Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, December 29, 2015
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 near 12:00AM Eastern Time. Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - respect is due.
This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Me and My Woman by Shuggie Otis
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Top News |
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Asian shares higher on strong lead from Wall Street
By (BBC)
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Asian shares headed higher on Wednesday, getting a strong lead from Wall Street where rising oil prices led to a rebound in the market.
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Encouraging economic data such as housing and consumer confidence in the US also boosted investor sentiment.
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But commodity shares still weighed on the market with shares of mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto down 0.9% and 0.4% respectively.
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Investors ignored data that showed industrial production saw its worst decline in 10 months in November on slumping global demand for exports.
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Should we solar panel the Sahara desert?
By (BBC)
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"We didn't want politicians in the game; it should just be scientifically sound and economically viable. But politicians liked it, and when the Desertec Industrial Initiative launched in Munich in July 2009, we were flooded with politicians. When they see the potential for a solution they get interested.
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"At the time when [the idea] was conceived, North Africa looked quite different. Now, this turbulence changes the whole business environment, and the region has to go through that. But the demand, the need to tap into the solar energy in deserts, has not disappeared."
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"The technology is good. It's matured a lot in the last few years in terms of thermal storage. That allows you to take the heat that you capture from the sun and store it for, let's say, up to a day, and produce the power later. That means you can generate it around the clock.
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"Africa has an acute energy problem. Only around 30% of sub-Saharan Africans have access to electricity. Economic growth in Africa is now around 5.5%, but this is hampered by lack of energy.
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"As an African, knowing the history about the exploitation of the continent, where there is a big gap when it comes to riches, and Africa is still poor due to the colonial past and the slave time, nobody can just come and do things as if we are still in the past.
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International |
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Government warned about funding cuts weeks before Yorkshire floods
By Rajeev Syal
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The government was warned by its own advisory body that a funding gap could leave swaths of the north vulnerable to flooding just weeks before the deluge this Christmas, official documents show.
Prof Colin Mellors, head of the Yorkshire regional flood and coastal committee (RFCC), said funding cuts could mean discontinuing some flood defences, according to minutes on the government’s website.
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Several MPs questioned the government’s priorities on Sunday, following claims from local politicians that the government has found millions for flood defences in the south of England, but has abandoned plans for the north.
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Greg Mulholland, the Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West, where Otley has been hit hard by the floods, called for more investment in flood defences as well as to combat climate change.
“The floods and unseasonably high levels of rain and warm temperatures are also a powerful reminder of the need to do more to tackle climate change, locally, nationally and internationally,” he wrote on his website.
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USA |
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BP oil spill money to go to Alabama governor’s mansion and a new hotel
By Raven Rakia
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. . .
While Alabama’s oyster industry and coastal communities continue to suffer from the effects of the massive Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout, the repairs to the governors’ mansion are estimated to cost between $1.5 million and $1.8 million. Though Bentley says he will stay there only “on occasion,” the administration said the property would be “primarily” used to wine and dine corporate executives considering the state for investment.
Alabama also plans to use a good chunk of the recovery funds to build a 350-room hotel and convention center on the coast. Alabama would spend $60 million of the spill settlement on the hotel in a $135.5 million restoration package that also includes dune restoration, walking trails, and other Gulf State Park projects. The plans resulted in a lawsuit filed by environmentalists who say the hotel is not a proper use of the recovery funds.
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In October, after the settlement was announced, Alabama Rep. Bradley Bryne expressed his frustrations to Yellowhammer News: “The settlement is severely flawed because it puts too much money under control of the federal and state governments … A better settlement would have directed more money into the RESTORE Act process and allowed our coastal communities to decide how the money should be spent.”
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
Born in Los Angeles, California, Shuggie Otis is the son of rhythm and blues pioneer, musician, bandleader, and impresario Johnny Otis and wife Phyllis. Otis, primarily known as a guitarist, also sings and plays a multitude of other instruments. While growing up with and being heavily influenced by many blues, jazz and R&B musicians in his father Johnny’s immediate circle, Otis began to gravitate towards the popular music of his generation such as Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and Arthur Lee.
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What does the Blues mean to you?
Shuggie: Blues means to me first of all my black ancestors which is the music that they played at the cotton fields. A lot of that music had to do with everyday things. Singing after hard work was like a celebration to us; a celebration of life. From the lowest lines to the highest heights. Blues is a whole range of things, as B.B. King said. I like in the blues the fact that it is a plausible music that way also to certain pop music, that’s not necessarily popular but it means something to the soul. I wanna have that kind of feel too. . .
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When me and Ray Charles started playing, at some point he looked back at me and said: ‘Hey guitar player turn your guitar up a little bit’. I think that’s the biggest compliment I’ll ever receive in music. But, I must also include B.B. King and T-Bone Walker, because these are five respectively true artists that I like. I feel like I know these people though I met Sly Stone recently; or with Jimmy Hendrix, with whom I didn’t exchange a word. Jimi Hendrix didn’t have to speak to me because his eyes spoke. It is still incredible to have met all these R’n’B people, even some jazz people. I even got to play with Jimmy Smith and Brother Jack McDuff. It was incredible. Generally, it was amazing to just play with all these different people. My dad taught me how to work with the business and that’s the reason I’m not afraid of the business. When I’m in a business meeting I feel like, my father is there, beside me. I feel him coming through me a lot, even back when he was alive. He taught me a lot. People shouldn’t blame anything on their parents because they tried the best they could; until a certain point where you are on your own, in order to become a man or a woman. My parents let me stay at home up until the age I was 23 and they were very lenient with me. As a kid I grew up with a lot of adults surrounding me. As a result I was fonder of adults than kids of my age. I became shy amongst my peers. Later, I got rid of that part of my personality because it kept me from opening up, not only around people but also in music. When I thought that I was getting compassionate in my twenties, you just hope to stay that way because life will present you with things all of a sudden.
Back to what's happening:
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Environmental |
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Tax Breaks, Falling Costs Are Boosting Wind And Solar
By Chris Arnold
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Thanks to fracking, solar and wind power now have to compete with supercheap natural gas. So more than ever, if you run a solar or wind farm you want to squeeze every bit of power and efficiency you can out of it.
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Wind turbines have gotten taller in recent years, with 200-foot-long spinning blades helping kick out more electricity. The generators have been getting better too. Altogether, the solar and wind farms SunEdison operates power the equivalent of about 1 million homes. . . .
Kearns says that's because tax credits are still crucial to securing financing for big solar and wind installations. And in recent years Congress created too much uncertainty, he says. But now, Congress has extended the tax credits for five years.
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Solar has fallen in price even more sharply. And Mir says in just the past two years there's been a big shift in the industry. He says utilities now want to add more wind because that power can be cheaper than even upgrading an old coal plant to meet pollution standards. "That's an amazing, amazing inflection point," he says.
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"Renewables have reached a point where there's no going backwards," he says. "They are becoming cheaper and cheaper and will eventually become the cheapest resource that we can use."
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Science and Health |
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'Forgotten' 19th-Century Images of Eclipses, Stars & Planets Found
By (ScienceDaily)
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An astronomer recently made an unexpected discovery — not in the skies, but in a tea-kitchen at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Tucked away in the basement room of the Danish capital were cartons holding hundreds of glass plates imprinted with images of telescope observations, some of which are 120 years old.
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Many of the fragile plates are yet to be unwrapped, but the majority of the images seen to date were captured by the University of Copenhagen Observatory on Østervold telescope, which was installed in 1895. A number of the photo plates date to the telescope's first years of operation.
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These archival records of skies from the past are immensely valuable to astrophysicists today, Shara told Live Science in an email. In some cases, they provide the only record we have of the skies from those times, he added. For his own research on supernovas, Shara has examined hundreds of plates to find stars whose explosions were visible more than a century ago.
One of the plates Pedersen found is of particular historical interest. It shows a solar eclipse from 1919, the same eclipse that was used by astronomer Arthur Eddington to prove Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein had proposed in 1915 that gravity would cause light to bend around massive objects in space, such as stars or galaxies. But it was Eddington's image of the 1919 eclipse that provided the first evidence that Einstein's theory was correct.
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"It may be marginal what we can expect of modern science from the old plates," Pedersen added. "But they contribute to the knowledge of how the sky was in former times."
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Technology |
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TSA threatens to stop accepting driver's licenses from nine states as of Jan 10
By Cory Doctorow
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When Congress passed the 2005 Real ID act -- mandating easy sharing (and intrinsic insecurity) -- of driver's license data, they insisted compliance by states with the rules would be voluntary.
But they also threatened "consequences" for noncompliance. After a decade of state/fed jousting, the feds appear ready to visit some of those consequences upon the recalcitrant states: Alaska, California, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Washington (as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands). . .
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12 states actually have laws prohibiting their DMVs from complying with Real ID requirements.
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A press officer for the Department of Homeland Security said the law’s intention was not to create a national identification card but to extend what the agency calls best practices on issuing driver’s licenses that apply to all states.
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Cultural |
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Life-jacket mountain a metaphor for Greece's refugees
By (Al Jazeera)
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At the end of the winding, rocky trail is a mountain of life jackets. Swelling by the day, it serves as testimony to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have passed through this Greek island on their way to search for safety in Europe.
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In Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, Mayor Spyros Galanos' office estimates more 450,000 refugees and migrants passed through the island between February and December 1. Lesbos has a population of a mere 85,000.
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Earlier this month, about 100 volunteers from Greece and elsewhere in Europe assembled in Lesbos and gathered as much life jackets and boat wreckage as they could. They started recycling some of the materials into items such as bags and tents
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Spiros, a shepherd in his 70s, has lived his entire life in Skala Skamnias. With a black-and-white striped bandanna across his forehead, he sits on a large stone and watches from afar as the tractor elevates a cluster of life jackets, saunters a few dozen metres and drops it on the edge of the ever-growing mountain of preservers.
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Speaking of the refugees fleeing the bloodletting in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, he says simply: "Whatever happens, it's always the normal people who pay."
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already.