As your faithful scribe, I welcome you all to another edition of Overnight News Digest.
I am most pleased to share this platform with jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall, JLM9999 and side pocket. Additionally, I wish to recognize our alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, and ScottyUrb along with annetteboardman as our guest editor.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Lead Off Story
Silvio Berlusconi Ousted From Italian Parliament After Tax Fraud Conviction
Silvio Berlusconi suffered arguably the heaviest blow of his political career on Wednesday when the upper house of parliament voted to oust him following a conviction for tax fraud.
A hostile front of the centre-left and anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) voted against the former prime minister, who pulled his Forza Italia party from Enrico Letta's governing coalition and into opposition on Tuesday.
Berlusconi was not present for the Senate vote. But shortly before the chamber approved his expulsion he gave a defiant address to supporters outside his residence in central Rome, declaring a "day of mourning for democracy" and promising that he would remain on the political scene.
"Today they are toasting because they can take an adversary, they say a friend, in front of the executioner's squad," Berlusconi said. "It is the day they have been waiting for for 20 years."
theguardian
World News
Right-Wing Provocation: Russian and German Populists Meet
Over the weekend, a meeting of right-wing populists brought anti-immigrant activists and homophobes together in a jamboree of "family values." Some 500 protesters voiced their opposition to a speech by one of the women behind Russia's recent anti-gay law.
At least the beginning of the "For the Future of the Family" conference offered a spectacle: For several minutes, a mighty drumming sound echoed through the conference hall. Dozens of demonstrators banged against the walls of the building in Schkeuditz, a small town located near Leipzig. "Your idea of family makes us want to puke," read placards held up by young leftist protesters.
In the run-up to it, the event attracted significant controversy, in no small part due to the second half of the title to Saturday's program: "Are Europe's peoples being abolished?" German Middle East expert Peter Scholl-Latour and former news anchor Eva Herman -- who gained notoriety in Germany and was fired from her job at a public broadcaster several years ago for making favorable remarks about family values during the Third Reich -- had both been scheduled to attend. But both withdrew at short notice, Scholl-Latour citing scheduling issues while Herman said she was doing so out of fear for her family's safety and "because I don't want to expose myself to media mud-slinging."
Herman instead addressed conference participants with a pre-recorded audio message. "Family policy in Germany nowadays is scarcely distinguishable from the East German model," she said. While Herman's views are well-known, they pale in comparison with the conference's other speakers. Another last-minute cancellation came from Frauke Petry, spokesperson for the new euroskeptic Alternative for Germany party. Presumably party strategists had decided that the Alternative's mantra-like promise to not enter into coalition with right-wing populists in the European Parliament would sound hollow if Petry participated in a conference that played host to crude theorizing about issues as diverse as demography, heredity, the evils of day care centers or youth they claim can become gay as a result of homosexual proganda.
spiegel
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Japan Boosts Military Outlays To Counter Chinese Navy
China’s growing maritime power has emerged as the biggest challenge to the Japanese military since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tokyo this year halted a decade of declining military outlays with an 0.8% increase to 4.9 trillion yen.
Defense outlays next year are expected to increase more sharply by about 3% according to senior Japanese military officials. Japanese military analysts believe their navy still holds a clear advantage in technology and firepower over its Chinese rival but the gap is closing.
“The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force is the second-largest and second-most capable navy next to the U.S. navy,” says retired Admiral Yoji Koda. “The Chinese navy is very much afraid of the Japanese navy’s real capability.” Koda and other security experts estimate that it will take China about 15 years to match the Japanese and U.S. naval power in East Asia if Beijing can maintain its double digit annual increases in military spending.
China this year increased its defense budget by 10.7% to $119 billion but some foreign experts estimate Beijing’s real spending could be as high as $200 billion.
japantoday
U.S. News
Iran Nuclear Deal Foes Rein In Criticism
As they prepare for battle over the new deal to limit Iran's nuclear program, the accord's supporters and foes are calibrating strategies based on their reading of Americans' conflicted views about the Islamic Republic.
American war-weariness forms a big part of the Obama administration's campaign for the accord, a preliminary agreement to curb Iran's disputed nuclear program.
Administration officials have said that without a diplomatic deal,
the country would be on a "march to war."
For now, the administration appears to have the upper hand. Many skeptics of the deal, who issued sharp criticism shortly after its announcement, have since muted their words.
Instead of attacking the agreement directly, opponents have pinned their hopes on continued American suspicion of Iran and its leaders. They expect the government in Tehran to fail to meet its obligations under the agreement and are poised to go on the offensive if that happens.
latimes
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Pakistan Drone Attacks Lead Activists To Accuse Outed 'U.S. Spy' Of Murder
Rising anger over deadly drone attacks spurred a Pakistani political party Wednesday to reveal the secret identity of what it said was the top U.S. spy in the country. It demanded he be tried for murder, another blow to already jagged relations between the two nations.
A pair of U.S. missile strikes in recent weeks — including one that killed the Pakistani Taliban's leader as the government prepared to invite him to hold peace talks — has increased simmering tensions between Washington and Islamabad after years of public fury over the covert attacks. The apparent disclosure of the top CIA officer's name will almost certainly strain the fragile diplomacy that the U.S. is relying upon to help negotiate an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
It was the second time in recent years that Pakistanis opposed to drone strikes targeting Islamic militants have claimed to have revealed the identity of the top CIA spy in the country.
In a letter to Pakistani police, Shireen Mazari, the information secretary of political party Tehreek-e-Insaf, called for the CIA station chief in Islamabad and CIA Director John Brennan to be tried for murder and "waging war against Pakistan" in connection with a Nov. 21 drone strike on an Islamic seminary in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
huffpo
Science and Technology
Rebuilding Fuller’s Dymaxion
Some concept cars influence decades of automotive engineering.
Some concepts never catch on. Some simply catch fire.
The Dymaxion car, designed by the visionary US architect and all-round polymath R Buckminster Fuller, may be the rare prototype for which all of these things are true.
“It’s full of unique and different technologies,” says Jeff Lane, director of the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. “It was a failure commercially, but it tried lots of different things that have had big influence on car design.” It was a big enough influence on Lane that, 80 years later, he’s in the final stages of recreating Fuller’s first prototype.
When the first zeppelin-shaped vehicle debuted in 1933, it broke every automotive design convention save the use of round wheels. Nearly 20 feet (6.1 metres) long, it could transport 11 people and return 30mpg thanks to wind-tunnel-tested aerodynamics and lightweight aluminium-skin construction. Its engine was rear-mounted but powered the front wheels, and it was steered with a single back wheel, a less-than-intuitive arrangement that may have contributed to a fatal crash that occurred during its demonstration at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
bbc
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Scientists Find Brain Region That Helps You Make Up Your Mind
One of the smallest parts of the brain is getting a second look after new research suggests it plays a crucial role in decision making.
A University of British Columbia study published in Nature Neuroscience says the lateral habenula, a region of the brain linked to depression and avoidance behaviours, has been largely misunderstood and may be integral in cost-benefit decisions.
"These findings clarify the brain processes involved in the important decisions that we make on a daily basis, from choosing between job offers to deciding which house or car to buy," says Prof. Stan Floresco of UBC's Dept. of Psychology and Brain Research Centre (BRC). "It also suggests that the scientific community has misunderstood the true functioning of this mysterious, but important, region of the brain."
In the study, scientists trained lab rats to choose between a consistent small reward (one food pellet) or a potentially larger reward (four food pellets) that appeared sporadically. Like humans, the rats tended to choose larger rewards when costs -- in this case, the amount of time they had to wait before receiving food-were low and preferred smaller rewards when such risks were higher.
sciencedaily
Society and Culture
If It Happened There… America’s Annual Festival Pilgrimage Begins
(This is the fourth installment of a continuing series in which American
events are described using the tropes and tone normally employed
by the American media to describe events in other countries.)
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States—On Wednesday morning, this normally bustling capital city became a ghost town as most of its residents embarked on the long journey to their home villages for an annual festival of family, food, and questionable historical facts. Experts say the day is vital for understanding American society and economists are increasingly taking note of its impact on the world economy.
The annual holiday, known as Thanksgiving, celebrates a mythologized moment of peace between America’s early foreign settlers and its native groups—a day that by Americans' own admission preceded a near genocide of those groups. Despite its murky origins, the holiday remains a rare institution celebrated almost universally in this ethnically diverse society.
During the holiday, more than 38.4 million Americans will make the long pilgrimage home, traveling an average of 214 miles over congested highways, often in inclement weather. The more prosperous citizens will frequently opt for the nation's airways, suffering through a series of flight delays and missed airline connections thanks to the country’s decaying transportation infrastructure and residual fears of foreign terrorist attacks.
Once home, the holiday’s traditions encourage Americans to consume massive quantities of food centered around the turkey, a flightless—and some would say tasteless—bird native to the American continent. All in all, 46 million of these animals will be slaughtered for the feast, nearly 20 percent of those raised each year. The average American will consume an almost unbelievable 4,500 calories, despite ongoing warnings about dangerous obesity rates nationally.
slate
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Springsteen’s Handwritten ‘Born to Run’ Lyrics Head To Auction
The lyrics to “Born to Run,” the evocative title track of Bruce Springsteen’s third album, from 1975, seem to roll off Mr. Springsteen’s tongue on the recording, a torrent of inspired urban car-culture imagery. But a page torn from a spiral-bound notebook that once belonged to Mr. Springsteen, which is currently up for auction at Sotheby’s, shows that it was a long road from Mr. Springsteen’s early thoughts about the song to its finished version.
The manuscript, said to date from 1974, includes 30 lines in Mr. Springsteen’s handwriting, neatly written in blue ink, but with second thoughts added in the margins and in the space above some of the lyrics. Certain key phrases, or early versions of them, are present – “this town’ll rip the bones from your back, it’s a suicide trap” (Mr. Springsteen has written “rap” over the last word) is there, as is “tramps like us baby we were born to run.”
But most of the lines in this version vanished as Mr. Springsteen worked on the song. For example: “I looked out cross my hood + saw the highway buckle neath the wheels of a gold Chevy 6.” That is followed by a numbered choice of lines: “I was headin for the place were good girls die in the arms of wild angels in one last kiss,” and “I was headin for the place where wild angels die in an everlasting or neverending kiss” – an image that, in altered form, made its way to the finished song.
nytimes
Well, that's different...
Children of 8 are 'racist' if they miss Islam trip:
School's threatening letter to parents is met with outrage.
Parents were ordered to send their children to a workshop on Islam or have them labelled as racist for the rest of their school career.
They were sent a letter warning that the primary school pupils would have a ‘racial discrimination note’ put on their records if they did not go.
Families were told to pay £5 per child for the Explore Islam trip next Wednesday to Staffordshire University, which would involve Year 4 and Year 6 children being shown Islamic artefacts
dailymail
Bill Moyers and Company:
Henry Giroux
Highly Recommended - The Editor