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.
The Guardian
President Barack Obama on Monday honored soldiers who died in Afghanistan, during his annual speech at Arlington national cemetery on Memorial Day. Though troops remain stationed in Afghanistan, it was the first time in 14 years that the US had celebrated the holiday while not engaged in a major ground war.
After laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Obama praised American soldiers for their “honor, courage, selflessness” in every war, from the Revolutionary war against Britain to the recently ended conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ahead of the ceremony, the administration touted this as the first Memorial Day ceremony since the end of the ground war in Afghanistan, where more than 2,200 Americans died since 2001.
Reuters
President Barack Obama heralded the first U.S. Memorial Day in 14 years without a major ground war in an annual ceremony of remembrance on Monday for fallen American forces.
In remarks at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, Obama paid tribute to U.S. military personnel who served in conflicts such as World War Two as well as the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he wound down as commander in chief.
"For many of us, this Memorial Day is especially meaningful. It is the first since our war in Afghanistan came to an end," Obama said. "Today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war."
As a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, Obama sharply criticized the war in Iraq launched by his Republican predecessor, former President George W. Bush.
Crowds stand for the national anthem during the Memorial Day observance at Arlington National Cemetery.
NPR
Americans are paying tribute today, Memorial Day, to the sacrifices of service members in the nation's earliest conflicts and the newest.
...
The president noted that this is the first Memorial Day since the end of the war in Afghanistan. But, he added, "we are acutely aware, as we speak, our men and women in uniform still stand watch and still serve, and still sacrifice around the world."
The Guardian
Severe weekend weather in Oklahoma and Texas showed no signs of letting up on Monday, as forecasters predicted more storms and possible tornadoes across the plains states.
Texas governor Greg Abbott expanded the emergency disaster zone in his state, adding 24 counties to a list of 13 already under an emergency disaster proclamation.
“I authorize the use of all available resources of state government and of political subdivisions that are reasonably necessary to cope with this disaster,” he said in a statement.
At least three people have died and at least 12 are missing in Texas and Oklahoma, after the region was pummeled with tornadoes, heavy rain and flash floods.
Al Jazeera America
RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — During the early morning hours of May 2, part of the northbound lane of North Carolina Highway 12 in Kitty Hawk broke off and washed into the Atlantic Ocean.
While the loss of 200 feet of roadway and about 500 feet of a protective sand berm will be temporary, it was more than just another hit to the road from a big spring storm at high tide under a full moon. In a state that has been engaged in a highly charged, highly politicized debate about climate change for more than five years, it was a reminder that the Atlantic isn’t waiting to see who wins the argument.
It was also a reminder that North Carolina, with its rapidly developing coastline and intricate ecological network of sounds and estuaries, has a lot at stake as sea levels rise. The state has more than 300 miles of direct coastline and thousands of miles of tidal areas. Like much of the Southeastern U.S. coast, commercial and residential development is growing more concentrated on barrier islands that move over time, rolling over themselves and drifting toward and away from the mainland with the rise and fall of the sea.
Al Jazeera America
LOS ANGELES — On any given day, the buzzing sounds of lawn mowers and leaf blowers resonate through leafy residential neighborhoods from ritzy enclaves in Beverly Hills to working-class areas in Van Nuys.
But this quintessential Californian sound is slowly being silenced.
The state’s historic drought, which has thrown two-thirds of the state into extreme or exceptional drought conditions, is cutting into a huge sector of California’s underground economy.
Gardeners, most of them small crews of Mexican immigrants who make their rounds in pickup trucks laden with gardening equipment, are losing their customers.
As more water districts struggle to abide by Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandatory 25 percent cut in water use by increasing incentives for homeowners to rip out their thirsty lawns and flowers and replace them with gravel and drought-resistant plants, gardeners are finding themselves with less and less work.
Al Jazeera America
NEWARK, N.J. — Amid the flotsam and jetsam of plastic bottles, car tires, and other urban debris that litter the lower Passaic River, Hugh Carola, 56, guided a pontoon boat full of visitors through the waterway, whose terminus is a busy port and is lined with heavy industry that had once dumped toxic chemicals into the river.
As the boat passed by the rusty Point-No-Point Bridge, an osprey — a type of fish-hunting raptor with a snow white chin — took off from a nest at the bridge and warily circled the boat. Later, Carola saw what the osprey was jealously guarding: two noisy chicks who peeked their heads from the twigs and branches of their nest.
“I was absolutely amazed,” said Carola, program director of the Hackensack Riverkeeper, a nonprofit environmental group that advocates for local waterways. “If they are nesting and successfully reproducing, they are finding enough prey.”
The Guardian
An Air France flight from Paris was escorted by US fighter jets to New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport on Monday after an anonymous threat was made against the flight, according to WABC television.
Flight 22 from Charles de Gaulle Airport landed safely, an airport official said. It was to be taken to a secure area at the New York airport to be searched, according to ABC News.
New York Times
Yacht-sized bonuses for Wall Street big shots and employee-of-the-month plaques for supermarket standouts are nothing new, but companies’ continued efforts to keep costs down have pushed employers to increasingly turn to one-off bonuses and nonmonetary rewards at the expense of annual pay raises.
“There is a quiet revolution in compensation,” said Ken Abosch, a partner at Aon Hewitt, a global human resources company. “There are not many things in the world of compensation that are all that radical, but this is a drastic shift.”
According to Aon Hewitt’s annual survey on salaried employees’ compensation, the share of payroll budgets devoted to straight salary increases sank to a low of 1.8 percent in the depths of the recession. It dropped to 4.3 percent in 2001, from a high of 10 percent in 1981. It has rebounded modestly since the recession, but still only rose 2.9 percent in 2014, the survey of 1,064 organizations found. (These figures are not adjusted for inflation.)
BBC
At least 13 people have been killed by a tornado that hit the northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Acuna.
Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in the city, in Coahuila state, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas.
The US state has seen severe flooding, with three killed and a dozen missing.
Images from Mexico showed cars and buildings badly damaged. Many people have been injured and there are fears the death toll could rise.
Coahuila Governor Ruben Moreira, on a visit to the stricken area, said 10 adults and three children had died and a baby was missing. Another 150 people had been taken to hospital, he said.
Reuters
Malaysia has found 139 graves, and signs of torture, in more than two dozen squalid human trafficking camps suspected to have been used by gangs smuggling migrants across the border with Thailand, the country's police chief said on Monday.
The dense jungles of southern Thailand and northern Malaysia have been a major stop-off point for smugglers bringing people to Southeast Asia by boat from Myanmar, most of them Rohingya Muslims who say they are fleeing persecution, and Bangladesh.
"It's a very sad scene... To us even one is serious and we have found 139 (graves)," Malaysia's Inspector General of Police, Khalid Abu Bakar, told reporters in the northern state of Perlis. "We are working closely with our counterparts in Thailand. We will find the people who did this."
The grisly find follows the discovery of similar shallow graves on the Thai side of the border earlier this month, which helped trigger a regional crisis. After a crackdown on the camps by Thai authorities, traffickers abandoned thousands of migrants in rickety boats in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.
Reuters
Southeast Asian nations are prioritizing spending on their navies and coastguards amid rising tensions in the South China Sea, but as their capabilities grow, so does the risk that any confrontation in the contested waterway will be harder to contain.
Annual defense spending in Southeast Asia is projected to reach $52 billion by 2020, from an expected $42 billion this year, according to IHS Janes Defence Weekly.
The 10 nations of Southeast Asia are expected to spend $58 billion on new military kit over the next five years, with naval procurement comprising a large chunk, it said.
Much of this equipment is likely to be used in and around the South China Sea, where Beijing's creation of artificial islands has alarmed some Asian countries and stoked tension between China's navy and the U.S. air force.
China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.
DW
The announcement from the government spokesperson comes days after the Greek interior minister warned his country would not be able to make debt repayments to the IMF due next month without more aid from foreign lenders.
Greece will honor its debt repayment obligations for as long as it can, government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis assured international lenders on Monday in Athens.
"To the extent that we are able to pay, we will keep on repaying these obligations," Sakellaridis told reporters.
"It is the government's responsibility to be able to repay all these obligations ... it is also the responsibility of the creditors to be faithful to (their) loan obligations," he added, refering to the latter's promise to extend a much-needed financial lifeline to Greece in exchange for wide-ranging economic and political reforms.
DW
Andrzej Duda has won Poland's presidential runoff. The right-winger trumped the incumbent centrist, Bronislaw Komorowski, with promises of change and generous social spending.
Duda, 43, ousted Civic Platform (PO) incumbent Bronislaw Komorowski in Sunday's runoff. The member of the European Parliament for the right-wing euroskeptic Law and Justice Party (PiS) secured about 53 percent of the vote in an election in which turnout reached 56 percent.
"Those who voted for me voted for change," Duda said late Sunday. "Together we can change Poland."
Poland's Roman Catholic church congratulated Duda, whose opinions on many issues fall in line with conservative religious thought. The former justice minister and member of national parliament promised increased social spending, earlier retirement and lower taxes. Duda has called for NATO to station troops in Poland as protection against Russia and cautioned against entering the eurozone, saying the country should only do once currency's debt woes have passed.
Reuters
European shares fell in thin trade on Monday while the dollar powered ahead after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen indicated that the central bank was poised to raise interest rates this year.
Investor concerns about Greece's debt problems and a poor regional and local election result by Spain's ruling People's Party also weighed on the euro and European shares.
The pull-back in European stocks mirrored losses on Wall Street on Friday after Yellen suggested the Fed was ready to act if the economy kept improving as expected, though a raft of recent data has suggested it is growing only modestly in the second quarter. She said delaying a policy tightening until employment and inflation hit its targets risked overheating the economy.
The benchmark French CAC 40 index shed 0.8 percent. Trading volumes were thin as several markets including Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States were shut for holidays.
NPR
Haneen Radi learned to run by walking.
"I used to walk," says the 36-year-old mother of four. "I saw people running and said, I'll try that."
Radi took off. In the decade since then she's finished eight marathons, and she now coaches a girls' running club with 80 members.
"I'm another person when running," Radi says. "I'm happy, I'm smiling."
A few months ago, Radi decided to organize a marathon in Tira, her hometown in northern Israel.
"I thought, I'm bringing something very nice to my society," Radi said, surrounded by supporters at a recent rally on Tira's main street. "To bring health, to bring something really good to my own people — sport."
...
This is where some hundred people rallied two weeks ago to support Radi and her plans for a public race. Because not everyone in town liked the idea.
"Certain people came to the municipality over here and said, 'You can do a race — but just for males, not females,' " said Radi, who refuses to name names. " 'No,' I said. 'No — you cannot put women aside.' "
New York Times
EDMONTON, Alberta — This is the Canadian province known for oil, cowboys, rodeos and as the adopted home of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party has long dominated politics.
So it seemed especially jarring when a boisterous crowd in this bastion of conservative voting known as Canada’s Texas celebrated its new premier this weekend: a woman regarded by much of the country as a leftist who vows to take on big oil and champion the poor.
The 51 newly elected New Democratic Party members who sat behind the new premier, Rachel Notley, their leader, in the swearing-in ceremony on Sunday did not resemble typical revolutionaries. Largely political novices, they dressed like junior bank managers. They include nurses, a phone technician and a yoga instructor.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Al Jazeera America
MEXICO CITY — When bureaucrats here ordered the closure of the feted restaurant Aguila y Sol in 2008, the A-list executive chef, Martha Ortiz, smelled a rat. The pretext was that the eatery’s 90 parking spaces fell short by one spot. Ortiz, however, suspected another reason: She was a powerful woman whose white-clothed tables attracted ministers and corporate chiefs.
Undeterred, Ortiz opened another establishment in the same swanky Polanco neighborhood, this one even more acclaimed than the last. She named it Dulce Patria, or Sweet Homeland, because a motherland transcends politics and sweet is feminine. The logo sports a woman on a horse, wearing a big sombrero and brandishing a freedom flame. Signature dishes are defiantly girly, with names like Mary Goes to the Flower Shop and garnished with purple flowers.
Spiegel Online
Founded by German entrepreneur Bastian Lehmann, on-demand courier service Postmates is going head-to-head with Uber and Amazon. The company has big ambitions but faces stiff competition.
Rush hour in San Francisco is just getting started when an algorithm decides that Bastian Lehmann is to pick up a burger with garlic fries from a nearby fast food restaurant and deliver it downtown.
The message arrives via Lehmann's iPhone, which he's attached to the dashboard of his VW Golf. He'd only just signed in to the Postmates app on his smartphone. It works out that Lehmann is the closest to the pick-up and drop-off addresses, can therefore deliver the goods the fastest and thus earn the most. Twenty-five minutes later, the app tells Lehmann that he's earned $5.80 (€5) plus a $4 tip.
Spiegel Online
For years, hackers have been warning that passenger jets are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Airlines and plane manufacturers have largely ignored the risks, but recent events are leading German authorities and pilots to take the threats extremely seriously.
The officials from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) were not at all happy about what they were hearing. An unshaven 32-year-old from Spain, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, was talking about cockpit computers and their weaknesses and security loopholes. Specifically, he was telling the EASA officials how he had managed to buy original parts from aviation suppliers on Ebay for just a few hundred dollars. His goal was to simulate the data exchange between current passenger-jet models and air-traffic controllers on the ground in order to search for possible backdoors. His search was successful. Very successful.
NPR
California's drought is turning neighbor against neighbor, as everyone seems to be on the lookout for water wasters.
Take Los Angeles resident Jane Demian, for example. She recently got a letter from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Water Conservation Response Unit, about an unverified report of prohibited water use activity at her home in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of L.A. Demian says she was called out for water runoff onto the sidewalk, driveway and gutter, and the unauthorized "washdown of hardscapes" like the walkway to her house.
But Demian isn't even sure that water waste was hers. "My neighbor next door runs his sprinkler," Demian told NPR. "And then the sprinkler water cascades down the street, ends up on my sidewalk, and waters my sidewalk actually!"
C/NET
The US wireless market is on the cusp of big changes and competitive clashes. Those, in turn, could lead to lower prices and better deals for you.
At least that's how I hope things will play out over the next few years. From Google's Project Fi experiment to build a hybrid Wi-Fi/cellular network, to rumblings about someone finally making use of Dish Network's stockpile of wireless spectrum, to the last major wireless auction for the foreseeable future -- there's a lot of activity in the mobile world. And with luck we'll see additional legitimate options in the wireless business, which could mean more-competitive prices.
In this edition of Ask Maggie, I look at each of these scenarios and explain how it could shape the future of the wireless industry.
C/NET
For many people in Silicon Valley, the trial pitting Ellen Pao against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was the legal equivalent of a telenovela. And no wonder.
The plaintiff: Pao, 45, a former junior partner with Kleiner Perkins -- arguably one of the most powerful venture firms in the industry -- claimed male partners made sexual advances to female co-workers, excluded women from potentially lucrative dinners and trips, and created an atmosphere that belittles women.
Now interim CEO of social news site Reddit, Pao sued her ex-employer for $16 million, alleging she was fired after she complained about pervasive sexism. She lost the case.
But her lawsuit was never about just the money. More than anything, it was about the real legal tender inside Silicon Valley -- the combination of power, influence and a knack for spotting the next big thing. VCs who command that currency are the industry's masters of the universe: The top investing partners at every firm who rake in the biggest bucks -- and almost 93 percent of them are men, according to Pitchbook Data, which analyzes the private investment industry.