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, planter, JML9999, 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.
NOTE: My apologies for the brevity of this OND...I thought that I had changed the time in thhe queue but...I guess not...anyways, you know where Meteor Blades is.
Reuters: U.S. denies request for Puerto Rico shipping waiver by Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Tuesday denied a request to waive shipping restrictions to help get fuel and supplies to storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, saying it would do nothing to address the island’s main impediment to shipping, damaged ports.
The Jones Act limits shipping between coasts to U.S. flagged vessels. However, in the wake of brutal storms, the government has occasionally issued temporary waivers to allow the use of cheaper, tax free, or more readily available foreign flagged ships.
The Department of Homeland Security, which waived the act after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, did not agree an exemption would help this time.
On Monday, U.S. Representative Nydia Velázquez and seven other representatives asked Elaine Duke, acting head of Homeland Security, to waive the nearly 100-year-old shipping law for a year to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria.Gregory Moore, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, an office of Homeland Security, said in a statement that an assessment by the agency showed there was “sufficient capacity” of U.S.-flagged vessels to move commodities to Puerto Rico.
Five Thirty-Eight: One More Thing For Puerto Rico To Worry About: Disease-Ridden Mosquitoes by Maggie Koreth-Baker
The images and reports coming out of Puerto Rico show an island in crisis. Many ports remain closed, airports are damaged, and roads are blocked by debris or have been washed away by floods. Electricity will likely be gone for months. Internet and phone service have become luxuries. Homes lie in ruins across the island.
The natural disaster has drawn attention to deeper political and financial inequalities between Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory — and U.S. states such as Florida and Texas, which are having an easier time returning to normal after their recent hurricane experiences. Unfortunately, there could be more trouble ahead, in the form of tiny tropical mosquitoes. Experts say the combination of natural disasters and persistent socioeconomic inequality creates an environment where mosquito-borne diseases — such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika — can spread.
All those diseases exist in Puerto Rico in the background of everyday life, occasionally flaring up into full-blown epidemics. Dengue, a virus that causes fever and joint pain, was diagnosed in 174 people in Puerto Rico in 2016 and none in the first half of 2017. But in bad years — 1994, 1998, 2007 and 2010, among them — it has infected more than 10,000. The same is true of other mosquito-borne diseases on the island. Zika, infamously, was epidemic in 2016, with more than 40,000 people diagnosed in Puerto Rico. By this June, though, cases of the disease had fallen to nearly nothing, and the epidemic was declared over.
Chicago Sun-Times: Emanuel says two kneeling cops caught between principles ‘in conflict’ by Fran Spielman
Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged Tuesday that two uniformed Chicago Police officers photographed “taking a knee” in a police station lobby were caught between principles “in conflict”: the need to build community relations and the ban on making political statements while in uniform.
But Emanuel said he supports the Chicago Police Department’s decision to reprimand the two officers.
“There’s a difference between an athlete wearing their uniform [and kneeling during the national anthem] and a police officer who is paid by the public who’s wearing theirs. And the Police Department has been consistent,” in enforcing the ban on making political statements, he said.
After a weekend of sideline demonstrations that swept through the NFL and exposed the nation’s bitter racial divide, the two uniformed African-American officers were photographed “taking a knee” in the lobby of a South Side police station.
Washington Post: Moore wins Republican Senate primary, dealing blow to GOP establishment by Michael Scherer
A former state judge who believes that “God’s law” can invalidate federal court decisions won Alabama’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday night, sending a clear warning to President Trump and GOP leadership that conservative grass-roots anger will continue to roil the party into the 2018 midterm elections.
Roy Moore, who was twice suspended from his job as the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, defeated incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed to the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and was backed by Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Moore is now the front-runner to win the seat in the Dec. 12 general election. He will face Democratic candidate Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama.
“We have to return the knowledge of God and the Constitution of the United States to the United States Congress,” Moore said in his victory speech. “We have becom:e a nation that has distanced ourselves from the very foundation.”
Mother Jones: Graham-Cassidy Is Dead, and Obamacare Is Alive by Patrick Caldwell
Republicans are giving up on their latest effort to repeal Obamacare. During their caucus lunch Tuesday afternoon, Republican leaders decided that the bill, known as Graham-Cassidy, will not be brought up for a vote this week. “We’ve made the decision since we don’t have the votes, we’ll postpone that vote,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said Tuesday. That puts an end to GOP’s hopes for repealing the Affordable Care Act and gutting Medicaid—at least for the moment.
Republicans faced a September 30 deadline if they wanted to use a procedure called reconciliation, which would allow the Senate to avoid a Democratic filibuster and pass a bill with only 50 votes. But while Graham-Cassidy is dead for the moment, Republicans could still revive the proposal—or pursue a different Obamacare replacement—by including reconciliation in their 2018 budget, which several GOP senators are already calling for. But keeping the reconciliation option open for 2018 would force Republicans to tackle health care and tax reform together, which would make the already complex tax debate even more difficult.
Bloomberg: Trump’s Le Cirque Fundraiser Pulls in $5 Million for Republicans by Zachary Mider and Margaret Talev
President Donald Trump helped raise an estimated $5 million for Republicans Tuesday as he dined privately in New York with some of the biggest names in U.S. finance and real estate.
About 150 people were expected to attended the event at New York’s Le Cirque restaurant, according to a Republican National Committee official who requested anonymity because the event was private. Tickets cost a minimum of $35,000, and $250,000 per couple bought access to a private roundtable with the president. A $100,000 donation guaranteed “VIP access” to Trump.
Casino mogul Steve Wynn and John Catsimatidis, the billionaire grocer and oil-refinery owner, were seen entering the closed-door event, as was Florida lobbyist and fundraiser Brian Ballard.
VICE: BTW Joe Biden Makes Podcasts Now by River Donaghey
Joe Biden has apparently decided to take a break from pining over the 2016 election and loaning his likeness to time-travel cartoons so he can get into the podcast game.
According to the Verge, the former vice president has started recording daily briefings, appropriately titled Biden's Briefings, where he'll dive in and discuss the news that tickled his fancy each day. For every show, Biden sifts through a bunch of media sources—including Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, MSNBC, HuffPost, New York Review of Books, Politico, and even us here at VICE—and cherrypicks a few stories that are worth paying attention to.
"These briefings include a range of thoughts and opinions, some of which I agree with and some I don't, but all of which I think are important to spend some time thinking about," Biden said.
The podcast will be available to download on iTunes and Spotify, or you can also listen in via your Amazon Echo or Google Home—which means that small talking puck you got last Christmas can soon start beaming the honey-sweet voice of Uncle Joe into your living room.
ESPN: NCAA basketball coaches among 10 charged with fraud, corruption by Mark Schlabach (warning: autoplay)
Four assistant basketball coaches from Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma Stateand Southern California were charged Tuesday morning in a federal corruption investigation, and that might be only the tip of the iceberg in a three-year FBI probe that focused on coaches being paid tens of thousands of dollars to steer NBA-bound players toward sports agents, financial advisers and apparel companies.
Federal prosecutors in New York announced charges of fraud and corruption against 10 people, including Auburn's Chuck Person, Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans, Arizona's Emanuel "Book" Richardson and USC's Tony Bland.
Each of the coaches is charged with bribery conspiracy, solicitation of bribes, honest services fraud conspiracy, honest service fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and Travel Act conspiracy. The U.S. Department of Justice said each of the coaches faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison.
Person was released on $25,000 bail. Bland appeared in a Florida court, did not enter a plea and said he needs a lawyer. Prosecutors recommended Bland be released on $100,000 bail with the understanding he must appear Oct. 10 in federal court in New York for another hearing. Richardson appeared in U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona, and was released on a $50,000 bond.
Louisville Courier-Journal: Fire Rick Pitino and Tom Jurich now by Joseph Gerth
Start with University of Louisville Athletics Director Tom Jurich, move on to head basketball coach Rick Pitino, and keep moving down the chain until they are all gone.
Fire them all. They deserve it.
They deserved it a long time ago.
Seriously, how much more embarrassing can Louisville's basketball program get under Jurich and Pitino?
If the sordid Karen Sypher affair in which Pitino was schtupping the former waitress after-hours on a table in a Frankfort Avenue restaurant wasn't enough for you, how 'bout the abortion she got after he gave her $3,000.
No problem, Jurich said.
And if the abortion wasn't enough for you, how 'bout inviting prostitutes into the University of Louisville basketball dorm to — ahem — recruit 16- and 17-year-old kids.
Funny, I always thought that University of Kentucky head basketball coach John Calipari would be the first between Calipari and Pitino to get into a scandal...since CBB corruption is already Calipari’s middle name going all the way back to Calipari’s tenure at UMass...of course, I’m in in no position to judge.
DW: Frauke Petry, co-chair of the far-right AfD, to quit the party by Jefferson Chase
Frauke Petry was not in attendance when the Alternative for Germany (AfD) convened in Berlin on Tuesday to discuss the formation of a parliamentary group and choose parliamentary speakers. The party co-chair was in Dresden, where she told German news agency dpa that she will be leaving the AfD.
"It's clear that this step is coming," she told dpa, although she did not set a date for when she would leave. She also said that she and two other AfD deputies in the regional parliament in Saxony would be quitting the parliamentary group there. Petry's husband, Marcus Pretzell, an influential AfD leader in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia, is also quitting the party.
"My decision is based exclusively on my not very optimistic view of how the AfD is likely to develop," Pretzell told newspaper Die Welt.
On Monday, in a joint appearance with lead candidates Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland after the AfD entered the Bundestag with 94 seats, Petry surprised her fellow party leaders by announcing she would vote as an independent. She said her decision was based on her belief that extremist statements made by other party leaders precluded it from exercising "constructive opposition." Petry won her seat in parliament outright in her local district.
In the wake of that bombshell, Weidel and other leading lights in the AfD had called on Petry to quit. The lead candidates were still nonplussed the day after Petry's surprise announcement but said they didn't think it was the sign of major rebellion.
Guardian: Archaeologists home in on Homeric clues as Turkey declares year of Troy by Kareem Shaheen
Rüstem Aslan, Troy’s chief archaeologist, grows more animated as he enters the fenced-off area just beyond the southern gate of the ancient city’s ruins. To him it offers tantalising clues that may add to the evidence that this was the scene of the war detailed in Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
“Priam, Achilles, Hector: [whether] they lived and died here, we cannot prove that 100%,” said the affable Aslan, who started working at the site as a student in 1988. “But if you work inside for 30 years, night and day, winter or summer, surrounded by this landscape, you can feel it. You start to believe.”
The ruins of Troy are half an hour’s drive from Çanakkale, a city in north-west Turkey situated on the Dardanelles strait and near the Gallipoli peninsula. The site, on Hisarlık Hill, contains the overlapping remains of 10 cities, Troys I to X, dating from as early as 3,000BC.
Much of the excavations over the past two years have focused on an area directly across from Troy VI’s southern gate, dated to 1300BC, and the main entry into the ancient citadel from the plains below. A few dozen metres from the gate, archaeologists have uncovered a late bronze age road and the remains of a house from the era, indicating the existence of an extensive organised network of buildings beyond the city walls.
AP: College Football Top 10
1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Penn State
5. Southern California
6. Washington
7. Georgia
8. Michigan
9. TCU
10. Wisconsin
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!