I'm Chitown Kev and I'm substituting for regular OND editor maggiejean tonight.
OND is a 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.
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.
Feel free to share some articles and stories of your own in the comments.
The Guardian: Bangkok bomb: Thai capital reeling after deadliest attack in years by Oliver Holmes
Thailand’s military rulers are facing up to the deadliest attack in the capital in recent memory after at least 19 people were killed in a bomb blast that the government blamed on forces seeking to destroy its tourist economy.
Body parts and mangled scooters were scattered across a busy intersection in central Bangkok after the improvised device went off at about 7pm local time (noon GMT) at the Erawan Hindu shrine.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the deadly assault in which more than 123 people were injured is a major test for the military-run administration, which ousted the elected government in May 2014. The military is fighting a Muslim insurgency in the south but militants rarely launch attacks of this scale on the capital.
“The perpetrators intended to destroy the economy and tourism, because the incident occurred in the heart of the tourism district,” the defence minister, Prawit Wongsuwan, told Reuters.
“We still don’t know for sure who did this and why,” he later told reporters. “We are not sure if it is politically motivated, but they aim to harm our economy and we will hunt them down.”
“It was a pipe bomb,” the national police chief, Somyot Poompanmoung, said, adding that the toll could climb to nearer 30. “It was placed inside the Erawan shrine.” CCTV footage captured a cloud of fire, and showed Thai people and a foreign man running away.
“Those who have planted this bomb are cruel. They aim to kill because everyone knows that at 7pm the shrine is crowded with Thais and foreigners,” Somyot said. “Planting a bomb there means they want to see a lot of dead people.”
Reuters: New York man plotted to harm Muslims, Obama with X-ray device: prosecutor by T.G. Branfalt, Jr.
A Ku Klux Klan member conspired to use a remote-controlled X-ray device hidden in a truck, which he called "Hiroshima on a light switch," as a weapon of mass destruction to harm Muslims and President Barack Obama, a prosecutor told jurors on Monday.
But a lawyer for Glendon Scott Crawford at the start of his trial said that government undercover agents dragged him further into the plot to build what media dubbed the "death ray" machine after he tried to pull away in the initial stages, when he had no more than "a piece of paper" sketching out his ideas.
In opening arguments at U.S. District Court in Albany, a lawyer for Crawford, 51, of Galway, New York, said the device would have never been built if not for the government supplying the necessary components via “criminal” sources.
"(Crawford) has strong political views and he saw Muslim extremism in Europe coming here," defense lawyer Kevin Luibrand said.
Crawford and Eric Feight were arrested in 2013 and charged in the plot to unleash radiation at a mosque in Albany and a Muslim school in nearby Colonie.
The men also planned to attack the White House, according to a recording of their May 2012 conversation played at the trial, in which Crawford described himself a Klansman and called the remote-controlled device "Hiroshima on a light switch."
AlJazeera: Heroin policy shifts toward treatment, but experts say not nearly enough by Naureen Khan
WASHINGTON — Amid a nationwide rise in heroin use and related overdoses, the White House announced an initiative on Monday to help combat the epidemic. However, advocates for drug treatment say it doesn’t go far enough.
Michael Botticelli, the director of the National Drug Control Policy, announced that Barack Obama’s administration would invest $2.5 million over a year in 15 states along the Northeast corridor and Washington, D.C., to track where heroin is coming from, where it is being distributed and where it is being mixed with a powerful additive believed to be contributing to the spike in overdose deaths.
Heroin overdose deaths in the United States quadrupled from 2000 to 2013, propelled by lower costs as well as the abuse of prescription opiates, according to a tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the growth came after 2010. Just last month, over 75 opiate overdoses were reported to the San Francisco Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project, compared with 25 in July 2014.
The new federal program, focused on hard-hit New England, would pair drug intelligence officers with public health coordinators to emphasize public safety as well as treatment, issuing alerts about dangerous batches of heroin and training first responders on how to effectively treat overdoses.
“The new heroin response strategy demonstrates a strong commitment to address the heroin and prescription opioid epidemic as both a public health and a public safety issue,” Botticelli said in a statement. “This administration will continue to expand community-based efforts to prevent drug use, pursue smart-on-crime approaches to drug enforcement, increase access to treatment, work to reduce overdose deaths and support the millions of Americans in recovery.”
Community advocates and public health experts caution, however, that the program still appears to prioritize law enforcement over programs that get drug users the medical help they need. Harm-reduction workers say they would prefer that the government invest in two proven health strategies: distributing naloxone, a medication that reverses opiate overdoses, and where possible, setting up syringe access and exchange centers to curtail hepatitis and HIV transmission among intravenous drug users.
Christian Science Monitor:
Unlike other states, Mississippi unlikely to remove Confederate flag soon by Kevin Truong
As part of a growing chorus to remove the Confederate battle emblem from Mississippi’s state flag, a group of more than 60 prominent former and current residents took out a full-page advertisement in Jackson's Clarion-Ledger Sunday calling for the state to strike the symbol.
The letter was signed by notables like actor Morgan Freeman, musician Jimmy Buffett, and author John Grisham. Mississippi is the only state where the symbol still flies over the statehouse.
"It is simply not fair, or honorable, to ask black Mississippians to attend schools, compete in athletic events, work in the public sector, serve in the National Guard, and go about their normal lives with a state flag that glorifies a war fought to keep their ancestors enslaved," the letter says. "It's time for Mississippi to fly a flag for all its people."
Like many former Confederate states, Mississippi has grappled with the issue before. In 2001, a referendum to change the flag’s design was put in front of voters, who opted in a landslide to keep the current styling.
But even though it's a decade and a half later, and even though the Confederate battle emblem has been removed elsewhere recently, it appears unlikely that Mississippi will remove the symbol from its flag soon.
The Daily Northwestern: NLRB declines to rule on Northwestern union, ending CAPA movement by Alex Putterman, Web Editor
The National Labor Relations Board on Monday unanimously decided not to rule in the Northwestern union case, ending the 18-month long movement for NU football players to unionize.
The board did not actively overturn the March 2014 ruling from the NLRB’s Chicago regional director that the players were NU employees but declined jurisdiction, citing the impact an NU union would have on the NCAA as a whole.
“Asserting jurisdiction would not promote labor stability due to the nature and structure of NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS),” the NLRB said in a news release. “By statute the Board does not have jurisdiction over state-run colleges and universities, which constitute 108 of the roughly 125 FBS teams.”
Because the Wildcats’ players are no longer legally employees, the votes cast during their union election last April will not be counted. The decision cannot be appealed.
Former NU quarterback Kain Colter, who spearheaded the union movement, tweeted that he was “Disappointed by the NLRB ruling. But can’t deny the positive changes that were brought about by athletes standing up. Proud of those guys.”
Kain Colter, former QB for Northwestern University
Reuters: Despite protests, slog more likely than radical change in Brazil by Paulo Prada
Despite protests by hundreds of thousands of Brazilians against President Dilma Rousseff and ongoing calls for her impeachment, little suggests radical change in Brazil anytime soon.
With the country hobbled by legislative gridlock, a lack of viable alternatives to the established political parties and an economic reversal so complete that its currency is trading at a 12-year trough, there are no easy or fast fixes.
"We see no immediate solution, but what else can we do?" said Rogerio Chequer, the São Paulo-based leader of one of the grassroots organizations that organized marches across the country on Sunday.
Brazil President Dilma Rousseff
The latest in a round of demonstrations across Brazil this year came as the economy reels from its sharpest slowdown in three decades, a vast corruption scandal ensnares political and corporate kingpins and a federal audit considers rejecting the government's 2014 book-keeping.
Together, the problems amount to a giant reversal for a country that, buoyed by a commodities boom and a consumer binge, appeared ready to make a long-sought leap into the league of economic heavyweights when Rousseff first took office in 2011.
They have also left Brazilians frustrated by what they believe is a lack of leadership across the political spectrum. Two-thirds of them want Rousseff's impeachment, polls show.
Associated Press: Palestinian hunger striker tests Israeli force-feeding law by Mohammed Daraghmeh & Miriam Berger
EINABOS, West Bank (AP) -- Palestinian hunger striker Mohammed Allan spent his college years as an activist and leader in the student wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group at a West Bank university. Now unconscious and shackled to a hospital bed, the lawyer accused of affiliating with terrorists has focused attention on Israel's controversial detention and force-feeding policies.
Allan was arrested in November 2014 and held for two six-month periods under administrative detention, which allows authorities to imprison suspects for months or years without charge. Israel defends the practice as a necessary tool to stop militant activity.
He began his hunger strike in June, 63 days ago, to protest his incarceration without charge and has been unconscious since Friday at the intensive care unit of the Barzilai hospital in Israel's southern city of Ashkelon. Doctors say he has organ damage because of the fast and his condition remains precarious.
Palestinian prisoners have used hunger strikes before to draw attention to their detention without trial or charges. Fearing that a fasting detainee's death could spark unrest among Palestinians, Israel has at times acceded to hunger strikers' demands. In June, it freed Khader Adnan, a 36-year-old senior activist in Islamic Jihad, after a 55-day hunger strike protesting his detention without charge.
Allan's fast is the first to test Israel's law, passed narrowly in July, that allows a judge to sanction force-feeding or medical treatment if an inmate's life is threatened, even if the prisoner refuses.
Associated Press: Egypt president approves sweeping anti-terrorism law by Brian Rohan
CAIRO (AP) -- In a significant leap toward harsher authoritarian rule, Egypt has enacted a draconian new anti-terrorism law that sets a sweeping definition for who and what could face a harsh set of punishments, including journalists who don't toe the government line.
The far-reaching new law adds provisions to protect security forces from prosecution, establishes stiffer prison sentences for terror-related offences, as well as heavy fines for those who publish "false news" and a special judicial circuit for terrorism cases.
Authorities claim the measures will halt attacks by Islamic militants and stop the spread of their ideology, but the new restrictions have prompted concern from lawyers, rights groups, the opposition and even some Egyptian politicians and senior judges.
The 54-article bill, signed into law late Sunday by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and announced Monday, establishes an extremely broad definition of terrorism, describing it in one article as any act that disturbs public order with force. Some charges, such as leading or organizing a terrorist group, carry the death penalty.
The law also prescribes heavy prison sentences for a range of crimes, including promoting or encouraging any "terrorist offense," as well as damaging state institutions or infrastructure, such as military or government buildings, courthouses, power and gas lines, and archaeological sites.
The Guardian: Oscar Pistorius prosecutors file appeal against murder acquittal by David Smith
Prosecutors filed an appeal on Monday calling for Oscar Pistorius, who is days away from being released from prison, to be convicted of the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The Paralympian was jailed last year for five years after being convicted on the lesser charge of culpable homicide, the South African equivalent of manslaughter. He is set to be paroled on Friday after serving 10 months behind bars, but will remain under a form of house arrest.
He is expected to stay at his uncle Arnold’s three-storey mansion in a wealthy suburb of Pretoria. He is likely to be allowed to leave the house to work, carry out community service or to attend important family events, and officials say he will not have to wear an electronic monitoring device.
The state filed its heads of argument with the supreme court of appeal. Pistorius’s defence team has until 17 September to submit its response, with the appeal hearing expected in November. If the judges rule against Pistorius, he could face returning to prison for at least 15 years.
Oscar Pistorius
The Guardian: Oldest US veteran dies weeks after she met Obama
A Michigan woman who was believed to be the nation’s oldest veteran, at 110, has died a month after meeting Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
The Oakland County medical examiner’s office said Emma Didlake died on Sunday in West Bloomfield, north-west of Detroit.
Didlake was a 38-year-old wife and mother of five when she signed up in 1943 for the women’s army auxiliary corps. She served about seven months stateside during the war, as a private and driver.
She was born in Alabama and moved with her family to Detroit in 1944.
Obama said on Monday in a statement: “Didlake served her country with distinction and honor, a true trailblazer for generations of Americans who have sacrificed so much for their country.”
Emma Didlake with President Barack Obama
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