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.
BBC
Africa leaders declare 'war' on Nigeria Boko Haram
African leaders meeting in Paris have agreed to wage "war" on Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamic militants.
President Hollande of France, who hosted the summit, said regional powers had pledged to share intelligence and co-ordinate action against the group.
Last month it abducted 223 schoolgirls in north-eastern Nigeria, where it is based. Fresh attacks were reported in Nigeria and Cameroon overnight.
Thousands of people have been killed by Boko Haram in recent years.
The Paris summit brought together President Francois Hollande, Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan, and their counterparts from Benin, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Afterwards, Mr Hollande said participants had agreed on a "global and regional action plan".
He said this involved "co-ordinating intelligence, sharing information... border surveillance, a military presence notably around Lake Chad and the capacity to intervene in case of danger".
BBC Science
'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered
Fossilised bones of a dinosaur believed to be the largest creature ever to walk the Earth have been unearthed in Argentina, palaeontologists say.
Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall.
Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus.
Scientists believe it is a new species of titanosaur - an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period.
A local farm worker first stumbled on the remains in the desert near La Flecha, about 250km (135 miles) west of Trelew, Patagonia.
A film crew from the BBC Natural History Unit was there to capture the moment the scientists realised exactly how big their discovery was.
By measuring the length and circumference of the largest femur (thigh bone), they calculated the animal weighed 77 tonnes.
"Given the size of these bones, which surpass any of the previously known giant animals, the new dinosaur is the largest animal known that walked on Earth," the researchers told BBC News.
"Its length, from its head to the tip of its tail, was 40m.
"Standing with its neck up, it was about 20m high - equal to a seven-storey building."
Al Jazeera America
First man charged for setting one of multiple fires that raced through 20,000 acres of San Diego brush land
Prosecutors have pressed charges in relation to a dozen fires that destroyed homes and raced through nearly 20,000 acres of northern and eastern San Diego County brush land.
Alberto Serrato, 57, pleaded not guilty Friday to an arson charge in connection with one of the smaller blazes in suburban Oceanside that started Wednesday.
Most of the initial fires have since been contained. But on Saturday, thousands of firefighters and fleets of water-dropping helicopters were deployed to battle fresh outbreaks of fire.
Meanwhile, investigators continue to seek the causes of the wildfires that burned at least eight homes and an 18-unit condominium complex. The fires emptied neighborhoods and spread ash and smoke to neighboring Orange County and as far north as Los Angeles County.
Serrato, authorities believe, added fuel to the fires, but he was not behind the initial cause of the blaze.
USA Today
AT&T buys DirecTV for $48.5 billion
AT&T agreed Sunday to buy DirecTV for about $48.5 billion in yet another mammoth deal in the pay-TV space this year that would immediately boost the telecom giant's customer base at a time of confounding industry challenges.
The merger, which both boards approved Sunday, is the latest evidence of TV-industry consolidation, one born of telecommunications companies' desire to amass customers and control content and delivery. With streaming and wireless technology upending the industry, cable and satellite service providers are rushing to add product options while boosting revenue per customer to please shareholders.
In the deal, AT&T would pay DirecTV shareholders $95 per share. Including DirecTV's debt, the total transaction's value is about $67.1 billion.
"Customers will be able to get wireless, voice, data, TV and home security from the same company nationwide," says Roger Entner, an analyst at Recon Analytics. "It allows (AT&T) to grow the share of consumers' spending on telecom."
CNet
Woz to FCC: You're supposed to be on the people's side
He's often offering his opinions, feelings, and quirks for all to see.
Recently, he's been musing a lot about the Web and government. He declared that Edward Snowden is a hero and that he, Steve Wozniak, feels guilty about NSA surveillance.
Now he has opened his mind to the FCC. In an open letter published in the Atlantic, Woz expressed himself with passion and not a little disturbance about the possibility that net neutrality would die.
Admitting that he initially thought "tiered pricing for various customers" made economic sense, he said that he ultimately came to one realization: "Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers [sic] have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed."
I think he meant "telecommunications carriers." I think that many people might carry the same view.
He explained how, because of the locational quirks of the houses he owned, he was often unable to get broadband service at all. At heart, the carriers don't exist to benefit everyone.
He said: "The local phone providers don't have any obligation to serve all of their phone customers with DSL. They also have no requirement to service everyone living in the geographic area for which they have a monopoly. This is what has happened without regulatory control, despite every politician and president and CEO and PR person since the beginning of the Internet boon saying how important it was to ensure that everyone be provided broadband access."
CNet
Tesla tops Toyota as largest auto employer in California
Electric car maker Tesla has become the largest auto employer in California, writing a new chapter for US automakers in the state.
The Palo Alto, Calif. company now employs more than 6,000 people in the state, according to a Bloomberg report.
That means it passes Toyota, which employs 5,300 direct employees in California, Bloomberg said.
And that gap will widen, as Toyota is slated to move its headquarters from Southern California to Texas. Moreover, Tesla will add about 500 more workers by the end of the year in California, Bloomberg said, quoting a Tesla spokesperson.
N Y Times Are ferries the most dangerous way to travel?
54 Bodies Are Recovered After River Ferry Sinks During a Storm in Bangladesh
MUNSHIGANJ, Bangladesh — Rescuers have recovered 54 bodies from a ferry that sank in a river during a storm in central Bangladesh, resuming their search on Saturday after protests by relatives of people missing in the disaster.
Officials said Saturday that 12 people were still unaccounted for, although there was confusion over how many were aboard the ferry when it sank Thursday in the Meghna River. On Friday, the police had estimated that at least 100 people were missing.
Ferry operators in Bangladesh usually do not maintain a list of passengers, and none was available for the vessel, a local administrator, Saiful Hasan, said.
Earlier Saturday, the authorities called off the search after retrieving 40 bodies, but hundreds of relatives and local residents protested at the scene of the accident in the Munshiganj district, forcing the authorities to announce that they would continue to look for bodies.
Raw Story
Affluenza alert: Rich Ferrari-driving businessman gets work release after 7th DUI
Angry citizens are vowing to march on the Thurston County courthouse to protest the arrest of a wealthy man who was sentenced for just a year of work-release after his seventh arrest of driving under the influence.
Shaun Goodman was arrested after leading police on a chase that reached speeds of in excess of 100 miles per hour. Henry Griffen, a passenger in the Ferrari Goodman was driving, jumped out of the car when Goodman slowed down to take a corner. He then called 911.
“I jumped out of the car and now I’m calling you guys because I’m scared he might be looking for me,” Griffen told the 911 dispatcher. “He smoked them man. I mean he went so fast.”
At his sentencing hearing, Judge James Dixon noted that he not only had six previous DUIs, but had also recently graduated from a DUI course in Thurston County.
“This is akin to an individual with a loaded gun walking though downtown firing rounds,” Dixon said.
Raw Story
New cookbook seeks to turn tide on insect cuisine
Video at link.
A new Dutch cookbook aims to get foodies thinking about insects as a valuable source of nutrition. Filled with dozens of recipes like grasshopper chap tjoy and cupcakes filled with mealworms, the book contains everything you need to know about cooking with insects - where to buy them, which ones are edible, and how to store and prepare them. More than 1,900 species of insects are eaten around the world, mainly in Africa and Asia, but most in the West still turn up their noses at the idea of eating bugs. Pictures and video by Michael Kooren, sound recording by Cris Toala Olivares
S F Gate
California gearing up for bad wildfire season
SAN DIEGO (AP) — All evacuation orders were lifted Sunday as firefighters gained the upper hand on the remaining four of nearly a dozen blazes that tore through Southern California last week — while the governor warned the state was gearing up for what could be one of the drought-stricken region's worst wildfire seasons.
Gov. Jerry Brown told ABC's "This Week" that the state has 5,000 firefighters and has appropriated $600 million to battling blazes, but that may not be enough in the future.
"We're getting ready for the worst," Brown said. "Now, we don't want to anticipate before we know, but we need a full complement of firefighting capacity."
The state firefighting agency went to peak staffing in the first week of April, instead of its usual start in mid-May.
Thousands of additional firefighters may be needed in the future, Brown said, adding that California is on the "front lines" of climate change that is making its weather hotter
.