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.
I’m Chitown Kev and I am substituting for annetteboardman tonight.
Chicago Tribune: Barack Obama to hold first public event since leaving office, Monday in Chicago by Katherine Skiba
Former President Barack Obama will speak to young people at the University of Chicago on Monday, returning to the city for what will be his first public event since leaving the White House.
Obama and young leaders will hold a conversation on civic engagement and discuss community organizing at the university's Logan Center for the Arts, his office announced Friday.
Hundreds of people are expected to attend, chosen from area universities that were given tickets for distribution, said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president. About six young people will appear on stage with him for the 11 a.m. discussion, he said.
The event will be a homecoming for Obama on multiple levels. He formerly taught constitutional law at U. of C., and his family has a home nearby in the Kenwood neighborhood. He gave his farewell address in January in the city that launched his political career. And the discussion with students lets the former president, who came to Chicago to work as a young community organizer, fulfill one of the commitments he set out for his post-presidential years: to engage and work with the country's next generation of leaders, Lewis said.
Reuters: Power outage cripples San Francisco for seven hours by Alexandria Sage and Noel Randwich
A massive power outage threw San Francisco into chaos for most of the work day on Friday, knocking out traffic signals, paralyzing businesses and halting the city's famed cable cars.
The power outage, which was triggered by a fire in a PG&E Corp. utility substation, disrupted San Francisco's normally bustling financial district, home to banks and technology companies.
The blackout started just after 9 a.m. (noon ET/1600 GMT) and at one point affected nearly 90,000 customers, according to PG&E. The cause of the fire was a circuit breaker failure at the substation, PG&E spokesman Paul Doherty said.
Office workers unable to access elevators or use their keycards spilled out onto the sidewalks, some wandering the streets in search of an open cafe or sunny spot to enjoy a rare warm San Francisco day.
Mother Jones: North Carolina Republicans Are Trying to Keep Residents From Suing Hog Farms by Tom Philpott
Modern hog farms make pungent neighbors. In North Carolina's hog-wild Duplin county, an average-sized operation holds more than 7,000 pigs, each generating about 10 times the fecal waste of a person. This massive manure gusher falls through slats and is shunted into open cesspools, known, rather delicately, as "lagoons." When the pits reach capacity, the untreated fecal slurry is sprayed onto nearby farmland as fertilizer.
A recent analysis of satellite data by Environmental Working Group found that around 160,000 North Carolinians, representing more than 60,000 households, live within a half mile of a CAFO or a manure pit. In Duplin County alone, more than 12,000 people—about a fifth of the county's population—live within sniffing distance of one of these fragrant facilities, EWG found. A growing body of research, summarized here, shows that these operations "pollute local ground and surface water," and "routinely emit air pollutants that negatively impact the quality of life and health of nearby residents." High levels of the air-borne toxins hydrogen sulfide and ammonia can trigger eye irritation, difficulty breathing, and feelings of stress and anxiety, research shows.
New Orleans Times-Picayune: Abolish the death penalty? Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards not taking a position by Julia O’Donoghue
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards says he will not be taking an official position on two bills pending in the Legislature to abolish the death penalty. He will be closely following the conservation about whether to keep capital punishment, however.
"I am pushing what is in the task force package," Edwards, referring to his criminal justice reform proposal, said in an interview with the NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune editorial board on Thursday (April 20). "The death penalty is not part of that."
Edwards is backing 10 bills aimed at reducing Louisiana's highest-in-the-world incarceration rate. He has made it a goal of his administration to bring down the state's prison population to the second highest in the United States or lower by the end of his first term in January 2020.
But abolishing the death penalty wasn't part of the broad, 10-month discussion by stakeholders had about how to improve the criminal justice system. Instead, the task force, which included a sheriff, district attorney, prison official, judges and others, primarily focused on how to shorten prison sentences and open up more parole opportunities for convicts. The governor based his criminal justice legislation on the group's work.
Guardian: Rare parchment copy of US Declaration of Independence found in England by Alan Yuhas
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to visit a tiny records office in southern England because it claims to have a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a decent respect for history requires investigation.
On Friday two Harvard University researchers announced they had found a parchment copy of the declaration, only the second parchment copy known to exist besides the one kept in the National Archives in Washington DC. Professor Danielle Allen and researcher Emily Sneff presented their findings on the document, known as “The Sussex Declaration”, at a conference at Yale on Friday, and published initial research online.
Sneff found her first clue of the parchment in August 2015, while compiling records for a university database. “I was just looking for copies of the Declaration of Independence in British archives,” Sneff told the Guardian.
FiveThirtyEight: Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery by Anna Marie Berry-Jester
There’s a map, made more than 150 years ago using 1860 census data, that pops up periodically on the internet. On two yellowed, taped-together sheets of paper, the counties of the Southern U.S. are shaded to reflect the percentage of inhabitants who were enslaved at the time. Bolivar County, Mississippi, is nearly black on the map, with 86.7 printed on it. Greene County, Alabama: 76.5. Burke, Georgia: 70.6. The map is one of the first attempts to translate U.S. census data into cartographic form and is one of several maps of the era that tried to make sense of the deep divisions between North and South, slave states and free.according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was drawn by pro-Union government officials who wanted to create a visual link between secession and slavery.
But the reason the map resurfaces so frequently is not just its historical relevance. Rather, it’s because the shading so closely matches visualizations of many modern-day data sets. There is the stream of blue voters in counties on solidly red land in the 2016 presidential election, or differences in television viewing patterns. There’s research on the profound lack of economic mobility in some places, and on life expectancy at birth.
Washington Post: Democrats partner with political newcomers aiming to create anti-Trump wave in 2018 midterms by Ed O’Keefe and Mike DeBonis
A wave of first-time candidates eager to fight President Trump and his young administration plan to challenge House Republican incumbents, giving Democratic Party leaders hope that they can capitalize on the anger and intensity at grass-roots protests and town hall meetings across the country this year.
At least 15 declared candidates or contenders on the verge of announcing have emerged in districts that Democrats must win to take back the House, including in several districts where the party did not seriously compete in 2014 or 2016, according to party officials.
Democrats need 24 new seats to retake control of the House — a tall order that no party leader publicly says is possible, at least not yet.
Still, less than 100 days into Trump’s presidency, the early interest gives Democrats a chance to compete more aggressively in districts where they haven’t fielded challengers in recent cycles — and perhaps chip away at the GOP’s seven-year control of the House.
Bring on the newcomers. Hurry up! Please! With sugar on top!
The Hollywood Reporter: Steve Bannon Once Told Roger Ailes That Megyn Kelly Was "The Devil" by Patrick Shanley
President Donald Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has opened up about the rift between his political website Breitbart and Fox News — and he blames Megyn Kelly.
In a recent interview with Politico, Bannon said, "The big rift between Breitbart and Fox was all over Megyn Kelly. She was all over Trump nonstop.”
Kelly, who has since departed Fox News despite an enormous offer from the network, made headlines when she accused then-CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment in her most recent book. Ailes would later resign amid claims made by other female staffers at his network, including host Gretchen Carlson, who filed a lawsuit against him.
Bannon said that he had previously warned Ailes of Kelly before the incident. "I told him then, I said, 'She's the devil, and she will turn on you,'" the Trump strategist told Politico.
Wait, I thought that, for Steve Bannon, Satan (along with darkness, Darth Vader, and Dick Cheney) were good because it’s power?
I’m so confused...
AFP: Champs-Elysees attack mars final day of French campaign
Analysts said Thursday night's shooting, which the Islamic State (IS) group claimed as the work of one of its devotees, could shake up the race in a country scarred by a string of attacks that have claimed 239 lives since 2015.
Authorities had feared further bloodshed during the presidential race -- a four-way contest between far-right leader Marine Le Pen, centrist Emmanuel Macron, conservative Francois Fillon and Communist-backed firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon.
A note praising IS was found next to the body of 39-year-old gunman Karim Cheurfi, who shot dead an officer and wounded two others before being killed in a firefight that sent tourists on the world-famous boulevard rushing for cover.
The violent scenes thrust security to the fore of campaigning after nine months of relative calm. Le Pen, Fillon and Macron cancelled their final rallies.
Mic: German-Russian suspect bombed soccer bus, then blamed Muslims, investigators say by Zak Cheney Rice
A 28-year-old German-Russian man was charged Friday with bombing the Borussia Dortmund soccer team bus on April 11. German officials said the man aimed to profit financially from the tragedy and blame Muslims for the fallout, the Associated Press reported.
The suspect, identified as Sergej W., allegedly planted three explosive devices along the team's bus route and left several notes at the crime scene suggesting Islamic terrorists were responsible. Just days before the attack, he took out a loan to bet Borussia Dortmund's stock shares would drop — a likely scenario if any of the team's players were severely injured or killed, prosecutors said.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere called the scheme a "particularly perfidious way to toy with people's fears," according to the Associated Press, hinting at the widespread fear-mongering aimed at Muslims that has gripped the globe in recent months.
BBC: Egyptian soldiers accused of killing unarmed Sinai men in leaked video
A video has emerged that allegedly shows Egyptian soldiers shooting dead unarmed detainees in the northern Sinai region, where the military is carrying out an anti-terror offensive.
The footage, which is unverified, appears to show military officers rearranging the scene to make it seem as if a gun battle had taken place.
Soldiers are shown apparently placing weapons beside the dead bodies.
A pro-government news site has said that the 2016 video is a fabrication.
So far there has been no comment from the Egyptian military, which has previously released footage - apparently from the same incident late last year - saying it had eliminated a "dangerous terrorist cell" after a heavy exchange of gunfire.
Human rights group Amnesty International said it had analysed the footage. It showed "cold blooded killings", which it said should be urgently investigated by the Egyptian authorities.
The footage, which emerged on Thursday, was apparently filmed with a mobile phone and has been broadcast on Mekameleen TV, a station that supports the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
AlJazeera: Pakistan court: Insufficient evidence to remove Sharif by Asad Hashim
Islamabad, Pakistan - Pakistan's Supreme Court has ruled that there was insufficient evidence to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over corruption allegations, but has ordered a high-level investigation into the charges.
The court issued its verdict on Thursday afternoon after months of hearings in a case based on the "Panama Papers" leaks that was moved by opposition leaders seeking Sharif's removal from office.
Following the announcement, both Sharif's ruling PML-N and opposition leader Imran Khan's PTI party claimed the verdict as a "victory".
"The Supreme Court has decided … the same thing that Nawaz Sharif himself had decided six months ago, when he ordered the formation of a commission to investigate [the allegations]," Khawaja Asif, a senior PML-N leader, told reporters outside the court following the announcement.
Speaking to the press after the verdict, Khan termed the decision "historic" and called for Sharif to step down pending the completion of the investigation in 60 days from its formation.
Vulture: What Broke the Met? by Boris Kachka (4.16.17)
One Monday last month, Thomas P. Campbell, the departing director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stooped silently over a burial suit of jade tiles threaded with gold, circa 100 B.C. In this private moment, he had his back to reporters gathering for a first look at the Met’s landmark China survey “Age of Empires.” A moment later, Ken Weine, the new communications chief, tapped him on the shoulder, and Campbell pivoted, summoned up his British charm, and shook my hand. At 54, sandy hair parted in the middle, looking like he’d just exchanged safari khakis for a headmaster’s suit, he wore a trace of the uncomplicated pride he might have felt if journalists weren’t just then dissecting his eight-year tenure and the snowballing crisis of confidence that had ended it just four weeks earlier.
Campbell pulled out his iPhone to show me a photo of an excavation at one of 85 far-flung Chinese sites where the show’s loaned treasures originated. “This is in Jiangsu province,” he said in a librarian’s murmur, “a deep ravine down into the earth.” Terra-cotta animals were still caked with mud, like unwashed newborns. “This was the moment when I realized — with the curators — that this would be an amazing exhibition.” Years later, when the Chinese culture minister visited, “he said that because America doesn’t have a department of culture, in some respects they regarded the Met as that department.”
The Atlantic: Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria by James Somers
You were going to get one-click access to the full text of nearly every book that’s ever been published. Books still in print you’d have to pay for, but everything else—a collection slated to grow larger than the holdings at the Library of Congress, Harvard, the University of Michigan, at any of the great national libraries of Europe—would have been available for free at terminals that were going to be placed in every local library that wanted one.
At the terminal you were going to be able to search tens of millions of books and read every page of any book you found. You’d be able to highlight passages and make annotations and share them; for the first time, you’d be able to pinpoint an idea somewhere inside the vastness of the printed record, and send somebody straight to it with a link. Books would become as instantly available, searchable, copy-pasteable—as alive in the digital world—as web pages.
It was to be the realization of a long-held dream. “The universal library has been talked about for millennia,” Richard Ovenden, the head of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, has said. “It was possible to think in the Renaissance that you might be able to amass the whole of published knowledge in a single room or a single institution.” In the spring of 2011, it seemed we’d amassed it in a terminal small enough to fit on a desk.
VICE: Before Banksy and Basquiat, There Was Shadowman by DJ Pangburn
Long before Banksy's vivid and satirical street art, and even the graffiti work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, there was street artist Richard Hambleton. A classically trained painter, Hambleton was known throughout the 80s for works that played on Lower Manhattan's seedy and dangerous reputation, as well as its DIY energy. First came his chalk outlines (which also appeared in other cities), then came mysterious "shadow paintings" depicting a Shadowman lurking in the city's darker corridors. Hambleton, whose star fell just as Basquiat and Haring's reputations became immortalized and their artworks became investment properties, is now the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Oren Jacoby. Premiering today at the Tribeca Film Festival, Shadowman tracks the artist's various rises, falls, and resurrections, and coincides with the exhibition I Only Have Eyes For You, which is now on at Woodward Gallery until May 5th.
As Shadowman details, the Vancouver-born artist, working on a grant from the city, took his "murder mystery" chalk outline paintings on an American West Coast tour of Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. He then worked his way across the United States, arriving in New York City in 1978, right as the Lower East Side's music and arts scenes were heating up. His murder mysterious, staged in TriBeCa and elsewhere, with its blood red paint splashed across white outlines, immediately unnerved everyone, including the NYPD. This brought Hambleton much media attention, and made him something of an art world star.
Don’t forget that Hunter is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!