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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
From the New York Times: Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly
For half a century, climate scientists have seen the West Antarctic ice sheet, a remnant of the last ice age, as a sword of Damocles hanging over human civilization.
The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds — if not thousands — of years to occur.
Now, new research suggests the disaster scenario could play out much sooner.
Continued high emissions of heat-trapping gases could launch a disintegration of the ice sheet within decades, according to a studypublished Wednesday, heaving enough water into the ocean to raise the sea level as much as three feet by the end of this century.
With ice melting in other regions, too, the total rise of the sea could reach five or six feet by 2100, the researchers found. That is roughly twice the increase reported as a plausible worst-case scenario by a United Nations panel just three years ago, and so high it would likely provoke a profound crisis within the lifetimes of children being born today.
From CNN: Tornado strikes Oklahoma; seven people injured near Tulsa
The blare of tornado sirens filled the Oklahoma night Wednesday as at least one tornado struck the state, according to the National Weather Service office in Tulsa.
Seven patients were taken to hospitals in the greater Tulsa area, Laura O'Leary with the Oklahoma Emergency Medical Services Authority told CNN.
One person was in critical condition, she said.
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: No charges against Minneapolis police officers in Jamar Clark shooting
The two Minneapolis police officers involved in the November shooting death of Jamar Clark will not face criminal charges, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Wednesday, as he released volumes of evidence he said prove the officers feared for their lives during the 61-second altercation.
Freeman said DNA and other evidence collected after the shooting on a north Minneapolis street show that Clark was not handcuffed during a scuffle with police officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze, and that Clark had grabbed Ringgenberg's gun after the officer tackled him to the ground. In a news conference, the county attorney played video from the scene and invited the public to peruse police files, lab reports and crime scene photos posted on the county's website.
"This case is not at all similar to others seen around the country," Freeman said, referencing controversial officer-involved shootings in Chicago, Cleveland and other cities. "These officers did not have the opportunity to negotiate or tactically withdraw."
While the city's mayor, police chief and other officials praised Freeman for transparency, community members angered by Clark's death rejected Freeman's conclusions. Leaders of the Minneapolis NAACP, Black Lives Matter and other advocates peppered Freeman with questions during the news conference, arguing the evidence points to the officers as the aggressors in the situation.
From NBC News: French Terror Suspect Had Arsenal in Apartment
The French national charged Wednesday with plotting a terrorist attack had an arsenal in his apartment.
In the apartment Reda Kriket rented in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil, police found some of the standard tools of terror — a cache of assault rifles and handguns, five stolen French passports, seven cell phones still in their packaging, and a single tear gas bomb, prosecutors said.
They also confiscated Tupperware containing 500 grams of the powerful explosive TATP, more than a kilo of industrial explosives, detonators and other electronics, they said.
More ominously, they found acetone and other chemicals, along with four cartons containing thousands of steel marbles — the killer ingredients in the kinds of deadly shrapnel-filled bombs favored by Islamic State terrorists.
From the Indianapolis Star: Slain 1-year-old Shaylyn Ammerman laid to rest
Shaylyn Ammerman, the 1-year-old girl who was brutally raped and smothered to death last week, was laid to rest Wednesday, March 30, at the Christian Life Center in Spencer, Ind. Throughout the afternoon and evening, hundreds filed into the center, most leaving with wet eyes and their faces buried in the arms of a friend or loved one.
When Shaylyn's father would step outside to smoke, a family member or friend would often accompany him to provide some comfort while he took pulls from his cigarette. One man, who said he worked with Shaylyn's maternal grandfather at a dump truck company, told IndyStar he'd driven all the way from Indianapolis to pay his respects. He said he'd never met Shaylyn, but knew how torn up her grandfather was, and thought coming down from Indy was the right thing to do.
Shaylyn's body was found March 24 next to a tree in an isolated, rural patch of land where the White River and Indian Creek meet, just outside of Gosport. She was suffocated, an autopsy showed, and badly bruised.
Kyle Parker, 22, has been charged with rape, murder, child molesting, kidnapping and other counts in connection with Shaylyn's death. He was put on suicide watch Wednesday and isolated in a padded cell in a sleeping bag for suicidal inmates. Jail officials said he is on constant video surveillance, and checked by staff every 15 minutes.
From Slate: Former Cheerleader and Mississippi State Sophomore Pleads Guilty After Trying to Join ISIS
A 20-year-old former Mississippi State sophomore pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a federal terrorism charge after she was arrested along with her fiancé in August trying to board a plane to travel to Syria to join ISIS. Jaelyn Young’s bio certainly doesn’t appear to be that of a typical ISIS recruit, if there is such a thing. A chemistry major at the time of her arrest, Young is the daughter of a police officer and former member of the Navy Reserve; she was an honor student and cheerleader in high school. Young’s fiancé, 22-year-old Muhammad Dakhlalla, pleaded guilty to a similar charge earlier this month.
Young now faces 20 years in prison for conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. The couple was identified by authorities after they contacted undercover federal agents online about assistance with traveling to Syria. When they boarded a flight in Columbus, Mississippi, on Aug. 8 with tickets to travel to Istanbul and a plan to cross the border, authorities intercepted them.
Prosecutors portrayed Young as the instigator of the couple’s plot to go to Syria and join ISIS, and her desire to convert to Islam took root before she began dating Dakhlalla.
From The Atlantic: The Commodification of Higher Education
When the U.S. News & World Report rankings were first published in 1983, they equipped students with what had previously seemed to be top-secret information about colleges and universities. They highlighted the practical role of higher education—something in which students (and their families) were investing to improve their lives. “College is expensive,” said Robert Morse, the chief data strategist for U.S. News, via email. “U.S. News’s mission is to arm students with good data, enabling them to sift through lots of complicated information when deciding which school is the right fit for them.” The rankings allow students to compare schools in an (arguably) apples-to-apples way—allowing students to, according to Morse, “navigate the complex process of choosing the best school for them” and creating “a national move towards greater transparency in the education industry.”
Many educators see the rankings in an entirely different way.
They’re “highly pernicious,” said Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University. “I think they’ve had a really deleterious effect on higher education as [colleges and universities] try to meet requirements that may not be in the best educational interest of their students.” The Education Conservancy founder Lloyd Thacker thinks the rankings have had such a disastrous impact on higher education that he edited an entire book—College Unranked—aimed at reminding “readers that college choice and admission are a matter of fit, not of winning a prize, and that many colleges are ‘good’ in different ways.” Critics like Roth and Thacker say the rankings contribute to the admissions frenzy, giving the impression that the most desirable schools—irrespective of the applicant and his or her specific interests and needs—are the ones at the top of the list, the ones that are harder to get into. “They accentuate the race toward the wealthiest schools,” said Roth.
From the Los Angeles Times: San Francisco State Probes Dispute Over Man's Dreadlocks
San Francisco State University said Tuesday it was investigating an incident captured on video in which a black woman confronted a white man on campus for wearing dreadlocks.
In a video posted on YouTube on Monday, the man and woman can be heard arguing in a hallway about his hair.
"You're saying that I can't have a hair style because of your culture? Why?" the man said.
"Because it's my culture," she said.
The man tells her that dreadlocks were part of Egyptian culture and asks her, "Are you Egyptian? Nah, man, you're not." She asked him if he was Egyptian, and he told her no.
"Wait, where's Egypt?" she asked. "Tell me."
He responded: "You know what, girl ... you have no right to tell me what I cannot wear."
From the Washington Post: Lawyers say Donald Trump under ‘continuous’ IRS audit
Tax counsel for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a letter released Wednesday that the billionaire businessman has been under continuous IRS audit for more than a decade.
In the letter, released by the Trump campaign to demonstrate that the candidate is in fact under audit, Sheri Dillon and William Nelson wrote that Trump’s personal federal tax returns “have been under continuous examination by the Internal Revenue Service since 2002, consistent with the IRS’s practice for large and complex businesses.”
The attorneys said the examinations of returns for years 2002 to 2008 “have been closed administratively by agreement with the IRS without assessment or payment, on a net basis, of any deficiency,” while the examinations for the years 2009 and onward are “ongoing.”
From Apple Insider: FBI agrees to help crack iPhone 6 and iPod tied to Arkansas murder trial, but method unknown
According to Arkansas prosecuting attorney Cody Hiland, the FBI's Little Rock field office offered to lend a hand in accessing two Apple devices owned by two suspects on trial for the double homicide of Robert and Patricia Cogdell, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The agreement comes just two days after the Department of Justice announced it successfully extracted data from an iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook. Federal prosecutors consequently withdrew a motion to compel Apple's assistance in unlocking Farook's phone. Apple was resisting the court order, saying at the time it was unwilling to create a software workaround as it would weaken the security of millions of iOS devices around the world.
It is unclear if the FBI plans to apply the same exploit in the Arkansas case. The target iPhone is two generations removed from Farook's iPhone 5c, meaning it not only came stock with iOS 8, but also contains hardware protection in a secure element embedded into the A8 processor.
From ESPN: Former pros stunned at D'Angelo Russell's disregard for locker room rules
The unwritten rules that govern locker rooms and clubhouses across sports are fairly standard. They're tied together by a thread of common sense that deters you from stealing, cheating or snitching. Most of the rules can essentially be boiled down to the same, catchy slogan that has become synonymous with Las Vegas: "What happens here, stays here."
When Los Angeles Lakers guard D'Angelo Russell recorded a private conversation with teammate Nick Young, during which he asked Young -- who is engaged to rapper Iggy Azalea -- about being with other women, he broke that cardinal rule. When the video of that recording ended up online for public consumption, well, he essentially took a sledgehammer to the rule. Although it's unclear how the video became public, it might be impossible at this point for Russell to piece back any semblance of trust with his teammates, according to several former athletes.
"There are levels to the rules," said SportsNation co-host Marcellus Wiley, who played in the NFL for 10 seasons. "The violations start at pillow talk, and that happens in every single locker room. Guys are talking amongst guys, and someone goes home and tells their significant other, and that turns to gossip, and someone else hears about it from the outside and it comes back into the locker room. That's a misdemeanor, because it happens so often. But what D'Angelo did was felonious. This is the worst example I've ever seen. This is damning."
From Chicago Tribune: Kehlani's suicide attempt, Internet bullies and Chris Brown
For days, a segment of the Internet has been consumed with R&B singer Kehlani's love life, harshlycriticizing her amid speculation that she cheated on Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving with her ex-boyfriend.
Back in February, Kehlani had posted on Instagram that she was dating Irving. On Monday morning, rapper PartyNextDoor shared a photo that showed him holding Kehlani's very recognizable tattooed hand while in bed. The pair used to date.
"After all her shenanigans, still got the r&b singer back in my bed," PartyNextDoor wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post.
Twitter went nuts and went after Kehlani, even though there wasn't anything there to confirm that she was still dating Irving. Later that day, the Grammy-nominated Oakland singer posted an Instagram photo of her lying in a hospital bed with an IV attached to her arm.
"Today I wanted to leave this earth," she wrote in a post. "Being completely selfish for once. Never thought I'd get to such a low point." She continued: "But ... Don't believe the blogs you read.. No one was cheated on and I'm not a bad person." Kehlani ended her very public admission of attempted suicide by bidding goodbye to Instagram. She has since deleted all of her posts.
Now singer Chris Brown has decided to weigh in ... for some reason. You know, Chris Brown, the singer who has been a suspect in numerous assault cases. The man who pleaded guilty in 2009 to assaulting his then-girlfriend, Rihanna. As you can imagine, Brown -- who alluded to Kehlani in a series of tweets early Wednesday -- didn't exactly elevate the conversation around Internet bullying, slut-shaming and mental health. "There is no attempting suicide," he tweeted. "Stop flexing for the gram. Doing s-- for sympathy so them comments under your pics don't look so bad."
Oof.
He also tweeted "#KYRIEMVP."