Urban Palm Trees, Miracle Mile area, Los Angeles
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest ! We have a rotating crew of regulars and guest hosts. Founded by Magnifico and currently strong-armed by Neon Vincent!
It is noted that we each have our own style, and I would like to add that my style changes from diary to diary.
There is plenty of oily news out there, and all of it is bad. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world, and Utah too.
THE WAR ZONES
Pakistan Taleban vow US attacks
Pakistan's Taleban chief promised attacks on major United States cities in a video apparently dated early April and released after the failed car bomb attempt in New York City, a monitoring group said.
It followed reports of another video in which the group apparently tried to take credit for that attempted strike.
US authorities have played down the potential connection between the Pakistani militant network and the car bomb attempt in Times Square, saying there is no evidence of such a link and the group does not have the global infrastructure to carry out such a strike.
Do they really want to be associated with the amateurish attempt of a failed bomb? Maybe: (see AROUND THE COUNTRY) But wait, there's more: Pak Taliban denies involvement in Times Square car bomb plot
Somali militants say they will stop piracy, free hostages
ISLAMIST militants who seized a pirate stronghold on the Somali coast will liberate any foreign hostages they find, a militia commander said, but the brigands had already fled on land and were also sailing off with several captured foreign ships.
Dozens of fighters from the militant group Hizbul Islam rolled into Haradhere on Sunday, but pirates piled their big screen TVs into the luxury cars they had bought with ransom payments and drove off, avoiding a clash.
At least four hijacked ships anchored near Haradhere moved toward Hobyo, another pirate den, said Haradhere resident Osman Gure.
Lessons: when you don't have a functioning government, you never know who will step in. 2. The pirates are doing all of this shit for TVs and luxury cars?
AROUND THE WORLD
Big brother checks up on farmers
THE biggest crackdown on illegal land clearing is about to start, with the NSW government set to begin mailing satellite photos of infringements to farmers across the state - many of whom had no idea they were being watched from space.
A surveillance payload on a satellite gives the government one of the strongest environmental monitoring systems in the world, with images of every farm in the state now being taken every year. It believes mailing the images will be a psychological deterrent to the minority of landholders who think they can cut down trees in remote areas, and that it will lead to more prosecutions for breaches of the Native Vegetation Act.
Yesterday the government said it could not discuss the compliance program and would not even say whether it existed. But sources confirmed that it had been developed and would start this year.
Thai protesters mull PM offer of November elections
Thailand's Red Shirt protest movement is to consider today Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's proposal to hold elections in mid November as a way of ending the country's political crisis.
A spokesman for the movement, which has demanded the immediate dissolution of Abhisit's government, said late on Monday it would discuss the prime minister's proposal before responding.
"We may have offers for the government
. We may not agree to everything," one of the protest leaders, Jatuporn Prompan, said.
Speaking on national television, Abhisit said yesterday that he was ready to hold elections in November to resolve the tense standoff with anti-government protesters, who have occupied Bangkok's commercial heart.
The great water debate
Flying over southern Pakistan in May and June, it feels your plane is crossing a large desert. A few weeks later, the monsoons transform this arid tract into lush farmland. In the spring, the Indus works its magic along the fabled valley, but for most of the year, much of Pakistan is dry and parched.
Water, after the air we breathe, is our most precious commodity. Life cannot be imagined without it, and vast areas of the planet are being stripped of greenery as the flow of rivers declines, and the rains fail. Drought has struck in different continents, and glaciers are melting at a rapid rate. In the subcontinent, we are balanced on a knife-edge as water resources are being depleted while the population soars unchecked.
Acutely aware of our precarious position, a lot of media attention is now focused on this issue. Much of this discussion, however, is ill-informed and emotional. The thrust of the narrative is that somehow, India is stealing our rightful share of the water that is due to us under the Indus Waters Treaty. This accusation is constantly bandied about despite the clear assertion from our officials charged with monitoring river flows into Pakistan that there has been no diversion of our water by India.
Religious differences aren't the biggest problem on this border.
India sweats over China's water plans
China's dam-building spree has lower riparian countries worried. There is concern in India's northeast and Bangladesh that its construction of dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo River (known as the Brahmaputra in India) and possible storage and diversion of its waters will leave little water for them, rendering the region parched.
The dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo is at Zangmu in Tibet. The project is being executed by Gezhouba Corporation, one of China's biggest engineering and construction companies and is expected to be complete by December 2015.
The Yarlung Tsangpo begins in the Jima Yangzong glacier in southwestern Tibet. It flows eastward at a height of 4,000 meters through southern Tibet for around 1,600 kilometers. At its easternmost point, it makes a spectacular u-turn known as the Shuomatan Point or the Great Bend, before it enters India's eastern-most state, Arunachal Pradesh. In Arunachal it is known as the Siang. There it is joined by the Dibang and Lohit rivers and called the Brahmaputra. The Brahmaputra snakes its way through Assam into Bangladesh, where it is joined by the Ganga. The Ganga and the Brahmaputra then go on to create the world's largest delta before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.
Ancient wreck yields evidence that Chinese merchants flouted imperial trade ban
Archaeologists working on the wreck of a 400-year-old merchant vessel off south China have found evidence that Chinese merchants probably flouted bans on foreign trade at the time.
The salvage team has recovered more than 800 pieces of antique porcelain and copper coins from the ancient ship off the coast of Guangdong Province, said the provincial cultural relics bureau Sunday.
Archaeologists believe the ship, which sank in the Sandianjin waters off Nan'ao County, Shantou City, may have been carrying 10,000 pieces of blue-and-white porcelain, mostly made during Emperor Wanli's reign (1573-1620) of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
Some big porcelain bowls found in the vessel, dubbed "Nan'ao-1," were probably made for foreign trade as they were not commonly used in Chinese daily life at that time, they believe.
Court Puts Pressure on Germany to Open Adolf Eichmann Files
A German court has ruled against a decision by the country's foreign intelligence service, the BND, to keep classified thousands of files on Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust.
A German freelance journalist based in Argentina, Gabriele Weber, has been seeking access to the BND's 3,400 documents on Eichmann, who escaped to Argentina after the war, was abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, put on trial in Israel and hanged. She took legal action after the BND refused to open the Eichmann files on the grounds that disclosure would damage Germany's national interests.
The BND's refusal to open the files, which date back to the 1950s and 1960s, has triggered speculation that they contain embarrassing information about possible collusion between West German authorities and former Nazis in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Federal Administrative Court in the city of Leipzig ruled on Friday that the refusal to declassify the files was unlawful. "The reasons given for keeping them classified were only partly justified by the contents of the files and did not permit withholding them completely," the court said in a statement issued on Friday.
UN mission in Sudan extended
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday extended for another year its mission in Sudan and tasked it with additional responsibilities, including support for the self- determination vote next year between north and south Sudan.
The new mandate expires on April 30 2011 with the possibility for further renewal "as may be required", the 15-nation council said in voting unanimously for the extension.
The UN Mission in Sudan (Unmis) has deployed close to 10 000 troops, including 470 military observers, to monitor the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement between the government in Khartoum in the north and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the south.
Tory candidate Philippa Stroud trends on Twitter over 'gay cure' story
The high-flying Conservative candidate Philippa Stroud is currently trending on Twitter, the subject of a campaign to bring wider media attention to the Observer's story yesterday that she founded a church that tried to "cure" homosexuals by driving out their "demons" through prayer.
The story has been put on Facebook more than 5,000 times and tweeted more than 7,000 (these are both huge figures). Judging by today's Twitter activity, a lot of those people are surprised it has so far escaped the attention of the BBC and Sky News, eg:
Tory politican can cure teh gay. Awesum. /snark.
Drug Traffickers, Cuba and FARC, Latam’s Main Predators of Press Freedom
The list is compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders (RWB) and released on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May. It is an occasion for RWB to reaffirm the values it defends, the right to inform and the right to access information, without which democracy is impossible. Many characters in this year’s list of predators were already on last year’s list.
In Latin America, there is no change in the four major sources of threats and violence against journalists: drug traffickers, the Cuban dictatorship, FARC and the paramilitary groups. Africa has also seen few changes. But power relationships have been evolving in the Middle East and Asia.
Several predators have been dropped from the list, as in Somalia, where intelligence chief Mohamed Warsame Darwish, the instigator of heavy-handed raids, arbitrary arrests and, in some cases, deliberate shooting on the country’s few remaining journalists, was dismissed in December 2008.
AROUND THE COUNTRY
Stockton Bar neighbors not keen on mining proposal
A 200-foot-high gravel bar coveted by road builders as much as by students of Pleistocene climate change is pitting a company that paves Utah roads against small-town neighbors and, potentially, science against a new highway.
The Utah Department of Transportation is trading a rich gravel deposit in Stockton to an excavating company for a chunk of western Salt Lake Valley land the state needs for a highway, and some Tooele County neighbors fear environmental problems and loss of a unique geological feature left behind by Lake Bonne -ville.
The Utah Transportation Commission last week approved a trade of 28 state-owned acres of the Stockton Bar, a high, sagebrush-speckled gravel berm on Stockton's north end that separates the Rush Valley from the Tooele Valley. UDOT assured wary local officials that they haven't executed the contract yet, though a company representative said he expects to win a county rezone for mining and proceed with the plan, and he's working on getting neighbors' blessings.
No alcohol involved.
Corroon picks Republican Sheryl Allen as running mate in Utah gubernatorial race
Thirty years ago, when Utahns last elected a Democratic governor, they also voted in a Republican lieutenant governor.
Of course, the friction between Gov. Scott Matheson and Lt. Gov. Dave Monson helped force a change in the state constitution so governors and lieutenant governors no longer run separately.
But that history didn't stop Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon from naming a Republican running mate on Monday, the first time a major party has offered a bipartisan ticket in Utah.
Corroon spent the day traveling the state with his pick for lieutenant governor, Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful. Allen, a moderate who faced conservative challengers from within the GOP, had already decided not to seek a ninth term in the Legislature.
Police looking for Pakistani man who bought car used in failed NY bomb
POLICE are looking for a Pakistani national after identifying the buyer of the car used in the botched Times Square bombing.
The suspect is a man of Pakistani descent who recently travelled to Pakistan.
The man is a Connecticut resident who paid cash weeks ago for the SUV parked in Times Square on Saturday and rigged with a crude propane-and-petrol bomb.
An official says the car's last registered owner told investigators he sold the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder to a man he did not know three weeks ago.
Rescuers patrol flooded Nashville by Jet Ski as river crests; storm's death toll rises to 28
Muddy waters poured over the banks of Nashville's swollen Cumberland River on Monday, spilling into Music City's historic downtown streets while rescuers using boats and Jet Skis plucked stranded residents away from their flooded homes as the death toll from the weekend storms climbed to 28 people in three states.
The flash floods caused by record-breaking amounts of rain caught many off-guard, forcing thousands to frantically flee their homes and hotels. The rapidly rising waters led to the deaths of 17 people in Tennessee alone, including 10 in Nashville, and officials feared that the death toll could increase. Officials announced the latest deaths late Monday after receding flood waters revealed six more bodies.
OTHER
Political Cartoons
Pat Bagley for the Salt Lake Tribune on facts.
Sports Headlines
ISU basketball: University bypassed diversity rules to hire Hoiberg
Links
Flight to Utah forced to land in Idaho over space alien threat Every time I start to think I live in a sophisticated big city, I see a headline like this.
US reveals size of nuclear arms cache Look how big mine is! Seriously, the USA had the advantage over the Soviet Union from the beginning, according to Eisenhower's biographer Perret.
SPIEGEL Interview with Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi 'Switzerland Should be Dissolved as a State' I couldn't decide which q & a to quote. There were too many.