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.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
Reuters
The U.S. Senate on Monday rejected four measures restricting guns after last week's mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, although lawmakers were still trying to forge a compromise that could keep firearms away from people on terrorism watch lists.
In a familiar setback for gun control advocates, all four of the measures to expand background checks on gun buyers and curb gun sales to those on terrorism watch lists - two put forth by Democrats and two by Republicans - fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage in the 100-member chamber.
The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history last week had intensified pressure on lawmakers and spurred quick action, but the gun-control measures lost in largely party-line votes that showed the lingering political power in Congress of gun rights defenders and the National Rifle Association.
Republicans and their allies in the NRA gun lobby said the Democratic bills were too restrictive and trampled on the constitutional right to bear arms. Democrats attacked the Republicans' plans as too weak.
US NEWS
DW News
US Supreme Court justices declined to hear an appeal of an October 2015 ruling by the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New York, upholding laws prohibiting semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines in the two northeastern states. Instead, it left current gun control laws that ban such assault weapons in place in New York and Connecticut.
The laws had been introduced in response to another mass shooting involving a semi-automatic weapon at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012. The legislation in New York and Connecticut is considered to be among the strictest in the US.
Gun rights advocates have, however, repeatedly challenged existing laws, asking for the legalization of assault weapons - like the one used in the June 12 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
McClatchy DC
At least once a day, Pam Retzlaff answered a call from parents concerned about her decision to allow a transgender student at Edgar Road Elementary School to use a bathroom different from his biological gender.
“It was hard in the beginning, very hard,” she said. “You can imagine my first open house. I had more parents in my office than ever before.”
It was new territory for Retzlaff, then principal of the school in Webster Groves, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, but it was never a question of whether she would or wouldn’t open the bathroom.
And as time passed, the calls slowly began to subside, going from once a day, to once a week, to once a month.
That was more than two years ago – a blip in the schoolwide effort to help the soon-to-be third-grader transition as seamlessly as possible from female to male – yet still no cohesive policy exists nationwide on the issue of bathroom access for transgender students.
The Guardian
When Barack Obama met in Orlando with yet another set of anguished families who had lost loved ones in a mass shooting, there was one distressingly simple question: “Why does this keep happening?”
It is a question asked around the world about gun violence in the United States – answered most often with a helpless shrug, and almost ritualistic manoeuvring as people on all sides take up entrenched positions.
Does a country with more than 30,000 gun deaths every year simply lack the will to change? And if reform of US gun laws could not happen after the desolation of 2012 when 20 first-graders were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school, is this a nation trapped in a perpetual cycle of failure?
This week, the Guardian will explore just what makes the politics of gun control so difficult. We will ask whether the assault weapons ban is the right target for reformers, why gun rights activists oppose “common-sense” measures, and what can be done to change the conversation in order to save American lives.
Reuters
Three New York City police commanders and a business consultant were arrested on Monday as part of a wide-ranging federal corruption probe that has also been examining Mayor Bill de Blasio's fundraising.
The latest arrests mark an escalation of an investigation that has led to discipline for nearly a dozen police officers and forced de Blasio to answer questions about whether he engaged in inappropriate fundraising.
A criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court accused businessman Jeremy Reichberg, 42, of plying Deputy Chief Michael Harrington, 50, Deputy Inspector James Grant, 43, and others with gifts including prostitutes, sports tickets and expensive trips.
As a result, Reichberg was able to secure official favors, including assistance with gun license applications, police escorts, special access to parades and the ability to get out of tickets, the complaint said.
David Villanueva, a sergeant, was also arrested and charged with accepting bribes to expedite gun license applications for Alex Lichtenstein, a member of a volunteer safety patrol in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood who was charged in April.
Reuters
About three months ago, Sarah Ibrahim's son came home from his fourth-grade class at a Maryland school with a disturbing question.
"Will I have time to say goodbye to you before you're deported?" he said, according to Ibrahim, a Muslim Arab American who works at a federal government agency in Maryland.
"The kids in his classroom were saying: 'Who's going to leave when Trump becomes president?'" said the 35-year-old mother.
The incident happened a few months after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump -- now the presumptive nominee -- first called for a ban on Muslim immigrants and for more scrutiny at mosques after 14 people were killed in San Bernardino by a Muslim couple whom the FBI said had been radicalized.
Trump intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric after last week's mass shooting in Orlando, in which a U.S.-born Muslim man killed 49 people at a gay nightclub, calling for a suspension of immigration from countries with "a proven history of terrorism".
Reuters
Donald Trump fired Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager who helped him win the Republican Party's presidential nominating contests but clashed with other advisers on how to appeal to the broader general electorate, several people with knowledge of the decision said on Monday.
The firing on Monday morning was another shakeup for a campaign already at odds with many senior Republican figures over the presumptive nominee's policies, with the party's nominating convention in Cleveland less than a month away.
But it may also prove a step toward calming concerns among party leaders about Trump, a wealthy businessman and political outsider, and the conflicting advice he was getting from senior aides, as he battles presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
Three people close to the campaign said some of Trump's staff viewed Lewandowski as opposing strategic changes and staff hires urged for the general election campaign by Paul Manafort, a strategist hired in April partly for his experience on presidential campaigns that Lewandowski lacked.
BBC
A Briton who tried to grab a police officer's gun at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas said he wanted to shoot the candidate, court papers say.
Michael Steven Sandford, 19, did not enter a plea when he appeared before a judge in Nevada and was remanded in custody until a hearing on 5 July.
According to the court papers, he went to the Trump rally on Saturday.
He reportedly tried to seize the gun from the police officer after saying he was seeking the candidate's autograph.
He said he had been planning to try and shoot Mr Trump for about a year but had decided to act now because he finally felt confident enough to do so, court papers say.
New York Times
The future Mrs. Donald J. Trump was puzzled.
She had been summoned to a lunch meeting with her husband-to-be and his lawyer to review a prenuptial agreement. It required that, should the couple split, she return everything — cars, furs, rings — that Mr. Trump might give her during their marriage.
Sensing her sorrow, Mr. Trump apologized, Ivana Trump later testified in a divorce deposition. He said it was his lawyer’s idea.
“It is just one of those Roy Cohn numbers,” Mr. Trump told her.
The year was 1977, and Mr. Cohn’s reputation was well established. He had been Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting consigliere. He had helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for spying and elect Richard M. Nixon president.
Then New York’s most feared lawyer, Mr. Cohn had a client list that ran the gamut from the disreputable to the quasi-reputable: Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, Claus von Bulow, George Steinbrenner.
Los Angeles Times
The Dalai Lama touched on issues both ancient and contemporary during a speech to the California Legislature on Monday, urging lawmakers to protect the environment, support education and seek inner peace by caring for humanity.
“The best way to take care of one’s self is to take care of others,” the Tibetan leader said.
He said it was “totally wrong” that Muslims are viewed as “militant.” In a reference to gun control, he said "external disarmament" must be preceded by "internal disarmament." And he mused about how the moon may look beautiful in the night sky, but it’s not a suitable place to live.
“This planet is the only place we can live happily,” the Dalai Lama said. “There is no other choice than to fully protect our own home.”
Reuters
A federal judge in Mississippi has allowed to stand a new state law that permits people to deny wedding services to same-sex couples based on religious objections.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves argued in his four-page order that since none of the lawsuit's plaintiffs would be harmed by the law in the immediate future, a preliminary injunction would be inappropriate.
"Here, none of the plaintiffs are at imminent risk of injury," Reeves wrote.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi said the measure, set to take effect on July 1, unconstitutionally discriminates against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
WORLD NEWS
AFP
A busload of Nepali security guards were among 25 people killed in a string of bombings across Afghanistan Monday, days after Washington expanded the US military's authority to strike the Taliban.
A Taliban spokesman on Twitter claimed the first attack, which killed 14 Nepali security guards working for the Canadian Embassy in Kabul in a massive blast that left their yellow minibus spattered with blood.
However Islamic State's affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan released a competing claim in which they named and pictured the alleged bomber, according to the SITE monitoring group, in what would be their most significant attack in the country.
DW News
Ahead of the impending "Brexit" vote, British politicians are paying tribute to the murdered MP Jo Cox. The "Remain" camp has seen an increase in support, bringing the two camps to a stalemate with 50 percent each.
In a rare display of unity, members of parliament have returned to the House of Commons for a special sitting - allowing lawmakers to honor their late colleague. The 41-year-old Labour MP was shot and stabbed on a street in Birstall, West Yorkshire, on Thursday.
In a break with tradition, members were also allowed to sit together, rather than dividing along party lines.
Al Jazeera
Campaigning in the United Kingdom's referendum on European Union membership has resumed following the killing of Labour Party MP Jo Cox last week. During the two-day suspension there was much talk of the need for a more "respectful tone" - and with good reason.
The "Brexit" debate has been characterised by some of the most poisonous, vitriolic rhetoric ever seen in a British election.
Last week, just hours before Ms Cox was shot and stabbed in her constituency, Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) unveiled his party's latest election poster.
In it a seemingly endless queue of non-white refugees stands beneath the slogan "breaking point". The message isn't a subtle one: Leave the EU, or hordes of foreigners are coming.
Such imagery has, sadly, been far from an aberration during this campaign.
So why, with only days to go, are opinion polls still neck and neck?
Spiegel Online
On a warm, sunny day, Easterhouse feels almost livable. Green grass is visible through the trash along the roadside, and residents push their improvised walkers to the Shandwick Square Shopping Centre, laughing and chatting. But a second, closer look reveals that the sign above the door of The Centaur, a local pub, is about to come off its hinges, paint is peeling off fences, there are broken windows and building walls are covered with mold.
"Our country already has enough problems," says local Lisa Hotchkiss. "It's better for all of us to stick together." That's why the 32-year-old says she will definitely vote against Brexit on June 23, when the British hold a referendum on whether to continue their membership in the European Union. But she knows that not everyone agrees with her in the blue-collar Glasgow neighborhood where she grew up and still lives today. Some also intend to vote yes on Brexit, she says.
Still others won't be voting at all. One is Nicola Robertson, a waitress at Marinaldo's Fast Food Restaurant, who says: "I know nothing about the issue, so I'm not voting." The 23-year-old serves fish and chips to the restaurant's guests, men with shaved heads and expressions like "Thug Life" tattooed on their muscular arms.
Reuters
Global stock indexes jumped on Monday and sterling rebounded broadly after polls showed support for Britain staying in the EU strengthened before Thursday's referendum.
At the start of what could be a frenetic weak for global markets, safe-haven assets such as the yen and gold retreated. Monday's surge in equity markets saw Wall Street recover losses from last week, when the chances of the United Kingdom leaving the EU, or "Brexit", appeared to be gaining momentum.
The surge in sterling, which rose more than 2 percent against the dollar, coincided with a broad retreat in the green back as several polls showed the "Leave" campaign weakening. Markets will likely remain volatile and headline-driven in the run-up to the vote, which still appears too close to call.
"Everyone is going to hold their breath until Thursday or Friday, when we get to know the result," said Adam Hewison, chief executive of Ino.com in Maryland.
The MSCI's all-country world stock index .MIWD00000PUS surged 2.1 percent, while Wall Street stocks as measured by the S&P 500 .SPX jumped 1.2 percent, their strongest daily increase in nearly three weeks.
Reuters
Venezuelan opposition sympathizers lined up on Monday around the country to validate signatures as part of a painstaking process to request a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro, who is deeply unpopular due to the country's economic crisis.
The elections council has required that those who signed for a recall vote against the 53-year-old former bus driver return to polling stations to verify their signatures through fingerprint detection.
Adversaries of the ruling Socialist Party say the requirement is part of a broader effort by the election council to stall the referendum at the behest of Maduro.
"This is necessary because the political situation of the country is unsustainable, what we're living is horrible," said Jose Gomez, 45, a merchant, in a line of hundreds at one signature point in Caracas.
"I feel terrible seeing neighbors selling television sets or belongings to be able to give food to their children.”
BBC
MPs and peers have paid tribute to Labour MP Jo Cox, who was killed in her constituency in West Yorkshire on Thursday.
Parliament, which was in recess for the EU referendum, was recalled to remember Mrs Cox, 41, who was described as "perfect" by her family.
Politicians are now at a memorial service at St Margaret's Church.
Speaker John Bercow said the Commons had gathered in "heartbreaking sadness" but also in "heartfelt solidarity".
A charity fundraising appeal set up in Mrs Cox's memory has now raised more than £1 million.
BBC
The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards has suggested there could be armed resistance in Bahrain after the Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom's top Shia cleric was stripped of his citizenship.
Gen Qassem Soleimani said Bahrain's action against Sheikh Isa Qassim could "set the region on fire".
Bahrain accused the cleric of using his position to "serve foreign interests", promoting "sectarianism and violence".
Thousands of protesters have gathered near his home.
They chanted slogans denouncing King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and the government. Bahrain's interior ministry has warned against any protests.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location.
It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change.
An expert says this extinction is likely just the tip of the iceberg, with climate change exerting increasing pressures on species everywhere.
AFP
The number of refugees and others fleeing their homes worldwide has hit a new record, spiking to 65.3 million people by the end of 2015, the United Nations said Monday.
Europe's high-profile migrant crisis, its worst since World War II, is just one part of a growing tide of human misery led by Palestinians, Syrians and Afghans.
Globally, close to one percent of humanity has been forced to flee.
"This is the first time that the threshold of 60 million has been crossed," the UN refugee agency said.
The figures, released on World Refugee Day, underscore twin pressures fuelling an unprecedented global displacement crisis.
DW News
The solar-powered plane took off on the last ocean crossing leg of its round-the-world flight from New York early on Monday. If things go according to plan, it should arrive in Sevilla, Spain, on Friday.
Air-travel pioneer Bertrand Piccard left New York on Monday for one of the last legs of a flight around the world with his solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2. A statement on the Solar Impulse website said it took off from JFK airport at 2:30 a.m. local time (6:30 a.m. GMT).
It is estimated this last great ocean-crossing will take just under five days. The plane charges its batteries during daytime, with excess power from the sun's rays, to keep its four propellers going at nighttime as well.
The route was calculated to be 5,739 kilometers (3,566 nautical miles). If everything goes to plan, the solar plane will arrive in Sevilla, Spain, shortly after 2 a.m. local time on Friday.
Reuters
A federal judge said Uber Technologies Inc can be added as a defendant in an antitrust lawsuit against its chief executive officer over its pricing practices, an outcome the ride-sharing service wanted in its bid to force the case into arbitration.
In a decision made public on Monday, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan called Uber a "necessary party" to Connecticut passenger Spencer Meyer's lawsuit against CEO Travis Kalanick, given its interest in maintaining its surge pricing algorithm and its contracts with drivers.
"While plaintiff now pretends that he 'seeks no relief whatsoever against Uber,' such an assertion is at odds with any fair reading of plaintiff's claim," Rakoff wrote in his decision dated June 19.
Rakoff suggested that Meyer might have sued only Kalanick to avoid a clause in his user agreement requiring that disputes with San Francisco-based Uber be arbitrated.
The Guardian
New wildfires erupted Monday in southern California and chased people from their homes as an intensifying heatwave stretching from the west coast to New Mexico blistered the region.
Towering columns of smoke rose from the San Gabriel mountains behind Los Angeles as the fires several miles apart devoured hundreds of acres of brush on steep slopes above foothill suburbs. Police in the city of Azusa ordered hundreds of homes evacuated.
Helicopters sucked water out of a reservoir to drop on flames while air tankers bombarded the flanks of the fire with retardant.
Officials had warned of extreme fire danger in the region as the heatwave peaked. Temperatures surpassed 100 degrees across much of southern California well before noon, while some desert cities sizzled in the 120s.
Elsewhere, crews made progress against a nearly week-old blaze in rugged coastal mountains west of Santa Barbara, where overnight winds had pushed flames into previously burned areas, allowing firefighters to boost containment to more than 50%.
NPR
When you think about fish, it's probably at dinnertime. Author Jonathan Balcombe, on the other hand, spends a lot of time pondering the emotional lives of fish. Balcombe, who serves as the director of animal sentience for the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy, tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that humans are closer to understanding fish than ever before.
"Thanks to the breakthroughs in ethology, sociobiology, neurobiology and ecology, we can now better understand what the world looks like to fish," Balcombe says.
In his new book, What A Fish Knows: The Inner Lives Of Our Underwater Cousins, Balcombe presents evidence that fish have a conscious awareness — or "sentience" — that allows them to experience pain, recognize individual humans and have memory. He argues that humans should consider the moral implications of how we catch and farm fish.
Reuters
The Chinese government appears to be abiding by its September pledge to stop supporting the hacking of American trade secrets to help companies there compete, private U.S. security executives and government advisors said on Monday.
FireEye Inc , the U.S. network security company best known for fighting sophisticated Chinese hacking, said in a report released late Monday that breaches attributed to China-based groups had plunged by 90 percent in the past two years. The most dramatic drop came during last summer's run-up to the bilateral agreement, it added.
FireEye's Mandiant unit in 2013 famously blamed a specific unit of China's Peoples Liberation Army for a major campaign of economic espionage.
Kevin Mandia, the Mandiant founder who took over last week as FireEye chief executive, said in an interview that several factors seemed to be behind the shift. He cited embarrassment from Mandiant's 2013 report and the following year's indictment of five PLA officers from the same unit Mandiant uncovered.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Guardian
It would be “absurd” if the Russian doping whistleblower Yulia Stepanova was allowed to compete at the Rio Olympics while clean Russian athletes are barred from the Games, the Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said on Monday according to R-Sport agency.
Stepanova, an 800m runner described as “a courageous athlete” by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), went into hiding after revealing details of widespread cheating in Russian athletics.
The IAAF said on Friday that Stepanova could be allowed to compete at the Rio Games as an independent athlete after, in an unprecedented step, they upheld a ban on Russian track and field athletes because they had not met readmission criteria imposed when they were suspended last November over widespread state-sponsored doping.
On Sunday Mutko also said the governing body should be disbanded. “In essence, by shifting the responsibility to the All-Russia AthleticsFederation, they have exonerated themselves from responsibility. The IAAF should be disbanded,” he said.
The Guardian
The SUV that rolled down a driveway and killed Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin was being recalled because the gear shifters have confused drivers, causing the vehicles to roll away unexpectedly, government records show.
Yelchin, 27, a rising actor best known for playing Chekov in the rebooted series, died on Sunday after his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee pinned him against a mailbox pillar and security fence at his home, Los Angeles police said.
The 2015 model-year Grand Cherokees were part of a global recall of 1.1m vehicles announced by Fiat Chrysler in April, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration records show.
The agency urged the recall because of complaints from drivers who had trouble telling if they had put the automatic transmissions in park. If they were not in park and a driver left the vehicle, it could roll away.
Fiat Chrysler, which makes Jeeps, said in a statement on Monday that it was investigating and it was premature to speculate on the cause of the crash. It offered sympathies to Yelchin’s friends and family.
I hope everyone takes some time to visit Doctor RJ’s post:
Where is the line between inspiration and infringement?