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.
New York Times
Heather D. Heyer died standing up for what she believed in.
Friends described her as a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised who was often moved to tears by the world’s injustices. That sense of conviction led her to join demonstrators protesting a rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.
“We were just marching around, spreading love — and then the accident happened,” a friend, Marissa Blair, said. “In a split second you see a car, and you see bodies flying.”
The authorities said Ms. Heyer, 32, was killed when a car driven by a man from Ohio plowed into the crowd.
US NEWS
The Guardian
More than a thousand protesters gathered outside Trump Tower in New York City on Monday night, ahead of Donald Trump’s first visit to his home there since his inauguration.
Spurred on by events in Charlottesville over the weekend, when a woman was killed and 19 injured during a white supremacist rally, and angered by the president’s lackluster response to the tragedy, people lined the streets to the north and south of Trump’s home, chanting and waving signs.
Police erected hundreds of yards of metal barricades in an attempt to contain protesters, while a line of sanitation department trucks prevented access to the front of Trump Tower.
At 6.22pm, as the president tweeted that he was “leaving for New York City”, the sidewalks outside his home were packed with protesters while shouts of “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA”, and “Not my president” echoed down 5th Avenue.
Bloomberg
Investors worried about what will happen to stocks in the wake of increasing tension between the U.S. and North Korea are going to be hard-pressed to find a reliable historical comparison.
The very notion of trying to weigh or predict a stock market reaction is absurd, of course, in the event of a nuclear attack or conventional war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives. Financial matters would be the least of anyone's concerns. Any war, particularly one that drew in Japan or China along with the U.S., would be a devastating blow to the world economy and stock markets.
But absent an unthinkable catastrophe, the investing calculus gets a bit murky because there seems to be little connection between what investors are willing to pay for stocks and the level of conflict around the world.
Agence France Presse
President Donald Trump on Monday was poised to ratchet up trade tensions with China, announcing the start of an investigation into Beijing's trade practices on intellectual property at a time when relations are already strained over North Korea.
In the afternoon, Trump is expected to sign a memorandum directing US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to determine whether Chinese policies hurt American investors or companies -- with retaliatory US trade measures a possible outcome.
At the weekend, Trump administration officials previewing the move on condition of anonymity accused China of "stealing" US industrial secrets, long a concern of major foreign corporations seeking a share of the huge Chinese market.
Deutsche Welle
In a statement Monday posted on Twitter, Merck chief executive (CEO) Kenneth Frazier said he was stepping down "as a matter of personal conscience" after the Charlottesville violence, adding that he was feeling "a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism."
The move came after Donald Trump is under increasing pressure to explicitly condemn the racially-tinged rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.
"America's leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all men are created equal," the CEO of America's third largest pharmaceutical company wrote on Twitter.
McClatchy DC
“Enemy of the American people,” #DishonestMedia, “garbage journalism,” #FakeNews.
These are some of the insults hurled at journalists in recent months in efforts to discredit the work of news organizations around the country.
Today marks the start of our colleague Austin Tice’s sixth year of captivity in Syria. We at McClatchy want to tell you about him and other journalists who have risked and sometimes given their lives to bring us stories that would not otherwise be told.
Some have been tortured. Several have been imprisoned. At least three were murdered – simply for doing their jobs – in the past several years alone.
The Guardian
Donald Trump has bowed to overwhelming pressure and directly condemned the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, two days after violent clashes left one woman dead.
“Racism is evil,” the US president said at the White House. “And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
The explicit remarks came after a storm of criticism – some from prominent figures in his own party – over Trump’s decision not to criticise head-on the white supremacist groups that targeted Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend.
He returned to Washington from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Monday and discussed the tragedy with attorney general Jeff Sessions and new FBI director, Christopher Wray.
Reading from a teleprompter, Trump then confirmed that the justice department has opened a civil rights investigation into the car attack that killed one woman and injured 20 others. “To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable,” he insisted. “Justice will be delivered.
Reuters
An Oklahoma man has been arrested by the FBI on charges that he tried to blow up an Oklahoma City bank building with a van he thought was packed with explosives, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Jerry Drake Varnell, 23, of Sayre, Oklahoma, on Saturday. According to a complaint, Varnell had initially planned to bomb the U.S. Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., in a manner similar to the 1995 explosion at a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.
…
The complaint filed in the federal court in Oklahoma City said that at the onset of the investigation, Varnell said he wanted to build a team to conduct a bombing. "I'm out for blood,'" the complaint quoted Varnell as saying. "'When militias start getting formed I'm going after government officials when I have a team.'”
Clip from Twitter Says it All
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
At least 18 people including eight or more foreigners were gunned down in a Turkish restaurant in Burkina Faso, officials said Monday, the latest west African attack to target a spot popular with expats.
There has been no claim of responsibility for Sunday night's attack at the Aziz Istanbul restaurant, which was often packed with foreign nationals who went there to watch football.
Foreign minister Alpha Barry told AFP that the "terrorist" attack in the capital Ouagadougou killed seven locals and at least eight foreigners including one Frenchman; one Canadian woman; male victims from Senegal, Niger, Lebanon and Turkey; and two Kuwaiti women.
Agence France Presse
At least 312 people were killed and more than 2,000 left homeless on Monday when heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown, leaving excavators to pull bodies from rubble and overwhelming the city's morgues.
An AFP journalist saw several homes submerged in Regent village, a hilltop community, and corpses floating in the water in the Lumley West area of the city, as the government held an emergency meeting to plan its response to one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit the city.
Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi told AFP the death toll was 312 but could rise further as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown and tally the number of dead.
Al Jazeera
Saudi Arabia's crown prince has told two former American officials that he "wants out" of the two-year war he started in Yemen, and that he is not against US rapprochement with Iran, according to leaked emails published by Middle East Eye.
The revelation sheds light on the thinking of Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the 31-year-old heir to the Saudi throne, also known as MBS.
The leaks pertain to discussions he held on the Middle East with Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel, and Steven Hadley, who served as US national security adviser during George W Bush's presidency.
The conversation took place at least one month before Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar, accusing it of trying to undermine their war in Yemen and for having friendly relations with Iran.
The Guardian
Britain and Germany have strongly condemned the violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one woman dead and at least 25 other people injured.
Asked whether the US president’s response had been robust enough, Theresa May’s spokesman said that Donald Trump’s words were “a matter for him”, but added: “We are very clear ... We condemn racism, hatred and violence. We condemn the far right.”
…
German chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said on Monday the scene at the Unite the Right march was “absolutely repulsive”, with “outrageous racism, anti-Semitism and hate in its most despicable form” on display.
NPR
The children pile into the stadium in shiny clothes, clutching green-and-white Pakistani flags. Their parents light the area with cell phones to record the event as they scream, chant and cheer, watching soldiers close a gate that separates India from Pakistan.
In the evening ritual at the Wagah-Attari border, near Lahore and Amritsar, soldiers from both countries high-kick, shake their fists, then shake hands – and slam the gate shut.
It is deeply visceral for many Pakistanis: an acknowledgement of their border, of a plucky country they feel they have sacrificed so much to create.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (8/11/2017)
A suicide epidemic among India’s farmers has shaken the country and contributed to a doubling of the nation’s suicide rate since 1980.
It’s a widespread and intensely personal issue, one that has been difficult to tease out the root source. Debt, mental health, lack of social services, weather vagaries and even media coverage have all been put forward as part of the problem. Now, recent research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that climate change could also be playing a role.
The findings attribute more than 59,000 suicides in India to rising temperatures since 1980. With the world expected to warm further, the results suggest that adaptation could play a key role in helping farmers.
“Suicide is a heartbreaking indicator of human hardship, and I felt that if this phenomenon were in fact affected by a changing climate, it would be essential to quantify its effect and consider this relationship as we build climate policy for the future,” Tamma Carleton, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley who authored the new study, said.
The Guardian (8/10/2017)
The US government’s withdrawal from dealing with, or even acknowledging, climate change may have provoked widespread opprobrium, but for Alaskan communities at risk of toppling into the sea, the risks are rather more personal.
The Trump administration has moved to dismantle climate adaptation programs including the Denali Commission, an Anchorage-based agency that is crafting a plan to safeguard or relocate dozens of towns at risk from rising sea levels, storms and the winnowing away of sea ice.
Federal assistance for these towns has been ponderous but could now grind to a halt, with even those working on the issue seemingly targeted by the administration. In July, Joel Clement, an interior department official who worked with Alaskan communities on climate adaptation, claimed he had been moved to a completely unrelated position because of the administration’s ideological hostility to the issue.
“We were getting down to the brass tacks of relocation [of towns at risk] and now work has just stopped,” Clement told the Guardian. He has lodged an official complaint over his reassignment.
The Guardian
As a scientist working for decades on national and global water and climate challenges, I must speak out against what I see as an assault on America’s water resources.
I grew up in New York in the 1960s hearing about massive Polychlorinated Biphenyl – a toxic chemical used as a coolant – contamination in the Hudson River and the threatened extinction of bald eagles and ospreys from eating contaminated fish.
I remember watching on television Ohio’s Cuyahoga River burning. I remember scientists warning about the death of the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay from uncontrolled industrial pollution. I remember not being able to swim at beaches polluted with raw sewage.
And I remember the public debate and bipartisan enthusiasm for federal action to clean up our waters – enthusiasm that led to passage of one of the nation’s foundational environmental laws, the Clean Water Act, signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1972.
NPR
John Essey and family live in a modest, two-story home on a tree-lined street in the suburbs north of Pittsburgh. From the outside, it looks like any other house in the neighborhood. But this house has a brain.
"It knows we're home. Doors unlock, [it] kinda sets the mood for the rest of the house too, turns on lights, sets the thermostat accordingly," Essey says.
Essey is an engineer at Uber and an early adopter of the Internet of things. He can control his lights with his Amazon Echo or an array of touchpad sensors he has installed throughout the home. Sensors tell him when there's water in the basement or a leak under the sink.
While Essey's setup might sound a little like science fiction, it's a prototype of the future. Some critics are worried these devices won't be secure and that companies will use them to spy on us to make money.
NPR
If you think your job is more stressful than it should be, you're not alone.
Americans work hard, and it takes a physical and mental toll, not to mention that it frequently cuts into personal time, according to a comprehensive survey on working conditions the nonpartisan RAND Corporation published Monday. But having a good boss and good friends on the job can make work feel less taxing.
In 2015, RAND researchers, along with Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles, began collecting data from over 3,000 people from all income and education levels who work or have worked in all types of jobs. What they discovered about how we work may help inform policymakers looking to grow the economy and employers looking to retain the best workers.
This kind of data, examining workplace conditions in the U.S., has not been collected for decades. "We have excellent data on wages, on training ... but we don't know much about the conditions of work," says Nicole Maestas, an economist and associate health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School who is the lead researcher on this study.
Reuters
TORONTO (Reuters) - Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer had its domain registration revoked twice in less than 24 hours, in moves that threatened to take it offline if it does not find a replacement for GoDaddy and Google, which both said the site had violated their terms of service.
GoDaddy Inc (GDDY.N) disclosed late on Sunday via Twitter that it had given The Daily Stormer 24 hours to move its domain to another provider, saying it had violated GoDaddy's terms of service. The white supremacist website, associated with the alt-right movement, helped organize the weekend rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent.
GoDaddy feared the site might be used to incite further violence after the events in Charlottesville, including the death of Heather Heyer, who was fatally struck by a car allegedly driven by a man with white nationalist views.
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
The Guardian
Taking a stand on racial injustice seems to be controversial for some reason. There are too many sports fans, and this is especially true for football I think, who see the players as Gladiators, fighting for the enjoyment of the masses.
The day after Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat out the national anthem, his former team-mate Michael Bennett has followed his lead.
The Seattle Seahawks defensive end, who is known for his strong views, sat with a towel draped over his head during the anthem before Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Bennett said he plans to continue the protest for the rest of the season, and that his stance was influenced by the far-right violence in Charlottesville over the weekend. Colin Kaepernick attracted attention when he chose to kneel for the anthem last season as a protest at racial injustice in the US.
NPR
The central plot mechanic that'll drive us to the end of this Game of Thrones season finally reveals itself: Jon needs to prove to ally and enemy alike that the White Walkers are both real and spectacular.
But, see, we the audience already know they're coming. We've seen them marching south ... slow as particularly creepy molasses ... for like five seasons now. But most of the show's characters haven't seen them, so at least the next two episodes will be spent getting everyone up to speed. ("OK, who just joined the call? Cersei, is it? Jon, maybe you can go back a few slides in the deck to make sure Cersei's on board.") That's a recipe for audience frustration, unless the show can offer up some visual candy to keep us sated.