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 (RIP) 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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New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of people without health insurance by 22 million by 2026, a figure that is only slightly lower than the 23 million more uninsured that the House version would create, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.
Next year, 15 million more people would be uninsured compared with current law, the budget office said.
The legislation would decrease federal deficits by a total of $321 billion over a decade, the budget office said.
The release of the budget office’s analysis comes as a number of reluctant Republican senators weigh whether to support the health bill, which the majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, wants approved before a planned recess for the Fourth of July.
Mr. McConnell already faced a host of reservations from across the ideological spectrum in his conference. Five Republican senators have said they cannot support the version of the bill that was released last week, and Mr. McConnell can afford to lose only two.
US NEWS
Vox
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s new estimate on the impact of the GOP health plan to repeal and replace Obamacare projects 22 million fewer people will have insurance by 2026 if the plan is enacted.
It’ll also result in thousands of unintended pregnancies, since the bill restricts funding for Planned Parenthood, which offers women family planning and abortion services.
If you search the latest draft of the bill and its amendments for precise language about Planned Parenthood, you won’t find it. But the bill’s provisions about “prohibited entities” are basically attempts to defund it.
In essence, these sections of the bill say groups that are primarily engaged in family planning services, reproductive health, and providing abortions (other than abortions that are medically necessary or responses to cases of incest or rape) — and whose Medicaid receipts exceeded $350 million in fiscal year 2014 — are barred from receiving federal dollars through several health programs, most importantly Medicaid, for one year. And one group that obviously meets that description is Planned Parenthood.
Agence France Presse
The US Supreme Court on Monday partially reinstated Donald Trump's controversial travel ban targeting citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries, prompting the president to claim a victory for national security.
The court said it would examine the case in full in October but said that the ban could be enforced immediately for travellers from the targeted countries "who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States."
The court tempered its ruling by saying the ban could not be implemented for now against people who have personal links to the United States, citing the examples of foreign nationals wishing to visit family or students accepted to attend a university.
But the Supreme Court's decision nonetheless marks a win for the Republican leader, who has insisted the ban is necessary for national security, despite criticism that it singles out Muslims in violation of the US constitution.
Trump had suffered a series of defeats in lower courts over the ban, with two federal appeals courts maintaining injunctions on it by arguing that his executive order discriminated against travelers based on their nationality.
Reuters
The image of the United States has deteriorated sharply across the globe under President Donald Trump and an overwhelming majority of people in other countries have no confidence in his ability to lead, a survey from the Pew Research Center showed.
Five months into Trump's presidency, the survey spanning 37 nations showed U.S. favorability ratings in the rest of the world slumping to 49 percent from 64 percent at the end of Barack Obama's eight years in the White House.
But the falls were far steeper in some of America's closest allies, including U.S. neighbors Mexico and Canada, and European partners like Germany and Spain.
Trump took office in January pledging to put "America First". Since then he has pressed ahead with plans to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, announced he will pull out of the Paris climate accord, and accused countries including Canada, Germany and China of unfair trade practices.
On his first foreign trip as president in early June, Trump received warm welcomes in Saudi Arabia and Israel, but a cool reception from European partners, with whom he clashed over NATO spending, climate and trade.
The Guardian
The mother of Philando Castile, a black motorist who was killed by a Minnesotapolice officer last year, has reached a nearly $3m settlement in his death.
The settlement was announced on Monday by attorneys for Valerie Castile and the city of St Anthony.
The settlement avoids the drawn-out process of a federal wrongful death lawsuit stemming from Philando Castile’s death.
The 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker was killed by the St Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez during a 6 July 2016 traffic stop after Castile said he was armed. Castile had a permit for his gun.
The shooting gained widespread attention after Castile’s girlfriend livestreamed its aftermath on Facebook.
Yanez, who is Latino, was acquitted of manslaughter and other charges earlier this month. The jury’s decision prompted days of protests that continued this weekend, with marchers interrupting the Pride gay rights event in Minneapolis. One demonstration, in St Paul, shut down Interstate 94 for hours and ended with 18 arrests.
The Guardian
As Donald Trump celebrated the marriage of Wall Street executive-turned-treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin in the Washington swamp he repeatedly pledged to drain, Bernie Sanders stepped onstage in Pittsburgh.
In a city the president last month said he was elected to represent rather than Paris, home of the global climate accord from which Trump has withdrawn, the Vermont senator denounced a “moral outrage that this country will never live down”.
In Washington, Senate Republican leaders pushed for a vote to dramatically reshape the US healthcare system, ignoring pleas from within their own party to allow more time for debate. In the Rust Belt, Sanders spent the weekend rallying opposition to their plan.
In Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, Sanders was unsparing in his attack on the Republican healthcare bill, which would likely leaves millions of people without insurance cover.
“The so-called healthcare bill passed in the House last month is the most anti-working class legislation in the modern history of our country,” he said in Pittsburgh, at the first of three rallies organized with the progressive group MoveOn.org, aiming to mobilize opposition ahead of an expected Senate vote this week.
Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that investigators apologize for looking into Russian interference and possible collusion with his 2016 election campaign, accusing predecessor President Barack Obama of having "colluded or obstructed," but he did not provide evidence.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller, along with several congressional committees, are investigating allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia used cyber attacks and fake media stories to help Republican Trump against his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton.
"The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win... and did not want to 'rock the boat.' He didn't 'choke,' he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good," he wrote on Twitter.
Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has repeatedly called the investigations a witch hunt.
In a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday, Trump said he had learned that Obama had known about the Russia issue long before the election but that he "did nothing about it.”
Reuters
U.S. Senate Republicans on Monday released changes to their healthcare bill to replace Obamacare, adding a measure that would penalize those who let their insurance coverage lapse for an extended period, following criticism that the original bill would result in a sicker - and more expensive - insurance pool.
President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress have been pushing to repeal and replace Obamacare, Democratic former President Barack Obama's signature domestic legislation.
The Senate bill unveiled last week was immediately criticized by both conservatives and moderates in the party, casting doubt over whether Republicans could win passage. They have only a 52-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate.
There were no signs yet if the revisions to the bill would sway any Republicans who had opposed the original measure.
NPR
The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case on whether the owner of a Colorado cake shop can refuse to provide service to same-sex couples due to his religious beliefs about marriage.
Jack Phillips, who along with his wife owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, has argued that a state law compelling him to produce wedding cakes for gay couples, which runs counter to his religious beliefs, violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment.
David Mullins and Charlie Craig, who are now married, filed a discrimination lawsuit in September 2012 after Phillips refused to make their wedding cake.
The case is "about more than just a cake," Craig wrote in a blog post for the ACLU. "It's about making sure that Masterpiece and other businesses don't discriminate against customers because of who they are."
NPR
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that taxpayer-funded grants for playgrounds available to nonprofits under a state program could not be denied to a school run by a church.
"The consequence is, in all likelihood, a few extra scraped knees. But the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand," Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, "If this separation [of church and state] means anything, it means that the government cannot, or at the very least need not, tax its citizens and turn that money over to houses of worship. The Court today blinds itself to the outcome this history requires and leads us instead to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment."
Two justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, refused to sign on to a footnote explicitly stating that the court's approval applied only to playground funding and should not be read as applying to parochial schools in general.
WORLD NEWS
Deutsche Welle
UK Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday that her government's 17-point plan for EU citizens in the UK would lay to rest anxieties felt in the wake of Brexit.
Under the plan, EU citizens living in the UK before a certain cut-off date will be allowed to remain and apply for formal residency rights, or "settled status," after the UK formally withdraws from the bloc. They would also be likely be required to apply for a special ID card confirming their status.
Read more: Negotiation experts say positive result in Brexit talks 'nearly impossible'
The cut-off date has yet to be decided and could threaten to cause major rows between London and Brussels."I know there's been some anxiety about what would happen to EU citizens at the point we leave the European Union," May said. "I want to completely reassure people that under these plans no EU citizen currently in the UK lawfully will be asked to leave at the point the UK leaves the EU. We want you to stay.”
Al Jazeera
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has told the Emir of Qatar that a "siege" imposed on it by four Arab states that recently cut ties with Doha "is not acceptable for us", according to the office of the president's website.
A statement released on Sunday quoted Rouhani as telling Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani in a phone conversation that "Tehran will stand by Qatar's government".
"Iran's air space, ground and sea will be always be open to Qatar as a ... friendly nation," said Rouhani, adding that the cooperation of the two countries will remain "continuous".
"We believe that if there are disagreements among countries of the region, pressure, intimidation, and sanction are not good ways for settle the disagreements," the statement added.
Spiegel Online
There they hang. Wearing crisp suits and serious and honest expressions, these men were honorable merchants who excelled at the salesman's craft -- cash management, accounting, correspondence -- and their books are as clean as their consciences.
There they hang, Hamburg's finest, immortalized on canvas, the former presidents of the Chamber of Commerce. But the way Tobias Bergmann stands in front of these pictures now, lean and lanky, the portraits of his predecessors seem more like trophies. Like prizes from a hunt.
"There has been and still is a merchant's aristocracy in Hamburg, like the Windsors and Orléans. And this election pushed them out. A revolutionary has now moved into this space." Tobias Bergmann, business consultant, was born 45 years ago in the village of Langquaid in Lower Bavaria, home to a weekly pig market.
The Guardian
A high-profile body that liaises between Israel and the Jewish diaspora has reacted with fury at a decision by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to in effect abandon a plan to allow men and women to pray together at the Western Wall.
The Jewish Agency has cancelled a gala dinner with Netanyahu in Jerusalem and is to discuss the ramifications of the decision at a meeting this week.
The Israeli cabinet decided on Sunday to scrap a compromise agreement made 17 months ago, which was intended to resolve a battle lasting more than a quarter of a century over equal rights for women praying at the Western Wall.
Netanyahu came under intense pressure from ultra-Orthodox parties in his coalition government and the religious authorities that manage the site, the holiest place that Jews can pray.
Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold their first face-to-face meeting in Washington on Monday, seeking to boost U.S.-Indian relations despite differences over trade, the Paris climate accord and immigration.
Their White House session promises less pomp than Modi's previous visits to Washington, which included former President Barack Obama taking him to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in 2014. It is Modi's fifth trip to the United States as prime minister.
"This meeting is, above all, an introduction, an opportunity for the two men to meet each other, to size each other up, and to get a sense of how each one views the other and the bilateral relationship on the whole," said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at The Wilson Center.
Trump administration officials have pointed to both leaders' impact on social media - each has more than 30 million Twitter followers - as proof that they are cut from the same cloth, and predicted the two would get along well.
The Guardian
The body of a missing Mexican reporter has been found in the western state of Michoacán, bringing to seven the number of journalists murdered in the country this year.
Salvador Adame, director of the local television station 6TV, was abducted 18 May in the city of Nueva Italia, some 400km west of Mexico City in a region known as Tierra Caliente, or the Hot Lands.
State officials said on Monday that Adame’s burnt remains had been located on 14 June near Nuevo Italia, and were identified with DNA testing.
Over the past decade, Michoacán – and especially the Tierra Caliente region – has seen horrific levels of violence between organized crime groups and the security forces.
It was one of the first states to be targeted by the government’s militarized war on drugs , and more recently became the setting for a new conflict between the cartels and vigilante groups – which in turn were often co-opted by the federal government or the criminals they purported to oppose.
Adame’s family and friends told the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) that he avoided reporting on drug cartels, but he did cover local politics, often critically.
Local police detained Adame and his wife in 2016 for covering a protest outside city hall. The harassment of journalists by public officials is common in Mexico, according to press freedom groups.
Agence France Presse
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday softened for the first time her opposition to gay marriage, as her conservative party comes under growing pressure on the issue ahead of elections in September.
Merkel, who had repeatedly voiced her opposition to gay marriage, said that lawmakers could vote according to their conscience, and not toe the party line.
Germany introduced civil unions for gay and lesbian couples in 2001, but they do not have the right to marry.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (6/25/2017
Global warming is likely to wipe out half of the coffee growing area in Ethiopia, the birthplace of the bean, according to a groundbreaking new study. Rising temperatures have already damaged some special areas of origin, with these losses being likened to France losing one of its great wine regions. Ethiopia’s highlands also host a unique treasure trove of wild coffee varieties, meaning new flavour profiles and growing traits could be lost before having been discovered. However, the new research also reveals that if a massive programme of moving plantations up hillsides to cooler altitudes were feasible, coffee production could actually increase.
Coffee vies with tea as the world’s favorite beverage and employs 100 million people worldwide in farming the beans alone. But climate change is coffee’s greatest long-term threat, killing plantations or reducing bean quality and allowing the deadly coffee leaf rust fungus to thrive. Without major action both in the coffee industry and in slashing greenhouse gas emissions, coffee is predicted to become more expensive and worse-tasting.
The research combined climate-change computer modelling with detailed measurements of current ground conditions, gathered in fieldwork that covered a total distance of 30,000km within Ethiopia. It found that 40-60 percent of today’s coffee growing areas in Ethiopia would be unsuitable by the end of the century under a range of likely warming scenarios.
Bloomberg
Think “American-made” doesn’t mean what it used to? You’re right, at least if you’re talking about how to define the world’s “Most-American” vehicles.
Online car research site Cars.com, which began ranking the “most-American” cars and trucks more than a decade ago, had to change its metrics this year as globalization of the supply chain means only three models could have qualified using the original criteria. That’s down from more than 60 vehicles when the index launched in 2006.
“Even if a car is from a brand headquartered in one place, you have to keep in mind what goes into a vehicle,” Joe Wiesenfelder, executive editor of Cars.com, said in an interview. “Automakers ultimately have to build their vehicles based on the numbers.”Whether President Donald Trump likes it or not, the definition of “made in America” has been undergoing some changes, especially in the auto industry. While the Trump administration has pushed car companies to manufacture more in the U.S., many of the parts makers are already located in Mexico and other low-cost countries. Integrated supply chains and efforts to cut costs have made the auto industry’s globalization “irreversible,” Wiesenfelder said.
The Guardian
If Amazon has its way, cities around the US will have vertical drone centers shaped like giant beehives in the middle of downtown districts, allowing the online retailer to coordinate speedy deliveries by unmanned aircrafts.
The company has filed for a patent for “multi-level fulfillment centers” that would accommodate the landing and takeoff of drones in dense urban settings, the latest example of Amazon’s futuristic vision of reshaping the way people receive packages.
The application filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office, which was written in 2015 and published last week, included a number of drawings of drones flying in and out of tall cylinder-shaped buildings that Amazon wants to locate in central metropolitan areas.
The centers would allow Amazon to shift away from the traditional model of large single-story warehouses that temporarily store packages before they are shipped to customers. Those buildings are typically located on the outskirts of urban areas and are not convenient for deliveries into cities where populations continue to swell, the company noted.
NPR
When people talk about jobs in Ohio, they often talk about the ones that got away.
"Ten years ago, we had steel. Ten years ago, we had coal. Ten years ago, we had plentiful jobs," says Mike McGlumphy, who runs the job center in Steubenville, Ohio, the Jefferson County seat.
Today, the city on the Ohio River is a shell of its former self. And health care has overtaken manufacturing as the county's main economic driver.
1 in 4 private sector jobs in the county are now in health care. The region's biggest employer by far is the local hospital. Trinity Health System provides about 1,500 full-time jobs and close to 500 part-time jobs, more than Jefferson County's top 10 manufacturing companies combined.
Still, unemployment in Jefferson County stands at 7 percent, 2 percent higher than the state overall. And health care leaders worry that the Republican proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act could take many health care jobs away.
Specifically, they're concerned about the rollback of Medicaid that is central to both the House and Senate bills. Ohio was among the states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA, adding 700,000 additional low-income or disabled people to the rolls.
NPR
We rub, pour, sprinkle and spray them all over our bodies, so you'd hope cosmetics would undergo serious safety oversight before they get into our hands. But in fact, the cosmetics industry is largely self-regulated, with no requirements for approval before going on the market. And once on the market, there are few systems in place to monitor the safety of personal care products.
"You can start making a cosmetic and start selling it the next day without any kind of permission from the FDA," says Steve Xu, a resident physician in dermatology at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University and author of a study on problems with personal care products published Monday.
If you suspect that a product has resulted in an "adverse event," such as a rash, nausea, stress, or even death, you can report it to the manufacturer or tell the Food and Drug Administration. And while that might get you an apology and some coupons, there is no guarantee that your case will be investigated, or that a manufacturer will report it to the FDA.
The Guardian
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft have created a joint forum to counter terrorism following years of criticisms that the technology corporations have failed to block violent extremists and propaganda on their platforms.
The Silicon Valley companies announced the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism on Monday, saying the collaboration would focus on technological solutions, research and partnerships with governments and civic groups.
The tech firms have long struggled to balance their missions of supporting free speech with the need to remove and prevent the spread of terrorist content. The companies have faced intense scrutiny over the way terrorist groups have used the site for recruitment and for spreading hateful and violent messages.
As part of the new forum, the companies said they would share best practices regarding “content detection and classification techniques using machine learning” and “define standard transparency reporting methods for terrorist content removals”. Through a partnership with a United Nations counter-terrorism committee and a range of organizations, the tech firms said they would also “identify how best to counter extremism and online hate, while respecting freedom of expression and privacy”.
ENTERTAINMENT AND ARTS
NPR
When the Grateful Dead started out in 1966 in San Francisco, they and all other bands of the Fillmore era were aided by elaborate light shows. Think: clear pie plates, filled with water, with colored mineral oil and other additives dropped in and swished and swirled around, projected through a grade-school overhead onto screens — or just plain old bed sheets draped behind the band.
The aim then was to approximate the, ahem, psychedelic experiences of the audience. The business of rock 'n' roll shows has evolved so much since those days, but even so The Grateful Dead continues to blaze new trails.