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.
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US NEWS
McClatchy DC
A line of police in riot gear stood to the left, visors down, mirroring the sun. Standing before them, she waited, arms to her side, wrists in front of her. Her gray dress floated about her in the summer breeze.
Two officers, guns holstered at their waists, fast approached with zip ties.
Then Jonathan Bachman, a freelance photographer for Reuters, clicked his camera.
The resulting photo was seen across the country after Ieshia Evans, 28, was taken into police custody and charged with obstructing the highway, one of more than a hundred protesters who demonstrated in the streets of Baton Rouge Saturday.
But it was the photo of her, standing alone against a line of police officers, that caught the nation’s eye. Shaun King, a New York Daily News writer and activist, shared the photo on Facebook, praising it as “POWERFUL.”
Commenters, including friends and family, marveled at her posture, “balanced, powerful, upright and well grounded with both feet firmly planted on the earth.”
“This is a legendary picture,” a commenter wrote. “It will be in history and art books from this time.”
But Evans suggested a greater power was at work in the moment the photo was taken.
Al Jazeera
Baltimore, Maryland has come to be known as 'Charm City' because of its harbour, which attracts a vibrant nightlife and thriving tourism business.
But just beyond the harbour's calm waters is one of the toughest and most violent inner cities in the US.
Baltimore is also home to Al Jazeera presenter Tony Harris and in this episode of Al Jazeera Correspondent he takes us on an up close and personal journey to his old neighbourhood to witness the challenges facing black youth today as they struggle to get out of the dead end of life on inner city streets.
Most of the crime in Baltimore is committed by black males with other blacks as victims, making black males an easy target for the police.
New York Times
DALLAS — As a demonstration against police shootings made its way downtown here on Thursday, it differed from others around the country in one startling way: Twenty to 30 of the marchers showed up with AR-15s and other types of military-style rifles and wore them openly, with the straps slung across their shoulders and backs.
In Texas, it was not only legal. It was commonplace.
The state has long been a bastion of pro-gun sentiment and the kind of place where both Democrats and Republicans openly talk about the guns they own and carry, on their person, in their vehicles, at their offices, at their homes and even in the halls of the Texas Capitol. And in recent years, as gun rights continued to expand, activists have exploited a decades-old freedom to openly carry a rifle in public by showing up at demonstrations with their so-called long guns.
The Guardian
Buoyed by recapturing Falluja from the Islamic State and the seizure of an airbase on Saturday, US and Iraqi officials are intensifying plans for an assault on Mosul, the terror group’s last urban stronghold in Iraq.
The US will send 560 more troops to the newly taken base, around 40 miles south of Mosul, which will be used as a staging point for the coming battle that officials suggest is likely to be launched later this year.
The fight for the country’s second-biggest city will define the fate of Isis in Iraq. The group emerged from civil war more than a decade ago and soared to prominence when it seized large parts of the country in mid-2014.
Reuters
Starbucks Corp will raise the wages of all workers in its U.S. stores this autumn, after being accused by employees of "extreme" cutbacks in work hours at its American cafes.
The world's biggest coffee chain will increase base pay for all U.S. workers and store managers at company-operated stores by at least 5 percent starting Oct. 3, Chief Executive Howard Schultz said in a letter to employees on Monday.
Starbucks, which recently announced price increases for some drinks, also will double the annual stock reward to hourly employees who have worked at company-operated stores for at least two years.
Combined, the steps will result in a wage hike of 5 percent to 15 percent for all employees at company-operated stores, Starbucks said.
Reuters
The S&P 500 hit a record intraday high on Monday as investors were more optimistic about the U.S. economy amid lingering concerns about global growth.
The benchmark index, which struggled to break past its May 2015 high in the past few months, got a solid boost on Friday after a robust monthly jobs report.
The S&P 500 .SPX touched a record intraday high of 2,140.43 points, topping its previous all-time high of 2,134.72. At 11:13 a.m. ET, the index was up 10.53 points, or 0.49 percent.
The gains were broad-based, with seven of the 10 major S&P sectors higher. Industrials .SPLRCI and consumer staples .SPLRCS also hit record highs.
Utilities .SPLRCU and telecom service .SPLRCL stocks, considered defensive sectors, fell about 0.4 percent.
The two indexes have risen 20 percent this year, outperforming other S&P indexes.
NPR
The past few days may mark the moment at which the interests of Fox News and its charismatic chairman, Roger Ailes, diverge from those of its parent company, 21st Century Fox, and the Murdoch family that controls it.
The Murdochs have arranged for an outside attorney to investigate the claims that Ailes committed sexual harassment by demanding sexual favors in exchange for furthering the career of former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson. Carlson said her refusal to yield to Ailes' sexual advances in a meeting last September ultimately led him to oust her from the network in retaliation last month.
…
Past Complaints Handled Differently
In 2004, Bill O'Reilly, then and now the network's top-rated star, was sued for $60 million by one of his former producers, Andrea Mackris. She alleged years of sexual harassment, and it's believed she captured him on tape. O'Reilly did not admit wrongdoing, but Mackris was paid a settlement that reportedly reached the high seven figures. While outside lawyers were retained to help defend O'Reilly, News Corp. (the parent company of Fox News before the Murdochs split their holdings into two) did not hire outside counsel to investigate him, according to a former senior News Corp. executive.
WORLD NEWS
The Guardian
Theresa May has declared herself “honoured and humbled” to be chosen as the new Conservative leader and promised to make a success of Brexit once she becomes prime minster.
The home secretary, who is due to move into No 10 on Wednesday, said her priorities were to provide leadership through Brexit negotiations, uniting the country and creating a positive vision of the future that gives people more control over their lives.
Speaking outside parliament, she said: “During this campaign, my case has been based on three things: first, the need for strong proven leadership to steer us through what will be difficult and uncertain economic and political times, the need to negotiate the best deal for Britain leaving the EU and to forge a new role for us in the world. Brexit means Brexit and we are going to make a success of it.
DW News
British opposition Labour lawmaker Angela Eagle has launched her bid for the leadership of the party. She said that current leader Jeremy Corbyn was unable to defeat the ruling Conservative Party.
Britain's Labour Party could have a new leader later in the year, as lawmaker Angela Eagle launched her candidacy against incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn.
"Today I am announcing my decision to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party," Eagle, 55, said in a speech to kick off her campaign. Eagle had neglected for days to launch her challenge, as her allies in the party sought to push Corbyn into resignation without a leadership contest. The current leader withstood this pressure, however.
"Jeremy Corbyn is unable to provide the leadership that this party needs. I believe I can. I am not a Blairite, I am not a Brownite and I am not a Corbynista, I am my own woman," she said, referring to previous party leaders Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Corbyn.
DW News
Embassies have begun evacuating non-essential staff as violence continues to grow in South Sudan. Fighting continues to rage between troops loyal to the president and vice president sparking fears of civil war.
Heavy fighting erupted again in South Sudan's capital on Monday a day after the UN Security Council told the warring factions to settle their differences peacefully after days of violence that have left scores dead.
When this did not happen, the United States, Canada, Japan and other foreign governments began emptying their diplomatic missions of non-essential staff.
With regards to the German embassy, sources at Germany's foreign office told DW they were watching the situation in Juba "very closely.”
Spiegel Online
British democracy these days is reminiscent of a crumbling building. And that isn't just a metaphor. Parts of Westminster Palace, home to the House of Commons and the House of Lords, is wrapped in scaffolding and plastic tarps. The façade is brittle, water is seeping in through the roof and pipes are leaky. The renovations are expected to take years and cost billions. On Monday, the prime minister's spokeswoman had to repeatedly interrupt her weekly press briefing because of the hammering of workers outside.
Similar cracks are visible across the United Kingdom. The entire country is suffering from the hangover of a revolution no one thought possible. Since the Brexit vote, many assumed certainties have been called into question, like the idea that parliament should be the heart of democracy. Or the binding force of the major political parties. The war over who will become David Cameron's successor in the Conservative Party is playing out before the public's hungry eyes, with all the betrayal and intrigues that entails. Within Labour, the antipathy between the fraction and leader Jeremy Corbyn is so great that it could lead to the division of the party.
The Guardian
The Vatican has named a former Fox News journalist and member of the controversial Opus Dei group as its chief spokesman, while a Spanish female reporter will serve as his deputy.
The appointment of Greg Burke, 56, was announced following the resignation of Federico Lombardi, a Jesuit priest who has served as spokesman for Pope Francisand his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Burke spent more than a decade as Fox News’s Rome correspondent before being hired by the Vatican in 2012 as a communications adviser. In December, the American was installed as the press office’s deputy director.
Although Burke does not wear a priest’s collar, the Vatican on Monday stressed the St Louis native is from a traditional Catholic family. As a student at Columbia University in New York he became a member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organisation that has faced criticism for secrecy and its approach to recruitment.
Reuters
Heavy fighting involving tanks and helicopters raged in South Sudan on Monday between troops loyal to the president and those backing the vice president, risking a return to civil war and further instability in a turbulent and poor region of Africa.
Clashes between the forces of President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar - the former rebel leader who became vice president under a deal that ended a two-year civil war - have killed hundreds of people since they broke out in the capital Juba four days ago.
The violence intensified early on Monday. A Reuters witness saw two helicopters overhead firing in the direction of Machar's headquarters, while residents reported tanks on the street. A United Nations official said heavy gunfire had erupted around U.N. bases where hundreds of civilian had fled to shelter.
AFP
Two South African brothers appeared in court Monday accused of plotting to blow up the US embassy in Pretoria and Jewish institutions, and planning to join the so-called Islamic State, police said.
The 23-year-old twins, Brandon-Lee and Tony-Lee Thulsie, were arrested over the weekend in a first for the country involving allegations of IS membership.
"It is alleged that they wanted to bomb the US embassy and Jewish facilities in the country," Hangwani Mulaudzi, spokesman for South Africa's elite police, the Hawks, told AFP.
"Although we have had people stopped from travelling abroad, this is the first time we have arrests linked to Islamic State," he said, after the pair appeared briefly in a Johannesburg magistrate court.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
A persistent wash of warm waters off the West Coast, which caused wildlife die-offs and blocked drought-quenching storms from reaching California last year, was caused by the happenstance interplay of natural ocean cycles, research findings published Monday show.
The findings also suggested that while the drought and the blob of warm water were the result of the natural whims of the weather, climate change could make such events more likely and intense in the future. To a small extent, it’s already doing so.
“The atmospheric variability that forced the warm blob is the same that forced the drought,” said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, an ocean and climate dynamics professor at Georgia Tech who coauthored the analysis, published in Nature Climate Change. “This atmospheric variability is increasing under greenhouse gases.”
The new findings could help scientists predict when similar marine heatwaves and droughts will strike in the future. They also suggest such heatwaves will become more common and intense, which could mean greater drought risks in the West. (By increasing evaporation and reducing snowfall, warmer temperatures are already making Western droughts worse.)
“This could potentially provide predictability,” said Cliff Mass, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor who wasn’t involved with the research. “This is natural variability that we’re dealing with.”
Climate Central
The number of people affected by the combined impact of the El Niño and La Niña weather patterns could exceed 100 million by the end of the year, according to the United Nations.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that more than 60 million people, two thirds of them in east and southern Africa, are facing food shortages because of droughts linked to El Niño, a climate phenomenon that occurs when water in the Pacific Ocean becomes abnormally warm.
The impact of La Niña, when waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean cool after a phase of El Niño, is not as severe - but the weather pattern has also been linked to floods and droughts.
"EL Niño has caused primarily a food and agricultural crisis," FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said last week at a meeting of U.N. agencies in Rome to discuss the impact of El Niño in Africa and Asia Pacific.
He said almost $4 billion was needed to meet the humanitarian demands of countries affected by El Niño.
The United Nations has called on governments and the international community to increase efforts to boost the resilience of "highly vulnerable" communities who are struggling to feed themselves, as well as to help them prepare for La Niña.
The FAO was mobilizing extra funding for agriculture, food and nutrition, and to invest in disaster preparedness, he said.
Al Jazeera (video at link)
Physician Gary Slutkin spent a decade fighting tuberculosis, cholera and HIV/Aids epidemics in Africa.
When he returned to the United States, he thought he had escaped brutal epidemic deaths.
But then he began to look more carefully at gun violence, noting that its spread followed the patterns of infectious diseases.
The Guardian
Female doctors in the US are paid nearly $20,000 a year less than their male colleagues, even after factors such as age and years of experience are taken into account, according to a study of medical pay.
The research looked at the gender pay gap among over 10,000 academic doctors working in publicly funded US medical schools across a wide range of specialties.
The results show that female doctors earn, on average, around $50,000 a year less than male doctors, with the pay gap at nearly $20,000 after factors such as age, years of experience and specialty are taken into account.
“Although we were not surprised by the findings of our study, they are nonetheless deeply concerning,” said Anupam B. Jena, first author of the research from Harvard Medical School.
NPR
The way clouds cover the Earth may be changing because of global warming, according to a study published Monday that used satellite data to track cloud patterns across about two decades, starting in the 1980s.
Clouds in the mid-latitudes shifted toward the poles during that period, as the subtropical dry zones expanded and the highest cloud-tops got higher.
These changes are predicted by most climate models of global warming, even though those models disagree on a lot of other things related to clouds, says Joel Norris, a climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
"I guess what was surprising is that a lot of times we think of climate change as something that's going to occur in the future," says Norris. "This is happening right now. It's happened during my lifetime — it was a bit startling.”
BBC
A Samsung smartphone advertised as being water-resistant has failed a water immersion test by a leading product review site.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Active stopped working after being put in a tank that simulated the effect of being about 5ft (1.5m) underwater.
Consumer Reports repeated its test on a second model, which was also damaged.
Samsung said it was possible defective devices were "not as watertight" as they should have been.
When removed after half an hour, the first phone's display was non-responsive and marred by green lines. Bubbles had also formed in its two camera lenses.
The second handset subjected to the same test suffered similar faults.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Guardian
Miko Grimes, the wife of former Miami cornerback Brent Grimes, was drawn into an antisemitism row on Monday when she accused Dolphins owner Stephen Ross of “keeping his Jew buddies employed” by not firing GM Mike Tannenbaum.
On Monday, as part of a lengthy Twitter tirade over the Dolphins’ perceived failings, Miko Grimes tweeted:
Ross and Tannenbaum are Jewish. The Glazer family, who own her husband Brent’s current team, the Buccaneers, are also Jewish. Tannenbaum, who was hired by Miami in 2015, left the New York Jets after signing Mark Sanchez to a disastrous five-year, $58.25m deal.