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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
From the New York Times: Pope Francis, in Washington, Addresses Poverty and Climate
Welcomed with a fanfare of trumpets and a chorus of amens, Pope Francis introduced himself to the United States on Wednesday with a bracing message on climate change, immigration and poverty that ranged from the pastoral to the political.
On a day that blended the splendor of an ancient church with the frenzy of a modern rock star tour, Francis waded quietly but forcefully into some of the most polarizing issues of American civic life. Along the way, he underscored just how much he has upended the agenda of the Roman Catholic Church and reordered its priorities.
Perhaps no one was more pleased than President Obama, who greeted him with an elaborate arrival ceremony at the White House, where the pope explicitly embraced the administration’s efforts to combat climate change. At a later speech to American bishops, Francis, the first pope from Latin America, pressed for openness to immigrants, marking a signal day for Hispanics in the United States.
From
KABC 7 Los Angeles:
Los Angeles Girl, 5, Blessed By Pope Francis During Washington, D.C. Parade
Pope Francis blessed a 5-year-old girl during the papal parade Wednesday morning who traveled from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. with her family and fellow church members.
Sophia Cruz waited along the parade route on Constitution Avenue for hours along with thousands of others.
The young girl in pigtails and tennis shoes, who wanted to see the leader of her family's faith, managed to get past the metal fence as the pope made a leisurely loop around the streets near the White House in his open-sided popemobile.
Sophia stepped into the roadway where U.S. Secret Service agents initially tried to stop her, but then made eye contact with the pope.
Pope Francis waved her over, and she handed him a T-shirt and a two-page letter she wrote for him months ago. He bestowed a papal kiss and blessing and then she was handed off back into the arms of her father Raul Cruz, who said the holy experience made him "so happy, so excited."
Sophia said she doesn't remember what she wrote in that letter to the pope, but she knows it made her feel "happy."
ABC News obtained images of Sophia's letter, in which she asks Pope Francis to urge President Barack Obama and Congress to pass immigration reform. She added her heart was sad because of the hate and discrimination toward immigrants in this country.
From the
Washington Post:
Colombian president, rebels announce major breakthrough in peace talks
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the FARC rebel group announced a major breakthrough Wednesday in peace talks, bringing the country to the verge of ending one of the world’s longest-running wars.
The dramatic announcement came in Havana, where the two sides began formal negotiations in 2012 on ending the 50-year-old conflict. Wednesday’s ceremony marked the first time Santos has appeared beside Timoleón Jiménez, alias “Timochenko,” the elusive FARC commander who previously surfaced in videos recorded from his jungle hideouts.
With Cuban President Raúl Castro seated between them, Santos said he and Timochenko had told their negotiating teams to reach a final agreement within six months. The guerrilla commander remains an adversary, Santos said, but “today we are making progress in the same direction, toward the most noble goal a society can have: peace.”
From the
Los Angeles Times:
Pope Francis canonizes Father Junipero Serra, saying he defended Native Americans
Pope Francis called Father Junipero Serra a defender of “the dignity of the native community,” as the first pope from the Americas canonized the 18th century missionary known as the Apostle of California on Wednesday while celebrating his first Mass in the United States..
The ceremony to name a new Catholic saint, the first to take place on U.S. soil, came nearly 250 years after the Spanish Franciscan friar redefined the culture and history of the far West.
Serra evangelized indigenous people – sometimes with harsh methods - and established the church mission system that defined the Spanish colonial era in California.
In a sermon to 25,000 people crowded outside the ornate Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in the country, Francis addressed the missionary’s controversial legacy by portraying him as a protector, not an oppressor, of early Californians.
From
BBC News:
Migrant crisis: EU to boost aid to agencies
European Union leaders have pledged another €1bn (£700m, $1.1bn) to help UN agencies support Syrian refugees in the Middle East, as part of renewed efforts to tackle the EU's migrant crisis.
More help will be extended to Syria's neighbours, where millions have fled since the country's conflict began.
The leaders also agreed on strengthening EU external borders.
European Council President Donald Tusk warned that "greatest tide of refugees and migrants is yet to come".
About half a million migrants have arrived in Europe this year, exposing deep divisions with in the EU.
The emergency summit in Brussels got under way amid a bitter row over the relocation of 120,000 migrants.
From
CNN:
Gacy investigation leads to breakthrough in separate, 36-year-old cold case
Because of John Wayne Gacy, John Doe No. 89 now has a name.
It's Andy Drath, who as a teenage boy fit the profile of many of the serial killer's victims. Authorities don't think Drath was one of them, though investigators looking into Gacy's past did manage to put two and two together in a major breakthrough in a 36-year-old cold case and major relief to Drath's family.
"You should never lose hope in finding your loved one." said Dr. Willia Wertheimer, Drath's half-sister who submitted DNA that proved pivotal. "... John Doe No. 89 now will come home to his kid sister with his own name -- Andy."
A ward of Illinois' Department of Children and Family Services, Drath was a 16-year-old boy when he was last seen in late 1978 or early the next year, the Cook County, Illinois, Sheriff's Office announced Wednesday. He'd gone west to San Francisco, hoping to have his guardianship transferred there.
It was in that Northern California city, in June 1979, that police found a male's body with multiple gunshot wounds in a homicide.
They didn't know who he was, much less who killed him. And, according to authorities, his case went cold.
At least until Gacy entered the picture.
From the
Chicago Tribune:
Attorney for accuser in Patrick Kane case cites evidence tampering
Chaos enveloped the investigation into Patrick Kane on Wednesday, after the attorney for the woman who accused the Blackhawks star of sexual assault said a police evidence bag that once contained the accuser's rape kit was left anonymously on her mother's doorstep.
The claim — which was not substantiated by police and was mocked by Kane's lawyer — kicked off a bizarre day of dueling news conferences and seesaw allegations in western New York, where authorities have been investigating an alleged incident that occurred early last month at Kane's lakefront mansion near Buffalo.
Attorney Thomas J. Eoannou launched the first accusation about noon, saying the alleged victim's mother found the empty brown bag when she returned home from work around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. Eoannou showed reporters the bag, which had a label with the accuser's name as well as the initials of the nurse who purportedly performed the evidence collection at an Erie County hospital.
"I have obviously ... grave concerns as to what's going on here. That's why we went public with it," Eoannou told reporters at a news conference. "Something seriously has gone amiss."
From
Vox:
How many deaths did Volkswagen's pollution scandal cause?
This week, Volkswagen admitted that it had secretly rigged as many as 11 million diesel cars worldwide so that their pollution controls only worked when they were being tested by regulators. The rest of the time, while the cars were actually being driven, they emitted up to 40 times as many smog-forming nitrogen oxides.
So how much extra pollution was Volkswagen's deception responsible for? And how many deaths might that extra pollution have caused? What follows is a very rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate based on what we know so far. (Spoiler: the premature death numbers range from single digits to hundreds per year. Like I said, rough.)
How much extra pollution did Volkswagen cause? Bloomberg crunched some numbers and estimated that Volkswagen's 482,000 deceitful US cars may have added between 3,000 to 12,000 additional tons of nitrogen oxide pollution (NOx) to the atmosphere each year, assuming the cars were driven an average amount.**
Extrapolating that out to 11 million cars around the world, and we get somewhere between 68,000 and 274,000 additional tons of NOx emissions each year.
From
Vice:
Whoops, Turns Out Hackers Stole 5.6 Million People's Fingerprints from the Government
Earlier this year, the United States government admitted it had been subject to a massive data breach in which the personal information for 21.5 million government employees and former employees was leaked through a hack of Office of Personnel Management security clearance applications. The Washington Post quoted FBI Director James B. Comey as calling the stolen data "a treasure trove of information about everybody who has worked for, tried to work for, or works for the United States government."
Then, earlier today, OPM issued a statement acknowledging that their initial estimate of 1.1 million fingerprints was inaccurate and that more than 5.6 million people's prints had been compromised in the June breach. "Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited," the agency explained. "However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves."
OPM is responsible for the staffing of government agencies, providing security clearances, and many other services concerning civilian government employees. Those affected by the breach included current and former government employees, as well as their spouses and partners.
Though US investigators have said they believe China is behind the hack, the Chinese government has denied it. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chinese President Xi Jinping flatly rejected the accusation, saying that, "the Chinese government does not engage in theft of commercial secrets in any form" and that his nation is "ready to strengthen cooperation with the US side on this issue."
From
The Daily Beast:
Marines Trained That Rape in Afghanistan Is a ‘Cultural’ Issue
U.S. Marines preparing to go overseas are given a detailed training session about the Marine Corps’ own rules against sexual assault. But they are offered practically no guidance on what to do if they witness rape and other sexual abuses by “local nationals” in other countries, including Afghanistan, where child rape is common.
A 45-minute scripted presentation given to Marines as part of their pre-deployment process doesn't say that they shouldn’t report sexual assaults in the countries where they’re serving. But it explains that laws and norms about sexual relations vary from country to country, and that in Afghanistan in particular, sexual assault is a “cultural” issue, and not a purely legal one.
The Daily Beast obtained a copy of the script for the training session, which includes a set of PowerPoint slides and instructions about what those leading the session are supposed to say on sexual abuse in other countries.
The training guide supports allegations by Marines and Army soldiers in recent days that they’ve been told not to intervene to prevent sexual assault in Afghanistan, including the rape and sexual enslavement of children on U.S. bases. Senior military officials, including the general in charge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, have been forced to respond to what critics say is a policy of remaining silent in the face of crimes committed by Afghan officials trained and supported by the U.S., crimes that would send American service members to prison.
From
The Guardian:
Chicago man charged with texting advice on Indonesia 'suitcase' murder
A Chicago man was arrested on Wednesday on charges that he advised his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend about how to kill the woman’s wealthy mother at a resort in Indonesia. The criminal complaint described how the man used text messages from the US to suggest the most effective methods to kill.
Robert Justin Bibbs, 24, believed that in exchange for instructing the couple on how to carry out the slaying and evade police detection, he would get a cut of the mother’s inheritance, according to the complaint, which was unsealed several hours after Bibbs’s arrest.
He is charged in federal court in Chicago with conspiring with his cousin, Tommy Schaefer, and Heather Mack to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase in a taxi at the resort in Bali in August 2014. An Indonesian court convicted Mack, 19, and Schaefer, 21, of the killing in April.
When US magistrate Maria Valdez asked Bibbs at an initial appearance Wednesday whether he understood he could face life in prison, Bibbs quietly replied, “Yes, ma’am.” Sitting nearby, his mother shook her head in disbelief when a prosecutor said her son was accused in a murder conspiracy.
From
Al Jazeera:
Nevada school district bans trans teen from using men's bathroom
Officials in Elko, Nevada have unanimously denied a request from a transgender middle school student to use his preferred restrooms and locker room.
The Elko Daily Free Press newspaper reported Wednesday that the Elko County School Board decided Tuesday not to allow the 13-year-old transgender boy to use the facilities designated for men.
The boy's mother, Michelle Gonzalez, said he is regularly bullied and pleaded with officials to approve his request.
The board has previously said the child can use a unisex restroom for special education students — a decision Gonzalez said promotes segregation.
Parents who spoke against the request said it could make other students uncomfortable and endanger the transgender child.
Elko School Board Trustee Cindy Elquist agreed, citing the board's mission to make policies that are best for all students.
From
Slate:
A Nightmare Scenario for the Student Loan Program
You may know that the federal student loan program makes an immense profit. But while that may be the case, not every student is profitable. In general, the government uses money it makes from the most reliable borrowers, particularly graduate students and the parents of undergrads, in order to subsidize generous terms for riskier undergrads who tend to default on their debts in large numbers.
That's why I can't help but feel a little nervous reading this piece from Quartz's Shelly Banjo about top companies that are now helping their young employees pay off or refinance their student debt. Credit Suisse, for instance, is now helping workers get an extra 0.25 percent off their interest rate when they choose to refinance with SoFi, a startup that apparently has similar deals with 200 employers. It's a nice perk, and I imagine other corporations looking to attract top graduates will start following suit. Which should probably give the Department of Education fits.
The student loan refinancing industry operates on a pretty simple principle: A lot of high-earning borrowers get a relatively raw deal on their government student loans, so it's easy to offer them better terms while still making a profit. This is because the Department of Education doesn't have any underwriting standards—no matter how big or small a credit risk a borrower might be, they get the same interest rate. So an aspiring software engineer at MIT, who will probably have no problem paying off her debt after graduation, gets the same deal as a community college student who's likely to drop out and possibly default. From a social fairness perspective, this make sense. But it leaves an opening for companies like SoFi to come along and pick off valuable borrowers by offering a new, low-interest loan to pay off their old government debt. They're just skimming the cream off the top.
From
The Atlantic:
Just Another Factory Closing
Since 1965, assemblers, most of them women, have finger-tinkered together all manner of valves out of tiny components molded and fabricated in that same factory building. During the 50 years of the plant’s existence, even as it supplied most of the appliance world with these little widgets, rumors circulated that the plant was in trouble, said Bob Gable, a retired 37-year veteran manager at the plant. That, in part, was what drove the little factory to lower its defect rate to (what I’m told are) near-perfect levels, and earned it a sparkling reputation for price and quality among big appliance makers like General Electric, Whirlpool, and Maytag—something Kirk King, a former Maytag buyer, confirmed for me.
Despite the rumors, the little Illinois factory always survived, even as nearby appliance makers—appliance-making, until recently, was a predominantly Midwestern endeavor—shuttered operations, including Maytag’s corporate demise after over a century in Newton, Iowa, in 2007.
Today, however, a handful of employees are assembling Hanover’s last batch of solenoid valves at that spot next to the Apple River, while maintenance crews clean up around them and office personnel put things in order. Next week, the little-factory-that-could will fall silent, and production will shift to Matamoros, Mexico. The 100 jobs lost will hardly register among the 12.3 million manufacturing jobs nationwide, but it’s worth considering how this happened to Hanover, and what it all means.
From
Maxim:
'Serial' Podcast Eyes Bowe Bergdahl for Upcoming Season
Serial fans, you heard it here first: according to several anonymous sources, one of the two upcoming seasons of the wildly popular podcast will focus on the infamous case of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who disappeared from his post in eastern Afghanistan under mysterious circumstances back in 2009.
Bergdahl was held prisoner by the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied guerilla insurgent group, until he was released in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees in May 2014. Bergdahl claims that he was abducted by the insurgents after intentionally walking off his outpost. His goal, he says, was to cause a scene that would ultimately draw attention to conditions in his unit that he found troubling, as the late Michael Hastings and I first reported in 2012.
However, this story contradicts accounts from multiple soldiers who served with Bergdahl in Afghanistan. They are convinced his reasons for leaving the outpost were far less honorable. Bergdahl was eventually charged with both desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
All of this is ripe material for Serial host Sarah Koenig's Rashomon approach to investigative journalism, which she deftly applied to the case of Adnan Syed, a man currently serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.
From
Rolling Stone:
Trevor Noah on His Version of 'The Daily Show'
Talk about trying to fill enormous shoes. On September 28th, viewers of The Daily Show will find a new face behind Jon Stewart's freshly vacated desk: Trevor Noah, a smart, politically minded stand-up comedian from South Africa who's huge abroad but an almost entirely unknown quantity here. Stewart transformed the politically minded talk show into a late-night institution. The challenge for Noah, 31, is to honor what his forebear accomplished while ushering the show into a new era — one in which social-media drives news cycles as much as, if not more than, Stewart's old cable-news foils, and one where programmers are scrambling to attract as many millennial eyeballs as possible. Here, the host talks about where he's from — and where he wants The Daily Show to go.
What can people can expect from your first episode?
The first episode will be a reintroduction of the show — but you can't just go off one episode like, Oh I know what this is about, I know what this is. It takes a lot more time. You're building a relationship. So what we're doing is dividing the first week into a four-part miniseries that will set the tone for what we hope the show will be.
From
Variety:
Viola Davis on Her Groundbreaking Emmy Win: ‘I Felt Like I Fulfilled a Purpose’
Fellow nominee Taraji P. Henson stood and applauded. Kerry Washington cried. But of all those moved by Viola Davis’ historic win at the Sept. 20 Emmy Awards, perhaps the most appreciative was a former 6-year-old girl who once lost the Miss Center Falls Recreation title.
“I keep expecting to be that little girl who loses the contest,” Davis tells Variety, after just four hours’ sleep at an early morning photo shoot at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. “It’s a mixture of disbelief and joy and acceptance. It’s just beautiful.”
Davis has earned a spot in the Emmy record books — as the first black woman to win for lead actress in a drama — sparking an outpouring of support on social media. The win, along with those of Regina King (supporting actress in a limited series for “American Crime”) and Uzo Aduba (supporting actress in a drama for “Orange Is the New Black”), was a resounding statement on diversity, especially in a year when the Academy Awards faced criticism for the lack thereof.
From
The Hollywood Reporter:
'Furious 8' Stuck at the Starting Line: Universal's Director Dilemma
No franchise is more important to Universal Pictures than Fast & Furious, the car-racing series whose seventh installment grossed $1.5 billion worldwide this year. But the effort to mount an eighth picture is proving more difficult than first imagined for the studio.
As its announced April 2017 release date inches closer and screenwriter Chris Morgan works on the script, Universal still has not found a director for the next outing. And in this case, it seems that the job will involve more than just the usual challenge of overseeing a big-budget thrill ride. There also is the recent exit of studio co-president of production Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, who oversaw the series, and the prickly matter of star-producer Vin Diesel.
Following the death of Paul Walker in November 2013, Universal enlisted Diesel, 48, as the face of the series, updating fans on Furious 7 via his social media and putting him forward to speak about the cast and crew's desire to finish the movie, which was about halfway completed when Walker died in a car accident. Diesel not only was a veteran of the series going back to the 2001 original (though he took a break, returning for the fourth installment), but he had the credibility of having been close to Walker, personally.
From
/Film:
Pierce Brosnan Sees “No Reason” Not to Have a Black James Bond; Chiwetel Ejiofor Nominates Michael Peña
Even as our current James Bond suits up for his next adventure, fans have started talking about about who could, or should, replace Daniel Craig. In particular, there’s been much speculation about whether the next Bond could be played by a non-white actor for the first time in franchise history.
For his part, former Bond Pierce Brosnan says he sees “no reason” why we couldn’t have a black Bond. Meanwhile, Chiwetel Ejiofor (himself a popular fan pick for the role) suggests Michael Peña should be the next one to pick up 007’s signature Walther PPK.
Brosnan shared his thoughts on the next Bond in a chat with the Press Association. “Anything is possible for sure, but I think he’ll be male and he’ll be white,” he said, adding, “There’s wonderful black actors out there who could be James Bond, and there’s no reason why you cannot have a black James Bond.”
His comments echo ones made by his successor Craig way back in 2008. “If we can have a black U.S. president we can have a black James Bond,” Craig told the Daily Mail while promoting Quantum of Solace. “I think it’s the right moment for a black James Bond.”
Brosnan was less open, however, to the idea of a distaff Bond. “But a female James Bond, no, I think it has to be male,” he said. “James Bond is a guy, he’s all male. His name is James, his name is James Bond.”
From
Vulture:
The Story Behind Black-ish's Provocative N-Word Episode
When Black-ish creator Kenya Barris found texts on his 16-year-old daughter’s phone from a few of her white male friends invoking the N-word, he lost it.
“I was like Hold on! Why are these people saying this?” Barris recalled during a phone interview with Vulture. “She was like—What, what Dad? Everybody says it. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a word. I was like, WHAT? I went off on her. Do you know this isn’t just a word? And I realized her relationship to it was just completely different than the way I was seeing it.”
It also birthed the thought-provoking and super funny second season premiere of Black-ish, ABC’s comedy about an upper-middle-class black family living in Los Angeles. In “The Word” adorable Jack Johnson (Miles Brown) performs Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” at school—N-word and all—and sparks a feisty 22-minute generational and multi-cultural debate about the use of the epithet that undoubtedly left the audience pondering some new ideas. (Read: It’s OK for Rosie Perez-type Puerto Ricans to invoke that word; but it’s not OK for J Lo-type Puerto Ricans to do so.)
The day before the show aired, Barris admitted to Vulture that he was “terrified” about releasing the episode, but he thinks it’s the right time in the country for this discussion.
From the
A.V. Club:
PETA goes for a dignity homerun by suing over the selfie rights of monkeys
Acting, as always, to uphold the dignity of every living creature save themselves, members of the People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals have brought a lawsuit against a photographer for infringing on the copyright to a photo taken by an endangered crested macaque. The photograph in question, usually referred to as the “monkey selfie,” has actually already been at the center of a contentious legal discussion over who owns the rights to animal-produced art, with the U.S. Copyright Office ruling last year that only works produced by a human being can by subject to copyright.
But that’s not stopping PETA from suing photographer David Slater, claiming that he’s profiting off of works that are owned by an Indonesian macaque (whose name, lest any aspect of this story avoid being completely ridiculous, is Naruto) after it came across and used Slater’s unattended camera equipment in the country’s Tangkoko Reserve. Defining themselves as Naruto’s “next friends”—a legal distinction that was once used to assist women whose legal rights weren’t recognized by the courts, and is now being employed to help a monkey own a selfie—PETA is suing Slater and his publisher, seeking damages to be used to support “Naruto, his family, and his community, including the preservation of their habitat.” (The Celebes crested macaque has seen its population drastically reduced by deforestation, and is listed as “Critically Endangered” by the International Union For The Conservation Of Nature).
From
Billboard:
Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Taylor Swift & More: What's the Song of the Fall?
As of 4:21 EDT a.m. this morning, it officially became fall. While we'll soon be covering our ears with earmuffs, we'll also be exposing them to some of the new season's biggest hits.
What will those songs be?
With OMI's "Cheerleader" having taken the title of Billboard's top song of the summer of 2015, Billboard reached out to pop radio programmers for picks on what songs could rule fall. From hits by The Weeknd to Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and more, here's what's likely to be the soundtrack as the leaves, and playlists, change.