The Overnight News Digest is an ongoing evening series dedicated to chronicling the day's news that the editor de la nuit finds of import or interest. Everyone is welcome to add their own news items in the comments. Tonight, I am featuring news from around the world.
Top Story
- NYT - Severe Drought Seen as Driving Cost of Food Up
Scorching heat and the worst drought in nearly a half-century are threatening to send food prices up, spooking consumers and leading to worries about global food costs.
On Wednesday, the government said it expected the record-breaking weather to drive up the price for groceries next year, including milk, beef, chicken and pork. The drought is now affecting 88 percent of the corn crop, a staple of processed foods and animal feed as well as the nation’s leading farm export.
The government’s forecast, based on a consumer price index for food, estimated that prices would rise 4 to 5 percent for beef next year with slightly lower increases for pork, eggs and dairy products.
The drought comes along with heat. So far, 2012 is the hottest year ever recorded in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose records date to 1895. That has sapped the production of corn, soybeans and other crops, afflicting poultry and livestock in turn. |
- Guardian - The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise
Although the world was hoping for a good US harvest to replenish dangerously low grain stocks, this is no longer on the cards. World carryover stocks of grain will fall further at the end of this crop year, making the food situation even more precarious. Food prices, already elevated, will follow the price of corn upward, quite possibly to record highs.
Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself. We saw early signs of the unraveling in 2008 following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As world food prices climbed, exporting countries began restricting grain exports to keep their domestic food prices down. In response, governments of importing countries panicked. Some of them turned to buying or leasing land in other countries on which to produce food for themselves.
Welcome to the new geopolitics of food scarcity. As food supplies tighten, we are moving into a new food era, one in which it is every country for itself. |
USA
- LAT - Obama calls for more steps to curb violence, including gun control
President Obama vowed Wednesday night to “leave no stone unturned” in seeking ways to curb the growing challenge of violence in American cities, including reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.
The president offered his most extensive comments in some time on the issue of gun control in a speech to the National Urban League, which came at the end of a four-day trip that began in Colorado, where he met with victims of the movie theater shooting that claimed a dozen lives. After that meeting, he reflected on the lives affected by the shooting, but did not suggest a refreshed attempt to restrict gun ownership.
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- Oregonian - Mariel Zagunis' honor as U.S flag bearer has family scrambling to attend Olympic Opening Ceremony
Beaverton native and two-time Olympic fencing champion Mariel Zagunis will carry the U.S. flag in the Opening Ceremony on Friday in London.
The U.S. Olympic Committee on Wednesday announced that Zagunis won a vote of the 529-member team, which means she'll serve in the most prestigious role available to an American Olympian.
"I'm extremely humbled by this incredible privilege," Zagunis, 27, said in a statement. "As an athlete, I can't imagine a higher honor than to lead Team USA into the Olympic Games, which are the pinnacle of sport and a platform for world peace. I am tremendously proud to represent my sport, our team and, most importantly, the United States of America." |
- StarTribune - Planting green space on roofs is a growing trend
There's a quiet creep of green moving across the rooftops of the Twin Cities, with succulent sedum, purple plugs of allium and other hearty plants replacing rock and tar…
The green roof phenomenon -- growing plants on rooftops -- has been quietly catching on here and nationwide, mostly as new public and corporate buildings gradually pop up in a slow economy. Experts point to the roofs' ecological and economic benefits, including storm water management, energy conservation, improved air quality, creation of new wildlife habitat and mitigation of the "urban heat island effect" -- where cities are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas…
Although green roofs usually cost more upfront than conventional roofs, proponents claim they last longer, sometimes 45 years or more, according to a Michigan State University report. |
Europe
- EU Observer - 'Banksters' could face criminal sanctions under EU rate fixing rules
Bankers caught fixing the inter-bank lending rate Libor could in future face criminal charges after the European Commission announced plans on Wednesday (25 July) to widen the scope of the ongoing legislation on Market Abuse to include rate fixing.
Unveiling the proposals, which have been added to the Market Abuse legislation aimed at combating insider dealing and market manipulation, Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding accused those involved as acting as though they were "more banksters than bankers. Public confidence in banks have "taken a nosedive with the latest scandal," she said.
Among the changes to the legislative package, which was tabled by the EU executive last October and is currently being debated in the European Parliament, are amendments to include the manipulation of interest rates and other financial sector benchmarks. |
- Guardian - How Finland keeps its head above eurozone crisis
Finland – home of reindeer, pickled fish and Nokia – is now the only eurozone country with a stable triple-A credit rating, according to Moody's…
Moody's said that while Finland would not be immune to the eurozone crisis, it had "strong buffers which differentiate it from the other AAAs". Among these were the fact it has no debt on a net basis. The IMF estimates Helsinki will collect taxes and other revenues of €105bn (£82bn) this year, compared with €101bn of government debt.
Finland has a small banking system focused on domestic customers, as well as "limited exposure to, and therefore relative insulation from, the euro area in terms of trade", notes Moody's. Finland has also insisted on receiving collateral in exchange for its participation in eurozone bailouts – which has impressed Moody's. |
- NYT - Olympics Test Limits of London Commuters’ Patience
Londoners, forced to navigate a vast city using one of the largest and oldest public transit systems in the world and a road network first laid out by the Romans, are not noted for suffering transportation woes in silence. But the everyday grumbling here sharpened Wednesday as the restrictions and increased demands of the Olympic Games began to bite.
London has spent more than $9 billion on refurbishing its creaking transportation infrastructure — parts of its underground train network date from 1863 — in time for the Games. The road and rail system will face a million trips a day in addition to the usual 3.5 million when the Games begin Friday, transportation officials warned in a news conference on Tuesday…
The city’s taxi drivers, in their well-known black cabs, have been among the most vocal predictors of doom, and they staged a protest on Tower Bridge this week. In the privacy of their cabs, they often regale passengers with more personal disaster warnings. “I’d leave the city if I could,” said one, flagged down in East London on Wednesday afternoon. |
Africa
- CS Monitor - After death of Ghana's president, a calm transition
Ghana’s vice president John Dramani Mahama was sworn in as president last night after the sudden death of former leader John Evans Atta Mills yesterday afternoon.
Mr. Atta Mills's death came just months before Ghana's presidential and parliamentary elections, and it could set off a close contest between the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and its main rival, the New Patriotic Party…
“Most Ghanaians know that nothing will happen and the democratic process will continue to go on,” says Dr. Kwadwo Adjei Tutu of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a political think tank based in Accra. “But there could be a significant power play there" between those who supported Mills and those who supported the wife of NDC party founder and former President Jerry Rawlings, whose relationship had grown tense over the past |
- allAfrica - Parliament Threatens to Impeach Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan is blamed for poor execution of the budget, midway into the financial year.
The ongoing face-off between the Nigerian Presidency and House of Representatives (the lower Chamber of Parliament) gathered more storm on Monday July 23 with the House vowing not to withdraw its threat to begin impeachment proceedings against President Goodluck Jonathan should he fail to improve on his performance on budget implementation by September.
The Guardian newspaper of Nigeria cited the House of Representatives Spokesman, Hon. Zakari Mohammed as declaring in a statement in the capital, Abuja that none of its members would bow to any pressure to rescind its decision, adding that the only interest of the House was to ensure that life was made better for ordinary Nigerians. |
- BBC - Hunter gatherer clue to obesity
The idea that exercise is more important than diet in the fight against obesity has been contradicted by new research.
A study of the Hadza tribe, who still exist as hunter gatherers, suggests the amount of calories we need is a fixed human characteristic. This suggests Westerners are growing obese through over-eating rather than having inactive lifestyles, say scientists…
The relative balance of overeating to lack of exercise is a matter of debate, however. Some experts have proposed that our need for calories has dropped drastically since the industrial revolution, and this is a bigger risk factor for obesity than changes in diet.
A study published in the PLoS ONE journal tested the theory, by looking at energy expenditure in the Hadza tribe of Tanzania. |
Middle East
- Spiegel - Assad's Bloody Battle to Cling to Power
This is Rastan. It was once a city of 55,000, set in an idyllic part of central Syria, between hills and a reservoir, almost exactly halfway between Homs and Hama.
Today Rastan is an inferno under siege, under attack from all sides by tanks, mortars and rocket launchers. All major access roads are closed. The mosques are riddled with artillery holes, and entire blocks have been reduced to rubble. Streetlights hang at bizarre angles between crumbled walls. A wholesale bakery that supplied the entire city was destroyed by shells months ago, the two water towers have been shot to pieces, and last week the last major food warehouse was struck by artillery fire and burned for a day and a half.
No one could have anticipated that Rastan would become a center of the resistance against the dictatorship of President Bashar Assad and his family. |
- McClatchy - Political crisis over, Yemen now faces a lack of food
Yemen has long suffered from chronic poverty, but the past year – filled with political turmoil amid a protest movement that ended the 30-year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh and a determined offensive by al Qaida-linked insurgents – has pushed the country to what international aid agencies have called a dire humanitarian catastrophe. As the country’s fragile economy has been brought to the brink of collapse, unemployment has risen and prices of staples like rice and flour have skyrocketed, leaving huge number of Yemenis struggling to afford basics like food, fuel and electricity.
According to the United Nations, as many as 10 million people – more than 40 percent of Yemen’s population – don’t have enough to eat; 267,000 Yemeni children suffer from severe malnutrition. Yet the problem has received little attention in the outside world, where Yemen’s role in the battle against international terrorism dominates coverage of the country.
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- AJE - Iraq blasts kill Kurdish security officials
A twin blast has killed six members of the Kurdish intelligence forces known as the Asayish and wounded three others in a town north of the capital Baghdad, hospital and police sources said.
The first bomb was planted outside a house of a member of the Asayish in Tuz Khurmatu, Salahuddin province, 170km north of Baghdad. When Asayish members arrived at the scene to evacuate the wounded, a bomb-rigged motorised cart then exploded. Three civilians were also wounded in the attack, sources said on Tuesday.
At least 107 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Monday, a day after 20 died in explosions, in a co-ordinated surge of violence against mostly Shia Muslim targets. |
South Asia
- Times of India - Assam riots spread to new areas, toll rises to 40
Even with the state machinery out in full gear and soldiers maintaining vigil in four districts, violence in lower Assam continued unabated on Wednesday, with the conflagration scorching new areas in Kokrajhar and Chirang districts where eight more bodies were found.
The toll of those killed in ethnic and communal clashes, fuelled by animosity between Bodos and the rising population of Muslims who settled on tribal land, now stands at 40. The killings have led to one of the largest ever exoduses in Assam's recent history, with officials saying 1.7 lakh people from 400 villages in Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts are now homeless and sheltered in 128 camps that dot the conflict zone.
Panic-stricken villagers are fleeing to relief camps or wherever their ethnic or religious group is in a majority using all modes of transport: from horse-drawn carts and hand-pulled rickshaws to bicycles, motorcycles and trucks. On Wednesday, hundreds were trekking through monsoon-drenched forests to escape armed militia from either side. |
- Politico - Afghanistan: Example of how not to give aid
The way Thor Halvorssen sees it, trying to spend aid money in Afghanistan “is like giving booze and car keys to a teenager.”
Halvorssen is president of the Human Rights Foundation, and he’s skeptical, even scornful, of trying to make progress on human-rights issues in Afghanistan. On that, Halvorssen is far from alone.
“For Afghanistan at the moment, I’d have to say the picture is very pessimistic,” said James Hoge, chairman of the board for Human Rights Watch.
Human-rights and foreign-aid officers have been working intensely in Afghanistan, spending tens of billions of dollars, for more than 10 years. So, can Afghanistan be considered a laboratory of sorts to see what human-rights work can actually accomplish? It depends on whom you ask. |
- Daily Times - Contempt of court: Even president has no immunity
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Chaudhry on Wednesday said that if the court had not given immunity to the prime minister in contempt of court law then how could it give the same to the president or governors.
The CJP said that if the court had not given exemption to people listed in the Contempt of Court Act 2012 then it might be possible not to grant immunity to the president and governors.
A five-member bench observed that the president and governors were entitled to immunity under criminal law. The CJP remarked that immunity was for performing functions in official capacity and not in personal functions. He said Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were not given immunity. The CJP said violating the court orders means contempt. |
Asia
- WaPo - North Korea Leader Kim Jong Un’s mystery woman is his wife
The mystery woman beside young leader Kim Jong Un at recent public events is indeed his wife, North Korea has confirmed, ending weeks of speculation and offering a new contrast between Kim and his intensely private late father and predecessor.
The news about “comrade Ri Sol Ju” was buried Wednesday in a state TV report about Kim’s tour of a new amusement park. It was delivered casually by a newscaster who gave no details about Ri, including how long she and Kim have been married.
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- Reuters - Suu Kyi Addresses Myanmar Parliament, Illustrating Year of Change
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi addressed Myanmar's parliament for the first time on Wednesday to support calls by a ruling party lawmaker for new laws to protect the country's many ethnic minority groups.
While her address might be routine for many parliaments around the world, it symbolized the huge changes that have unfolded in Myanmar since the military ceded power to a quasi-civilian government in March last year…
Speaking from the floor of the lower house in the remote capital, Naypyitaw, Suu Kyi said Myanmar's ethnic minorities had suffered decades of civil war and underdevelopment and that laws should be made to ensure their rights were guaranteed. |
- China Daily - US factories eye home as China costs rise
After decades roaming the world in search of lower costs, US manufacturers are finding that factories at home can compete with China, India, Mexico and other low-cost countries.
To be sure, labor-intensive industries like clothing and electronics, which are heavily dependent on hand assembly, are seen as unlikely to come back to the United States in a major way. And the trickle of returning jobs is far from a flood. But higher transportation costs and wage inflation in China could drive more production back to the United States.
Prime candidates for return are bulky, heavy items. GE has shifted production of appliances from Mexico and China to Louisville, Kentucky, partly due to rising shipping costs. The new plant that Caterpillar is building near Athens, Georgia, will employ about 1,400 and make small bulldozers and excavators. |
- LAT - China flooding gives government another credibility crisis
Deadly rain that battered the nation's capital over the weekend has left the Chinese government knee-deep in its latest credibility crisis. Authorities are accused of underreporting the number of dead while failing to provide adequate infrastructure to safeguard against flooding in a swiftly modernizing metropolis.
The official death count in Saturday's downpour, described as the heaviest in more than 60 years, was 37 people. The deluge paralyzed Beijing's outdated drainage system, flooding wide swaths of the city, toppling homes, downing power lines and trapping an unknown number of motorists in submerged vehicles…
"Who cares about us?" Wang Jianxue told a Hong Kong broadcaster Monday while searching for his brother in a flooded Fangshan ditch. "I called police. No one cared. The next morning I came here myself looking for my brother." |
- CS Monitor - Fish-loving Japan begins to embrace sustainable seafood
A sign that market-based efforts to make fishing and aquaculture more environmentally friendly are spreading from Europe and the US, where eco-labeling schemes like the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) were first launched, to Asia, where most of the world’s fishermen, fish farmers, and seafood consumers live.
So far in Asia, wealthy, seafood-loving Japan is leading the way… Consumers and corporations here are becoming some of the first in Asia to put their buying power to work for the cause of sustainable seafood.
Signs of the nascent revolution could be found on a recent afternoon in the sprawling fish display of a chain grocery store in Nagano Prefecture, three hours from Tokyo. There, nearly hidden among the piles of attractively packaged seafood and the red flags blaring “The more you buy, the cheaper it seems!,” sat several dozen Styrofoam trays of salmon and trout roe, salted mackerel, and salmon steaks bearing the MSC logo, signifying that the fish had been sustainably caught. |
Oceana
- AFP - Australian fossil find could hold key to climate change
Australian cavers have stumbled upon a vast network of tunnels containing fossils that could offer key insights into species' adaptation to climate change, scientists have confirmed.
The limestone caves in Australia's far north contained what University of Queensland paleontologist Gilbert Price described as a "fossil goldmine" of species ranging from minute rodents and frogs to giant kangaroos.
Once part of an ancient rainforest, the remote site now lies in arid grassland and Price said the fossilised remains could hold key clues about how the creatures had adapted to climate change and evolved to their current forms. The caves' oldest specimens are estimated to be 500,000 years old. |
Americas
- WSJ - Tribes Hold Engineers of Dam in Brazil
Two indigenous tribes in Brazil's Amazon rainforest are holding hostage three engineers working for the company building the contested Belo Monte dam, the latest trouble to hit the $13 billion project.
The engineers working for Norte Energia, a consortium of Brazilian firms and pension funds, were being held in a village close to where the 11,233-megawatt dam is being built on the Xingu River, Brazil's national indigenous institute, called Funai, said Wednesday.
Leaders of the Juruna and Arara tribes say construction of the dam, which has been opposed by environmental groups and activists like Hollywood director James Cameron, is already preventing them from traveling freely along the Xingu, a tributary of the Amazon River. |
- MercoPress - Chavez unveils 3D image of Simon Bolivar based on his exhumed body
Venezuela's Hugo Chávez unveiled a 3D image of South America's 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar on Tuesday, based on bones the president ordered exhumed two years ago to test his theory that Bolivar was murdered.
In a ceremony to mark the 229th anniversary of Bolivar's birth, senior government officials and military commanders clapped as Chávez and a group of school children unveiled the new image, which was based on scans of Bolivar's skull.
The populist leader reveres Bolivar - he renamed the country the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” - and has wrapped his leftist “revolution” in the imagery and language of the region's battle to break free of colonial power Spain. |
- AJE - Mexican official: CIA 'manages' drug trade
The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers", a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead "they try to manage the drug trade".
Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico's most violent states - one which directly borders Texas - going on the record with such accusations is unique.
"It's like pest control companies, they only control," Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, the Chihuahua spokesman, told Al Jazeera last month at his office in Juarez. "If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs." |
- Globe and Mail - B.C. calls on Alberta, Ottawa to join pipeline talks
British Columbia Premier Christy Clark opened another front in her demand for a “fair share” of benefits from the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, calling on the Harper government to sit down at the negotiating table along with Alberta.
Ms. Clark laid out the new terms as Canada’s premiers met with aboriginal leaders in the historic fishing town of Lunenburg ahead of the annual Council of the Federation meetings, which begins Thursday in Halifax. “My basic request is for Alberta and Canada to come to the table and sit down and figure out how we can resolve this,” she told reporters after the meeting.
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- BBC - Satellites reveal sudden Greenland ice melt
The surface of Greenland's massive ice sheet has melted this month over an unusually large area, Nasa has said.
Scientists said the "unprecedented" melting took place over a larger area than has been detected in three decades of satellite observation. Melting even occurred at Greenland's coldest and highest place, Summit station.
The thawed ice area jumped from 40% of the ice sheet to 97% in just four days from 8 July. |
Arctic
- Guardian - Loss of Arctic sea ice '70% man-made'
The radical decline in sea ice around the Arctic is at least 70% due to human-induced climate change, according to a new study, and may even be up to 95% down to humans – rather higher than scientists had previously thought.
The loss of ice around the Arctic has adverse effects on wildlife and also opens up new northern sea routes and opportunities to drill for oil and gas under the newly accessible sea bed.
The reduction has been accelerating since the 1990s and many scientists believe the Arctic may become ice-free in the summers later this century, possibly as early as the late 2020s. |