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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
The Washington Post
Early Saturday morning, President Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers.
Here’s the problem: There is no evidence the Twitter feed belongs to someone named Nicole Mincey. And the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign.
On Sunday, Twitter suspended the Mincey account, known as @ProTrump45, after several other users revealed that it was probably a fake, created to amplify pro-Trump content.
The incident highlights Trump’s penchant for off-the-cuff tweeting — and the potential consequences for doing so now that he holds the nation’s highest office. Even as the president has railed against multiple investigations into Russia’s meddling in U.S. politics, he may have become Exhibit A of the foreign government’s influence by elevating a suspected Russia-connected social-media user — part a sophisticated campaign to exacerbate disputes in U.S. politics and gain the attention of the most powerful tweeter in the world.
US NEWS
New York Times
ASPEN, Colo. — Sweating under the hot glare of stage lights, Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had reached the limits of his patience with questions about Russian interference in the presidential election.
“Just look,” he snapped during the rare public appearance last month at the Aspen Security Forum. “This is the 19th time you all have asked.”
It was, in fact, only the fourth question about Russia that evening. But Mr. Pompeo could be excused for snapping: He runs an agency that is certain Russia meddled in the election, yet serves a president who has dismissed the talk of Russian interference as “fake news” and denounced the investigation into it as a witch hunt.
All C.I.A. directors must balance the political demands of the president they serve with the agency’s avowedly apolitical idea of itself. Yet rarely has a director had to straddle so wide a breach as has Mr. Pompeo, perhaps the most openly political spy chief in a generation — and one of President Trump’s favorite cabinet members.
Bloomberg
Donald Trump may have annoyed the wrong man in Congress.
Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has been ramping up an investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, in addition to the president’s dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey.
The plain-spoken Iowa Republican had sharply criticized the administration’s initial failure to respond to many lawmakers’ requests for information. He also hasn’t been shy about other topics, including the use of foul language by the recently dismissed White House communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci.
The Guardian
In the early hours of Sunday 10 July 2016, Seth Rich, a 27-year-old digital campaigner with the Democratic National Committee, was walking home after a long night at his favorite Washington sports bar, Lou’s City. He was in no hurry, chatting for more than two hours on the phone to his girlfriend. At 4.19am, he told her he was almost at his door and had to go.
Seconds later, gunshots rang out. A minute after that, police arrived to find Rich lying on the ground just a block from his apartment, still alive but fading fast, with two bullet wounds in his back. He died in hospital a few hours later.
…
Last week, the conspiracy theory that conservatives draped around Rich’s lifeless neck – that he was the source of the hacked DNC emails released by WikiLeaks at the height of the 2016 presidential race, and not Russia, as US intelligence insists– was revealed to have received a boost from the highest quarter. The former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and allegedly even Donald Trump himself, were revealed to have been given advance notice of a sensational Fox News story that blamed Rich for the hack, and implied he had been murdered by Clinton acolytes as payback.
The only problem with the Fox story: it wasn’t true.
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday proposed raising taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers to increase funding for the city's deteriorating subway system.
His plan, an increase in the tax rate on an individual's income above $500,000 to 4.41 percent from 3.876 percent, would also fund half-price bus and subway rides for up to 800,000 of the city's poorest residents, he said.
The plan comes as the mayor and New York state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, squabble over who is responsible for the nation's largest subway system, which has suffered a surge in delays.
Reuters
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago on Monday sued to prevent the Trump administration from enforcing new policies that would withhold money from so-called sanctuary cities that deny U.S. immigration officials access to local jails.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, said the federal policies force the nation's third largest city to choose between its constitutional rights and funding for law enforcement.
"These new conditions also fly in the face of longstanding City policy that promotes cooperation between local law enforcement and immigrant communities," the lawsuit said.
The Trace
Energized by Donald Trump’s coarsely confrontational nationalism, the armed right-wing fringe is doing more than stepping out of the shadows in 2017. Detachments of armed men in fatigues have become fixtures at liberal protests, forming the vanguard of what’s become known in some quarters as the “counter-resistance.”
Now, in a smattering of states with histories of right-wing extremism, chapters of groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters may be emerging as even more direct political players, providing security for local pro-Trump politicians and Republican organizations. In one case, a Three Percenter was found to be employed on a state lawmaker’s staff.
When self-designated patriot groups first emerged during the early ‘90s, they identified as enemies of the “New World Order” heralded by George H.W. Bush, and tended to oppose the government, regardless of which party was in power. But experts say that the recent activity of some militia members could be evidence of a greater shift in political allegiances.
The Guardian
Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.
A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA unit that oversees farmers’ land conservation, show that the incoming Trump administration has had a stark impact on the language used by some federal employees around climate change.
…
In her email to staff, dated 16 February this year, Moebius-Clune said the new language was given to her staff and suggests it be passed on. She writes that “we won’t change the modeling, just how we talk about it – there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the sail [sic], climate mitigation is just one of them”, and that a colleague from USDA’s public affairs team gave advice to “tamp down on discretionary messaging right now”.
In contrast to these newly contentious climate terms, Moebius-Clune wrote that references to economic growth, emerging business opportunities in the rural US, agro-tourism and “improved aesthetics” should be “tolerated if not appreciated by all”.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
North Korea vowed Monday that tough new United Nations sanctions would not stop it from developing its nuclear arsenal, as it rejected talks and angrily warned the United States of retaliation.
The message of defiance was the first major response to the US-drafted sanctions, which the UN Security Council unanimously approved over the weekend and which could cost North Korea $1 billion a year.
The North's sole major ally China, accused by the United States of doing too little to rein in Pyongyang, piled on the diplomatic pressure by vowing to fully implement the new sanctions.
Agence France Presse
A man was knocked unconscious and three others suffered facial fractures and broken ribs after a whale slammed into a charter fishing boat off Australia's north coast, the skipper said Monday.
The 30-foot (9-metre) vessel was returning to port in the Whitsundays off the Queensland state coast with eight passengers on board when a humpback whale rammed it from below, sending it airborne.
"Within a split second we all hit the floor, the boat launched up into the air and it dislodged everyone off their feet," captain Oliver Galea told AFP of the drama on Saturday. "None of us knew what happened."
Deutsche Welle
Whenever I visit a refugee hostel or am recognized on the street, I am immediately surrounded by people. I speak Arabic, and they have a lot of questions. Why haven't I heard anything from the BAMF [Federal Office for Migration and Refugees]? Why have I only been granted residency for one year, not three? Why can't I bring my family over to join me? Why aren't I allowed to change my place of residence? Why can I still not find a job or an apartment, although I'm trying everything I can? Why, why, why?
My last visit to a refugee hostel was in Hamburg. Then, too, I was bombarded with questions, but this time I had a big question of my own. This hostel was where Ahmad A., the alleged knife attacker, lived. What I wanted to know was: Who was this 26-year-old who had killed an innocent person in a supermarket in Hamburg's Barmbek district and seriously injured four others?
Deutsche Welle
A fugitive criminal, a parent dodging child support, a hit and run driver or a person wanted for a drug offense - they are in for a surprise these days if they try to board a commercial flight from Germany to, say, Ireland, because they will most certainly be stopped and nabbed by German federal police.
Under new EU border regulations effective since early April 2017, identity checks are mandatory for everyone leaving and entering the EU's Schengen passport-free travel zone. Previously, checks of travelers to non-Schengen destinations were much less rigorous. The Schengen zone includes 22 EU states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Ireland and Britain are not part of the zone.
Now border control officers can crosscheck passengers' documents against EU-wide security databases, like the Schengen Information System (SIS), Interpol and registers of wanted persons.
Al Jazeera
Shutting down Al Jazeera's offices in Jerusalem will be a lengthy process and involves multiple offices and official bodies, lawyers have said.
Their estimates come a day after Ayoub Kara, Israel's communications minister, vowed to ban Al Jazeera's Jerusalem operations.
Kara repeated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's July 27 threat to shut down Al Jazeera over its coverage of last month's protests at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
"Freedom of expression is not the freedom to incite and foment strife," he said. "Even democracy has its limits."
Kara used similar words to Netanyahu in his announcement, but upon closer inspection, there was a distinct lack of detail over what comes next.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (8/5/2017)
There is only a 5 percent chance that the Earth will avoid warming by at least 2°C come the end of the century, according to new research that paints a sobering picture of the international effort to stem dangerous climate change. Global trends in the economy, emissions and population growth make it extremely unlikely that the planet will remain below the 2°C threshold set out in the Paris climate agreement in 2015, the study states.
The Paris accord, signed by 195 countries, commits to holding the average global temperature to “well below 2°C” above pre-industrial levels and sets a more aspirational goal to limit warming to 1.5°C. This latter target is barely plausible, the new research finds, with just a 1 percent chance that temperatures will rise by less than 1.5°C.
The Guardian
A Melbourne teenager says his legs were covered in blood after they were eaten by tiny marine creatures at a Victorian beach.
When Sam Kanizay, 16, felt sore after football on Saturday, he decided to soak his legs at Dendy Street beach in Brighton.
Half an hour later, he walked out covered in what his family said were tiny marine creatures eating his legs.
“When he got out, he described having sand on his legs, so he went back in the water,” his father, Jarrod Kanizay, said.
“He went back to his shoes and what he found was blood on his legs. They ate through Sam’s skin and made it bleed profusely.”
Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - Producers of processed lithium - an essential element for batteries used in electric cars - are agreeing long-term contracts with their customers to fund the investments needed to address a looming shortfall.
Demand for battery-grade lithium compounds is expected to skyrocket in the next decades in tandem with soaring demand for electric cars as governments and individual consumers try to reduce their carbon footprint.
Although there's plenty of lithium around, the problem is ensuring there is enough capacity to process it.
Battery makers and other end-users such as car manufacturers will need to sign multi-year deals that encourage large producers to invest more, and faster, industry sources say.
NPR
Betsy DeVos was back in western Michigan last week. It was her first public visit to the area where she grew up since being named education secretary. She visited a science-focused summer learning program and Grand Rapids Community College, and she met privately with superintendents from across the state.
DeVos' efforts to expand school choice, as a philanthropist and advocate, concentrated for decades on her home state. She and her husband helped found a lauded aviation-focused charter school just outside Grand Rapids. They campaigned for a largely free-market approach to school choice that sees 80 percent of charter schools in Michigan run by for-profit operators, an unusually high figure.
NPR
In a 3,300-word document that has been shared across Google's internal networks, an engineer at the company wrote that "biological causes" are part of the reason women aren't represented equally in its tech departments and leadership. The document also cited "men's higher drive for status."
The engineer's criticism of Google's attempts to improve gender and racial diversity has prompted two Google executives to rebut the lengthy post, which accused the company of creating an "ideological echo chamber" and practicing discrimination.
Danielle Brown, Google's vice president of diversity, stated, "Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company.”
NPR
You might think that, after thousands of years of observing total solar eclipses, science-minded folks would have exhausted what can be learned from this awesome natural spectacle.
You would be wrong.
"I get asked all the time, why are we still doing eclipses for scientific purposes," says Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College in Massachusetts who chairs the International Astronomical Union's working group on solar eclipses. "There [are] still whole parts of the sun that can't be seen from satellites and that we just see better at eclipses.”
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
The Guardian
If Jean-Luc Godard really meant it when he said “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, how come he never made a movie with just a girl and a gun? Vivre Sa Vie might just about scrape through, but Godard basically took it as read that there would be a guy in the mix.
Hollywood, on the other hand, has started to take Godard’s maxim literally. We have had countless “girl and gun” movies recently, and virtually none have stuck. It’s as though the studios looked at Bourne, Bond, John Wick and all the other franchised-up action heroes and all had the same bright idea: “Make the hero a woman!” Often that becomes a woman wearing next to nothing, such as Salma Hayek in Everly. Sometimes, a proper fighter gets cast, like Gina Carano in Haywire. Sometimes our hero is a teenager (Hanna); sometimes it’s a Bourne-like agent (Noomi Rapace in Unlocked). Often, it’s Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider, Salt, Wanted). And sometimes it’s a chemically enhanced superhuman, such as Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy. That one worked; the others, not so much.
CNN
The New York Knicks have reportedly hired Craig Robinson to serve multiple roles in their front office, "including player development and serving as general manager of the Knicks' development league team in Westchester," according to Shams Charania of The Vertical.
Robinson—the brother of Michelle Obama and brother-in-law of former president Barack Obama—was previously the Milwaukee Bucks' vice president of player and organizational development.
There is some discrepancy as to Robinson's precise role in New York, however. According to Ian Begley of ESPN.com, "Robinson is not expected to serve as general manager for the Knicks' G League team. That role is expected to continue to be filled by Allan Houston, sources said."
Page Six
Donald Trump — while berating his top generals about “losing” the war in Afghanistan — told a story about the renovation of the ‘21’ Club that was completely wrong in every detail, both the former owner and the former CEO of the landmark restaurant told me.
Marshall Cogan, who owned ‘21’ from 1985 to 1995, told me, “I have no idea what was in his head. I never have.”
Ken Aretsky, the restaurant’s CEO from 1986 to 1995, said, “Once again, Trump exaggerated another story.”
NBC News reported that Trump told his national security advisers that ‘21’ had shut its doors for a year and hired an expensive consultant to plan the renovation. The consultant’s only suggestion was a bigger kitchen.