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 Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, 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
WASHINGTON — Just hours after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia boasted last week about producing “invincible” new nuclear arms designed to evade American missile defenses, President Trump’s nominee to command the nation’s military cyberunits was being grilled at a Senate confirmation hearing about another vexing Russian threat.
Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the nominee to run the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, acknowledged that plans were in place to strike back at Moscow for its election hacking. Those actions would require Mr. Trump’s approval.
But General Nakasone said the Russians, as well as America’s other adversaries in cyberspace, seem unimpressed.
“I would say right now they do not think much will happen to them,” he said. “They don’t fear us.”
The Russian muscle-flexing and the American hand-wringing captured a strategic vacuum that now envelops Washington as Mr. Putin pursues what he views as a complementary new-generation nuclear arsenal, as well as cyberweapons.
US NEWS
Bloomberg
President Donald Trump declared that he won’t retreat from his plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports after House Speaker Paul Ryan rejected the plan, saying the U.S. economy could suffer.
Asked Monday about the remarks from Ryan’s office, Trump was undeterred. "No, we’re not backing down,” he told reporters at the White House, less than an hour after the speaker’s office aired his concerns.
Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement, “We are extremely worried about the consequences of a trade war and are urging the White House to not advance with this plan. The new tax reform law has boosted the economy and we certainly don’t want to jeopardize those gains.”
Al Jazeera
A special counsel is probing alleged attempts by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to curry favour with members of Donald Trump's campaign team during the 2016 US election, a news report said.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that George Nader - an advisor to the de facto ruler of the UAE - has been questioned "for information about any possible attempts by the Emiratis to buy political influence by directing money to support Mr Trump during the presidential campaign, according to people with knowledge of the discussions".
Nader, who is described as a White House regular, allegedly took part in discussions of American foreign policy in the Gulf region with then-chief strategist Stephen Bannon and senior advisor Jared Kushner shortly after Trump took office.
The Guardian
In August, hundreds of white men with torches marched across the University of Virginia campus. They chanted “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!” and fought with counter-protesters in the streets.
The footage and photographs from the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, left people around the world shaken. These were white nationalists and neo-Nazis marching proudly in public, faces bare, in support of an openly fascist ideology.
For months before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, news outlets had been profiling the emboldened racist extremists who had celebrated the election of Donald Trump. The coverage had often sparked backlash, with readers across the political spectrum arguing that fringe racists were being given too much of a platform, and that media coverage was blowing their influence out of proportion.
Charlottesville made clear that far-right groups were a serious, violent threat. But it did not put an end to the debates over media coverage of these groups – and the fierce criticism when news organizations produced coverage that readers saw as too “normalizing”.
Reuters
BOSTON (Reuters) - For three years, the mutual funds in Fidelity’s flagship retirement franchise have outperformed at least 85 percent of their competitors, reversing a decade-long trend of subpar performance.
And yet client money has continued to flow out of the firm’s Freedom Funds as retirement plan sponsors shift workers’ savings to rivals in the target-date fund business.
While deposits in the trillion-dollar sector have surged, Fidelity has seen nearly $16 billion in net withdrawals over the past four years, according to research firm Morningstar Inc.
The exodus stems in part from unease with the way Boston-based Fidelity has boosted performance - by ramping up risk.
Since a strategy overhaul that took full effect in 2014, Fidelity has substantially increased exposure to stocks, including those from volatile emerging markets. The firm also scrapped a long-held belief of sticking to pre-set allocations of stocks, bonds and other assets in target-date funds.
Reuters
Utica College in upstate New York ordered students to shelter in place on Monday after it received threats from a person saying he was armed with a weapon, school and police officials said.
No gunfire or injuries have been reported, the school said.
Armed law enforcement officers were evacuating buildings and taking people on campus to a safe location, the college said.
The Tangerine, a student newspaper at the college, shared a photograph online of people hiding under desks.
Reuters
Former drug company executive Martin Shkreli may have to give up a Picasso and a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, after a U.S. judge on Monday ordered him to forfeit $7.36 million following his conviction of defrauding investors.
U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn said the assets Shkreli could forfeit to satisfy the judgment also include $5 million in a brokerage account and his stake in Vyera Pharmaceuticals, one of the drug companies he founded.
Shkreli is scheduled to be sentenced for securities fraud on Friday.
A lawyer for Shkreli could not immediately be reached for comment on the judge’s order.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
Eight people were questioned in Brussels following counter-terror raids as part of an investigation into what one source said Monday appeared to be preparations for an attack.
All eight were arrested Sunday in Molenbeek, an immigrant district in the Belgian capital linked to the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, the federal prosecutor's office said.
Spokesman Wenke Roggen said all eight were released without charge.
The prosecutor's office said earlier that the arrests were not connected to the Paris or Brussels attacks.
A source close to the probe said investigators suspected an attack was in preparation.
The prosecutor's office said no explosives were found in the raids carried out at the request of a judge specialised in terror cases.
Agence France Presse
Rival populist leaders fought Monday for the right to govern Italy after its general election as the leader of the defeated ruling centre-left party resigned with a warning about a "wind of extremism".
The anti-immigrant League party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) each claimed Sunday's vote gave them a mandate to lead the nation of 60 million.
But the eurozone's third-biggest economy was in political limbo as negotiations between the various groups to determine who leads looked likely to take weeks or months.
League leader Matteo Salvini said that he had "the right and the duty" to form a government after its surprise success at the heart of a right-wing coalition.
But M5S, which won the biggest share of the vote of any single party, claimed it was the winner. Its leader Luigi Di Maio said it had a "responsibility" to form a government.
Agence France Presse
The head of the World Trade Organization warned senior diplomats Monday against tipping "the first dominoes" in a trade war that would be hard to reverse and trigger a deep recession.
The stark alert from WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo came days after President Donald Trump's announcement last week that Washington was set to impose heavy tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the US.
US trading partners, including China and the European Union, already are preparing to retaliate and have pledged to file a dispute at the 164-member WTO.
"In light of recent announcements on trade policy measures, it is clear that we now see a much higher and real risk of triggering an escalation of trade barriers across the globe", WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo told a heads of delegation meeting at the organisation's Geneva headquarters.
"We cannot ignore this risk and I urge all parties to consider and reflect on this situation very carefully.
Deutsche Welle
A German energy executive has been badly injured in an acid attack, his company confirmed early Monday. Bernhard Günther, the CFO of energy giant RWE's green subsidiary, Innogy, was struck as he crossed a park in Haan, a well-to-do suburb of Düsseldorf on Sunday.
"We are deeply shocked," said Innogy chairman Uwe Tiggs. "Our thoughts are with Bernhard and his family and we wish him a speedy recovery."
Two unknown perpetrators poured acid over the 51-year-old's face before fleeing the scene on foot, according to a statement Günter made to police.
The victim staggered home to get help and was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries. His condition is now believed to be stable.
Düsseldorf police said they were investigating "in every direction," but that they had no current leads to the motive.
Al Jazeera
An exclusive Al Jazeera documentary has uncovered evidence of the involvement of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain in supporting a foiled coup attempt to overthrow the Qatari government in 1996.
Airing for the first time on Sunday, the first episode of the investigative documentary incorporates interviews with leaders of the coup attempt who give testimony of the role of these countries played in plotting the overthrow. It also brings to light documents belonging to Saudi intelligence and the Saudi monarch about the plot.
The failed coup, dubbed "Operation Abu Ali", took place during the month of Ramadan on February 14, 1996, one year after the former Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani assumed the throne.
Reuters
Former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, who was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain, was critically ill on Monday after exposure to unidentified substance in Britain, a source close to the investigation told Reuters.
Skripal, once a colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence, was convicted in Russian of betraying agents to British intelligence before he was later swapped as part of a Cold War style spy swap in Vienna in 2010.
Police said two people had been found unconscious on a bench on Sunday in the city of Salisbury. They were being treated for“suspected exposure to an unknown substance” and they remained critically ill, police said.
It was unclear what the substance was.
ABC News
More than a dozen police wearing bulletproof vests entered the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Panama on Monday morning and evicted the Trump Organization’s staff, a move that comes after weeks of simmering tensions over control of the property.
The Trump Organization manages the hotel in the 70-story tower overlooking the Punta Pacifica Peninsula and the new majority owner had gone to court in the U.S. and Panama to evict the company run by President Donald Trump’s sons. There were scuffles as police arrived to carry out the eviction, and Panamanian court officials were present.
“I am the owner,” said Orestes Fintiklis, who last year obtained control over more than 200 units in the tower, as police and Trump employees pushed and shoved one another. “Love and peace!”
Washington Post
BETTYHILL, Scotland — From his wind-scoured bungalow, Andreas Herfurt overlooks the village cemetery, an end place in his line of work. For almost 20 years, the German has served as the town doctor here in the woolly wilds on the north coast of Scotland.
“Those are not just my former patients,” Herfurt said of the graves surrounding the old church. “They are my neighbors and my friends. I have learned the hard way the whole truth about cradle-to-grave medical care.”
Herfurt is the National Health Service’s family physician for 850 souls in a 400-square-mile rural practice. This is a place where the cozy village pub — the Farr Bay Inn, known with a wink as the FBI — has a public room the size of a walk-in closet, the only restaurant option in winter is a fish-and-chips shop, and sheep outnumber humans by thousands to one.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
The Guardian
Researchers studying invasive Burmese pythons in Florida recently came upon something they had never seen before: an 11ft python that had consumed an entire deer that weighed more than the snake itself.
The wildlife biologists stumbled upon the bloated snake in Collier Seminole state park. When they moved it, it began regurgitating a white-tailed deer fawn.
Biologist Ian Bartoszek told the Naples Daily News the fawn weighed 35lb; the snake 31.5lb.
“We were sitting there just trying to process that an animal this size could get its head around what turned out to be a deer,” Bartoszek said. “It’s surreal to see that in the field.”
Bartoszek said it was the largest python-to-prey weight difference he had measured.
Burmese pythons, which can grow to nearly 20ft, were brought to south Florida as pets in the late 1970s. Released into the wild, they have become a problematic invasive species.
The Guardian
When people ask me where I live and I say, “Santa Barbara,” I wait for the inevitable reply, “Paradise,” and the quizzical look that says, how does one live there, rather than vacation. It’s as if I had replied, Disneyland.
People who visit from colder climates have been complaining lately. Last year, when it finally rained after six years of drought, and we were practically on our knees with gratitude, a woman from New England remarked, “I didn’t come here for the rain.” I almost said, “Well, then, why don’t you go back home?” Another pestered a friend: when was her club in Montecito going to open? My friend replied, “I think it’s under eight feet of mud.” She wanted to add, “And they’re still looking for the bodies.”
It’s always been a struggle here to have a normal life, to hold on to reality.
In December, we got a mega-dose of reality when the biggest fire in California’s history burned more than 270,000 acres. Seven cities were evacuated.
When the air was labeled “hazardous” for three days running, we made plans to leave. On Sunday morning, my phone pinged a mandatory evacuation for Montecito. I called a friend who lives there. “Packing,” she said. The fire was less than a mile away. I drove through the brown air and falling ash to a gas station and when I got there, my credit card wouldn’t work; the power was out. I stood in the zombie snow as others lined up behind me. Finally, we drove north to a hotel on the coast, where, with evacuated friends, we hiked and walked together along the shore.
NPR
Some of the worst flooding during this weekend's East Coast storm happened during high tides.
Shoreline tides are getting progressively higher. A soon-to-be-published report obtained by NPR predicts a future where flooding will be a weekly event in some coastal parts of the country.
"The numbers are staggering," says oceanographer William Sweet, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Today's storm will be tomorrow's high tide," he says, referring to how high coastal water rises. "A storm [such as we experienced] along the East Coast of the United States this weekend, that will be a high tide at some point in the future, whether that's two or three decades or eight decades, we'll see, but it's coming.”
NPR
When Landon Morris was diagnosed with hemophilia shortly after birth, his mother, Jessica Morris, was devastated. "It was like having your dreams — all the dreams you imagined for your child — just kind of disappear," she recalled.
Hemophilia, a rare bleeding disorder caused by a gene mutation that prevents blood from clotting properly, is typically passed from mother to son. Morris' grandfather had it, and she remembered hearing how painful it was. "It was almost like he was bubble-wrapped," she said. "He was coddled, because his mom didn't want him to get hurt."
But Landon's life turned out to be much different than she expected.
"He's wild. He's probably sometimes the roughest of them all," she said, as she watched the 6-year-old race around a park in Yuba City, Calif., where the family lives. "He leads a totally normal life. He plays T-ball. He'll start soccer in the fall. He runs and jumps and wrestles with his brothers."
NPR
For scientists who monitor the health of the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary, simply watching grass grow underwater can be very, very exciting.
The floor of the Chesapeake Bay off Solomon's Island "had no grass since 1972," says Robert Orth, a marine scientist at the College of William & Mary, and there's a undertone of amazement in his voice. "It was just last year, for the first time, we saw small patches of grass appear in front of the lab. Truly remarkable."
"We have seen the development of [seagrass] beds the last few years where we've never seen them before," Orth continues. "So the plants are telling us that the conditions are improving."
This week, Orth and a dozen other scientists published results from years of monitoring seagrass in the Chesapeake. And the news is good. The area covered by beds of seagrass has expanded dramatically over the past 30 years.
NPR
A major medical association today suggested that doctors who treat people with Type 2 diabetes can set less aggressive blood sugar targets. But medical groups that specialize in diabetes sharply disagree.
Half a dozen medical groups have looked carefully at the best treatment guidelines for the 29 million Americans who have Type 2 diabetes and have come up with somewhat differing guidelines.
The American College of Physicians has reviewed those guidelines to provide its own recommendations, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It has decided that less stringent goals are appropriate for the key blood sugar test, called the A1C.
"There are harms associated with overzealous treatment or inappropriate treatment focused on A1C targets," says Dr. Jack Ende, president of the ACP. "And for that reason, this is not the kind of situation where the college could just sit back and ignore things.”
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
Deutsche Welle
Why is everyone suddenly talking about the "inclusion rider"? Upon accepting her best actress Oscar, Frances McDormand reminded the assembled actors of their power — and popularized a little-known concept.
“I have two words for you: inclusion rider," Frances McDormand said, before leaving the stage clutching her Best Actress Academy Award on Sunday night.
Her acceptance speech for the Oscar, which she won for her role in the film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," was a rousing one. She called for all the female award nominees in the audience to rise to their feet and said: "Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed."
"Don't talk to us about it at the parties tonight," she continued. "Invite us into your office in a couple days — or you can come to ours, whatever suits you best — and we'll tell you all about them."
The speech went down a storm. But those last two words — "inclusion rider" — had many people reaching for their smartphones to Google the unfamiliar phrase.
Agence France Presse
Oscar-winner Frances McDormand had her statuette stolen at a post-show party by a man who allegedly snatched it from her table before he was arrested, police and witnesses said on Monday.
McDormand, 60, won best actress at Sunday's awards for her role as a rage-filled mother seeking justice for her murdered daughter in Martin McDonagh's "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."
"Security at the Governors Ball are looking for this guy, who grabbed Frances McDormand's Oscar and ran out with it," said New York Times writer Cara Buckley, who was at the event and live-tweeted the drama.
She said a photographer working for celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck -- who was providing the catering -- stopped the man and seized the Oscar, before the thief disappeared back into the ball.
NPR
Writer Sherman Alexie last week issued a statement admitting he "has harmed" others, after rumors and allegations began to circulate about sexual harassment. Without providing details, Alexie said "there are women telling the truth," and apologized to the people he has hurt. Now, some of those women have come forward to speak to NPR about their experiences with him.
Alexie may not be a household name, but he is one of the country's best known Native American poets and writers, with a charismatic personality and a large following. He won the National Book Award in 2007 for his young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and wrote the screenplay for the film Smoke Signals, based on one of his stories. So the news about him has rocked the worlds of both Native American and children's literature.
DOCTOR RJ
From Twitter