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.
Mic: United's victim had a "troubled past." But the Chicago police department's is worse. by Jack Smith IV
After a doctor was dragged off a United Airlines plane by police for refusing to give up his seat, journalists had a slew of questions. Why are the police arbitrating simple disputes between companies and consumers by using physical force? Why didn't United simply offer passengers more money to give up seats?
The Kentucky-based Courier-Journal had a different question: What's up with this doctor? The paper dug in hard, looking at his licensing history, his formal patients and even some decade-old drug charges. This doctor? He had a "troubled past," the Courier-Journal concluded.
This is a common device used after police and other perpetrators are criticized for excessive use of force, especially when it comes to people of color: to examine erroneous elements of the victim's history in order to suggest to the public that they were deserving of their treatment. Think Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and plenty of others.
But while we're on the subject of past records, let's take a closer look at the ones dragging the 69-year-old man down the aisle: the Chicago Police Department.
Chicago Sun-Times: WATCHDOGS: Chicago Obama donors tried to strike it rich in Africa by Tim Novak, Robert Herguth and Jon Seidel
Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama made it clear to Zimbabwe that he would keep America’s economic sanctions against the nation’s leaders in place until they reformed their government’s repressive policies.
Around the same time, a cadre of Obama political supporters from Chicago began exploring an array of potentially lucrative ventures in the African nation, everything from manufacturing medical supplies to mining diamonds.
Despite the U.S. sanctions, Americans can legally do business in Zimbabwe as long as their deals don’t involve specific people, including President Robert Mugabe, and companies targeted by the sanctions in place since 2003.
But it’s a tricky road to navigate. So the Obama supporters turned to Mel Reynolds — a former congressman and twice-convicted felon — to seek business opportunities for them starting in 2009. That ended by 2014, when he was arrested in Zimbabwe for possessing pornography, which is a crime in that country. The case was later dropped.
Mel fuc*ing REYNOLDS?!! You have GOT to be kidding me!
The Root: FBI Offers $25,000 Reward for Information Leading to Arrest of Gunman Who Killed Chicago Judge by Breanna Edwards
The FBI is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a gunman who shot and killed a Cook County judge outside his Chicago home early Monday morning.
Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles, 66, was gunned down just before 5 a.m. in what has been described by authorities as a possible robbery gone bad,
Fox News reports.
A woman, identified as Myles’ girlfriend in later reports, had left the home before the judge and encountered the gunman, who shot her in the leg. The woman is expected to survive. When Myles stepped out upon hearing the disturbance, the gunman turned the weapon on him, shooting him multiple times.
Boston Globe: Remember Mitt Romney’s ‘binders full of women?’ They’re real. And we got them. by Jim O’Sullivan
In the world of important political documents — from the Magna Carta to the Pentagon Papers — there are also those known for more pedestrian reasons. Count Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” in that category.
For those who don’t recall, Romney mentioned the binders during a 2012 presidential debate in which he was questioned about workplace inequality. He awkwardly referred to the “binders full of women” he had considered for state posts after he was elected governor. Critics pounced on his response as clumsy at best, patronizing at worst. Late-night comics had a field day.
For all the high-stakes attention they drew, the binders themselves never surfaced. Until now.
A former Romney aide recently exhumed the files and shared them with the Globe. Two white three-ring binders (weighing in at an aggregate 15 pounds, 6 ounces) are packed with nearly 200 cover letters and résumés, along with a few handwritten notations.
Philly.com: How did 8,000 pieces of trash land in one Delaware River cove? by Frank Kummer
Carelessly tossed plastic water bottles eventually go somewhere, and that somewhere might be a hidden cove off Plum Point on the Delaware River, a few miles north of Center City, that snags mighty amounts of trash as it flows downstream.
Enter Jay Kelly’s class, determined not only to clean up the mess on the Jersey side of the Delaware, but also to log each and every of the 7,917 pieces of debris they found Saturday morning before the 60-mile bus ride back to Raritan Valley Community College.
Their mission, in collaboration with the nonprofit Clean Ocean Action, was scientific: Where does all the trash come from? What types of debris are most common? The garbage not only is ugly, it also may be swallowed by animals, killing or injuring them. And some chemicals, scientists fear, can end up in the food chain, contaminating other creatures.
Charlotte Observer: NC House bill seeks to make gay marriage illegal again, defying Supreme Court by Colin Campbell
A bill filed Tuesday by four N.C. House Republicans would direct state government to defy a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and restore the state constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage.
House Bill 780 is titled “Uphold Historical Marriage Act,” and is sponsored by some of the House’s most conservative legislators. They frequently file bills that don’t get a hearing because House GOP leaders don’t support the proposals.
The bill says that the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the country “is null and void in the State of North Carolina.” The sponsors argue in the bill language that it’s “clear that laws concerning marriage are for each state to establish and maintain severally and independently.”
The bill quotes the Christian Bible and says the ruling “exceeds the authority of the court relative to the decree of Almighty God that ‘a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24, ESV) and abrogates the clear meaning and understanding of marriage in all societies throughout prior history.”
The Colorado River — which supplies about two-thirds of San Diego County’s drinkable water — on Tuesday was named the most endangered river in the U.S. by a leading conservation group.
Published by American Rivers since 1984, the report ranks the 10 most threatened rivers nationwide. The group said it tries to spotlight rivers that are subject to influential policy decisions, not necessarily the most polluted.
This year, it chose the lower portion of the Colorado River for greatest attention based on ongoing concerns about dwindling flows due to increasing water consumption and adverse impacts from global warming.
It’s unclear what effect, if any, the spotlighting will have. For decades, all manner of people — federal and state officials, scientists, environmentalists, recreational organizations — have sounded the alarm about drought and excess user demand causing the Colorado’s water levels to keep dropping. Yet relatively little has been done to change those dynamics.
New York: Bill O’Reilly Is Going on Vacation. Will His Show Return? by Gabriel Sherman
Embattled Fox News host Bill O’Reilly announced tonight that he is taking a vacation. O’Reilly’s decision to go off the air in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal and advertiser boycott arguably has the appearance of a suspension, but O’Reilly worked to dispel that notion. He announced that he’d scheduled his trip “last fall” — well before the New York Times reported he paid $13 million to settle harassment claims. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed O’Reilly will return on April 24.
But according to four network sources, there’s talk inside Fox News that tonight’s show could be his last. Lawyers for the law firm Paul, Weiss, hired last summer by 21st Century Fox to investigate Roger Ailes, are currently doing a “deep dive” investigation into O’Reilly’s behavior. They’re focused now on sexual harassment claims by O’Reilly guest Wendy Walsh after she reported her claims via the company’s anonymous hotline.
Bloomberg: DeVos Undoes Obama Student Loan Protections by Shahien Nasiripour
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday rolled back an Obama administration attempt to reform how student loan servicers collect debt.
Obama issued a pair (PDF) of memorandums (PDF) last year requiring that the government’s Federal Student Aid office, which services $1.1 trillion in government-owned student loans, do more to help borrowers manage, or even discharge, their debt. But in a memorandum (PDF) to the department’s student aid office, DeVos formally withdrew the Obama memos.
The previous administration’s approach, DeVos said, was inconsistent and full of shortcomings. She didn’t detail how the moves fell short, and her spokesmen, Jim Bradshaw and Matthew Frendewey, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
DeVos’s move comes a week after one of the student loan industry’s main lobbies asked for Congress’s help in delaying or substantially changing the Education Department’s loan servicing plans. In a pair of April 4 letters to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, the National Council of Higher Education Resources said there were too many unanswered questions, including whether the Obama administration’s approach would be unnecessarily expensive.
Washington Post: FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page by Ellen Nakashima, Delvin Barrett and Adam Entous
The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.
The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.
This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
[I picked up the Axios story that I have now deleted from a link in my Twitter feed that was ~45 min. old at the time and I just noticed that the story is dated “Feb. 27” so it’s old news that I did not review carefully enough deleting the story, leaving up the warning, and I apologize for the error! CK 11:56 pm CST]
I love posting “exclusive” stories/links almost as much as journalists love writing and reporting “exclusive” stories. Axios is relatively new to the MSM/Beltway landscape, so I can’t help but being a little suspicious. So I checked to see exactly who Axios is and I’m a little more comfortable with posting this story...but I confess to being a little wary, still.
Reuters: North Korea warns of nuclear strike if provoked; Trump 'armada' steams on by Sue-Lin Wong and David Brunnstrom
North Korean state media warned on Tuesday of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression, as a U.S. Navy strike group steamed toward the western Pacific - a force U.S. President Donald Trump described as an "armada".
Trump, who has urged China to do more to rein in its impoverished ally and neighbor, said in a tweet that North Korea was "looking for trouble" and the United States would "solve the problem" with or without Beijing's help.
Tension has escalated sharply on the Korean peninsula amid concerns that reclusive North Korea may soon conduct a sixth nuclear test and after Washington said at the weekend it was diverting the aircraft carrier strike group Carl Vinson toward the Korean peninsula in a show of force.
"We are sending an armada. Very powerful," Trump told Fox Business Network. "We have submarines. Very powerful. Far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. That I can tell you.”
Guardian: Foreign states may have interfered in Brexit vote, report says by Rajeev Syal
Foreign governments such as Russia and China may have been involved in the collapse of a voter registration website in the run-up to the EU referendum, a committee of MPs has claimed.
A report by the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee (PACAC) said MPs were deeply concerned about the allegations of foreign interference in last year’s Brexit vote.
The committee does not identify who may have been responsible, but has noted that both Russia and China use an approach to cyber-attacks based on an understanding of mass psychology and of how to exploit individuals.
The findings follow repeated claims that Russia has been involved in trying to influence the US and French presidential elections.
Ministers were forced to extend the deadline to register to vote in the EU referendum after the collapse of the government’s website on 7 June, 100 minutes before the deadline.
AFP: Corruption probes target nine Brazilian ministers
Brazil's corruption crisis struck the heart of President Michel Temer's government Tuesday with the opening of probes into up to nine ministers and scores of lawmakers.
What Brazilian media called "the bomb" and even "the atomic bomb" landed when the Supreme Court authorized probes against 108 politicians in the already giant "Car Wash" investigation.
They ranged from ministers to senior senators, at least four former presidents and Rio de Janeiro's mayor during the Olympics.
All are suspected of involvement in a massive embezzlement and bribery conspiracy that fleeced state oil company Petrobras and funneled dirty money into leading political parties' election war chests.
The so-called Car Wash investigation has already been running three years.
The Atlantic: Why ISIS Declared War on Egypt's Christians by Mokhtar Awad
Four months after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 28 Christian worshipers in Cairo, the group struck Egypt’s Christians again—this time with a double church bombing on Palm Sunday that left at least 44 dead and scores injured. The attacks, only hours apart, targeted a church in the Delta city of Tanta as well as a church in Alexandria where Coptic Pope Tawadros II was leading a service. It was the single deadliest day of violence directed against the Middle East’s largest Christian community in decades.
When the ISIS claim of responsibility came within hours of the attacks, it wasn’t a surprise. For months, the Islamic State has been accelerating the import of Iraq-style sectarian tactics to Egypt. In doing so, the group hopes to destabilize the Middle East’s most populous country and expand the reach of its by now clearly genocidal project for the region’s minorities.
AlJazeera: IOM: African migrants traded in Libya's 'slave markets'
Hundreds of African refugees and migrants passing through Libya are being bought and sold in modern-day slave markets before being held for ransom, forced labour or sexual exploitation, survivors have told the UN's migration agency.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that it had interviewed West African migrants who recounted being traded in garages and car parks in the southern city of Sabha, one of Libya's main people smuggling hubs.
People are purchased for between $200 and $500 and are held on average for two or three months, Othman Belbeisi, head of the IOM's Libya mission, said in Geneva.
"Migrants are being sold in the market as a commodity," he said. "Selling human beings is becoming a trend among smugglers as the smuggling networks in Libya are becoming stronger and stronger."
VICE (UK): This Weekend Saw the Biggest Protests in Serbia So Far
This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia
For seven consecutive days, thousands of mostly young Serbs have rallied in their capital Belgrade and several other cities to protest prime minister Aleksandar Vucic having been elected president.
This weekend saw the biggest rally of all. Students joined forces with members of police and army unions, who were protesting low wages and the fact that security forces aren't a priority for the government. In the end, more than 10,000 protesters marched through the heavy rain, mainly because they suspect electoral fraud during the elections on the 2nd of April, which Vucic won by a landslide. Protesters see Vucic as an autocrat and they demand the resignation of the state election commission, of editors of the state TV stations (who they think are turning a blind eye to the demonstrations) and of other high-ranking officials.
The protesters we spoke to all insist they don't want politicians at the protests – even the ones in the opposition who support their cause. The protests are spontaneous, it's written on the Facebook page, and shouldn't be politicised by the opposition.
BBC: Quebec's maple syrup producers seeking global domination by Robin Levinson-King and Jessica Murphy
Maple syrup isn't just for pancakes anymore, thanks to a group of maple syrup producers in Quebec who are trying to turn a cottage industry into a global empire.
Montreal chef Martin Picard says maple syrup runs through the veins of Quebecers like the sap that flows from the trees each spring in sugar bushes across the countryside.
In an annual communal gastronomic ritual, Quebecers flock to sugar shacks - casual restaurants where maple syrup is also produced - to fill their plates with pea soup, meat pie, baked beans and crispy pork rinds, all served with ample amounts of maple syrup.
"When we taste the maple syrup we taste all our souvenirs (memories)" says Picard, who opened a sugar shack nine years ago. It remains one of the toughest reservations to get in the region and was voted one of the top 100 restaurants in Canada.
He says people who have never tasted the golden syrup might be surprised by its unique flavour, which can have hints of toffee and spice, herbs and flowers.
"But this is the best sugar in the world," says Picard.
I, for one, welcome our new Quebecer Maple Syrup Overlords.
Fusion: Fucking in the Age of Trump by Luna Malbroux
November 8, 2016 was one of the most romantic nights of my life.
I was at the Hillary Clinton campaign’s headquarters in San Francisco, and a feeling of dread was hanging in the air. My hopes of seeing Clinton appear victorious had just been crushed. My fear of what it would mean for Donald Trump to turn his campaign bluster into actual policies was beginning to grow. We had begun to pass around a bottle, the collective groan of the pantsuit-clad crowd the only thing audible.
And yet, I was also hiding the faintest giggle and sneakily texting Bonnie, my newfound long-distance sweetheart, underneath the table. We had met a month before, while I was traveling through Ohio for a journalism project exploring privilege and identity within a divisive campaign.
“Look at what your state done did!’’ I texted. That was followed with a parade of emojis that would be undecipherable to anyone who fails to understand the complexity and emotional breadth of a baby chick in an egg. Bonnie understood.
Chaos and confusion took over that night, but one thing was clear: During a divisive election cycle and in the face of threats to my well-being as a queer, black woman, Bonnie had become a safe place. Our connection seemed steady in an unsteady world. Over the past few months, our attraction has grown to love in the face of a Trump-Pence administration, and even feels stronger because of it. Our Ohio-California, interracial, same-sex love is a nourishing and supportive sacred space amid folks who are clamoring to “take our country back,’’ a thinly veiled call to arms to fight for the heyday when white supremacist, heteronormative, “Christian” ideals went unchallenged.
As a student of history, I have to say that Ms. Malbroux’s experience is not surprising.
(Of course, not everyone agrees!)
Smithsonian: 13,000-Year-Old Fillings Were “Drilled” With Stone and Packed With Tar by Jason Daley
Having a dental procedure is painful enough with modern medicine—but it must've been even worse before the invention of high-speed drills and pain killers. Long before these inventions, however, it seems people have been fiddling with each other's teeth.
A new study, published in the journal
Physical Anthropology, details the work of one Neolithic dentist in Italy between 13,000 and 12,740 years ago. Archeologists discovered teeth some 20 years ago from six Neolithic people in an area called Riparo Fredian in the mountains of northern Tuscany,
Bruce Bower reports for ScienceNews. The new study focuses on two of the incisors, which contain marks that suggest a pointed instrument, likely a stone, was used to enlarge cavities in the teeth and scrape out decayed tissue.
The Neolithic dentist then seemed to stick dark bits of bitumen—a type of naturally occurring tar that Ice Age people used to waterproof baskets and pots—to the walls of the cavity. The researchers also found bits of hair and plant fibers stuck in the bitumen, though they are not sure what purpose they served. Overall the teeth appeared to have undergone a similar process as seen in modern dentistry: the cavities were drilled out and filled.
If you’re curious, you can click on that Physical Anthropology link for some really cool pictures and diagrams...that seem even more painful than modern day procedures.
CBC: Decades of prohibition over; it's legal to play pinball in a Montreal bar again by Maria Steuter-Martin
After six decades of prohibition, it is legal once again to play pinball in a Montreal bar.
Since it opened in 2015, North Star — a pinball-themed bar on St-Laurent Boulevard — has been operating in a legal grey zone.
The bar features several vintage pinball machines, hosts pinball leagues and projects a four-hour montage of pinball scenes from movies on a wall.
As such it openly flouted bylaw 5156, passed in 1977, which banned "amusement machines" in places where alcohol is served.
"Thankfully the law was not enforced while we were open," North Star's co-owner, Adam Kiesler, told CBC's Homerun earlier this week. "Technically we could have been shut down at any time."
Kiesler waged a two-year campaign to get the city to overturn the bylaw.
New York Times: J. Geils, Whose Band’s Catchy Pop Hits Colored the 1980s, Dies at 71 by Niraj Chokshi
J. Geils, the guitarist who lent his name to the J. Geils Band, which in the early 1980s produced a series of continuously played, catchy pop hits like “Love Stinks,” “Freeze Frame” and, especially, “Centerfold,” was found dead at his home in Groton, Mass., on Monday. He was 71.
His death was confirmed by the Groton Police Department, whose officers found him after they were asked to check on Mr. Geils, whose full name was John Warren Geils Jr. A preliminary investigation showed that he appeared to have died of natural causes.
The band that bears Mr. Geils’s name was originally formed in the mid-1960s as Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels while Mr. Geils attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute, according to the J. Geils Band’s official Facebook page. It switched focus in 1967, recruiting the energetic frontman and lead singer Peter Wolf and becoming the J. Geils Blues Band, with “blues” later being dropped.
The band spent years establishing roots in the Boston area before signing with Atlantic Records in 1970 and emerging on the national stage a year later.
Everyone have a safe and restful evening!
(Open thread for night owls is now up!) CK 12:15 am