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 (RIP), 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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The Guardian
As many as 24 million Americans risk losing health coverage over the next decade under the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported.
By 2026, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured if Congress enacts the healthcare proposal, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law, according to the report. President Donald Trump, who supports the legislation, vowed that the plan would provide “insurance for everybody”.
The congressional analysts estimate that the Republican healthcare proposal could reduce the federal budget by $337bn over 10 years, with largest savings would come from cuts to the federal Medicaid program and “Obamacare” tax credits for people who buy insurance individually.
The bill, called the American Health Care Act, faces intensifying opposition from conservatives, Democrats, consumer interest groups and nearly every sector of the US healthcare industry.
US NEWS
Reuters
A fast-moving winter storm bringing up to two feet of snow was expected to hit the northeastern United States, forecasters warned on Monday, prompting airlines to cancel thousands of flights and some mayors to order schools to close on Tuesday.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, with forecasts calling for up to 2 feet (60 cm) of snow by early Wednesday, with temperatures 15 to 30 degrees below normal for this time of year.
Some 50 million people along the Eastern Seaboard were under storm or blizzard warnings and watches.
"When this thing hits, it's going to hit hard and it's going to put a ton of snow on the ground in a hurry," Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker told reporters on Monday. He urged people to consider working from home if they could.
"It's going to snow hard and fast for a long period of time. It will create whiteout conditions," Baker said.
Airlines preemptively canceled more than 4,000 flights ahead of the storm, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. The airports with the most cancellations were Newark International Airport in New Jersey and Boston Logan International Airport.
The Guardian
Just after 8am on the first of March, Lucia Gomez sat snarled in traffic on her way to her office when she received a call from an undocumented worker – an elderly member of the labor union where she works as an organizer. Two officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) were knocking at the door of the man’s apartment building in Union City, New Jersey. Should he let them in? Was it unlawful to not let them in? If he didn’t open the door, would they find a way to arrest and deport him anyway?
The man, who makes a living hauling asbestos waste, had been walking home with groceries for breakfast when the Ice officials had intercepted him. They asked for his name, which he gave, and his identity papers, which he said he needed to gather from his apartment. He’d be right back, he told them.
Instead, dashing inside, he locked the door and waited, frozen in fear. Twenty-two years since he left his home for the US, he was careful to renew his drivers’ license each year and had long since received certification to handle hazardous waste that he was still carting in his late 60s. But he lacked legal residence papers.
Through his window, he could see the officers lurking.
Calculating a half-hour drive at least to the man’s home, Gomez phoned an immigration attorney, then another, and a third. No one picked up. She sent them texts. Nothing. It was early. People were probably commuting to work. Perhaps they were out of range. Her heart racing, she burst into tears. “My level of anxiety was through the roof,” Gomez said.
The Guardian
Donald Trump’s administration is considering a military proposal that would designate various undeclared battlefields worldwide to be “temporary areas of active hostility”, the Guardian has learned.
If approved, the Pentagon-proposed measure would give military commanders the same latitude to launch strikes, raids and campaigns against enemy forces for up to six months that they possess in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
The proposal would in effect unravel a highly controversial bureaucratic structure for launching lethal assaults, such as drone strikes and counter-terrorism raids, set up by Barack Obama’s White House.
Under Obama’s structure, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance(PPG), the president and his counter-terrorism adviser at the National Security Council played a substantial role in approving life-or-death strikes on suspected terrorists on undeclared battlefields such as Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
The Guardian
The first sign that things were not as we had expected was the surprised look we got from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s staffer. It was the day before the nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary was initially slated to be voted on by a Senate subcommittee. We were a group of public school parents with more than 1,000 letters from parents all over New York City urging our senators to oppose DeVos’s appointment.
We were confident that our blue-state senators would vote the right way, if only to capitalize on the ferocious anti-Trump sentiment among Democrats. Our letter-writing campaign was something they could point to as a reason to take an even stronger stand against DeVos.
We were not allowed to go into either senator’s office, so we stood in the lobby, our arms weighted down. A staffer from each office came down and talked to us for a few minutes. First came the bombshell – neither senator had decided whether or not to oppose DeVos. At this point her record as an extremist crusader for privatization, and her many statements deriding the very notion of public school had been widely reported.
What had begun as one parent standing outside one Brooklyn schoolyard collecting signatures at morning drop-off had expanded with exponential speed into a multi-school, multi-borough grassroots coordinated action. And yet neither Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, nor Gillibrand, an outspoken advocate for children and educators, knew enough about her to take a position.
Reuters
When Johnathan Smith resigned from the U.S. Justice Department on Inauguration Day, he looked forward to spending time with his infant son, but that plan unraveled a week later when President Donald Trump unveiled his explosive foreign travel ban.
Within two weeks, Smith had a new job as legal director of civil rights group Muslim Advocates and was drafting briefs for a successful court challenge to the ban, joining other former top Obama administration lawyers now fighting Trump.
It is not surprising that Smith and some of his colleagues, political appointees of Democratic President Barack Obama, would leave the Justice Department now led by Republicans. What is unusual is how fast they have signed up to be Trump adversaries.
Some Republican lawyers say they were less hasty in moving into oppositional roles post-election. George Terwilliger, a senior Justice Department official under President George H.W. Bush, described the Obama lawyers' actions as "unprecedented to my memory – and really bad form."
NPR
The Justice Department has asked for more time to respond to a congressional committee about any evidence that President Barack Obama ordered surveillance of then-candidate Donald Trump last year, as Trump has claimed.
The House Intelligence Committee had set the deadline of Monday in a letter to Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente last week in which it asked for proof of the claim, which Obama and others have said is baseless.
Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and ranking Democrat Adam Schiff requested any applications for surveillance of Trump or his associates that were made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any court orders supporting such surveillance made by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, NPR's David Welna reports.
David adds that a copy of the letter also was sent to FBI Director James Comey, who has asked the Justice Department to publicly deny President Trump's claims.
NPR
The man at the heart of the legal resistance to the Trump agenda works in an unfinished office a block away from the White House.
David Cole, the new national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, hasn't had time to hang pictures on the wall or remember to bring a mug to hold his morning tea.
"I get to wake up every morning and I get paid to think about how to respond in ways that will preserve our basic rights and liberties," Cole said. "That's a tremendous privilege."
Weeks into the Trump administration, the ACLU is positioning itself as the chief enforcer of the government's system of checks and balances. And near the center of that effort is Cole, who is on a four-year leave from his teaching job at Georgetown Law.
When he accepted the ACLU job in the summer of 2016, Cole says, he had a very different idea about what was to come.
Reuters
The move would be a change from the policy of former President Barack Obama's administration of limiting the CIA's paramilitary role, the newspaper reported. (on.wsj.com/2mlgyS9)
The White House, the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Obama had sought to influence global guidelines for the use of drone strikes as other nations began pursuing their own drone programs. (reut.rs/2nnaA51)
The United States was the first to use unmanned aircraft fitted with missiles to kill militant suspects in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Strikes by missile-armed Predator and Reaper drones against oversea targets began under former President George W. Bush and were expanded by Obama.
WORLD NEWS
AFP
The risks to Britain of its vote to leave the EU were laid bare on Monday when Scotland's nationalist government announced a new independence vote in anticipation of the imminent start of the Brexit process.
Legislation empowering Prime Minister Theresa May to formally begin withdrawing from the European Union is expected to become law by Tuesday, allowing her to start Brexit at any point.
But Downing Street sought to play down speculation she would immediately trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon treaty, starting the two-year divorce process.
"We have been clear that the prime minister will trigger Article 50 by the end of March," her spokesman said, heavily emphasising the word "end".
The prospect of an imminent start to negotiations to pull Britain out of the EU, after four decades of membership, was however enough to push the Scottish nationalist government into calling a fresh independence vote.
As the price for cutting immigration, May has said Britain will leave Europe's single market -- a move that the Scottish National Party (SNP) in power in Edinburgh has warned would be highly damaging to jobs and growth.
Al Jazeera
The union that binds together the four countries within the United Kingdom has never been more at risk. What nobody in the English political and media class seems to have realised is how badly England will fare if Scotland, which is more than likely, and Northern Ireland, which is plausible though by no means certain, split off.
It will be the end of England - the dominant power of the UK, when the term "Little England" will really come into its own.
Almost exactly two and a half years ago, the Scottish electorate decided against leaving the UK. They were told by pro-union campaigners that if they did vote to leave Britain, they would lose their membership of the European Union.
At the time this was probably true. There was no incentive for European decision-makers to allow accession for Scotland, not least because it would embolden Spanish Catalonian independence, and therefore Spain at least - perhaps Belgium too - would veto Scotland's membership.
Now the circumstances have changed. Britain has voted for Brexit, but Scotland did not, with just 38 percent of Scottish people voting to leave the EU. In contrast, 53 percent of the electorate in England voted to leave.
AFP
Carlos the Jackal, the world's most wanted fugitive in the 1970s and early 1980s, went on trial in France on Monday for the deadly bombing of a Paris shop more than 40 years ago.
The 67-year-old convict cut a grizzled, thinner figure as he was led smiling into a courthouse in Paris, where he is serving a life sentence for other attacks.
Ever the sharp dresser with a taste for theatrics, he wore a jacket and a red pocket kerchief and kissed the hand of his lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who is also his partner, before blowing kisses at the media.
While attention in France is now focused on the jihadist threat after a string of bloody attacks, the trial reaches back to a time when Europe was repeatedly targeted by groups sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
DW News
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to meet US President Donald Trump has been postponed until Friday due to bad weather. Merkel had been scheduled to meet with Trump on Tuesday.
Merkel's office also announced the postponement just before the Chancellor was due to depart. A spokesperson told reporters that Trump had called her to explain the severity of the blizzards in the forecast and advised her to postpone the trip.
The trip will mark Merkel's first face-to-face meeting with the new US president. The two have had a fractious start to their relationship, clashing on a range of issues including trade, military spending and, perhaps most outspokenly, immigration.
"Talking together instead of talking about one another - that will be my motto of the visit," Merkel said.
Snowstorms bearing down the US east coast have forced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to postpone her visit to Washington DC.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed on Monday that the Chancellor's meeting with US President Donald Trump, originally set for Tuesday, will instead take place on Friday, March 17, and follow the same schedule of events.
DW News
Turkey has summoned the Dutch envoy to protest a "disproportionate" use of force against demonstrators in Rotterdam. The Netherlands has also warned its citizens in Turkey to "stay alert" in light of the rising tensions.
Turkey's foreign ministry said on Monday that it summoned the Netherlands' top diplomat as a feud between the NATO allies continued to deepen.
The Dutch Embassy's charge d'affaires, Daan Feddo Huisinga, was called to the foreign ministry where Turkish officials gave him two formal protest notes - the first about the treatment of its family ministerand the second about the treatment of protesters.
Hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam after the family affairs minister was blocked from attending a pro-Ankara rally.
Some of the protesters threw bottles and stones while Dutch police used dogs and water cannon to disperse the crowd. Several of the demonstrators were also beaten with batons while mounted officers charged the crowd.
Al Jazeera
As the Dutch parliamentary election edges closer, traditional parties fear a victory by Geert Wilders and his far-right Party for Freedom (PVV). But attempts by these parties to win back voters only seem to have strengthened Wilders' nationalism.
There are only a few days left until the Dutch cast their votes. Many are still in doubt, but a steady group of angry voters have already made up their minds. They will vote for Geert Wilders and his PVV. Of the 150 seats that the parliament offers, Wilders is predicted to win almost a fifth of them, a huge gain in a parliamentary system that is built for 12 to 15 parties.
A ban on migration from Muslim countries, closing all Dutch mosques and a ban on the Quran are just some of the controversial commitments that the far-right politician has made in his one-page manifesto for the upcoming Dutch elections.
"Those foreigners think that we have always been this rich," says Janine, a retired cleaning lady who says she will vote for Wilders next week. "But many here were penniless. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to see that newcomers get everything?"
Janine left her neighbourhood in Amsterdam a few years ago after migrants moved in. "I do want to speak with others, but it doesn't work with those people. Maybe not all of them, but the ones I met should all go back to their own country," she says.
Reuters
Japan plans to dispatch its largest warship on a three-month tour through the South China Sea beginning in May, three sources said, in its biggest show of naval force in the region since World War Two.
China claims almost all the disputed waters and its growing military presence has fueled concern in Japan and the West, with the United States holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.
The Izumo helicopter carrier, commissioned only two years ago, will make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and U.S. naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July.
It will return to Japan in August, the sources said.
"The aim is to test the capability of the Izumo by sending it out on an extended mission," said one of the sources who have knowledge of the plan. "It will train with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea," he added, asking not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media.
A spokesman for Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force declined to comment.
Reuters
Turkey said on Monday it would suspend high-level diplomatic relations with the Netherlands after Dutch authorities prevented its ministers from speaking at rallies of expatriate Turks, deepening the row between the two NATO allies.
The sanctions - which include a ban on the Dutch ambassador and diplomatic flights from the Netherlands but do not appear to include economic measures or travel restrictions for ordinary citizens - mark another low point in relations between Turkey and the European Union, which it still officially aims to join.
President Tayyip Erdogan, who is seeking Turkish voters' support in an April 16 referendum on boosting his powers as head of state, has previously accused the Dutch government of acting like "Nazi remnants" for barring his ministers from addressing expatriate Turks to drum up votes.
The row is likely to further dim Ankara's prospects of EU membership. It also comes as Turkey wrestles with security concerns over militant attacks and the war in neighboring Syria.
"We are doing exactly what they did to us. We are not allowing planes carrying Dutch diplomats or envoys from landing in Turkey or using our airspace," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told a news conference after a cabinet meeting. "Those creating this crisis are responsible for fixing it."
Reuters
Russia appears to have deployed special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya in recent days, U.S., Egyptian and diplomatic sources say, a move that would add to U.S. concerns about Moscow's deepening role in Libya.
The U.S. and diplomatic officials said any such Russian deployment might be part of a bid to support Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, who suffered a setback with an attack on March 3 by the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB) on oil ports controlled by his forces.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States has observed what appeared to be Russian special operations forces and drones at Sidi Barrani, about 60 miles (100 km) from the Egypt-Libya border.
Egyptian security sources offered more detail, describing a 22-member Russian special forces unit, but declined to discuss its mission. They added that Russia also used another Egyptian base farther east in Marsa Matrouh in early February.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (03/12/2017)
Karin Wanngård, the mayor of Stockholm, rides an electric bike to work each morning — at least when it is not snowing too heavily.
She also wears second-hand clothing — a trendy move in Stockholm, she says — and eats less meat than she used to. It is all part of her contribution to meeting an ambitious goal she set for her city: eliminating all use of coal, oil and other fossil fuels by 2040.
“Leadership is really important when you want to make things happen,” said the 41-year-old, who has run Sweden’s capital city since 2014. “You can always have politicians making nice speeches but when it comes to action you need to have leadership.”
Around the world, cities are increasingly at the forefront of action to curb climate change. Some, like Stockholm, have set ambitious emissions reduction goals, while others have pushed ahead with climate policies despite national policy reversals, such as under President Donald Trump in the United States.
Increasingly, many of the cities leading on climate change — Paris, Washington, Sydney, Cape Town — are run by women.
The Guardian (03/12/2017)
Great white sharks are swimming toward the waters off Massachusetts in rising numbers, scientists say, after a second consecutive year showing an increase in predators to Cape Cod.
The latest data from a multiyear study of the ocean predators found that the number of sharks in waters off the vacation haven appeared to be on the rise, said Greg Skomal, a senior scientist with the Massachusetts division of marine fisheries, and the state’s top shark expert.
The sharks are after seals, not humans, and towns are using the information from the study to keep it that way. “How long does it stay and where does it go are the questions we’re trying to answer,” Skomal said. “But for the towns, it’s a public safety issue.”
Researchers using a plane and boats spotted 147 individual white sharks last summer. That was up slightly from 2015, but significantly more than the 80 individual sharks spotted in 2014, the first year of the study, funded by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
Reuters
President Donald Trump is set to formally announce a review of vehicle fuel efficiency rules locked in at the end of the Obama administration when he meets with automaker chiefs this week, according to two sources briefed on the matter.
Trump will visit an autonomous vehicle testing facility in a Detroit suburb on Wednesday and meet with chief executive officers of several U.S. automakers who want the rules revised.
The administration has decided to review the feasibility of the 2022 through 2025 vehicle emissions rules, sources told Reuters last week, after the Obama administration moved in its final days to keep them. Reuters reported on the planned announcement on March 3.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday the trip is focused on "job creation and automobile manufacturing... highlighting the need to eliminate burdensome regulations that needlessly hinder meaningful job growth.”
NPR
Reading isn't usually a competitive sport. But it's become one for Braille readers because of a lack of excitement about Braille.
Right now, the Los Angeles-based Braille Institute is putting on regional competitions like this one in a classroom at the Tennessee School for the Blind.
A braille reading competition actually looks more like a typing contest.
As competition begins, students flip through their packets. Their spread fingers sweep over the square pages.
In some events, they proofread Braille. But in this session, they interpret charts and graphs, typing their answers into mechanical nine-key Braille writers.
The old-school equipment is akin to taking a math test without a calculator these days. Digital technology, especially a computer's ability to read text aloud, makes Braille seem more and more antiquated. But 12th-grader Marcus Johnson finds it a necessary skill.
NPR
Conservationists are sounding the alarm over a South African proposal that would legalize and regulate the domestic trade of rhinoceros horn, as well as allow some limited exports.
A public comment period ended last week on the draft regulations from the Department of Environmental Affairs, published on Feb. 8 in the official government gazette.
"South African rhino breeders want the government to legalize the sale so, they say, they can flood the market and decrease the cost of rhino horn," reporter Peter Granitz in Pretoria tells NPR's Newscast unit. "They argue that would drive down demand for poached rhinos."
However, Granitz says conservationists opposed to the regulation say this "makes no sense because there's no domestic demand. Any horn sold locally would be smuggled to Asia, where demand for rhino horn is booming."
The proposed regulation would legalize domestic trade of rhino horn, and allow for foreigners with a permit to export no more than two horns for "personal purposes." The draft did not elaborate on what "personal purposes" means.
NPR
Countersurveillance fashion designs are being spotlighted at this year's South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, by a group of young women of color who started a company called Hyphen-Labs.
They are scientists, architects and engineers turned artists "creating critical work for critical times," says Ashley Baccus-Clark, a speculative neuroscientist and member of the collective, which includes designers from around the globe.
Clark was trained as a molecular biologist, while one of her partners, Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, used to work as a structural engineer. At the conference, they're offering participants a look at their covert fashion accessories.
Their art installation begins with a virtual reality experience they call NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism. It's a science-fiction-like beauty salon for black women that anyone can live through using VR goggles. Inside this virtual world, beauticians braid the clients' hair with electrodes meant to boost brain power.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
NPR
Two former high-level Penn State administrators pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor charges of child endangerment, for their roles in covering up child sex abuse by disgraced assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Former Vice President Gary Schultz and former Athletic Director Tim Curley each took a plea bargain that — if accepted by the judge — will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. As part of the plea bargain, the felony charges they originally faced were reduced to misdemeanors.
As Penn Live notes, the pleas also open the possibility they may testify against former university President Graham Spanier, the only remaining defendant in the case. Jury selection begins next week for Spanier, who has been charged with a conspiracy felony and a child endangerment misdemeanor.