Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, 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 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
New York Times: Ted Cruz Ends His Campaign for President by Matt Flegenheimer
INDIANAPOLIS — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced Tuesday that he was ending his presidential campaign, bowing to the reality that his crushing loss in Indiana all but assured the nomination of Donald J. Trump.
“From the beginning, I have said that I will continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory,” he told supporters here. “Tonight, I am sorry to say, it appears that path has been closed.”
Mr. Cruz, who staked his bid in the Republican race on a message of conservative purity and religious faith, had suffered through weeks of setbacks as the primary calendar reached the Northeast, where Mr. Trump significantly expanded his lead.
But the senator had hoped to find more favorable terrain in Indiana, dashing across the state for over a week in a last-ditch effort to unify Republicans who viewed Mr. Trump’s success as an existential threat to the party.
Since entering the race over a year ago, Mr. Cruz had far exceeded most expectations, energizing hard-line conservatives and casting his toxic relationships with Senate colleagues as an asset as he railed against “the Washington cartel.”
Crain’s Chicago Business: Civic Federation rips Rauner budget, declares Illinois finances at 'new low' by Greg Hinz
After nearly a year and a half of all-out budget war in Springfield, the state's fiscal situation has hit "a new low"—and Gov. Bruce Rauner's proposed 2017 spending plan is making it worse, the nonpartisan Civic Federation says.
In a beyond-blistering report being issued today, the Chicago watchdog says the budget's reported $3.5 billion deficit—a shortfall Rauner has suggested might be filled with spending cuts and perhaps some tax hikes—in fact is "more like $4.5 billion to $5 billion," federation President Laurence Msall told me in a phone interview last evening.
Cuts of that magnitude are "unrealistic," said Msall, whose group had previously urged a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts. But equally unrealistic, he continued, are some of the accounting tricks the Rauner administration proposes using to get just to the $3.5 billion figure, including draining the state's entire $276 million rainy-day fund, assuming the sale of the Loop's James R. Thompson Center and deferring $748 million in payments to the state's already grossly underfunded employee pensions.
In the absence of a balanced budget deal with lawmakers, the report proposes an eyebrow-raising temporary solution: no new appropriations for anything, including aid to public grade and high schools.
Potentially closing schools would set off a political firestorm. Appropriations for schools were about the only part of this year's budget signed into law by Rauner last spring, though other spending obligations—particularly for worker salaries and social service programs—have continued under court orders.
Chicago Sun-Times: Friends of the Parks deals Lucas Museum site potential death blow by Fran Spielman
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Hail Mary plan to keep movie mogul George Lucas’ museum in Chicago suffered a potential death blow Tuesday when Friends of the Parks declared its opposition to the McCormick Place site and threatened another lawsuit.
“Mr. Lucas and the city only wanted a lakefront site, and we do not believe that is acceptable. We don’t think it’s appropriate to exchange building on lakefront land for other things—even if it’s park land. It’s inappropriate to build on public trust land,” said Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks.
“Mr. Lucas may leave. That is ultimately his decision. But there are many other viable sites. Chicagoans should not be held hostage to one man’s desires. The public trust must be protected and we will continue to fight for our lakefront to remain open, free and clear.”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported exclusively in mid-April that Emanuel has shifted his focus from Soldier Field’s south parking lot to the site of McCormick Place East to avoid a protracted legal battle over the Soldier Field site and satisfy Lucas’ demand to get moving on the legacy project.
Detroit Free Press: Snyder to attend briefing with Obama in Flint by Paul Egan and Todd Spangler
LANSING — Gov. Rick Snyder, who on Monday requested a Wednesday meeting with President Barack Obama in Flint after earlier saying his schedule was full that day, will participate in a briefing with the president and federal officials, a spokesman said Tuesday.
"Gov. Snyder will greet President Obama at Bishop Airport and then participate in a briefing of the president with federal officials," said Snyder spokesman Ari Adler. "The governor is pleased to meet with the president to help explain the efforts under way by the state to help the people of Flint recover and the need for additional and ongoing federal support to address the initial failure at all levels of government."
Flint Mayor Karen Weaver also is expected to meet with Obama. The president's press secretary, Josh Earnest, said Tuesday there may be an opportunity for Obama to meet with both Snyder and Weaver separately from the briefing with federal officials at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan.
Obama is to speak at Northwestern High School in Flint on Wednesday afternoon.
Before visiting the high school, Obama will "take part in a neighborhood roundtable discussion where he will hear from Flint residents dealing firsthand with the impacts of the crisis," Earnest said.
TheGrio: Racist commenters attack Malia Obama after news of her going to Harvard
This weekend the White House announced that President and First Lady Obama’s eldest daughter Malia had decided on Harvard University for undergrad.
However, they also announced that she will take a gap year break before enrolling in the Ivy League school in 2017. If you thought to yourself — “Well who can hate on that?” — prepare to be both surprised and disappointed.
Commenters allegedly on the conservative Fox News site used the “n-word” to describe 17-year-old Malia Obama. No racial epithet seemed to be spared and one commenter even wished that she’d get cancer or AIDS “or one of those colored diseases.” The more civil comments — if you can refer to it as that — called her attendance an example of “black privilege” and “affirmative action.” Fox News did work to remove many of the posts and disabled commenting on the page but not before the examples of their users’ hate reached the rest of the internet.
New York Times: U.S. Diplomat’s Same-Sex Marriage Causes Stir in China by Edward Wong
BEIJING — Newly married in San Francisco, two men with matching red ties held hands and smiled broadly as they bounded out of City Hall on a recent sunny day.
Though a common enough scene in the Bay Area, the marriage ceremony for this couple was notable for many Chinese people seeing the news: One of the men was Hanscom Smith, the United States consul general in Shanghai. Photographs of his marriage, posted Tuesday on the official Chinese microblog account of the United States consul general, generated interest in China, which does not allow same-sex marriage.
Mr. Smith married Lu Yingzong, or Eric Lu, who is from Taipei, Taiwan, an island that is independently governed but that the Chinese Communist Party claims it rules.
One Chinese Internet user by the name of Daniel Chen Dandan posted an image of a beating heart on a microblog, writing, “Respect any type of love.”
A few official Chinese news media websites picked up the photographs of the wedding and posted a short accompanying announcement. One photograph showed the men exchanging rings in front of a judge at City Hall.
Boston Globe: Tuition cuts make UMaine a hot college for Mass. students by Jennifer Fenn Lefferts
A record number of out-of-state students, including hundreds from Massachusetts, will be attending the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono this fall after the college slashed tuition prices for new students.
Under the new Flagship Match program, qualifying students from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania will pay the same tuition and fees at UMaine in Orono as they would at their home state’s flagship institution.
A Massachusetts student, for example, will pay the in-state UMass Amherst price of $14,141 instead of UMaine’s out-of-state rate of $28,880. The savings will be $14,709.
“We’re thrilled that the Flagship Match program was so well received, and that we’ll be opening our doors to many new out-of-state students this fall,” said Jeffrey Hecker, the provost at UMaine. “Students and their families recognized that UMaine is offering a world-class education at a fair price, and we’re excited to welcome them to campus this fall.”
Reuters: Saudi minister confirms warning on proposed U.S. law on 9/11 by Stephanie Nebahay
Saudi Arabia has warned the United States that a proposed U.S. law that could hold the kingdom responsible for any role in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks would erode global investor confidence in America, its foreign minister said on Monday.
The minister, Adel al-Jubeir, speaking to reporters in Geneva after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, which mainly focused on Syria, denied that Saudi Arabia had "threatened" to withdraw investment from its close ally.
The New York Times reported last month that the Riyadh government had threatened to sell up to $750 billion worth of American assets should the U.S. Congress pass a bill that would take away immunity from foreign governments in cases arising from a "terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil".
"We say a law like this would cause an erosion of investor confidence. But then to kind of say, 'My God the Saudis are threatening us' - ridiculous," Jubeir said.
"We don't use monetary policy and we don't use energy policy and we don't use economic policy for political purposes. When we invest, we invest as investors. When we sell oil, we sell oil as traders."
Chicago Tribune: Obama library could seed a turnaround on Woodlawn's open land by Angela Caputo and Dahleen Glanton
If Woodlawn is chosen as the site for the Obama Presidential Center, a South Side megachurch, a nonprofit development organization and the city could suddenly find themselves holding some of the most valuable land on the South Side.
While President Barack Obama still is weighing whether to build his library and museum in Jackson Park or Washington Park, the possibility that he'll choose Jackson Park is raising hope in Woodlawn for an economic renaissance that could reverse decades of unfulfilled promises of redevelopment.
Woodlawn has a vast amount of space near the proposed site: more than 300 tracts of undeveloped land and parking lots.
Nearly a third of those properties are clustered near 63rd Street and Stony Island Avenue. The biggest landowners include the city; Apostolic Church of God, a 20,000-seat megachurch; and the nonprofit Woodlawn Community Development Corp., according to a Tribune analysis of property records. Key parcels were acquired from the city at a discount years ago.
Guardian: Gentrification's toll: 'It's you or the bottom line and sorry, it's not you' by Rebecca Solnit
Last week, the Sierra Club left San Francisco, its home since its founding 124 years ago. Like so many individuals and institutions, it was pushed out by high rent.
The Club, the US’s largest grassroots environmental organization, will be fine in its new home across the bay in Oakland; it’s San Francisco I worry about.
Contemporary gentrification is an often violent process by which a complex and diverse urban environment becomes more homogeneous and exclusionary. It does to neighborhoods and cities what climate change is doing to the earth: driving out fragile and deeply rooted species, and pushing the poor past the brink.
Think of climate change as a globalized form of gentrification, reducing complex environments, uprooting species and cultures, punishing the poor and rewarding the rich – or at least leaving them out of the purges. After all, the reason why climate change continues unabated long after most of the world has acknowledged its seriousness is that it’s profitable for some, notably fossil fuel companies, and not threatening enough to the people in power. You can buy your way out of a lot of trouble, if watching the suffering and annihilation of others doesn’t trouble you.
Reuters: U.S. families struggling with teens' phone addiction: report by Susan Heavey
Half of teenagers in the United States feel addicted to their mobile phones, with most checking the devices at least every hour and feeling pressured to respond immediately to messages, a survey released on Tuesday found.
The majority of parents concurred, with 59 percent of those with children between ages 12 and 18 saying their kids cannot give up their phones, according to a poll of 1,240 parents and children by Common Sense Media.
The findings from the nonprofit group, which focuses on the effects of media and technology on children, highlighted the tension such close ties to devices can cause, with it disrupting driving, homework and other time together.
About a third of those polled said they argue every day about screen use, the San Francisco-based group said.
"It is causing daily conflict in homes," Common Sense Media's founder and CEO James Steyer said in a statement.
Its survey is the latest indication of American families struggling to balance mobile devices in an age of ever-evolving technology. It also underscores the ongoing debate over Internet addiction and its consequences.
Guardian: London mayoralty: Sadiq Khan urges voters to choose hope over fear by Haroon Siddique
Sadiq Khan has urged Londoners to choose hope over fear in the elections as he attempts to bring policy back to the forefront of an increasingly bitter mayoral campaign.
Khan, the Labour candidate bidding to be the first Muslim mayor of London, has repeatedly had to fend off accusations of links to extremism made by the Tory campaign for Zac Goldsmith.
In his last speech before Londoners go to the polls on Thursday, Khan outlined his vision for a better London.
Contrasting his oft-referenced humble origins with those of the billionaire Goldsmith, he reiterated his pledge to freeze fares on public transport and promised that by 2020 50% of new homes would be genuinely affordable.
By contrast, he said, a London led by Goldsmith would see higher rents, more children living in poverty, more rough sleepers and a deterioration in public services. “I ask Londoners today to choose hope over fear,” he said. “And to give me the chance to ensure that all Londoners get the opportunities that our city gave to me and my family. So that I can be a mayor for all Londoners.”
Reuters: Brazil prosecutor asks Supreme Court to investigate Lula (Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Andrew Hay)
Brazil's prosecutor-general asked the Supreme Court to investigate former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the court said on Tuesday, as a senator's testimony opened new fronts in a massive corruption case.
Rodrigo Janot also asked for several of President Dilma Rousseff's ministers to be investigated, including Chief of Staff Jaques Wagner, the minister in charge of legislative affairs Ricardo Berzoini, and her spokesman Edinho Silva.
Janot on Monday requested an investigation of opposition Senator Aecio Neves, also based on testimony from Senator Delcidio do Amaral. Amaral was the government's former leader in the senate and decided to collaborate with the investigation after he was arrested last year.
Janot's recent requests, which come on top of already existing investigations into Lula and other officials, have added to growing uproar over just how many senior politicians are implicated in a graft scheme involving kickbacks from state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
Coming as Brazil's Senate weighs what is expected to be Rousseff's suspension ahead of a trial on charges over budget irregularities, the charges also underscore the likelihood that senior politicians from the ruling Workers' Party will continue to face legal problems, and possible jail terms, well past what is expected to be Rousseff's eventual ouster.
TheAtlantic: Is a Coup Taking Place in Brazil? by Uri Friedman
Is it a coup or isn’t it? Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff claims the impeachment proceedings against her, which have now progressed from the lower house of Congress to the upper house, have “no legal foundation” and “all the features of a coup.” Vice President Michel Temer, who would succeed Rousseff if the Senate votes to remove her from office, says the process is constitutional and not a coup at all.
“I’m very worried about the president’s intention to say that Brazil is some minor republic where coups are carried out,” Temer recently told The New York Times. Crying coup has consequences when you’re leading one of the largest economies and democracies in the world.
But these days, straight-up coups are rarely carried out in any republic, minor or major. According to data gathered from 1950 through 2015 by the political scientists Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne, there have been no more than three successful coups per year in the 21st century. In the 1960s, that number got as high as 12.
Last year, the political scientist Jay Ulfelder combined two datasets, that of Powell and Thyne and another by the Center for Systemic Peace, to plot the number of coup attempts around the world over time. There is no one definition of a “coup,” but Ulfelder described the type of incident that qualified for inclusion in the chart below as “a forceful seizure of national political authority by military or political insiders.”
ThinkProgress: Death Toll Rises As India’s Heat Wave Breaks Records by Cory Herro
One year after India experienced the fifth-deadliest heat wave ever recorded, temperatures are again soaring to deadly extremes. Local governments are scrambling to address rising death tolls and dwindling water supplies.
The drought and blistering heat, some 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, has claimed 300 lives since early April. Towns on India’s eastern side have been hit with record-setting temperatures — 119.3 degrees in the town of Titlagarh, Orissa, which is the highest temperature ever recorded in that state during April.
Before monsoon rains provide relief in mid-June, India’s subsistence farmers will be incredibly vulnerable to the heat. They’re faced with a dire choice: stay inside and let the crops go to waste or work the land and risk heat stroke. Abandoning the choice altogether, thousands of farmers have migrated to cities in search of jobs — “often leaving elderly and young relatives behind in parched villages,” Reuters reports.
The suffering of these farmers has reinvigorated calls for the government to provide a social safety net. This week, more than 150 Indian leaders and activists signed an open letter to the prime minister expressing their “collective anxiety about the enormous suffering of the rural poor.” They called for the government to provide 100 days of paid work a year for the poor and unemployed.
Foreign Policy (blog): Spooked by Beijing, India Embraces Closer U.S. Ties by Keith Johnson and Dan De Luce
China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea has complicated the U.S. pivot to Asia. But those same antics, plus some Chinese muscle-flexing off the coast of the Indian subcontinent, may well give the pivot a new lease on life — in a different ocean.
Indian military officials and policymakers, for decades obsessed with Pakistan, are now growing increasingly worried by what they see as potentially threatening moves by China. Beijing’s growing blue-water navy is becoming more active in the Indian Ocean, with bigger ships spending more time there than ever before. China is inking port deals across India’s watery backyard, from Sri Lanka to Djibouti, that many in New Delhi see as a threat to Indian security.
With a still-unresolved border dispute simmering between the two countries, and with recent Chinese moves in the South China Sea providing an alarming glimpse of what a rejuvenated Beijing is really after, India seems closer than it has in years to embracing closer ties with the United States by jettisoning decades of non-aligned foreign policy.
AlJazeera: Wired on Mount Athos by Iason Athanasiadis
A crowd of men mills around the port of Ouranoupolis, the so-called City of the Sky and the departure point from which pilgrims and monks enter Mount Athos, the second holiest place in Orthodox Christianity. One of them poses for his selfie-stick against the ageing ship that will convey them along a peninsula studded for a thousand years with 20 monasteries and a tradition of male monasticism.
Another downloads the new Mount Athos app on his smartphone to read up on the monasteries he plans to visit and check road connections between them. Others update on Facebook the running online record of their lives, instantly reaping 'likes' and peer validation for their pilgrimage.
It is a far cry from my first visit to the mountain in 1999, when my father handed me the Diamonitirion, an ecclesiastical visa stamped with the Byzantine two-headed eagle granting four days of access to this medieval monastic state.
Shouldering rucksacks, we got off the nearly empty boat and struck into the mist-shrouded mountain, hiking from monastery to monastery along lush paths to explore a place known in Orthodox theology as the garden of the Virgin Mary.
MIT News: Scientists discover potentially habitable planets by Jennifer Chu
For the first time, an international team of astronomers from MIT, the University of Liège in Belgium, and elsewhere have detected three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star, just 40 light years from Earth. The sizes and temperatures of these worlds are comparable to those of Earth and Venus, and are the best targets found so far for the search for life outside the solar system. The results are published today in the journal Nature.
The scientists discovered the planets using TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope), a 60-centimeter telescope operated by the University of Liège, based in Chile. TRAPPIST is designed to focus on 60 nearby dwarf stars — very small, cool stars that are so faint they are invisible to optical telescopes. Belgian scientists designed TRAPPIST to monitor dwarf stars at infrared wavelengths and search for planets around them.
The team focused the telescope on the ultracool dwarf star, 2MASS J23062928-0502285, now known as TRAPPIST-1, a Jupiter-sized star that is one-eighth the size of our sun and significantly cooler. Over several months starting in September 2015, the scientists observed the star’s infrared signal fade slightly at regular intervals, suggesting that several objects were passing in front of the star.
With further observations, the team confirmed the objects were indeed planets, with similar sizes to Earth and Venus. The two innermost planets orbit the star in 1.5 and 2.4 days, though they receive only four and two times the amount of radiation, respectively, as the Earth receives from the sun. The third planet may orbit the star in anywhere from four to 73 days, and may receive even less radiation than Earth. Given their size and proximity to their ultracool star, all three planets may have regions with temperatures well below 400 kelvins, within a range that is suitable for sustaining liquid water and life.
Reuters: Musician Kidjo, African activists win human rights award by Astrid Zweynert
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Amnesty International has given its top 2016 human rights award to Grammy Award-winning musician Angélique Kidjo and to three African youth activist movements for their work standing up to injustice, the organization announced on Wednesday.
Benin-born Kidjo and groups Y’en a marre from Senegal, le Balai Citoyen from Burkina Faso and Lutte pour le Changement (LUCHA) from the Democratic Republic of Congo have shown "exceptional courage," Amnesty said.
"(They) have all proved themselves to be bold advocates for human rights, using their talents to inspire others," Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary general, said in a statement.
Previous winners of the Ambassador of Conscience Award include the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi, the rock band U2, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and American singer-songwriter Joan Baez.
Kidjo fled her homeland in the 1980s after being pressured to perform for the country’s repressive regime.
In a 30-year career spawning 12 albums, she has been a prominent campaigner for freedom of expression and against female genital mutilation.
Y’en a marre (Fed Up) is a group of Senegalese rappers and journalists who joined forces in 2011 to encourage young people to register to vote in the country's election and exercise their right to freedom of expression.
Guardian: Sixteen ways Hamilton transformed theater – and the world by Alexis Soloski
How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman grow up to be the musical sensation of the decade? Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway dynamo, made history again on Tuesday morning, scoring 16 Tony award nominations, the most in Broadway history. (If the Tonys had not recently eliminated the sound design awards, the tally would likely have been even higher.) To celebrate this feat, here are 16 ways that the success of the musical has altered Broadway and beyond.
1. It proved that hip-hop and rap can thrive at the box office
After the failure of Holler if Ya Hear Me, there was some doubt as to whether Broadway welcomes more contemporary sounds. While Hamilton is not exclusively a hip-hop musical (it borrows from pop, rock, jazz, show tunes and the American songbook), it makes not-so-strange bedfellows of Biggie Smalls and Stephen Sondheim with aesthetically exciting and commercially triumphant results.
Deadline: Oprah Winfrey To Star In HBO Films’ ‘The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks’ by Nellie Andreeva
EXCLUSIVE: In a rare starring turn as an actress, Oprah Winfrey is set to topline HBO Films’ The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, which has been greenlighted for production.
This has been a passion project for the TV mogul and Oscar-nominated actress who six years ago teamed with Six Feet Under and True Blood creator Alan Ball to produce a feature-length adaptation of Rebecca Skloot’s then-recently published nonfiction bestseller though HBO Films, which acquired the book for the duo. Winfrey has now upped her involvement by committing to star in the movie.
Veteran Broadway director-producer George C. Wolfe (HBO’s Lackawanna Blues; Tony winner for Angels In America) wrote the adaptation and will direct the film, which will begin shooting in the summer. Winfrey’s previous acting credits include high-profile supporting roles in the features Selma, Lee Daniels’ The Butler as well as her acting debut, The Color Purple, which earned her an Oscar nomination.
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line. Told through the eyes of her daughter, Deborah Lacks (Winfrey), the film chronicles her search to learn about the mother she never knew and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks’ cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever. It’s a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty and deep friendship between the unlikeliest of people.
Guardian: The Leicester Supremacy – a triumph that was never supposed to happen by Barney Ronay
Do not adjust your reality: this really is happening. For the past three months Leicester City’s gloriously bold progress towards a first English top-flight title has unfurled like a slow breaking wave. A draw against Manchester United on Sunday afternoon left Claudio Ranieri’s collection of offcuts and rising talents a step closer. Tottenham’s failure to beat Chelsea on Monday night was the final nudge. The wave has finally broken on a Premier League title some are already calling the most unlikely sporting victory of all time.
The fairytale-ish aspects of this are well rehearsed. At the start of the season Leicester were 5,000-1 with bookmakers to win the league, a wager taken up by only 12 William Hill punters, among them the 39-year-old Leicester carpenter Leigh Herbert whose fiver, offered up in faith not hope, has now raked in £25,000. Three months into the season, with Leicester already haring away at the top of the table, they were still 1,000-1 to win it. Still a freak, a blip, a hilarious blue-shirted glitch.
Have a good night, everyone!