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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The Hill
A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official on Monday called celebrity chef José Andrés “a businessman looking for stuff to promote his business” after the chef criticized the response to Hurricane Maria while providing meals on the island, BuzzFeed News reported.
“He was very critical of us publicly and we were disappointed he took that approach,” Marty Bahamonde, director of the FEMA disaster operations division, told the news outlet. “We had a good working relationship, and we paid him a lot of money to do that work. It wasn’t volunteer work — so we were disappointed in some of his public comments.”
FEMA reportedly awarded Andrés two short-term contracts worth a combined $11.5 million to assist in relief work. Andrés’s Washington-based organization, World Central Kitchen, has served millions of meals to Puerto Ricans as the island recovers from Hurricane Maria.
US NEWS
Bloomberg
They autographed baseball caps emblazoned with “Donald & Shinzo.” They played nine holes of golf with a Japanese sensation often compared to Tiger Woods and didn’t keep score. They shared an intimate dinner and repeatedly showered each other with praise.
But for all the apparent chumminess between President Donald Trump and Japan’s Shinzo Abe, it hasn’t resulted in much concrete action to address Trump’s main complaint: fixing what he sees as an unfair trade relationship with Japan.
For Trump, more known for shoving a fellow leader aside than embracing one, the relationship with Abe is a way to show he can work with his peers around the globe. The two men also agree on a hard-line approach to North Korea.
McClatchy DC
Republicans enter the new election cycle already carrying the weight of Sisyphus: Rarely does the party in power gain seats in midterm congressional elections. But in 2018, they have an additional burden to bear, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Donald Trump’s team colluded with Russia drags into the campaign season.
As the recent indictments of three Trump campaign aides, one of whom pleaded guilty, foreshadow, Mueller’s expansive inquiry will put Republicans who have been supportive or at least tolerant of Trump’s behavior on the defensive as they try to win re-election and maintain control of Congress.
“Certainly if we’re in a scenario where it’s totally consuming the news cycle, it will be very hard for Republicans to point to accomplishments,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican communications strategist and top adviser to Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee. “You could have a very animated opposition that could help Democrats really energize their base to show up on Election Day.”
Spiegel Online
Ten months into the Trump presidency, the world has not gone over a cliff. Nuclear brinkmanship with North Korea has not produced Armageddon. That this must be considered an achievement is testimony to how alarming Donald Trump's erratic belligerence has been. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has concluded that Europeans must now take "our destiny into our own hands." Dismay is widespread. The post-war order, stripped of its American point of reference, is frayed to the breaking point.
This is no surprise. Trump's election, like Britain's perverse flight from the European Union, reflected a blow-up-the-system mood. The tens of millions of Americans who elected Trump had few illusions about his irascibility but were ready to roll the dice in the name of disruption at any cost.
The president, who continues to act principally as the rabble-rousing leader of a mass movement, is the ultimate provocateur. He jolts the facile assumptions of a globalized liberal elite. Rising inequality and rampant impunity for the powerful certainly demanded such a jolt. But the question remains: How dangerous is Trump to the world and the American Republic?
Reuters
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (Reuters) - The gunman who shot 26 worshipers to death and wounded 20 others at a Texas church was embroiled in a domestic dispute with his in-laws and had been sending threatening messages to his wife’s mother before the massacre, officials said Monday.
The killer, Devin Kelley, 26, was previously convicted by court-martial of assaulting his first wife and step-son while serving in the U.S. Air Force and spent a year in detention before his bad-conduct discharge in 2014, according to the Pentagon.
The Air Force acknowledged on Monday that it failed to enter Kelley’s 2012 domestic violence offense into a U.S. government database used by licensed gun dealers for conducting background checks on firearms purchasers.
A sporting goods retail chain has said Kelley passed background checks when he bought a gun in 2016 and a second firearm the following year.
Reuters
A U.S. District judge again declined to ease bail conditions for President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business associate Richard Gates on Monday, saying they still needed to provide more financial information.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she was concerned about some of the $12 million in assets that Manafort had offered as security to get the court to lift house arrest and allow him to stop wearing an electronic monitoring device.
Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty to a 12-count indictment as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential collusion with Trump associates.
They are charged with conspiring to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government.
BuzzFeed News
Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and two of his sons — key figures in a growing movement against the federal government's control of vast public land in the West — will face charges in federal court Tuesday in a highly-anticipated trial over a 2014 armed standoff with federal officers.
Three years after the Bundys and hundreds of their supporters faced off with federal agents in Bunkerville, Nevada, propelling the family into the national spotlight, they now face charges of conspiracy to commit offenses against the US, impeding or injuring a federal officer, threatening federal officials, and multiple weapons charges.
The four men standing trial in Las Vegas are Cliven Bundy, his two sons Ammon and Ryan, and longtime supporter Ryan Payne. The four are key figures in two separate armed standoffs that have helped embolden an anti-federal government movement in the US.
Vox
So far, President Donald Trump has been sticking to Twitter to counter Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
But following the indictment of two campaign staffers — along with disclosure of a guilty plea and cooperation agreement by a campaign foreign policy adviser — President Trump may be tempted to use the powers of the presidency to lessen his legal and political exposure.
With the news that Mueller may have enough information to charge Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser, the temptation may grow all the stronger.
One possibility is that he could fire special counsel Mueller, but he’d have to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein first — and possibly other officials too. That could get messy, fast. Reports indicate that Trump has also asked about the scope of his pardon powers. And in recent days, some key allies have encouraged the president to issue pardons of one sort or another, including a blanket pardon to all officials involved in his campaign.
Reuters
Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump, testified to U.S. lawmakers that he met with a Russian deputy prime minister on two trips to Moscow in 2016 and consulted with senior Trump campaign staff about one visit.
In testimony made public on Monday, Page initially said he did not meet with any senior Russian officials during a trip in July 2016 but later said he “briefly” greeted Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, and saw him again at a dinner in December 2016.
When asked if he had a private meeting with Dvorkovich on that second trip, Page replied: “We did - he stopped by a dinner I went to in December with people from the university.”
Page also said he let senior members of Trump’s campaign staff know of his trip in July 2016, including then-Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, who is now U.S. attorney general, as well as senior Trump aides Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
The Supreme Court on Monday indefinitely delayed a vote for Liberia's new president, ordering the electoral commission to resolve an opposition party's complaint of electoral fraud before a runoff vote can be held.
The decision throws Liberia's first democratic transition in seven decades into uncertainty a day ahead of what was to have been the final round of voting to pick between former international footballer George Weah and incumbent vice-president Joseph Boakai.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Francis Korkpor said the National Elections Commission (NEC) was prohibited "from conducting the runoff election until the complaint filed by the petitioners is investigated," referring to the opposition Liberty Party.
But they must now await the result of an ongoing NEC complaint by a party neither belong to, as well as any Supreme Court appeal, which could take weeks.
Deutsche Welle
The Paradise Papers data release shines a light on the tax activities of politicians and some of the world’s richest people. But it appears for now that most of the questions raised are ethical rather than legal.
First it was the Panama Papers, now it's the Paradise Papers. The lid has well and truly been lifted on the exotic but shady world of offshore accounting, where firms serve some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful clients within whistling distance of martinis, marinas and docked pleasure craft.
The massive 'Paradise Papers' leak, detailing some of the off-shore tax avoidance methods used by some of the world's richest and most powerful companies and individuals, mirrors the Panama Papers leaks of April 2016.
Like with that dramatic data leak, the Paradise Papers story will dominate the news agenda for weeks and months and will bring embarrassment and intense scrutiny to people and firms long used to keeping troublesome secrets well out of the spotlight.
But how much of what will be revealed, however startling, is actually illegal? Will the prevailing questions that arise be more ones of ethics and morality, rather than strictly ones of legal or regulatory probity?
Al Jazeera
Iran has rejected accusations by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen that it was involved in the firing of a missile that was intercepted north of Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh.
In a statement on Monday, Bahram Qassemi, spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry, said the claim of Iranian responsibility for the missile launch late on Saturday, which was claimed by the Houthi rebels, was "malicious, irresponsible, destructive and provocative".
"Yemeni response is an independent one and a result of Saudi Arabia's aggression, one which is not carried out or provoked by any other country," said Qassemi.
Al Jazeera
Iraq's top court has said the country's constitution does not allow for the secession of any part of the country from the state.
In a statement on Monday, Iyas al-Samouk, Supreme Federal Court spokesperson, said the national charter expressly calls for the preservation of Iraq's unity and territorial integrity.
The court is responsible for settling disputes between the central government in Baghdad and the country's regions and provinces, including northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
The court's rulings are final and cannot be contested by higher judicial authorities.
On September 25, people in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq and a number of disputed areas under the control of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) voted in a controversial referendum that found overwhelming support for secession.
The referendum, which was declared illegal by the federal government in Baghdad and criticised by neighbouring countries, resulted in 92 percent of people voting in favour of splitting from Iraq.
The Guardian
An Argentinian prosecutor was murdered four days after he formally accused the then president Cristina Fernández of covering up the role of Iranian officials in connection with the country’s deadliest terror attack, a border police investigation has found.
The report, obtained by the Associated Press, bases its conclusions on controversial new evidence and sharply contradicts earlier official findings that Alberto Nisman likely killed himself.
Nisman, 51, was found dead on 18 January 2015, with a bullet in his right temple. A .22 caliber pistol was found next to him.
The crusading prosecutor had led the investigation into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre, which killed 85 people.
Coming just days after Nisman challenged Fernández, his death became a politically charged controversy. Allies of Fernández suggested Nisman took his own life because he couldn’t back up his allegations. Many other Argentinians insisted he had been murdered. It triggered anti-government protests ahead of the 2015 presidential election.
Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union states will on Tuesday bring forward a discussion on plans for a tax havens’ blacklists after newly leaked documents revealed investments by wealthy individuals and institutions around the globe, officials said.
The subject’s inclusion on the monthly meeting’s agenda of EU finance ministers came after weekend media reports citing the “Paradise Papers”, a trove of financial documents leaked mostly from Appleby, a prominent offshore law firm.
The documents were obtained by Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and some media outlets. Reuters has not independently verified them. Appleby was not immediately available for comment.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Agence France Presse
Mexico's efforts to save the critically endangered vaquita, the world's smallest porpoise, has suffered a major blow after one of just 30 creatures thought left in the wild died soon after being captured by authorities.
The vaquita marina, known as the "panda of the sea" for the distinctive markings circling its eyes, has been pushed to the brink of extinction by illegal gillnet fishing.
The Mexican government and conservation groups have launched an unprecedented plan to save the species by taking as many as possible to a protected marine reserve.
Mexico's environment minister Rafael Pacchiano had lauded Saturday's capture of a mature female -- the first animal of reproductive age to have been caught -- as "a great achievement that fills us with hope."
The captured vaquita, however, "suffered complications" and its condition deteriorated, Pacchiano tweeted.
Attempts by authorities to release it back into the Gulf of California -- the only place in the world vaquitas are found -- proved unsuccessful.
Agence France Presse
Wealthy countries are falling well short of their pledge to provide $100 billion a year to developing countries by 2020 as part of the Paris climate accord, a report published Monday said.
Of the $111 billion invested in clean energy technologies only $10 billion was provided by rich countries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The pledge was first made at a Copenhagen summit in 2009 and confirmed by signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The $100 billion, to be raised from multiple sources including from the private sector, was intended to be a minimum, with nations expected to set a new goal by 2025.
UN negotiators meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week are trying to work out how to implement the Paris accord, which aims to keep warming at "well under two degrees Celsius" (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Deutsche Welle
The small city of Bonn, Germany was inundated with thousands of delegates today for this year's UN climate summit. Over the coming two weeks, negotiators will hammer out the rule book for the Paris climate agreement reached two years ago.
The VIPs will not arrive until next week for the intensive final days of the summit. But already, the politicians are gearing up for a battle between people claiming to speak for the United States.
Donald Trump announced earlier this year he will pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. However the withdrawal process takes three years, leaving the United States in as a signatory until then. President Trump is sending a small delegation to Bonn that will try to continue to shape the rules of the agreement.
The role this delegation intends to play, and what role it should be allowed to play, was the subject of much debate on the first day of the summit.
The Guardian
2017 is set to be one of the hottest three years on record, provisional data suggests, confirming yet again a warming trend that scientists say bears the fingerprints of human actions.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said temperatures in the first nine months of this year were unlikely to have been higher than 2016, when there was a strong El Niño weather system, but higher than anything before 2015.
Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the WMO, said: “The past three years have all been in the top three years in terms of temperature records. This is part of a long term warming trend. We have witnessed extraordinary weather, including temperatures topping 50C in Asia, record-breaking hurricanes in rapid succession in the Caribbean and Atlantic reaching as far as Ireland, devastating monsoon flooding affecting many millions of people and a relentless drought in East Africa.”
He said further detailed scientific studies would be carried out, but that it was already possible to say many “bear the tell-tale sign of climate change” caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities, such as burning fossil fuel and deforestation.
NPR
Editor's Note: This story was originally published in October and has been republished with updates in the wake of the shooting Sunday in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Barely a month after the massacre in Las Vegas, another horrific attack has underscored the persistence of gun violence in the United States. At least 26 people are dead after the shooting this Sunday at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
If the mounting death toll has you thinking that attacks like this seem to be more frequent in the United States than in other rich nations, you're right. Statistics on the rates of gun violence unrelated to conflict underscore just how outsize U.S. rates of gun deaths are compared with those in much of the rest of the world.
Take countries with the top indicators of socioeconomic success — income per person and average education level, for instance. The United States ranks ninth in the world among them, bested only by the likes of Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Iceland, Andorra, Canada and Finland.
NPR
In the world of Facebook, relationship status comes in a few flavors: "married" and "divorced," "single" and "it's complicated." When it comes to science, relationship status has its own varieties: love and hate, comprehension and confusion.
Some of these relationships reflect values and emotions, while others are epistemic: They reflect what we know or understand about science.
What's the relationship to science that we should be aiming to achieve? And why does it matter?
International assessments reliably find that the U.S. lags behind many other countrieswhen it comes to scientific literacy, and a variety of efforts aim to improve what's referred to as "public understanding of science." While some of these efforts focus on assessing and improving people's attitudes towards science, the educational world is typically more concerned with imparting knowledge and understanding.
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
Reuters
Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox film and television conglomerate has held talks to sell most of the company to media giant Walt Disney Co, CNBC reported on Monday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Fox’s shares jumped 7.1 percent to $26.76 in afternoon trading in response. Disney shares climbed 1.7 pct to $100.33.
The two sides are not currently talking, CNBC said, but had held talks in the last few weeks, reflecting a view among Fox executives that the media company could not reach the size needed to compete with Amazon.com Inc, Netflix Inc and other major media players. cnb.cx/2hgHcPA
A Disney spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Fox spokesman had no comment.
BBC
Two Fox News broadcasts in the UK have been found in breach of Ofcom rules over impartiality.
A January edition of the Hannity programme discussed US President Donald Trump's ban restricting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.
Ofcom said the US-made show was largely pro-Trump and did not sufficiently reflect alternative viewpoints.
Tucker Carlson Tonight was also found in breach for a broadcast in May following the Manchester terror attack.
Regarding Hannity, Ofcom said they had taken into account "that Fox News is a US news channel, directed at US audiences, which is available in the UK. The people who watch it in the UK are aware that it is a US channel and their expectations are different.
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