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.
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US NEWS
Reuters
Tropical Depression Bonnie was swirling over the South Carolina coast on Sunday evening, dumping several inches (cm) of rain on the area as it slowly crawled up the coast into Monday.
Bonnie came ashore just northeast of Charleston, South Carolina, on Sunday morning, bringing heavy rains, minor flooding and sustained winds of about 30 miles per hour (48 kph).
The system, the first tropical storm to reach the United States this year, dumped as many as 8 inches (20 cm) of rain in parts of South Carolina and Georgia, and caused flooding in low-lying areas and streets at high tides, meteorologists said.
Reuters
Police in Houston killed a gunman on Sunday in a chaotic shootout that left one other person dead, six wounded - including two officers - and set off a fire at a nearby gas station when bullets struck a gas pump, authorities said.
Witnesses reported that a gunman approached a man who had just pulled up to an auto detail shop and opened fire with a pistol, police spokesman John Cannon said.
"It appears that it was a random, unprovoked attack," Cannon said. The victim, a male in his 50s, died, he said.
The gunman fired on the first officer to respond to the scene, riddling his car with bullets, including many that struck the windshield, Cannon said. At least five shots also struck a police helicopter, he said,
Alternet
The growing acceptance of and access to legal marijuana has some people worried that the youth are going to start using it more frequently, but that's not the demographic where pot has really taken off. Instead, it's senior citizens.
Whether it's wide-open medical marijuana states like California or fully legal states like Colorado, the gray-haired set is increasingly turning to pot, and not just to ease their aches and pains With a half-dozen more states likely to have legalization on the ballot (and win) this year and medical marijuana coming to more, grandma and grandpa are set to become even more interested.
The Guardian
At least three people were still missing on Sunday after torrential rain in Texas and Kansas flooded rivers, washed out roads and left four people dead.
In Kansas, the search for a missing 11-year-old boy was suspended late on Saturday because of darkness and fatigue of first responders, according to Wichita fire department battalion chief Scott Brown. The boy was swept away in a swollen creek on Friday night.
“We are more in body recovery mode than rescue,” Brown said. Recovery efforts would resume at first light on Sunday, he said.
Near Austin in Travis County, Texas, officials planned to resume aerial searches on Sunday for two missing people whose vehicle was swept off a flooded roadway after the area got nine inches of rain this week, said emergency services spokeswoman Lisa Block.
The Intercept
DURING MUCH OF her three years awaiting trial in New York’s Rikers Island jail, Candie Hailey was locked in a solitary confinement cell ventilated by a mold-covered air duct. The purpose of the vent was, of course, to pump fresh air into her 6-by-10-foot concrete room, but the mold infestation instead added to an array of hazards and discomforts that made her life unbearable at Rikers, where she made multiple attempts at suicide. “There was big, dark, gray, blackish mildew around the air vent and that’s where the air was coming from,” Hailey told me. “It’s what I was inhaling — it smelled like death.”
Hailey, who says she developed persisting asthma as a result of mold exposure, described overall conditions at Rikers that were so punishing not even the guards — who spent only a fraction of their time in the building — could withstand them. Hailey says that one officer implored her to complain to authorities about the conditions, as the employee feared she would be punished for doing so herself.
New York Times
There was a time when it looked as if Chicago would follow New York and Los Angeles into a kind of sustained peace. Then progress stalled in 2004, and the city has been through some harrowing years leading up to another alarming spike in homicides this year.
Already embroiled in a crisis over race and police conduct, Chicago now faces a 62 percent increase in homicides. Through mid-May, 216 people have been killed. Shootings also are up 60 percent.
So what’s going on in Chicago?
…
Guns Are a Key Difference
People who know both cities say there are some significant differences in policing, especially around the issue of guns.
The homicide rate in Chicago is just a little higher than in New York when guns aren’t involved. But when it comes to shootings, both fatal and not, Chicago stands out, suggesting a level of armed interaction that isn’t happening in New York.
Huffington Post
The University of North Carolina system will not enforce a state law that mandates people use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate, UNC System President Margaret Spellings told a federal court Friday.
“I have no intent to exercise my authority to promulgate any guidelines or regulations that require transgender students to use the restrooms consistent with their biological sex,” Spellings wrote in an affidavit filed as part of a motion to halt civil legal proceedings against the university system, The Associated Press reported.
Reuters
A judge, called a "hater" by Donald Trump for his handling of a lawsuit related to the businessman's Trump University real estate school, has unsealed documents related to the case.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is fighting a lawsuit that accuses his school venture of misleading thousands of people who paid up to $35,000 for seminars to learn about the billionaire's real estate investment strategies.
In an order signed on Friday, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel said that materials, including Trump University procedures on dealing with students and the media, should be unsealed.
He noted that they had already been published by the media organization Politico and that a magistrate judge described them previously as "routine" and "commonplace."
WORLD NEWS
AFP
A week of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean culminated Sunday with 700 migrants feared dead and survivors giving harrowing testimony of dozens of small children drowned.
Survivors brought to safety in the Italian ports of Taranto and Pozzallo told the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) and Save the Children how their boat sank on Thursday morning after a high-seas drama which saw one woman decapitated.
"We'll never know the exact number, we'll never know their identities," said the UNHCR's spokeswoman Carlotta Sami. But multiple witness reports suggested over 500 people had drowned in that shipwreck alone.
With some 100 others missing after a boat sank Wednesday, and 45 bodies recovered from a wreck that happened Friday, the UNHCR said it feared up to 700 people had drowned in total this week.
AFP
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood shoulder to shoulder Sunday to mark the centenary of Verdun, one of the bloodiest battles of World War I.
The battle in northeast France was the longest of World War I, lasting 300 days, and claimed more than 300,000 lives before France emerged victorious.
"The name Verdun is a symbol of the unimaginable atrocity and the absurdity of war, but also of Franco-German reconciliation," Merkel said in the speech at Verdun's town hall, a first for a German leader.
The chancellor said she recognised it was not "easy" for the people of the town that is forever marked by the fighting to give her such a "warm welcome".
The Guardian
Tony Blair has suggested that he will refuse to accept the verdict of the Chilcot inquiry if it accuses him of committing Britain to invading Iraq before he told parliament and the public.
In an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, the former prime minister said he did not think anyone could say he did not make his position clear ahead of the 2003 war that led to the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Sir John Chilcot is due to publish his long-awaited report into the war on 6 July. It is expected to be highly critical of Blair and other political and military figures. During the inquiry hearings there was particular focus on evidence suggesting Blair had given a firm commitment to back President George W Bush’s decision to invade while he was publicly saying a final decision had not yet been taken.
Asked if he would accept Chilcot’s conclusions, Blair told Marr: “It is hard to say that when I haven’t seen it.”
Reuters
Jordan's King Abdullah appointed veteran politician Hani Mulqi as caretaker prime minister on Sunday after dissolving parliament as its four-year term nears its end, and charged him with organising new elections by October.
The king accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour before appointing Mulqi by royal decree. Mulki has held senior government posts in successive administrations.
Under the constitutional rules the election must be held within four months.
Jordan traditionally votes according to tribal and family allegiances but parliament amended the electoral laws in March in a move government sources and political analysts say will lead to more candidates from political parties vying for votes.
BBC
The parents of a seven-year-old boy missing in the mountains of northern Japan have admitted that they left him alone in the woods as a punishment.
The child has not been seen for two days, since his parents abandoned him in northern Hokkaido, a region home to wild bears.
The couple first told police he got lost as they foraged for vegetables.
But they later confessed they had left him alone for five minutes to punish him but when they returned he had gone.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
A first United Nations meeting on implementing a 2015 global agreement to combat climate change showed it could take two years to work out a detailed rule book for a sweeping shift from fossil fuels, delegates said.
The May 16-26 talks marked a return to technical work and the end of a "honeymoon period" since the Paris Agreement was worked out by almost 200 nations in December to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit rising temperatures.
"My bet is 2018, everything will be done (in) a maximum two years," Laurence Tubiana, France's climate ambassador, told Reuters when asked how long it would take to negotiate a set of rules. Several other delegates gave similar estimates.
Tubiana said the Bonn talks had not exposed big, unexpected problems with the Paris text that could mean an even longer haul. "There was no shouting, no crying," she said.
Climate Central
A new scheme launched by U.N. agencies, the World Bank and countries most vulnerable to climate change is seeking funding of up to $130 million to help 20 at-risk nations prepare better for natural disasters.
The Global Partnership for Preparedness, launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, aims to help the countries attain a basic level of readiness by 2020 for future disaster risks mainly caused by climate change.
The money will enable the countries to access risk analysis and early warning systems, put together contingency plans, including pre-committed finance, and respond better to shocks such as floods and droughts.
"The aim is to save lives, safeguard development gains, and reduce the economic impacts of crises," said United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark. Development gains, in particular, "can otherwise be lost with each disaster", she said.
Deborah Button doesn't want to be late for the "stoner Bible study" group she founded seven months earlier, where people consume marijuana before immersing themselves in that week's topic. Still, she takes the time to explain to me the appeal of the bed-and-breakfast she owns 8 miles outside of Denver.
"We have bongs, vape pens, vapes -- all the [marijuana] accoutrements that you could dream of," says Button. "Sometimes, we'll [put] out 50 rolled joints. It's like a candy shop in the house."
A self-described conservative soccer mom, Button voted against two statewide bills to permit marijuana use in Colorado before it became legal for adults in 2014. That's also about the time Button started meeting tourists with multiple sclerosis, lupus and other chronic conditions who came to Colorado to relieve their symptoms with pot.
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
BuzzFeed News
New Orleans Pelicans guard Bryce Dejean-Jones was shot and killed in a Dallas apartment early Saturday morning, police said.
The 23-year-old rookie allegedly kicked open the door to an apartment, where the resident inside opened fire with his handgun, police said in a statement.
Dejean-Jones was taken to a nearby hospital but died from his injuries, according to the statement released by the Dallas Police Department.
Police were called to the apartment at about 3:20 a.m., where police found Dejean-Jones collapsed on the breezeway.
The resident told police that he heard someone kick open the front door, according to the statement. The resident said he had been asleep in a bedroom and called out after hearing the noise, but no one answered.
Vox
After watching the Bloodline season two premiere, I joked to my wife that the show might as well be called Things Are About to Happen: The TV Show. I had no idea how right I was.
In its first season, Bloodline tried my patience by endlessly spinning plates covered in dread-soaked portent that seemed like they might never add up to anything.
It worked, in the end, because it kept flashing forward to a very dark day for the eldest brothers in Florida's Rayburn family, and because the performance of Ben Mendelsohnas oldest brother Danny was so impressively magnetic. When the clouds finally burst, and the show erupted into a squall, it was too late to improve my opinion of the season as a whole, but boy, were those last few episodes satisfying to watch.
BBC
Mexican footballer Alan Pulido has been kidnapped in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, officials say.
The 25-year-old striker was reportedly kidnapped on Sunday near his home in Ciudad Victoria after leaving a party.
He plays for the Greek team Olympiakos and has made several appearances for Mexico's national team.
Mexico has the one of the world's highest kidnapping rates, with government figures saying some 1,000 people are taken every year.
Others argue that the true figure could be almost ten times as high.
The Atlantic
In January ‘77, I was old enough to be allowed to watch grown-up TV with my sister, brother, and parents. During our viewings, I would either sit in Mama’s lap, or on the floor, my back resting against her legs because it was comfortable, and because she could easily clasp her hand over my eyes if something was too intense for me to see. On one of those nights, we were all engrossed watching a man named Kunta Kinte try to escape slavery again and again. Suddenly, in one scene, we saw an ax heading toward Kunta’s foot. I turned away from the screen and buried my face in Mama’s legs and cried. Everybody cried.