Overnight News Digest: You Choose Edition

Welcome to jlms qkw's second hosting of the wonderful OND.  I am again taking a hopefully quirky approach, looking at several international papers on various continents, for stories you may not have heard of, that I hope you find of interest.  

I will be regularly hosting Monday nights starting in July, so I appreciate your suggestions about making this more useful for you.  

Oh, and on the local news:  I tried using the Des Moines Register, but all of the news was about the flooding.  I'm headed there tomorrow morning to visit my parents, with the two kidlets in tow.  

Des Moines Register

Iowans scramble to handle rising water
State begins cleanup and prepares for more. Trouble spots: Mason City, Iowa City, Saylorville area
• D.M. levees should hold
• I.C. outflow worse than '93
• Mason City without water
• Ask your questions
• Share your photos
• Weather forecast

NYTimes:  Who Received Livers?

A United States senator wants to know more about liver transplant operations performed by U.C.L.A. Medical Center on four Japanese gang figures, according to a published report.

The senator, Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, wrote a letter to the University of California, Los Angeles, requesting surgery details, according to a story posted Friday night on the Web site of The Los Angeles Times.

The Australian:  Islamists protest as Indonesian sect escapes ban

HARDLINE Indonesian Islamists are up in arms after a long-awaited government ruling last night on the controversial Ahmadiyah sect failed to ban the group.

Demonstrators in Jakarta and elsewhere have been calling for the movement to be outlawed, after a recommendation to that effect by a government religious advisory body some weeks ago.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has had to walk a fine line between appeasing Indonesia's Muslim heartland in order to win re-election to office next year - that is, by banning the group - and respecting the constitutional right to freedom of religious expression.

The Australian:  Bad news for mangoes

THE news will send a shiver through fruit aficionados the world over: India's mangoes, revered for millennia for their succulence, are becoming fewer and less sweet as changes in weather patterns affect harvests.

Official estimates suggest three million tonnes of mangoes have been wiped out by a severe winter in India this year and that the unseasonable deluges that have swept key growing regions in recent days may weigh further on production. Forecasts already say this year's crop of 10 million tonnes will be down by a fifth on last year's.

Der Spiegel (Germany):  German Women Earn a Fifth Less than Men

When it comes to equal pay, German women get a rough deal: Women in Germany on average earn 22 percent less than men, placing the country near the bottom of a European Union equal pay league table. Out of the 27 EU member states, only Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia have a bigger or just as high gender pay gap, EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Vladimir Spidla told German newspaper Die Welt.

Guardian (UK):  100 British War Dead in Afghanistan

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, today paid tribute to the 100 British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001, after a suicide attack claimed another three soldiers' lives.

The three soldiers, from 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, were on a routine foot patrol near their base in the Upper Sangin valley, in Helmand province, when they were struck by an explosion.

The Guardian (UK):  Parents pray as 10 million Chinese teenagers sit make-or-break exam

Xu had just done the first part of an exam taken by the most people ever at one sitting, the Chinese equivalent of A-levels or gaokao. This weekend more than 10 million 18-year-olds across China sat through four critically important papers. Tonight they will celebrate - or simply sleep. 'A piece of cake,' bragged Xu Ziwen as he cycled off.

But with only six million university places, many risk disappointment. In today's increasingly market-oriented China, where high school and university are now the norm for urban populations, the results posted online at the end of the month will decide not only who will go on to further education but can also determine the future of the students and their families.

Washington Post:  Japanese, South Korean Stocks Fall in Wake of U.S. Drop

Stock markets slid in Japan and South Korea on Monday morning, as Asia reacted to a wrenching Wall Street sell-off on Friday.

Stock exchanges in China, Hong Kong and Australia were closed for a holiday, but Japan's Nikkei average was off about 2 percent in early trading Monday, as was the Kospi index in South Korea.

Salt Lake Tribune (AP):  National meeting of park officials in Utah draws fire

 The national meeting, set for July 16-17 at Snowbird, will bring together more than 400 park superintendents and other top Park Service officials to hear from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Park Service Director Mary Bomar, Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman and others.
   Some of those attending the conference question the value of a meeting with political leaders who won't be around in just a few short months, when the Bush administration ends. They also say the timing is bad, coming in the month when many parks are having their busiest period of the year.

Salon (AP):  Auditor blames FBI's systems for immigration delay  Finger pointing?  

The FBI uses old technology and workers without enough training to do security checks on people applying for citizenship and other immigration benefits, a government audit found.

The problems have led to large backlogs in name checks and are affecting people wanting to naturalize, become legal residents or bringing in foreign workers for businesses, said the audit issued Monday by the Justice Department's inspector general Glenn Fine.

NYTimes (Reuters):  Family Of Captured Israeli Soldier Receives Letter

The family of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, received a hand-written letter from him, Israeli officials said on Monday.  A senior Hamas official said the letter was released in a gesture to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter who met with the group's leaders during a trip to the region in April.

TPM (AP):  Saudi calls for talks  For unknown reasons, this does NOT make me feel better.  Hmmmmm?

The kingdom will also work with OPEC to "guarantee the availability of oil supplies now and in the future," the minister said following the weekly Cabinet meeting, held in the seaport city of Jiddah.  The Saudi announcement comes just three days after the biggest single-day price leap ever, when oil surged more than $11 to surpass $139 per barrel.

Google News:  DOE supercomputer broke the petaflop barrier

Though unofficial news leaked this morning, this afternoon, independent sources are acknowledging a new fact: A computer made with IBM Cell and AMD Opteron processors can process a thousand trillion operations per second.

This afternoon, the itinerary of the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden was officially altered to make way for a special panel, acknowledging what the US Department of Energy had announced a few hours earlier: Its Roadrunner supercomputer, built by IBM as a unique hybrid of Cell BE and AMD Opteron processors, has recorded an official throughput speed above one quadrillion floating point operations per second -- one petaflop.

Yahoo (AFP):   24 Ukrainian miners found alive after explosion  I have a soft spot for miners found alive, and the people who helped rescue them.  

Twenty-four miners were found alive Monday in a Ukrainian coal mine more than 24 hours after they were trapped deep underground by a huge explosion, rescue officials said.  But rescuers were racing against rising flood waters in the mine in eastern Ukraine to find 12 miners still missing after Sunday's methane blast, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's mine safety agency, Marina Nikitina, told AFP.

Guardian (UK):  Oil prices: Europe threatened with summer of discontent over rising cost of fuel

Concerns were growing last night over a summer of coordinated European fuel protests after tens of thousands of Spanish truckers blocked roads and the French border, sparking similar action in Portugal and France, while unions across Europe prepared fresh action over the rising price of petrol and diesel.  Main routes to France through Catalonia and the Basque country were blocked, with reports that lorries crossing picket lines were stoned and their windscreens smashed.