Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Special thanks to JekyllnHyde for the OND banner.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
DW
International aid and rescue workers have been continuing to arrive at Kathmandu's airport two days after Nepal was hit by a devastating earthquake. The official death toll has now climbed above 3,700.
A series of aftershocks on Monday continued to keep people from returning to their homes for fear that even the houses left standing could collapse. The Nepal Red Cross said the strongest aftershock following Saturday's 7.8-magnitude earthquake had a magnitude of 6.7.
This left tens of thousands of people sheltering in makeshift tent camps in and around the capital, Kathmandu. The chief administrator for Kathmandu district, Ek Narayan Aryal, said that aid workers were handing out tents and water at 10 locations around the capital Monday.
Aid and rescue workers from several countries, including Germany, India, China and the United States, are already in Kathmandu delivering assistance to the survivors, with many more on their way.
Al Jazeera America
Rescue efforts have intensified in Nepal as a stream of foreign aid reaches the capital, Kathmandu in, the wake of a devastating earthquake that has killed more than 3,700 people and injured up to 6,500 others.
Police said on Monday that the death toll might increase as rescuers struggle to reach remote regions in the mountainous country of 28 million people and as bodies buried under rubble are recovered.
Meanwhile, aid efforts are being stepped up. The first nations to respond were Nepal's neighbors India, China and Pakistan — all of which have been jockeying for influence over the landlocked nation.
Nepal remains closest to India, with which it shares deep political, cultural and religious ties. Military cargo planes from India and Pakistan have landed at Kathmandu's small airport, which has been struggling to handle the volume of cargo and civilian planes flying in.
The Guardian
After more than 36 hours of darkness, Garima Saha, 12, woke up on Monday morning in a makeshift orthopaedic surgery ward in the reception hall of a hospital in central Kathmandu.
When she opened her eyes, finally regaining consciousness having been buried for nine hours in rubble after Saturday’s earthquake, she found she was safe, but in great pain with multiple fractures to her shoulder. She also learned that her mother and elder brother were dead.
An hour or so later, held by her sobbing grandmother who had rushed from a distant village to be with her, she was gently raised to a semi-upright position in the bed she had been placed in after a long surgery on Saturday night.
Reuters
Nepalese officials scrambled on Monday to get aid from the main airport to people left homeless and hungry by a devastating earthquake two days earlier, while thousands tired of waiting fled the capital Kathmandu for the surrounding plains.
By afternoon, the death toll from Saturday's 7.9 magnitude earthquake had climbed to more than 3,700, and reports trickling in from remote areas suggested it would rise significantly.
A senior interior ministry official said it could reach as much as 5,000, in the worse such disaster in Nepal since 1934, when 8,500 people were killed.
Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport was hobbled by many employees not showing up for work, people trying to get out, and a series of aftershocks which forced it to close several times since the quake.
New York Times
KATMANDU, Nepal — Even for Lakpa Rita, a revered Nepalese mountaineer who has reached the summit of Mount Everest 17 times, the roaring wall of boulders, rocks, ice and debris that pulverized much of the mountain’s base camp over the weekend signified a malign new twist in the peak’s destructive powers.
“Nothing like this has happened before at Everest base camp,” Mr. Rita said by telephone Monday from the camp in eastern Nepal, three days after the earthquake set off the avalanche and geological convulsions there. At least 18 people died in the area of the camp, which is 18,000 feet above sea level. “This is a huge, huge avalanche,” he said.
Al Jazeera America
Mourners gathered Monday for the funeral of a man who died after suffering serious spinal injuries in the custody of Baltimore police — an event that sparked protests and confrontations with authorities over the weekend.
Services began at around 11 a.m. for Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who died April 19 after an encounter with police days earlier. Pastor Jamal Bryant, who was to deliver Gray's eulogy, said he expected Baltimore's New Shiloh Baptist Church to be filled for the service.
A small group of mourners lined up about two hours ahead of the funeral. As they began filing into the church, the white casket with Gray's body was opened, flanked by floral arrangements. A rope was placed in front of the casket to prevent people from getting too close.
then ...
NPR
A day of mourning gave way to an evening of riots and looting in Baltimore on Monday, where Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and moved to deploy the National Guard.
Just hours after Freddie Gray's funeral, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, burning police cars, looting stores and facing off with police. Television images showed those demonstrators throwing rocks, bricks and bottles at a line of police officers in riot gear.
In a press conference, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said there was a big difference between what is happening today and the peaceful protests that have taken place over the past week.
Al Jazeera America
WILLISTON, N.D. — From an airplane at night, Williston appears an oasis of thousands of points of light on the Great Plains. Most are white or yellow, but some flicker bright orange. They are the oil drilling rig flares of the Bakken Shale formation — fires that burn night and day.
But dozens of these fires have gone dark in the last eight months.
Williston has been pummeled by plunging oil prices worldwide, which dropped from a $105 a barrel in February 2014 to $54 in February 2015. There are still high-paying jobs, but fewer of them.
For residents, the result is layoffs, reduced work schedules and smaller paychecks for everyone from oil rig workers to Walmart greeters. The slowdown, as locals call it, has pushed thousands deeper into poverty, closer to homelessness or out of the city altogether, charity workers said.
The Guardian
James Holmes appeared calm at the opening of a trial to determine whether he will be executed, spend his life in prison, or be committed to a mental health facility for shooting 12 people dead and injuring scores more at a Colorado movie theater in July 2012.
Holmes’s clown-like red hair grew out long ago, and the bushy beard he wore awaiting trial was gone, too. Out of sight, Holmes was being restrained: under his blue dress shirt was a harness, cabled through the leg of his khaki pants to the courtroom floor.
The Guardian
Without Tamerlan Tsarnaev, there would have been no bombings – this was the core message that the team defending his younger brother Dzhokhar from the death penalty outlined in their opening statement on Monday.
Tamerlan died during the manhunt that followed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, in which three people were killed and more than 260 wounded, leaving only Dzhokhar to face charges after he was discovered hiding in a dry-docked boat in the Watertown suburb of Boston.
In April, Tsarnaev was found guilty on 30 charges relating to the attack. Seventeen of those charges carry a potential death sentence, and it is now up to the same jury that convicted him to decide whether to send him to his death or sentence him to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole in a supermax prison in Colorado.
Reuters
A day before the U.S. Supreme Court hears landmark arguments on whether the Constitution provides a right to same-sex marriage, activists on both sides of the contentious social issue converged on the white marble courthouse to voice their views.
Anti-gay rights activists rallied in front of the courthouse steps condemning same-sex marriage, while a line snaked around the block of people, many displaying gay rights messages, hoping to snag one of the limited number of seats available in the courtroom for Tuesday's 2-1/2 hour oral arguments.
NPR
Loretta Lynch is the new U.S. attorney general.
Lynch was sworn in today by Vice President Joe Biden, who said the daughter of a Baptist minister who preached during the sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C., will now be "leading the march to a more perfect union."
Lynch, 55, is the nation's 83rd attorney general and the first black woman to hold the position. She said during a ceremony at the Justice Department that she would work to "imbue our criminal justice system with both strength and fairness" to protect the rights of all.
NPR
As long as there have been schools and classes, there have been students who don't show up. And educators scratching their heads over what to do about it.
In most states, missing a lot of school means a trip to the principal's office. In Texas, parents and students are more likely to end up in front of a judge.
Truancy there is treated as a criminal offense, a class C misdemeanor. In 2013, school districts in the state filed 115,000 truancy cases. The problem is so big, state lawmakers and the U.S. Justice Department are investigating whether prosecuting children and teenagers in adult criminal courts is doing more harm than good.
Zaid Yassin's case is just one example of the complexity of chronic school absence and the challenges of dealing with it through the criminal justice system.
Yahoo Business
President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush.
President Barack Obama's chief spokesman brushed off former President George W. Bush's recent criticisms of the current administration during his press briefing on Monday.
"I don't think it's a surprise to anyone in this room that President Bush might have some differences with President Obama when it comes to foreign policy," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
Earnest was responding to reports over the weekend on Bush's remarks to a closed-door gathering of Jewish donors. At the Republican Jewish Coalition event in Las Vegas, Bush allegedly criticized Obama for putting the US in "retreat" around the globe. Bush also panned the current president's nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Both Bloomberg and The New York Times reported Bush said Obama pulled US troops out of Iraq too quickly in 2011, paving the way for the Islamic State jihadist group (also known as ISIS or ISIL) to take root there. Attendees recalled Bush quoting Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina): "Pulling out of Iraq was a strategic blunder."
But Earnest told reporters that it was Bush who actually set the stage for the Islamic State by invading Iraq in the first place in 2003. Earnest called this point a "historical fact."
NHK World
Foreign and defense chiefs from Japan and the United States have agreed on new defense cooperation guidelines.
Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani met in New York with US State Secretary John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
Both sides agreed to revise guidelines for the first time in 18 years.
The new guidelines say the 2 countries are securing their seamless and effective coordination under normal circumstances, as well as in the case of contingencies.
This is meant to confront an increasingly complicated international security environment.
Measures call for both sides to work together on intelligence gathering and surveillance.
DW
In the latest of a growing number of attacks since the departure of foreign combat troops, Taliban fighters are threatening the northern city of Kanduz. The president delayed a visit to India to consult security chiefs.
Hundreds of Taliban fighters attacked police and army checkpoints in the northern Afghan in and around provincial capital Kunduz on Monday, according to official sources. Over the past three days, the northern Kunduz province has seen several Taliban attacks.
"There are casualties as a result of three days battles on both sides, but I can't provide precise figures as the fighting is still going on," provincial governor Omer Safi said.
DW
A UN inquiry has found that dozens of Palestinians were killed while seeking refuge at UN facilities during last year's Gaza conflict. The majority of the more than 2,200 people killed in the fighting were Palestinians.
The inquiry found that more than 40 Palestinians had been killed and more than 200 others wounded while sheltering at United Nations schools and other facilities in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014.
"I deplore the fact that at least 44 Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli actions and at least 227 injured at United Nations premises being used as emergency shelters," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote in a cover letter for a summary of the inquiry's findings released on Monday.
However, the inquiry did not just place blame ad the hands of the Israelis. It also said that weapons had been found at three empty UN schools in Gaza, and that there was evidence to suggest that Palestinian militants had "probably" fired from them.
Al Jazeera America
BEIRUT — Israeli jets have conducted another series of airstrikes in Syria, targeting advanced weapons systems at military bases north of Damascus and close to the border with Lebanon, according to regional media reports.
The airstrikes launched late Friday reportedly hit long-range guided missiles stored in several Syrian army bases in the mountainous Qalamoun region along the Lebanon-Syria border.
Israel has struck weapons consignments in Syria on eight occasions since January 2013, hitting an array of sophisticated weaponry, including Iranian Fateh-110 guided missiles, SA-8 and SA-17 anti-aircraft systems and Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles. In each case, the weapons were allegedly earmarked for transfer to the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, a Shia group backed by Iran.
Spiegel Online
In comments made to SPIEGEL ONLINE, new Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos categorically rules out his country exiting the euro zone and supports calls for German reparations payments in connection with Nazi war crimes.
Time is running out for Greece and its international creditors. If an agreement isn't found by June, the country will face insolvency. The new Greek president, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, has now told SPIEGEL ONLINE his views on the conflict: He rules out the possibility of a Grexit and promises that all the loans made to Greece will be paid back, but he is also critical of past austerity programs.
"Some of the measures imposed on us go beyond EU law," Pavlopoulos said to SPIEGEL ONLINE at his official residence in Athens. "We want to be equal members of Europe."
Spiegel Online
US intelligence spent years spying on European targets from a secretive base. Now, it seems that German intelligence was aware of the espionage -- and did nothing to stop it.
It was obvious from its construction speed just how important the new site in Bavaria was to the Americans. Only four-and-a-half months after it was begun, the new, surveillance-proof building at the Mangfall Kaserne in Bad Aibling was finished. The structure had a metal exterior and no windows, which led to its derogatory nickname among members of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German foreign intelligence agency: The "tin can."
NHK World
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will maintain his predecessors' stance on those who are referred to as comfort women.
He made the remark in response to a question after a speech at a Harvard University forum on Monday. He said he feels sorry for those referred to as comfort women whenever he thinks of them as they had experienced human trafficking that was beyond description.
He said his view is not different from his predecessors. He stated that he said many times he will maintain the stance stated in a 1993 statement issued by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono. Abe said Kono expressed sincere apologies and remorse to those women.
He also said his country has made various efforts to provide realistic assistance to the women.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
|
New York Times
The moderate global warming that has already occurred as a result of human emissions is responsible for about 75 percent of daily heat extremes, and about 18 percent of precipitation extremes, scientists reported Monday.
Especially hot days of a sort that occurred only once every 30 years or so before the Industrial Revolution are now occurring every six or seven years, the scientists found. Such scorching days could become near-annual events by late this century even if emissions are brought under control, the researchers said, and could occur several times a year if they are not.
The new research builds on those predictions of frequency and attempts to answer the question: To what degree are the changes attributable to human-caused climate change?
Sacramento Bee
MEADOW VALLEY
High above a landscape parched by unremitting drought, Meadow Valley Creek courses through the northern Sierra Nevada and pools in a stand of alders behind a tiny, concrete dam.
Robert Forbes draws water from the reservoir through an overturned smokestack and into a ditch that has run west of Quincy for more than 100 years.
He adjusted a piece of plywood at its mouth to restrict the flow one recent morning. In dry years, Forbes said, “I start rationing people along the line.”
Forbes’ family’s access to this water derives from an 1870s claim in Plumas County; and his antiquated management of the ditch – breaking ice with a shovel in the winter, negotiating irrigation schedules among neighbors when the weather warms – has persisted for decades with little intervention.
The Guardian
Rather than the sharp teeth, large head and thick neck of its meat-eating cousins, Chilesaurus had a horny beak, flatter teeth for chomping plants, a small head and slender neck.
Fossil hunters in Chile have unearthed the remains of a bizarre Jurassic dinosaur that combined a curious mixture of features from different prehistoric animals.
The evolutionary muddle of a beast grew to the size of a small horse and was the most abundant animal to be found 145 million years ago, in what is now the Aysén region of Patagonia.
The discovery ranks as one of the most remarkable dinosaur finds of the past 20 years, and promises to cause plenty of headaches for paleontologists hoping to place the animal in the dinosaur family tree.
“I don’t know how the evolution of dinosaurs produced this kind of animal, what kind of ecological pressures must have been at work,” said Fernando Novas at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires.
NPR
Federal health officials Monday changed the recommended amount of fluoride in drinking water for the first time since 1962, cutting by almost half the maximum amount of fluoride that should be added to drinking supplies.
The Department of Health and Human Services recommended a maximum of 0.7 milligrams per liter of water instead of the long-standing maximum of 1.2 milligrams.
"The change is recommended because now Americans have access to more sources of fluoride, such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, than they did when fluoridation was first introduced in the United States," Dr. Boris Lushniak, the deputy surgeon general, told reporters during a conference call.
As a result, many Americans are getting too much fluoride, which is causing a big increase in a condition known as fluorosis that causes very faint white marks on people's teeth.
C/Net
The Apple Watch, which was delivered to customers around the world starting last week, may be what everyone's talking about right now.
But when it comes to Apple's financials, it's still all about the iPhone.
The Cupertino, Calif., company on Monday will report its second-quarter earnings, giving an update on how many phones, tablets and computers it sold from January to the end of March. It's also expected to increase the amount of money it returns to shareholders in dividends.
But while investors and analysts will undoubtedly ask plenty of questions about Apple's first smartwatch on the conference call -- with everyone wanting to know how many devices have been purchased and when supply will be able to keep up with demand -- Apple has already said it won't provide details on watch sales.
C/NET
Has the technology industry passed Microsoft by?
That's the question the world's largest software maker, its customers, its developers and its rivals hope to get answered this week when Microsoft kicks off its annual developer conference. Called Build, the three-day event starts April 29 in San Francisco.
Microsoft's objective for Build is pretty straightforward: convincing the world that the newest version of its Windows operating system adds enough new features and technology to push the software forward and gain mainstream acceptance -- not become yet another detour.
Build has typically been a place for in-the-weeds discussions about cloud computing and software architecture. But with the coming of Windows 10, due this summer, along with promised new info on Microsoft's ambitious HoloLens headset, Microsoft followers see this year's Build as a cornerstone event for the Redmond, Wash., company and its CEO, Satya Nadella.
ScienceBlog
Astrophysicists have created a 3D map of the universe that spans nearly two billion light years and is the most complete picture of our cosmic neighbourhood to date.
The spherical map of galaxy superclusters will lead to a greater understanding of how matter is distributed in the universe and provide key insights into dark matter, one of physics’ greatest mysteries.
ScienceBlog
Two wrongs can make a right, at least in the world of visual perception and motor functioning, according to two University of Oregon brain scientists.
In a two-experiment study, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, UO neuroscientists Paul Dassonville and Scott A. Reed used eye-tracker technology in a dark laboratory to test a developing theory about how the brain determines the locations of nearby objects.
NPR
Fast-casual food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill has announced it has removed all ingredients made with genetically modified organisms from its menu, making good on a two-year-old promise. It's the latest example of the food industry stripping away ingredients, some more questionable than others, as consumers demand a say in what's in their dinner.
There is no scientific evidence that GMOs pose a risk to health, as Chipotle founder and co-CEO Steve Ells readily acknowledges. "I don't think this is about GMOs being harmful or not being harmful to your health," Ells tells The Salt. "It's a bigger picture. It's really part of our food with integrity journey."
After Chipotle committed to ditching GMOs in 2013, its corn and flour tortillas were among the hardest items to revamp. But they're now GMO-free, thanks to Chipotle's collaborations with suppliers to plant non-GMO corn varieties. The soybean oil in the chips and taco shells, which was GMO, has also been replaced with non-GMO sunflower oil.