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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NPR
Oxford University Press has announced that its new edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare will credit Christopher Marlowe as a co-author on the three Henry VI plays.
Despite years of controversy about the authorship of some of Shakespeare's work, this is the first time a major publishing house has formally named Marlowe as a co-author.
Christopher Marlowe is a 16th century British poet and playwright. The extent of his possible influence on (or even collaboration with) William Shakespeare is the subject of much academic scholarship, as NPR has reported, but for many years, mainstream academics had mostly derided efforts of independent scholars who challenged the authorship of plays attributed to Shakespeare.
US NEWS
NPR
In most cases, when an employer pays a signing bonus to attract new workers, that payment is understood to be essentially unrecoverable. But the Pentagon has a different understanding — and it's ordering the California National Guard to claw back thousands of dollars paid to soldiers who re-enlisted to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And in many cases, an employer would also have a tough time arguing that decade-old lapses in its own oversight should trigger wage garnishments and tax liens against its workers. But again, this is the U.S. military, and its officials say the law requires them to reclaim the overpayments.
That's the gist of a report by The Los Angeles Times, which says nearly 10,000 soldiers are now scrambling to pay back signing bonuses that helped the Pentagon cope with the task of using an all-volunteer service to fight two prolonged international conflicts.
Al Jazeera
Food is at the core of human survival - it can be at the heart of a family's traditions and the key to a nation's cultural identity.
It has also been the source of war, conflict and devastation. Natural disasters can wipe out the food supply of an entire country but what happens when you live in the largest economy in the world, where food is ever abundant and yet you may still go to bed at night hungry?
Nineteen-year-old Chima, a homeless Nigerian immigrant, takes us on a journey through New York City to reveal what it means to be truly food insecure in the land of plenty. In his own neighbourhood he shows us what unhealthy food choices most of the poor must make each day and how part of the solution may be growing just around the corner.
The Guardian
Over the last week, as the news was blanketed by new accusations of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump, a quiet reckoning began to take place in a small federal courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia: the first of two defamation trials against Rolling Stone for its story of a gang rape at the University of Virginia.
The trial, which started Monday and is expected to unfold over the course of 12 days, swirls around a blockbuster feature that Rolling Stone retracted in April of 2015. Titled A Rape on Campus, it told a harrowing story of a student, “Jackie”, who claimed to have been gang-raped by seven fraternity brothers in an initiation ritual. The story appeared in the November 2014 issue of Rolling Stone, only to slowly unravel as other publications questioned its major claims.
The Guardian
The 1960s anti-war activist Tom Hayden, whose name became forever linked with the celebrated Chicago seven trial, Vietnam war protests and his ex-wife, actor Jane Fonda, has died aged 76.
Hayden died on Sunday after a long illness, said his wife, Barbara Williams. He had a stroke in 2015.
Once denounced as a traitor by his detractors, he won election to the California assembly and senate where he served for almost two decades as a progressive force on issues such as education and the environment. He was the only one of the radical Chicago seven defendants to win such distinction in the mainstream political world.
He was an enduring voice against war and spent his later years as a prolific writer and lecturer advocating for reform of US political institutions.
NPR
You might assume that with the thawing of relations between Cuba and the U.S., Cubans would see positive change at home, and less reason to attempt the perilous water crossing to Florida. You'd assume wrong.
U.S. law enforcement authorities are confronting a surge of Cuban migrants trying to make the journey by boat across the Florida Straits: the highest numbers they've seen in two decades.
"It's gotten busier and busier," says U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jeff Janszen, commander of sector Key West, Fla.
Over the past fiscal year, the Coast Guard intercepted 5,396 Cuban migrants who were attempting the crossing. That's nearly twice the number from the previous year. About 1,000 Cubans managed to evade detection and make it to U.S. shores.
NPR
The final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton wrapped up last week, but a post-debate argument raged for days afterward: Is Trump saying "bigly" or "big-league"?
Many took to social media questioning what the Republican nominee could be saying.
Some even criticized him, saying bigly isn't a word.
But it turns out bigly is a word, says lexicographer and Merriam-Webster editor Kory Stamper. "Bigly is, in fact, an adverb," she says. "It's just a really rare adverb that doesn't have much use today."
Bigly's meaning has also changed through the years.
"It originally meant violently or strong," Stamper says. "Over time, it actually came to mean pompous or in an arrogant manner, which is kind of ironic.”
NPR
Ed. note: I was riveted to this podcast.
Adnan Syed, the convicted murderer whose case was exhaustively explored in the first season of the hit podcast Serial, has asked a judge to release him on bail.
His lawyers said they filed the request in a Maryland court on Monday.
Syed is currently waiting to go to trial — again. This summer, a judge agreed that Syed's defense attorney had mishandled his case during his murder trial in 2000, and granted a new trial.
"Syed has now served more than 17 years in prison based on an unconstitutional conviction for a crime he did not commit," the motion for release states. "[If] released he would pose no danger to the community. He is also not a flight risk; it makes no sense that he would run from the case he has spent more than half his life trying to disprove.”
Vox
One of the more shocking images circulating on social media this week is one of a sign vandalized with 30 bullet holes. The sign marks where the body of 14-year-old black student Emmett Till was found in 1955.
Kevin Wilson Jr., a New York University graduate student working on a film about Till, shared the image on Facebook. Till was a black teen who was brutally murdered after he spoke to a white woman. The perpetrators were acquitted, but Till’s murder is one of the most infamous examples of individual, racism-inspired violence whose perpetrators walked free. The photo has gone viral, with accompanying commentary about how American racism persists.
Reuters
The average premium for benchmark 2017 Obamacare insurance plans sold on Healthcare.gov rose 25 percent compared with 2016, the U.S. government said on Monday, the biggest increase since the insurance first went on sale in 2013 for the following year.
The average monthly premium for the benchmark plan is rising to $302 from $242 in 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services said. The agency attributed the large increase to insurers adjusting their premiums to reflect two years of cost data that became available.
…
Large national insurers including Aetna Inc (AET.N), UnitedHealth Group Inc (UNH.N) and Anthem Inc (ANTM.N) have said they are losing money on the exchanges, created under President Barack Obama's national healthcare reform law, because patient costs are higher than anticipated and enrollment is lower than forecast. Both UnitedHealth and Aetna have pulled out of the exchanges for 2017.
As a result, consumers will have fewer plans to choose from. In 2017, in five states there will be offerings from only one insurance company. The government expects average monthly 2017 enrollment of 11.4 million people, up about 1 million from 2016.
WORLD NEWS
DW News
Closely watched by 1,200 police officers, long lines of migrants waited calmly in chilly temperatures to board buses in the French port city of Calais. They were headed for resettlement centers in other parts of France.
Several hundred people lined up in front of official meeting points as French police began evacuating the refugee camp in the northern French town of Calais.
"I feel very happy, I've had enough of the Jungle," Abbas, a 25-year-old from Sudan, told news agency AFP.
"There are a lot of people who don't want to leave. There might be problems later. That's why I came out first," he added.
People carrying multiple suitcases and bags lined up "to take their chances in France," reported DW's Teri Schulz from Calais.
DW News
Russia has said it will not extend the ceasefire in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo. The announcement came as Moscow criticized the US-led coalition's role in the conflict.
Russia's deputy foreign minister said a renewed ceasefire in Aleppo would be irrelevant at the moment, citing diplomatic tensions and a failure on the part of the US-led coalition to rein in anti-government forces.
Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax news agency that the three-day ceasefire last week had failed. "Over the last three days, what was needed did not happen," he said.
The official went on to blame the US and its allies, saying they spent too much time criticizing President Bashar al-Assad and not enough time exerting pressure on the fighters it supported.
Moscow has long accused the coalition forces of backing terrorists, and has insisted that Washington work to separate "moderate" rebels from the extremist groups fighting alongside them.
Al Jazeera
Iraqi forces have fought their way into two villages near Mosul as the offensive to retake city enters its second week.
Iraqi special forces began shelling ISIL positions before dawn on Monday near Bartella, a historically Christian town to the east of Mosul that they had retaken last week.
With patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers on their Humvees, they then pushed into the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometres (5.5 miles) from Mosul, amid heavy clashes.
After entering the village, they allowed more than 30 people who had been sheltering in a school to escape the fighting.
Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, fell under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in 2014.
Al Jazeera
Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Americas, second only to Haiti. Poverty is rampant and easily witnessed on its streets.
The dream of building a trans-Nicaragua canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific has been around for centuries, but despite prospects for economic growth, the latest China-backed canal project in Nicaragua is dividing the nation.
The proposed Nicaragua Canal Project presents a classic trade-off between economic development and the protection of natural resources to the country.
In this case, it is Lake Cocibolca (also known as Lake Nicaragua), the largest lake in Central America and a source of drinking water to thousands of Nicaraguans, that is in danger.
The Guardian
Masked youths burned rubbish and set up roadblocks in a volatile Venezuelan border city on Monday, witnesses said, in the latest protest over the suspension of a referendum drive to remove socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
Several hundred students held demonstrations in San Cristobal, near Colombia. The city, a hotbed of anti-Maduro sentiment, was the site of the worst violence during protests two years ago that led to 43 deaths around the nation.
"We want freedom!" chanted the protesters, who closed several roads under the watch of police and troops.
Students held scattered protests in other places around Venezuela, including the capital Caracas, but mainstream opposition leaders were holding fire for nationwide rallies planned for Wednesday.
The political polarization is impeding solutions to Venezuela's punishing economic crisis. In the third year of a recession, many people must skip meals due to widespread food shortages and spiraling prices.
BBC
Belgium cannot sign a key EU trade deal with Canada, Prime Minister Charles Michel has said, because of objections led by its Wallonia region.
Mr Michel said talks with Wallonia and two other elected bodies had failed.
His comments appeared to dash hopes the Ceta deal could be signed on Thursday but European Council President Donald Tusk said it was still possible.
This is the EU's most ambitious free trade deal to date but Belgium needs its regions' approval to sign it.
Mr Michel said he had told Mr Tusk that Belgium could not sign Ceta (the acronym for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement).
The other 27 EU governments want to sign the agreement, which has been in the pipeline for seven years.
The European Commission had set Belgium a Monday deadline to make its decision on the deal.
Reuters
Signaling a shift in strategy in its blood-soaked war against drugs, Philippines police aim to reduce the killing of suspects and put more resources into arresting prominent people tied to the trade, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Project Double Barrel Alpha will put a stronger focus on arresting politicians, military, police, government officials and celebrities allegedly involved in narcotics, the sources said.
The new approach will be outlined on Tuesday at a meeting of police chiefs from each of the Philippines' 18 regions at Camp Crame, the police headquarters north of the capital Manila, Philippines National Police spokesman Dionardo Carlos confirmed to Reuters.
The operation will be launched within days, Carlos said, adding he did not have further details of the new operation.
The meeting comes after what one of the sources familiar with details of the plan described as "intense" discussions among law enforcement officials about the wave of killings of drug suspects.
The Guardian
At last 54 people have been killed in an attack on a police training centre in the city of Quetta, Pakistani officials said after announcing the end of a military counter-operation.
Gunmen attacked the training centre, where hundreds of cadets are staying, and took hostages.
The home minister of Balochistan province, Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti, told reporters at the site of the attack early on Tuesday that five to six gunmen had attacked a dormitory inside the training facility while cadets rested and slept.
More than a hundred people were injured, he said. The death toll could rise as many cadets were seriously injured.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, which has been outlawed by the government, has been involved in past attacks on security forces
Al Jazeera's correspondent Kamal Hyder noted that the facility has come under attack in the past, with rockets fired towards it in 2006 and 2008.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
On Monday, the World Meteorological Organization released another reminder of the planetary predicament we’re in: The earth’s atmosphere permanently passed the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold last year.
It’s the first year in human history where carbon dioxide levels have reached the symbolic milestone for an entire year. But it certainly won’t be the last as humans continue to treat the atmosphere as a waste dump for carbon pollution.
You might have heard that the world reached the 400 ppm milestone permanently this September. And it did, according to data collected at Mauna Loa Observatory, which is considered the gold standard for carbon dioxide monitoring. But it’s not the only place in the world where scientists are monitoring carbon dioxide.
Climate Central (10/21/16)
Significant droughts are already in place over nearly 45 percent of the contiguous U.S., with hotspots in California — where the drought is in its sixth year — the Southeast and Northeast. With the renewed possibility of a La Niña emerging in the next couple months, little improvement is expected in most areas; the drought in the Southeast is expected to expand and drought could also emerge in the Southern Plains, according to the most recent seasonal forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The winter forecast doesn’t bode well for [California] and many other areas around the nation currently experiencing drought,” Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said during a press teleconference.
Spiegel Online (10/22/16)
There are 1.6 billion songbirds in Europe and half of them fly south for the winter. Scientists would like to follow them -- using sensors attached to the International Space Station. But keeping up isn't easy.
Martin Wikelski is late arriving at the Radolfzell air strip on Lake Constance because of a lynx. The feline lives in the Swabia Jura mountain range in southern Germany and wears a radio collar, but for the last 11 days, the radio receiver has been silent. Forest service workers turned to Wikelski for help.
As head of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Wikelski doesn't just have an airplane and over 1,000 hours of flying experience: His Cessna 172 is equipped with technology for tracking animals that have been tagged with radio transmitters.
The Guardian
I’d never been squeamish about talking about bodily functions. At university, I was a peer contraceptive counselor (meaning I handed out condoms on the quad and happily explained the inner workings of our reproductive systems to fellow students) and I’ve gone so far as to solicit drawing of vulvas from people, so I was surprised that when I started experiencing menstrual cramps so bad that I could hardly get out of bed in the morning, I kept quiet. Despite the fact that the pain made it so hard for me to go to work, it took me a year to tell my boss. And I hardly mentioned it to my closest friends and family.
Dysmenorrhea, the technical term for extreme period pain, is a common problem. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, up to 20% of women suffer from menstrual cramping severe enough to interfere with daily activities. But unlike the skiing-aficionado in your office who excitedly explains how he broke his arm on the slopes, many menstruating women grimace through their pain in silence.
The Guardian
Short-selling firm Muddy Waters said in a legal filing on Monday that outside cyber security experts it hired have validated its claims that St. Jude Medical Inc cardiac implants are vulnerable to potentially life-threatening cyber attacks.
Muddy Waters released a 53-page report from boutique cyber security firm Bishop Fox, the latest piece of evidence to emerge in an ongoing dispute over claims made in August by the short-selling firm and cyber research firm MedSec Holdings that St. Jude cardiac implants are vulnerable to hacking.
St. Paul, Minnesota-based St. Jude has strongly disputed those claims, which are under investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has told patients to continue to use their devices as instructed and not change any St. Jude cardiac implant while it reviews the allegations.
The cardiac devices have been implanted in hundreds of thousands of patients, according to St. Jude.
Buzz Feed
As part of an ongoing battle against counterfeit products, Apple purchased a number of power products — adapters and charging and syncing cables — from Amazon and determined that they were counterfeit, according to a lawsuit filed with the US District Court in San Francisco.
Apple accuses Mobile Star of selling Amazon counterfeit products that “pose an immediate threat to consumer safety.”
Mobile Star’s products are not subjected to industry-standard consumer safety testing and are “poorly constructed with inferior or missing components, flawed design and inadequate electrical insulation,” the company alleges.
Groupon also sold Mobile Star’s power products through its site. Amazon and Groupon are not listed as defendants in the lawsuit.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
McClatchy DC
On Tuesday, the Cleveland Indians will play their first World Series game in two decades. Sharing baseball's brightest spotlight with them will be what many people consider to be the most offensive image in sports: Chief Wahoo.
Already, to the chagrin of the team's fans, debate over the controversial logo has intensified – on Twitter, in columns and even in court.
Last week, a Canadian judge denied a request by a Native American activist to bar the Indians from using their name and logo during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Though the litigation failed, it triggered dozens of news stories and a response from Major League Baseball, which said it "appreciates the concerns" of those offended and welcomed "a thoughtful and inclusive dialogue to address these concerns outside the context of litigation.”
BBC
The Chicago Cubs will be hoping to end the most infamous run of failure in US sport when they face the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, which starts on Tuesday.
Remarkably, this year's finale features the two franchises who have waited longer than any other to win a championship.
Cleveland's last title came way back in 1948. In ordinary circumstances a win for "the Tribe" would be a baseball fairytale: this year it would mostly be remembered for crushing Chicago's dreams.
The Cubs, despite being one of the most popular and historic franchises in baseball, have not won a World Series title since 1908.
They have not even played in the Fall Classic since 1945, when legend has it that a curse was placed on the team when a local tavern owner was asked to leave a game because the smell of his pet goat was upsetting other fans.
McClatchy DC
Hillary Clinton is using star power to help her boost the turnout of millennials.
She has asked a series of singers to perform as part of what her campaign calls the “‘Love Trumps Hate”’ concerts series.
On Thursday, singer Jon Bon Jovi will hold a performance in Pittsburgh. This Saturday, singer Jennifer Lopez will perform in Miami. On Nov. 2, rock band the National will appear in their hometown of Cincinnati. On Nov. 5, singer Katy Perry will give a concert in Philadelphia while Bon Joni will do the same in Tampa.
“This election is one of the most important in our lifetime,” Lopez said. “Florida, home to one of my favorite cities, Miami, and millions of Latinos is a pivotal state in this election. It’s time to unify, support, and vote for the only choice that makes sense not only for Women or for Latinos, but for all Americans. Vote for Hillary. I’m with her.”