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.
Special thanks to JekyllnHyde for the new OND banner.
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BBC
As a gunman holds people hostage in a cafe in Sydney, thousands of messages of support have been posted online for Muslims in Australia who are afraid of an Islamophobic backlash.
The spark was this post on Facebook by Rachael Jacobs, who said she'd seen a woman she presumed was Muslim silently removing her hijab while sitting next to her on the train: "I ran after her at the train station. I said 'put it back on. I'll walk with u'. She started to cry and hugged me for about a minute - then walked off alone'.
The story of Rachael's encounter with a woman in religious attire inspired this Twitter user, 'Sir Tessa', aka Tessa Kum: "If you reg take the #373 bus b/w Coogee/MartinPl, wear religious attire, & don't feel safe alone: I'll ride with you. @ me for schedule," user 'Sir Tessa' tweeted. Moments later she tweeted "Maybe start a hashtag? What's in #illridewithyou?"
Reuters
Heavily armed Australian police stormed a Sydney cafe early on Tuesday morning and freed a number of hostages being held there at gunpoint, in a dramatic end to a 16-hour siege in which three people including the attacker were killed.
Police have not publicly identified the gunman but a police source named him as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian refugee and self-styled sheikh known for sending hate mail to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and who was charged last year with being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.
During the siege at the Lindt cafe in Sydney's central business district, hostages had been forced to display an Islamic flag, igniting fears of a jihadist attack.
NPR
Just as the siege entered its second day, police stormed a chocolate shop in downtown Sydney, ending a more than 12-hour hostage standoff that began during morning rush hour.
Television images showed police throwing what appeared to be stun grenades before entering the building. One hostage was carried out, while others ran out with their hands over their heads.
"Sydney siege is over," the New South Wales Police tweeted. "More details to follow."
New South Wales police, in a statement, said shots were fired during the confrontation. It said the 50-year-old gunman died in the hospital. A 34-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman also died in the hospital, the statement said.
BBC
Two people died, along with an Islamist gunman, after commandos stormed a cafe in Sydney, Australia, to bring to an end a 16-hour siege.
The gunman, identified as an Iranian refugee, had taken dozens of hostages.
Four people were injured, including a policeman hit by shotgun pellets.
Central Sydney was put in lockdown when the gunman seized the hostages early on Monday, forcing some of them to hold up a black Islamic banner at the window of the Lindt cafe.
The Lindt Chocolat Cafe is located in Martin Place, a busy shopping area in Sydney's financial district.
The gunman was named as Man Haron Monis. He received political asylum in Australia in 1996 and was on bail facing a number of charges.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the "horrific incident" at the cafe had been "tragic beyond words" and there were "lessons to be learned" from this "brush with terrorism".
Al Jazeera America
Heavily armed Australian police stormed a downtown Sydney cafe early Tuesday, ending a 16-hour standoff with a gunman who was holding 17 hostages.
Gunfire and explosions accompanied the raid, which came shortly after five or six people were seen fleeing out of the Lindt Chocolate Cafe. Australian police confirmed that three people were killed in the course of the stand-off, including the gunman. Some of the hostages were injured in the course of the ordeal, including a female hostage who was shot in the leg, a hospital official said. At least two others were wheeled out of the cafe on stretchers.
Shortly before the raid, police identified the hostage taker as Man Haron Monis, a 50-year-old Iranian-born self-styled sheikh.
Police raided the cafe after they heard a number of gunshots from inside, said New South Wales state police Commissioner Andrew Scipione.
McClatchy
ULM, GERMANY — Khalid al Masri is a broken man today. A decade after the CIA snatched him by mistake, flew him half way around the world in secret, and questioned him as part of its detention and interrogation program, he’s yet to recover.
He’s abandoned his home. He no longer is part of the lives of his wife or children. Friends can’t find him. His attorneys can’t find him. German foreign intelligence will say only that he’s “somewhere in a western-leaning Arab nation.”
When his Ulm attorney and confidant Manfred Gnjidic last saw him, he was broke, unkempt, paranoid and completely alone. He’d been arrested twice and sent once to a psychiatric ward, once to jail. He was in deep need of psychological counseling but with no hope of the extensive help he needed.
Masri’s case is one of the 26 instances detailed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report where the CIA snared someone in its web of secret dungeons by mistake, realized its error after weeks or months of mistreatment and questioning, then let them go. But the report, made public Tuesday, does not recount what that mistake meant to al Masri’s life.
McClatchy
HOUSTON — As fellow parents of an international hostage, our hearts are broken again by the tragic news of the death of Luke Somers. These recent events in Yemen once more bring into intense focus the need for the participation of hostage families in the policies and procedures of the United States government.
On Aug. 14, 2012, when our son Austin was taken captive in Syria, we abruptly became part of an international hostage crisis and our lives were turned inside out. The oft-repeated cliché is “there is no handbook,” but that hardly begins to express the challenges we have faced. In reality, there is no government policy and no established support network to assist in navigating the many questions suddenly requiring an answer: questions regarding interaction with the government; questions about how to protect Austin’s identity and assets; questions of how to best manage a relationship with the media; questions of preserving some semblance of normal life for the family; all of which pale in comparison to the biggest question of all – what can and should we do to get Austin safely home as soon as possible?
Al Jazeera America
The strip of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn lit up by taquerias and Mexican bakeries was just beginning to shutter for the night, as a shopkeeper dragged the last of the display mannequins from the sidewalk into a clothing store. David Galluzo, 17, shivered in his thin varsity jacket as he made his way to 46th Street to meet the other members of El Grito de Sunset Park, a neighborhood group that monitors police aggression in their community.
Some of the members walked with hoodies tied tightly around their faces and GoPro cameras strapped to their chests. Dennis Flores, who started the group a decade ago, listened to a police scanner. “Aw man, sounds like all of the cops are in Prospect Park,” he said.
Galluzo, a senior and varsity running back at New Utrecht High School, once wanted to be a cop. The Puerto Rican and Italian teen is now wary of police and teaches his seven younger siblings to just ignore them. “We just decided we wanted nothing to do with the 72nd Precinct anymore,” he said.
Al Jazeera America
The families of nine of the 26 people killed in the Sandy Hook gun massacre, alongside a teacher injured in the school attack, have filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer, distributor and seller of the rifle used in the 2012 shooting.
The negligence and wrongful death lawsuit, filed in Bridgeport Superior Court on Monday, asserts that the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle should not have been made publicly available because it was designed for military use and is unsuited for hunting or home defense.
"The AR-15 was specifically engineered for the United States military to meet the needs of changing warfare," attorney Josh Koskoff said in a release. "In fact, one of the Army's specifications for the AR-15 was that it has the capability to penetrate a steel helmet."
The Guardian
Police in Pennsylvania are searching for a 35-year-old man suspected of killing six family members and seriously wounding one more.
In the town of Pennsburg, police have surrounded a home and are reportedly firing flash-bangs into the home.
The Montgomery County district attorney warned the public that Bradley Stone, 35, is “armed and dangerous”. Police believe that Stone, a Pennsburg resident, killed six family members and is still on the loose.
Police could be seen investigating at least three separate crime scenes, including one in Lansdale and Souderton, though it’s still unclear how the scenes are connected. The crime scenes are all within about 20 miles of each other in Montgomery County.
The Guardian
Spelman College has become the latest institution to distance itself from comedian and actor Bill Cosby amid allegations by women that he drugged and raped them.
The move to shun Cosby comes from a school with which the comedian is intimately connected – his daughter attended university there, and in the 1980s he gave the school its largest ever single donation of $20m.
Citing sources and then a brief statement from the school’s spokeswoman, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution broke the news on Sunday night.
“The William and Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Endowed Professorship was established to bring positive attention and accomplished visiting scholars to Spelman College in order to enhance our intellectual, cultural and creative life,” a school spokeswoman told the Constitution. “The current context prevents us from continuing to meet these objectives fully. Consequently, we will suspend the program until such time that the original goals can again be met.”
Reuters
U.S. manufacturing output recorded its largest increase in nine months in November as production expanded across the board, pointing to underlying strength in the economy.
Factory production rose 1.1 percent after advancing 0.4 percent in October, the Federal Reserve said on Monday.
"There is little evidence here that weaker global growth or a stronger dollar has hurt U.S. manufacturing," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.
The upbeat factory data joined bullish employment and retail sales reports in suggesting strength in the economy, even as growth in the fourth quarter is expected to moderate sharply after two back-to-back quarters of robust expansion.
NPR
The pay gap between men and women has been narrowing for decades. But it persists, and it gets larger as women move toward the middle of their careers.
In a recent paper, Harvard economist Claudia Goldin looked at the gap in a bunch of different ways — how it's changed over time, how it changes over the course of people's careers, and how it varies from industry to industry.
The gap grows as women move through their careers largely because women are more likely than men to take time off to raise a family. (The gap shrinks after the prime child-rearing years.) But the penalty for taking time off to raise kids is much larger in some industries than in others.
NY Times
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Monday confirmed President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, ending a yearlong fight over gun control and politics.
In a vote early in the evening, Vivek Murthy, a doctor specializing in internal medicine, was approved by 51 to 43.
The confirmation was one of the last acts of business for the Democratic-controlled Senate. Had it not occurred, the nomination would have died, leaving the president without a permanent top doctor, possibly even for the remainder of his two years in office.
Democrats said there was no reason to delay the Murthy nomination any longer, especially as the nation’s public health system remained on edge after the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and a number of recent Ebola scares at American hospitals. Any reason for denying a vote on his nomination, they said, was purely political.
But Republicans saw Dr. Murthy as a politically connected supporter of Mr. Obama who would use his position to push for stricter gun control. Though the surgeon general’s office does not set or implement gun policy, Dr. Murthy’s support for banning the sale of certain weapons and ammunition, as well as implementing longer waiting periods for firearms sales, drew the ire of gun rights advocates like the National Rifle Association.
Washington Post
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a lower court decision blocking an Arizona law that abortion-rights supporters said would have virtually eliminated medical abortions in the state.
Arizona said the new restrictions in the law were meant to protect women’s health. But the groups challenging the law said it would make it extremely difficult for some women to obtain medical abortions, which are used in the earliest stages of pregnancy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked the law while it was being challenged. Similar laws are in effect in Ohio and Texas, and such restrictions are increasingly being enacted at the state level.
DW
The UN released a report accusing Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels of torturing and indiscriminately shelling civilians. At least 4,634 people have died and 10,234 have been wounded in the last eight months.
“The actual numbers of casualties are likely to be considerably higher,” the United Nations' human rights office said in reference to the above numbers, adding that the lives of 5.2 million residents living in the devastated region was deteriorating further with the onset of winter and a complete breakdown of local infrastructure that left homes without water or heat.
Among other things the UN report claims: “The situation is becoming extremely dire for the population, particularly older persons, children and people in institutional care, many of whom are on the brink of survival.”
Al Jazeera America
Belgian unions grounded all flights, halted all trains and closed hundreds of factories and offices in a nationwide strike Monday, protesting the government's planned pension reforms and budget cuts as part of a larger battle over how to restore growth and decrease national debt levels that stand at around 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
In the country's first general strike since 2005, Brussels Airport canceled about 600 flights as a stoppage by air traffic controllers meant no planes could take off or land in Belgium.
Eurostar, which operates high-speed rail services between Brussels and London, terminated all Brussels-bound trains in Lille, France. Most trains on the high-speed Thalys link to Germany, France and the Netherlands were also canceled.
Local bus, tram and metro services were also hit.
Spiegel Online
In 2013, SPIEGEL reported on the tapping of chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone by the NSA. Now the case is back in the news following the German federal prosecutor's efforts to publicly undermine SPIEGEL's credibility.
In June, German Federal Prosecutor Harald Range opened an official investigation into allegations the NSA spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone. So far, though, he hasn't made much progress.
The US signals intelligence agency has ignored all questions submitted by Range's investigative authority. And Germany's own foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), hasn't provided any further assistance.
The Guardian
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is pushing for a vote in the United Nations security council – as early as Wednesday – on a resolution calling for a deadline to end the 47-year-long Israeli occupation.
The move, disclosed late on Sunday night by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, comes as Israel’s prime minister vowed to reject any attempt to set a deadline for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders or a timeline for ending the occupation.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s comments came as he flew to Rome for a meeting with the US secretary of state, John Kerry, to discuss Palestinian moves at the UN. Kerry will later meet with Arab foreign ministers and Erekat in London.
The push to hold a vote on Wednesday comes during a period of intense diplomatic negotiations over two rival draft texts for a resolution. The first, sponsored by Jordan at the behest of the Palestinians – envisages setting a November 2016 deadline for ending the occupation. The rival proposal, drawn up by France, would only set a deadline for an end to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Guardian
Prosecutors in the Philippines have filed murder charges against a US marine accused of killing a Filipino transgender woman in a case that has fanned anti-American sentiment.
Prosecutors found probable cause against Pte First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton and decided that he used “treachery, abuse of superior authority and cruelty” against his alleged victim, lead prosecutor Emilie Fe delos Santos told a televised briefing.
“You can see the kind of cruelty she endured, the injuries she sustained,” Delos Santos said. “We believe we have a strong case.” Pemberton will not be allowed to post bail, she said. Murder is punishable by up to 40 years in jail.
The Guardian
Its members have been dubbed the “pinstriped Nazis” and they refer to their demonstrations as “evening strolls” through German cities. But on Monday night, an estimated 15,000 people joined Pegida, or Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West, in a march through Dresden carrying banners bearing slogans such as “Zero tolerance towards criminal asylum seekers”, “Protect our homeland” and “Stop the Islamisation”.
Lutz Bachmann, the head of Pegida, a nascent anti-foreigner campaign group, led the crowds, either waving or draped in German flags, in barking chants of “Wir sind das Volk”, or “We are the people”, the slogan adopted by protesters in the historic “Monday demonstrations” against the East German government in the runup to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Associating themselves with the freedom demonstrations has given Pegida protests an air of moral respectability even though there are hundreds of rightwing extremists in their midst, as well as established groups of hooligans who are known to the police, according to Germany’s federal office for the protection of the constitution.
“The instigators are unmistakably rightwing extremists,” a federal spokesman said.
BBC
Mexican police have clashed with protesters organising a concert in the city of Chilpancingo in support of a group of 43 students who went missing more than two months ago.
Police said several officers had been injured, including some who were knocked down by a vehicle.
The two groups accused each other of starting Sunday's violence.
The case of the missing students, one of whom has been found dead, has triggered protests across Mexico.
Rising tension
Police said eight officers were injured, five of whom were run over by a car.
They said three others had been beaten by the protesters.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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The Guardian
Rob Evans
Monday 15 December 2014 14.12 EST
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Police asked a university to hand over a list of members of the public who were due to attend a public debate on its campus.
Canterbury Christ Church University, which had invited experts to debate the merits of fracking in an open forum, refused to hand over the list, and the police request has drawn sharp criticism, with one of the panellists branding it deplorable.
More than 200 people went to the debate to listen to and question a panel that included a retired geologist, engineers, a local councillor, an analyst from a thinktank and a campaigner.
Kent police said they needed to assess “the threat and risk for significant public events in the county to allow it to maintain public safety”.
The fracking debate on 19 November was organised by sociology academics, and members of the public who wanted to attend were required to book a place through the university.
The Guardian
America and India will unveil joint efforts to fight climate change when Barack Obama visits New Delhi next month, as the US tries to keep up the momentum of international negotiations.
Obama’s visit – on the back of the United Nations talks in Lima – is seen as a key moment to persuade one of the world’s biggest carbon polluters to step up its efforts to fight climate change.
After China and the US, India is the world’s third largest producer of the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change – although it is responsible for only about 6% of such emissions globally.
During the visit, Obama and the prime minister, Narendra Modi, are expected to unveil a number of modest initiatives to expand research and access to clean energy technologies.
The announcement in the works for Obama’s visit to Delhi will be modest in scale – nowhere near last month’s milestone agreement between the US and China to cut their carbon pollution.
The Guardian
Sony Pictures has demanded that news organisations stop reporting on the information stolen by hackers in the crippling attack on the studio.
The demand was sent to media companies in a three-page letter written by Sony Pictures’ lawyers Boies, Schiller & Flexner after a wave of highly embarrassing data releases by hackers
The Guardian
Tech and media companies, privacy groups and leading computer scientists all filed legal briefs on Monday backing Microsoft in a case against the US government it claims is “fundamental to the future of global technology”.
Microsoft is challenging a government order to hand over emails held on servers at its datacenter in Dublin, Ireland. The company has lost twice in court but is challenging the order in the US court of appeals for the second circuit in New York.
Technology companies including Apple, Amazon, Cisco, eBay and Verizon all filed in support of Microsoft. As have two of the US’s largest business organizations, the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as media organisations including ABC, CNN, Fox News and the Guardian.
The unusual level of cooperation among often fiercely competitive organisations comes as privacy advocates argue the US is overreaching its authority in a manner that will set a dangerous precedent for government access to online information across the world.
NPR
Speed. That's key to ending the Ebola epidemic, says the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Thomas Frieden is visiting West Africa this week to figure out how to reduce the time it takes to find new Ebola cases and isolate them.
Otherwise, Ebola could become a permanent disease in West Africa.
"That's exactly the risk we face now. That Ebola will simmer along, become endemic and be a problem for Africa and the world, for years to come," Frieden tells NPR. "That is what I fear most."
Frieden plans to spend several days in each country where the virus is still out of control — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
NPR
A government-appointed group of top nutrition experts, assigned to lay the scientific groundwork for a new version of the nation's dietary guidelines, decided earlier this year to collect data on the environmental implication of different food choices.
Congress now has slapped them down.
Lawmakers attached a list of "congressional directives" to a massive spending bill that was passed by both the House and the Senate in recent days. One of those directives expresses "concern" that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee "is showing an interest in incorporating agriculture production practices and environmental factors" into their recommendations, and directs the Obama administration to ignore such factors in the next revision of the guidelines, which is due out next year.
The directive is not legally binding, but ignoring it would provoke yet another political battle between the Obama administration and Congress.
The federal dietary guidelines have never explicitly considered the effects of food choices on the environment, but the idea of doing so is not new.
Number of providers by state who wrote at least 3,000 prescriptions for Schedule 2 controlled substances in 2012 in Medicare Part D.
NPR
Despite a national crackdown on prescription drug abuse, doctors churned out an ever-larger number of prescriptions for the most-potent controlled substances to Medicare patients, new data show.
In addition, ProPublica found, the most prolific prescribers of such drugs as oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine and Ritalin often have worrisome records.
In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, Medicare covered nearly 27 million prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers and stimulants with the highest potential for abuse and dependence. That's up 9 percent over 2011, compared to a 5 percent increase in Medicare prescriptions overall. Even taking into account an increase in the number of Medicare enrollees, the prescribing rate rose slightly for these drugs, which are classified as Schedule 2 controlled substances by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
C/NET
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Apple revolutionized the digital music business with its iPod media player -- and eight jurors now get to decide whether the company was a champion or a bully.
A two-week-long legal battle over the meteoric rise of the iPod and iTunes music store heads to a close here Monday after lawyers presented closing arguments in a class action antitrust case. Plaintiffs, who spoke to the jury first, are resting the heart of their case on a central complaint that Apple has fought in the past -- that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company exerted too much control over the consumer experience and potentially acted anti-competitively in the process. Apple counters those claims, saying it worked to deliver the best user experience with its revolutionary hardware and software.
"They [Apple] don't believe that you own that iPod," Patrick Coughlin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in court today. "They believe that they still have the right to choose for you what third-party player can play on a device that you bought and you own." Coughlin says Apple believed it had the right to "degrade your experience from a song you can play one day ... to one you can't play the next" when it shut out competing stores' MP3 files.