Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Reuters
Putin orders Russian troop withdrawal from Ukrainian border
(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to withdraw to their permanent bases after military exercises in Rostov region near the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin said, in a sign of some tension easing before a key meeting next week.
The troop pullout came before an expected meeting between Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko in Milan next week.
The Kremlin said that the Russian president had met his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu.
"The minister had reported to the Supreme Commander about the completion of summer period of training on shooting ranges of the southern military district," said a statement on the Kremlin's web site.
"After the report, Putin ordered to launch the return of the troops to their permanent bases. In total, these are 17,600 military servicemen who were trained on the shooting ranges of Rostov region in summer."
Russian RIA Novosti news agency, citing the defense ministry, said that the troops have already started to pull out.
Reuters
Kurds hold off Islamic State in Kobani; fighters strike in Iraq
(Reuters) - Kurdish defenders held off Islamic State militants in Syria's border town of Kobani on Sunday, but the fighters struck with deadly bombings in Iraq, killing dozens of Kurds in the north and assassinating a provincial police commander in the west.
The top U.S. military officer suggested that Washington, which has ruled out joining ground combat in either Iraq or Syria, could nevertheless increase its role "advising and assisting" Iraqi troops on the ground in the future.
U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said in a television interview that Turkey agreed to let bases be used by coalition forces for activities inside Iraq and Syria and to train moderate Syrian rebels in the fight against Islamic State.
A U.S.-led military coalition has been bombing Islamic State fighters who hold swathes of territory in both Iraq and Syria, countries involved in complex multi-sided civil wars in which nearly every country in the Middle East has a stake.
Reuters
Kerry pushes for Mideast peace, donors pledge $5 billion for Palestinians
(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Sunday for a renewed commitment to achieving Middle East peace, saying a lasting deal between Israel, the Palestinians and all their neighbors was possible.
But prospects for a renewed peace process appeared dim as Kerry offered no specifics on how to restart negotiations in his speech to a Gaza reconstruction conference that raised more than $5 billion in aid for the Palestinians after a devastating war in the tiny coastal territory.
The last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks foundered in April over Israeli objections to a Palestinian political unity pact that included the Islamist Hamas movement and over Palestinian opposition to Israeli settlement expansion.
"Out of this conference must come not just money but a renewed commitment from everybody to work for peace that meets the aspirations of all, for Israelis, for Palestinians, for all people of this region," Kerry told the meeting in Cairo.
"And I promise you the full commitment of President (Barack)Obama, myself and the United States to try to do that," he said.
Al Jazeera America
Handling Hamas money just got a lot riskier for Middle East banks
As the dust settles on a landmark ruling against Jordan-based Arab Bank, found liable for knowingly processing transactions of Hamas members and thereby supporting its attacks on civilians, legal experts have just begun to parse the implications for banks that do business in the volatile Middle East. But as the case heads toward appeal, the world’s financial institutions have been put on notice: Turn a blind eye to clients designated by the U.S. as "foreign terrorist organizations," as Arab Bank was accused of doing, and face the consequences.
Late last month, the jury in a class-action civil case filed by 297 relatives and representatives of American victims of Hamas suicide bombings in Israel found that Arab Bank, one of the region's largest financial institutions with over $40 billion in assets, had provided material support for the group — 10 years after the lead case, Linde et al. v. Arab Bank PLC, was filed.
Among other Hamas-related transactions that totaled about $100 million, Arab Bank processed a series of $5,300 payments to the families of suicide bombers from a Saudi-registered charity, the Saudi Committee.
The bank argued that it followed the rules under the Know Your Customer provision of the Patriot Act by running the individuals' names by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and other U.S. government blacklists. It only proceeded with the transactions after coming up with no matches, apparently because of misspellings in the English transliterations of their names.
Raw Story
Billions set aside for post-Saddam Iraq turns up in Lebanese bunker
More than $1bn earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq was stolen and spirited to a bunker in Lebanon as the American and Iraqi governments ignored appeals to recover the money, it has been claimed.
Stuart Bowen, a former special inspector general who investigated corruption and waste in Iraq, said the stash accounted for a significant chunk of the huge sums which vanished during the chaotic months following the 2003 US-led invasion.
Bowen’s team discovered that $1.2bn to $1.6bn was moved to a bunker in rural Lebanon for safe keeping – and then pleaded in vain for Baghdad and Washington to act, according to James Risen, a journalist who interviewed Bowen for a book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War , to be published this week.
Raw Story
Bernie Sanders reminds CNN host: You can slam Obama, but Bush’s ‘blunder’ created ISIS
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Sunday told CNN host Candy Crowley that it was easy to criticize President Barack Obama’s fight against ISIS in Iraq, but he reminded her that it was President George Bush’s “disastrous blunder” that allowed the extremists group to get a foothold in the first place.
In a interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Sanders agreed that ISIS had to be defeated, but he said that “the people of America are getting sick and tired of the world and region — Saudi Arabia and the other countries — saying, ‘Hey, we don’t have to do anything about it. The American taxpayer, the American soldiers will do all the work for us.’”
“Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest defense spender in the world,” he pointed out. “They have an army which is probably seven times larger than ISIS, they have a major air force. Their country is run by a royal family worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Sanders said that if the battle was perceived as the United States vs. ISIS then “we’re going to lose that war.”
“This is a war for the soul of Islam, and the Muslim nations must be deeply involved,” he insisted. “And to the degree the developed countries are involved, it should be the U.K., France, Germany, other countries as well.”
Raw Story
Tropical fish are fleeing warming waters and heading to the poles ( I believe Knucklehead's are staying put.)
Fish are acutely aware of sea temperature; it’s one of the key reasons particular species of fish live where they do. As the oceans warm however, many tropical species are moving towards cooler climes. So might the traditional cod and chips one day be replaced by Nemo and chips?
It’s a big question, as the distribution of species across the Earth is one of the most fundamental patterns in ecology. All plants and animals are of course adapted to a limited set of climatic and environmental conditions; if the climate changes, we expect distributions to change. This matters not only because we like to eat many of the species in question, but also because entire ecosystems appear to depend on the number of interacting species present.
In general the tropics have more different species than the poles. This pattern, known as the latitudinal diversity gradient, holds true for plants and animals across the world both on land and in the sea. Compare a rainforest or a coral reef with icy tundra or the Arctic ocean.
N Y Times
Breakthrough Replicates Human Brain Cells for Use in Alzheimer’s Research
For the first time, and to the astonishment of many of their colleagues, researchers created what they call Alzheimer’s in a Dish — a petri dish with human brain cells that develop the telltale structures of Alzheimer’s disease. In doing so, they resolved a longstanding problem of how to study Alzheimer’s and search for drugs to treat it; the best they had until now were mice that developed an imperfect form of the disease.
The key to their success, said the lead researcher, Rudolph E. Tanzi of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was a suggestion by his colleague Doo Yeon Kim to grow human brain cells in a gel, where they formed networks as in an actual brain. They gave the neurons genes for Alzheimer’s disease. Within weeks they saw the hard Brillo-like clumps known as plaques and then the twisted spaghetti-like coils known as tangles — the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease.
The work, which also offers strong support for an old idea about how the disease progresses, was published in Nature on Sunday. Leading researchers said it should have a big effect.
N Y Times
Arrests Divide a Town That Lived for Football
SAYREVILLE, N.J. — Blue here has always meant Bomber Blue, the color worn by fans flooding the field to cheer on the town’s championship football teams.
As people here gathered for a vigil on Sunday night amid the allegations of hazing and sexual assault that ended the team’s season, they were preparing to wear ribbons of a darker blue, the symbol of a national anti-bullying campaign. Some wondered whether Bomber gear would be unwelcome at the vigil; would it, as one football mom warned, “pour salt in the wound”?
It was but one question in a town gripped by a larger one: What should the role of football be, in a place where it has long been ritualized and celebrated?
The recent struggles of the National Football League, with allegations of domestic violence, charges of locker-room bullying and questions about the long-term effects of head trauma, were something that people in football towns like this one just read about, or saw on television.
But the troubles that have shaken the sport at its highest levels arrived here last week with the arrests of seven players accused of engaging in criminal sexual contact, as part of a frightening locker room ritual.
C/Net
Edward Snowden's girlfriend is with him in Moscow
No great spy tale is complete without a love angle.
It's as if spies need something to rely on, as their daily lives are defined by subterfuge.
When the tale of Edward Snowden's heroism/treason (delete as appropriate) came to light, the love angle was bathed in pain.
It was said (allegedly even by her father) that his dancer girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, had been abandoned in Hawaii while Snowden sought fame/refuge (delete as appropriate).
Last night, however, love's labor was found to be still alive in the land of the kolkhoz. The premiere of a new Snowden documentary, "Citizenfour," revealed that far from being abandoned, Mills is now living with her man in Moscow (and it also apparently confirms that there's a second leaker).
As The Intercept reports, the movie, made by its co-founding editor Laura Poitras, reveals that Snowden "is now living in domestic bliss." Yes, in Moscow, where he now lives on a three-year permit.