Welcome to Overnight News Digest, where the usual crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, side pocket, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, jlms qkw, and ScottyUrb, guest editors annetteboardman and Doctor RJ, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with tonight's news. 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.
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From USA Today: 2 suspects arrested in social media threats at Missouri campuses
Police arrested two college students in Missouri on Wednesday for making threats to black students that heightened tensions as the state's flagship University of Missouri-Columbia campus has been roiled in recent weeks by racial strife.
Northwest Missouri State University student Connor Stottlemyre, 19, was arrested on suspicion of making a terrorist threat after he allegedly posted a threat on the anonymous social media app Yik Yak that read "I'm going to shoot any black people tomorrow, so be ready," said university spokesman Mark Hornickel
Campus police were made aware of the threat by another student. The university issued a security alert to students and faculty at about 8:30 a.m. to inform them of the threat. Stottlemyre, of Blue Springs, Mo., was arrested at 11 a.m. at his dormitory on the Maryville campus.
In a separate incident, Hunter Park, of Lake St. Louis, Mo., was taken into custody around 1:50 a.m.Wednesday at a residence hall at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, in Rolla, Mo., where he is a student, the school said in a statement. Parks was taken into custody and transferred to the Boone County Jail in Columbia, where he was held on $4,500 bond.
From CNN: Akron plane crash: Shock, horror after plane slams into apartment building
Roberta Porter was driving with her grandson through Akron, Ohio, when a plane "dropped out of the sky." It slammed into an apartment building, causing an "instant boom and flames and smoke."
"It was horrific," Porter told CNN affiliate WOIO. "It was terrible."
There was no one inside the four-unit apartment building when the small Hawker 700 plane smashed into it Tuesday, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. That means no deaths or injuries on the ground, despite the jarring crash and massive fire that followed.
Nine people -- seven passengers and two crew members -- died in the crash, said Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairwoman with the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash.
From the New York Times: G.O.P. Fight Now a Battle Over What Defines a Conservative
For months, the Republican presidential race has been animated by the party’s inchoate anger about the state of the country and an equally undefined hope that a candidate would emerge who could usher in an era of civic renewal. But the debate here and its aftermath marked an abrupt transition from vague promises about making America “great again,” in Donald J. Trump’s phrase, to a new season of the campaign shaped more by the glaring policy fissures that are dividing Republicans over what exactly to do about the nation’s problems.
From immigration and bank regulation to taxes and national security, the robust seminar on the issues that began Tuesday night and continued Wednesday exposed a contentious dispute over what it means to be a conservative and offered a preview of the contours of the battle for the Republican nomination.
Years’ worth of arguments conducted at issues forums and in the pages of policy journals and newspapers are now coming to life. The Republican hopefuls are sparring over such high-fiber fare as tax policy: whether to adhere strictly to the party’s supply-side creed or move at least modestly toward policies aimed at bolstering lesser earners. They are clashing over the role America plays in the world, and whether fiscal conservatism is compatible with a drastically enlarged military.
Most vividly, and perhaps consequentially, they are staking out their ground on immigration, clarifying the divide between restrictionists and pragmatists on an issue that could determine who is the party’s nominee.
From Vice: 'The Cleveland Strangler': The Story of a Brutal Serial Killer and His Forgotten Victims
At least 11 black women were raped and killed on Cleveland's East Side between 2007 and 2009 by a man named Anthony Sowell. It's one of the worst cases of serial murder in recent history and has been largely left untold.
For Wilbert L. Cooper, who was born and raised in Cleveland, the real story lies in how Sowell was able to get away with these heinous acts for two years. These crimes say as much about the depraved killer as they do about race, class, and law enforcement in the city of Cleveland.
In part one of the series, Wilbert heads back to his hometown and speaks to his parents, both former sergeants on the Cleveland Police Department, about the case. He also meets with the homicide detectives who investigated the murders and he revisits the horrific evidence found when the 11 bodies were discovered in October 2009.
From the Washington Post: Not all gay Catholics are pleased about how Vatican priest came out of the closet
Two days before a longtime Vatican official burst from his stained-glass closet last month, he was dining with an Italian media consultant inside an elegant restaurant on the right bank of Rome’s Tiber River. The topic of conversation: How should the official come out?
Krzysztof Charamsa was still employed at one of the Holy See’s most powerful offices, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But after decades of hiding, the 43-year-old gay Polish priest wanted to come out with a flourish. He was no longer afraid to confront a church he saw as intrinsically “homophobic” and proposed a symbolic news conference outside the headquarters of the Congregation — the very institution charged with defending and disseminating Catholic teachings around the globe.
But Emilio Sturla, a public relations consultant who worked closely with gay Catholic groups and was helping Charamsa, strongly suggested he reconsider, both men recalled. The public and the church, Sturla insisted, would see such a move as too incendiary.
“But that’s what he wanted,” Sturla said. “To be provocative.” And that’s what he did.
From the Los Angeles Times: Utah judge takes baby away from lesbian foster parents
A Utah juvenile court judge has ordered a baby taken away from a lesbian couple and placed with a heterosexual couple for the child's well-being, and child welfare officials say they are trying to determine whether they can challenge that order.
Judge Scott Johansen's order Tuesday in the central Utah city of Price raised concern at the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, agency spokeswoman Ashley Sumner said Wednesday.
Its attorneys plan to review the decision and determine what options they have to possibly challenge the order.
The ruling came during a routine hearing for April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce. They are part of a group of same-sex married couples who were allowed to become foster parents in Utah after last summer's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made gay marriage legal across the country, Sumner said.
From The Guardian: Russian TV stations broadcast secret nuclear torpedo plans
The Kremlin has admitted that Russian television accidentally showed secret plans for a nuclear torpedo system on air.
Two Kremlin-controlled channels, NTV and Channel One, showed a military official looking at a confidential document containing drawings and details of a weapons system called Status-6, designed by Rubin, a nuclear submarine construction company based in St Petersburg.
The nuclear torpedoes, to be fired by submarines, would create “zones of extensive radioactive contamination making them unsuitable for military or economic activity for a long period”, says the document, which is clearly visible in the footage for several seconds.
The images were filmed during a meeting of President Vladimir Putin with military officials in the Black Sea city of Sochi on Monday.
The footage was aired on Tuesday and later deleted by the channels, but several websites still published screenshots from it.
From BBC News: Migrant crisis: Swedish border checks introduced
Sweden has announced the introduction of temporary border checks to control the flow of migrants into the country.
Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said the step had been decided after police warned a surge in new arrivals posed a threat to public order.
The controls will come into effect from midday local time on Thursday and will last initially for 10 days.
It came as EU and African leaders gathered in Malta to discuss measures to stem the flow of people into Europe.
On the day the summit began, 14 migrants drowned in the latest boat sinking between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos.
From CBC News: Canadian Judge Asked Sexual Assault Victim Why She Couldn't Just Keep Her Knees Together
The Canadian Judicial Council is reviewing the conduct of a Federal Court judge who questioned the efforts of a sexual assault complainant to fend off her attacker.
The council announced Monday it will review the behaviour of Robin Camp during a 2014 case he adjudicated while serving as an Alberta provincial court judge. The case involved the alleged rape of a 19-year-old woman by a Calgary man, whom she accused of sexually assaulting her over a bathroom sink during a house party.
The review comes after a complaint from four law professors at Dalhousie University and the University of Calgary who described Camp as "dismissive, if not contemptuous" toward sexual assault laws and the rules of evidence.
In the 11-page complaint, Elaine Craig, Jocelyn Downie, Jennifer Koshan and Alice Woolley said that in the 2014 case, Camp asked the complainant, "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?" and, "Why didn't you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn't penetrate you?"
From The Atlantic: When Campus Hate-Speech Rules Go Further Than the Law
It’s stunning how quickly the story in Columbia, Missouri, has turned from a debate about racism in the university community to a story about free speech—and attempts to limit it.
Most prominently, the video of a crowd intimidating a photographer—a student journalist—and attempting to block him from doing his job went viral. Tim Tai, the photographer, asserted his First Amendment rights with impressive poise and calm, given the pressure on him. (On Tuesday, the faculty of the School of Journalism were voting on whether to strip Melissa Click—an assistant professor of communication shown calling for “muscle” to push a reporter out—of her “courtesy” appointment in journalism.) Suddenly, the focus of the University of Missouri story has become about free speech.
That’s even more true after an email Tuesday from university police, circulated by many people on Twitter, about “Reporting Hateful and/or Hurtful Speech.”
From Rolling Stone: The Death of Daily Fantasy: Welcome to the Beginning of the End
You can blame it on those damn ads.
The daily fantasy sports industry faces a crucible of various legal challenges that could result in anything from slight regulation of the billion-dollar business to its all-out collapse. The latest marker includes New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's call for daily fantasy giants DraftKings and FanDuel to cease operations in the state, which, in and of itself, could deal a crippling blow to business.
Operators face a confluence of legal obstacles that include the Nevada Gaming Control Board's recent ruling that daily fantasy is no different than gambling, a growing number of class-action lawsuits from New York to Florida against them, the intense scrutiny in some state legislatures as to how to deal with the growing industry and Schneiderman's letter this week, which demanded the companies stop accepting wagers from New York residents, and gave them five days to comply with his orders.
"They all share the same connective tissue of being brought about by the rapid growth of daily fantasy sports. I think if that growth would have happened in a more organic way, stretched over a number of years, you wouldn't see necessarily the confluence of those factors at this particular point in time," says Chris Grove, the editor of LegalSportsReport.com. "I think, in many ways, the advertising campaigns served maybe not as a trigger for these efforts, but certainly as fuel. It may not be the factor for why each one of these [legal challenges] exists, but it's certainly a reason why they are all coming to a head simultaneously."
From CNN Money: Joe's Crab Shack is trying out no-tipping
The no-tipping movement is picking up steam. Joe's Crab Shack is testing a no-tip model in several of its restaurants.
The casual seafood chain has eliminated gratuity in 18 establishments since August and could eventually expand the policy nationwide.
Front-house workers at the selected restaurants will now earn hourly wages of around $12-$14 an hour, but some can earn more.
With more than 130 locations nationwide, this is the first major restaurant chain to put a no-tipping system to the test.
"We picked a broad range of locations with different nuances to see how it responds in each different area," Raymond Blanchette, president and CEO of Ignite Restaurant Group, which owns Joe's Crab Shack, told CNNMoney. "We wanted a random sampling that would be indicative of how a national rollout would be."
From Slate: Why Is Othello Black?
Is Othello black? With the news that David Oyelowo will play Othello opposite Daniel Craig’s Iago and that the Metropolitan Opera is finally discontinuing the practice of blackface in productions of Otello, we may see a revival of this oft-asked question. What people mean when they ask if Othello is black is: What did Shakespeare mean when he called Othello black? Would we say Othello is black today?
It’s an understandable question. Shakespeare’s writing mostly predates the transatlantic slave trade and the more modern obsession with biological classification, both of which gave rise to our contemporary ideas of race. When Shakespeare used the word “black” he was not exactly describing a race the way we would. He meant instead someone with darker skin than an Englishman at a time when Englishmen were very, very pale. Although Othello is a Moor, and although we often assume he is from Africa, he never names his birthplace in the play. In Shakespeare’s time, Moors could be from Africa, but they could also be from the Middle East, or even Spain.
While the question is logical to me, as a reader, a director, and a lover of Shakespeare, it’s not the most interesting one. As language’s meaning evolves, so do these plays, even if their words remain exactly the same. To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours.
From The Hollywood Reporter: Producer Roundtable: 6 Filmmakers on 'Compton' Threats, Tarantino Outbursts and the Truth Behind a 'Star Wars' "Firing"
"Nothing's tougher than making a movie," says Ice Cube ('Straight Outta Compton'), who gathered with five other elite producers — Scott Cooper ('Black Mass'), Steve Golin ('The Revenant' and 'Spotlight'), Simon Kinberg ('The Martian'), Stacey Sher ('The Hateful Eight') and Christine Vachon ('Carol') — for a discussion on their most difficult career moments and the pitfalls of their profession.
Did Leonardo DiCaprio's The Revenant really cost $200 million? "Oh no, that's ridiculous," says Steve Golin at THR's annual gathering of six top producers with Oscar-contending films. But Golin admitted that Alejandro G. Inarritu's snowy Western did end up going well over its budget and was the "most difficult production" of his long career, which also includes this year's Boston church abuse dramaSpotlight. Golin, 60, shared war stories with fellow producers Ice Cube (N.W.A biopicStraight Outta Compton), 46; director-producer Scott Cooper (Black Mass), 45; writer-producer Simon Kinberg (The Martian), 42; Quentin Tarantino's longtime producer Stacey Sher (The Hateful Eight), 52; and indie veteran Christine Vachon (Carol), 53, in a lively discussion Oct. 25 at Mack Sennett Studios in L.A.
From Forbes: The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show: A $50 Million Catwalk
Don’t be fooled by the bejeweled bras and feathery wings: The 20th annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion show is big business. Airing on television in 185 countries, the L Brands owned extravaganza is the hallmark of a lingerie line known to be the most lucrative gig in fashion.
Five of the 47 models walking its catwalk tonight rank on FORBES’ Highest-Paid Models list, earning a combined $28.5 million pretax in the 12 months prior to June 2015. Add in the earnings of the dozen other power players FORBES has estimates for, such as Gigi Hadid and Elsa Hosk, and a combined $50 million-plus in annual paychecks will be storming the runway tonight. (Viewers at home will have to wait until December to watch the show air on CBS.)
Victoria’s Secret, which features nearly 50 models in its annual show, only anoints a select few Angels retained on contract per year. The company doles out seven-figure deals to its longtime Angels, while newer signees are thought to command far lower sums. This means that stars such as second-highest paid model Adriana Lima, who has been a Victoria’s Secret Angel since 2000 and banked $9 million this year, far out-earns the likes of new Angel Martha Hunt, who banked an estimated $2 million in the same time frame.
“We’re interested in appealing to women because women do 99% of the shopping in Victoria’s Secret,” said Ed Razek, chief marketing office of Victoria’s Secret, earlier this year. “Women have to say, I want to look like that, I want to have that spirit or that confidence and strength.”