injection in May.
At his formal sentencing on June 24, the 21-year-old ethnic Chechen apologized and admitted he and his now-dead older brother carried out the attack.
BBC
South Carolina's Senate has passed a bill to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol in Columbia.
It was put forward after the flag was linked to a gunman who killed nine people at a Charleston church in June.
The bill must now pass by a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives before being sent to the governor for approval.
The flag is seen by some as an icon of slavery and racism while others say it symbolises US heritage and history.
The flag was originally the battle flag of the southern states in the American Civil War when they tried to break away to prevent the abolition of slavery.
NHK World
The operator of the Sendai nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan plans to start loading fuel into one of the reactors on Tuesday in preparation for restarting it.
The Kyushu Electric Power Company has scheduled 4 days for the work of placing 157 nuclear fuel assemblies into the Number 1 reactor. Workers will use a crane to transfer the fuel rods one by one from a storage pool in an adjacent building.
The utility says it will rotate workers so it can conduct the work around the clock. It also says safety is the highest priority.
Kyushu Electric halted the operation of the Number 1 reactor 2 months after the 2011 disaster in northeastern Japan. All of its fuel was removed by the end of January 2013.
DW
Recent talks between German flagship carrier Lufthansa and various labor unions have collapsed. In the absence of a settlement, strike action may follow.
Facing an impass after unsuccessful negotiations on Monday, the pilots' union Cockpit said that it would hold a board meeting to decide about the prospect of taking industrial action again.
Negotiators have been butting heads for more than a year over proposed changes to early retirement options, resulting in 12 previous rounds of strikes. About 5,400 Lufthansa pilots could be affected by the suggested changes, which would impose stricter limitations on early retirement and pensions.
DW
Football's world body has banned the official who was responsible for inspecting the bids to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Harold Mayne-Nicholls is accused of breaching "confidentiality."
FIFA's ethics committee said Monday Mayne-Nicholls would be barred from "any kind of football-related activity at national and international level" for seven years.
The football body did not provide specific information about his offense, but said in a statement it was connected to a breach of confidentiality rule in FIFA's code of ethics. It added that more details would be released, "after this final decision becomes effective."
Al Jazeera America
China has no "ethnic problem" in its western province of Xinjiang, and Muslim Uighur minorities there enjoy freedom of religion, the Foreign Ministry said Monday, following anti-China protests in Turkey over Beijing's treatment of the group.
Relations between China and Turkey have been strained over Turkish reports that Uighurs were banned from worshipping and fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. China expressed displeasure after Turkey this month took in 173 Uighur refugees from Thailand.
"Uighurs live and work in peace and contentment and enjoy freedom of religion under the rules in the constitution," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular briefing. "So the so-called 'Xinjiang ethnic problem' you mentioned that has been raised in some reports simply does not exist."
Spiegel Online
Revelations from WikiLeaks published this week show how boundlessly and comprehensively American intelligence services spied on the German government. It has now emerged that the US also conducted surveillance against SPIEGEL.
Walks during working hours aren't the kind of pastime one would normally expect from a leading official in the German Chancellery. Especially not from the head of Department Six, the official inside Angela Merkel's office responsible for coordinating Germany's intelligence services.
Reuters
A dispute over U.N. sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program and a broader arms embargo were among issues holding up a nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers on Monday, the day before their latest self-imposed deadline.
"The Iranians want the ballistic missile sanctions lifted. They say there is no reason to connect it with the nuclear issue, a view that is difficult to accept," one Western official told Reuters. "There's no appetite for that on our part."
Iranian and other Western officials confirmed this view. The foreign ministers of the six powers - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - met on Monday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif - and were expected to meet again soon - to try to strike a deal by Tuesday night.
"The Western side insists that not only should it (Iran's ballistic missile program) remain under sanctions, but that Iran should suspend its program as well," an Iranian official said.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Coral garden at Agincourt Reef as part of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Climate Central
Corals that naturally thrive in the hottest tropical waters can be bred with cousins in cooler seas to help them survive mounting threats from global warming.
Tests of corals in warm waters on Australia's Great Barrier Reef found they were able to survive bigger temperature rises than those of an identical species in cooler seas 300 miles south, according to a University of Texas at Austin study published in the journal Science.
The study, by scientists in the United States and Australia, raises the possibility of deliberate breeding to pass on heat-tolerant genes to combat climate change, linked by almost all scientists to a build-up of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"Coral larvae with parents from the north, where waters were about 3.6 Fahrenheit warmer, were up to 10 times as likely to survive heat stress, compared with those with parents from the south," the scientists found.
Al Jazeera America
LOS ANGELES — California Gov. Jerry Brown issued a stern warning when he ordered unprecedented 25 percent cuts in water use from every one of the state’s 400 urban water suppliers in April: “People should realize we are in a new era. The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”
Since then, green lawns have turned brown or been ripped out to heed the governor’s conservation mandate and state officials announced Wednesday that residential water use this May was down an impressive 29 percent from May 2013.
The good news is that conservation goals are being met. The bad news is that there are millions of unintended victims of this civic allegiance: Trees.
The Guardian
A notorious funder of climate sceptics in the US has spent at least €550,000 (£390,908) lobbying the EU on environmental protections and energy issues over the past three years.
An obscure entry on the EU’s voluntary transparency register shows that up to €750,000 (£533,049) may have been spent by Koch Industries, the largest private energy company in the US, on trying to influence EU policy.
Brothers David and Charles Koch, who own Koch Industries, fund several thinktanks in the US that deny climate change. Most recently, one of their charitable foundations was found to have have been funding a prominent Harvard-Smithsonian Center scientist and climate sceptic, Willie Soon.
The Koch’s lobbying in Europe, spotted by the blog DeSmog UK, has focused on “all initiatives on the areas of environmental protection, trade and internal market,” documents show.
NPR
A woman has HIV. She becomes pregnant. What are the chances that she can deliver a baby who is not infected?
In some countries, like Yemen, for example, only 11 percent of pregnant women with HIV receive treatment to prevent their babies from being infected. For women who aren't part of that fortunate group, the chance of passing HIV to their infant is as high as 45 percent.
But in Cuba, the chances are now practically nil. On June 30, Cuba became the first country to receive what can be seen as a global seal of approval — the World Health Organization validation — for essentially eliminating transmission of AIDS from a mother to her baby. (Cuba has eliminated transmission of syphilis as well.)
NPR
Reddit CEO Ellen Pao has apologized to users of the popular website, citing a "long history of mistakes" that resulted in an insurrection last week in which moderators shut down many of the site's most popular sections in protest against the dismissal of a key figure in the site's popular r/IAmA section.
Here's part of Pao's apology that was posted on the site today:
"We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years. We haven't communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes. We have apologized and made promises to you, the moderators and the community, over many years, but time and again, we haven't delivered on them. When you've had feedback or requests, we haven't always been responsive. The mods and the community have lost trust in me and in us, the administrators of reddit.
"Today, we acknowledge this long history of mistakes. We are grateful for all you do for reddit, and the buck stops with me."
Pao announced three steps: improved tools, a new moderator advocate, and search.
NPR
Nothing like a good measles outbreak to get people thinking more kindly about vaccines.
One third of parents say they think vaccines have more benefit than they did a year ago, according to a poll conducted in May.
That's compared to the 5 percent of parents who said they now think vaccines have fewer benefits and 61 percent who think the benefits are the same.
Vaccine safety also got a boost, with 25 percent of parents saying they believe vaccines are safer than they thought a year ago, compared to 7 percent of parents who think they're less safe. Sixty-eight percent didn't change their minds.
NPR
Pope Francis is making his first visit as pontiff to Spanish-speaking countries in South America.
Francis landed in Quito, Ecuador, on Sunday and was welcomed by hundreds of thousands. The New York Times reports:
"The first pope from Latin America, Francis later drove through the streets of Quito, the capital, standing in the back of a white car with open sides. Thousands of enthusiastic followers packed the route, throwing flower petals, locally made Panama hats and other items at him. At one point a person ran up to the car and held up a small child dressed in white, and the pope reached out to touch the child on the head. The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, estimated the crowd at 500,000.
"Francis brings his message of a church in transformation to a region that contains nearly four out of 10 of the world's Roman Catholics, but that has seen many faithful leave in recent years to join Protestant denominations or abandon organized religion altogether."
NPR
A nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty in June to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company in exchange for prescribing its high-priced drug to treat cancer pain. In some cases, she delivered promotional talks attended only by herself and a company sales representative.
But when the federal government released data Tuesday on payments by drug and device companies to doctors and teaching hospitals, the payments to nurse practitioner Heather Alfonso, 42, were nowhere to be found.
That's because the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act doesn't require companies to publicly report payments to nurse practitioners or physician assistants, even though they are allowed to write prescriptions in most states.
Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are playing an ever-larger role in the health care system. While registered and licensed practice nurses are not authorized to write prescriptions, those with additional training and advanced degrees often can.