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.
The Guardian
Donald Trump, who last month chided fellow Republicans for being “petrified” of the National Rifle Association (NRA), is under growing pressure after seemingly caving in to the powerful gun lobby group’s demands.
The US president on Sunday backed away from raising the minimum age for gun purchases from 18 to 21, one of several measures he initially supported after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February.
The proposal was notably absent from a modest set of Trump administration plans for school safety released over the weekend, which closely aligned with NRA positions. They include training teachers to carry guns in schools, a fiercely controversial idea already in place in some states.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, insisted on Monday that the president has not abandoned some of the more radical changes but is focused on measures that can get through Congress straight away.
“Right now the president’s primary focus is on pushing through things that we know have broad bipartisan support or things that we can do from an administrative perspective, that we can do immediately,” she said. “But we haven’t let go of some of those other things that we’re going to continue to review and look at.”
US NEWS
The Guardian
Donald Trump’s visit to California will generate a memorable image: the president inspecting prototypes of his planned border wall.
Four years after he first proposed a wall, an idea that helped vault him to the White House, he will on Tuesday finally be able to touch solid concrete on some of the eight barriers, 30ft tall and 30ft wide, arrayed in the desert outside San Diego.
Congress may yet stymie construction of a wall along the frontier with Mexico but Trump will at least have a photo-op to accompany vows to deter and expel undocumented migrants, rhetoric which electrifies his base across the United States.
California’s Republican leaders, however, may view this political theatre very differently: as the equivalent of a man sawing a tree branch on which they – and he – all sit.
Bashing immigrants elicits nativist GOP cheers outside the state but in California it could doom GOP candidates in November’s midterm elections – and hand Congress to the Democrats.
“He’s gaining cheap applause outside California at the cost of real seats in California. It’s not a good trade,” said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna University political scientist and former GOP congressional aide.
The Guardian
Donald Trump, Jr. has a previously undisclosed business relationship with a longtime hunting buddy who helped raise millions of dollars for his father’s 2016 campaign and has had special access to top US officials since the election, records show.
The president’s eldest son and Texas hedge fund manager Gentry Beach have been involved in business deals since the mid-2000s and recently formed a company despite claims by both men that they were just friends, according to previously unreported court records and other documents.
Beach last year met top National Security Council officials to push a plan that would curb US sanctions in Venezuela and open up business for US companies in the oil-rich nation.
Ethics experts questioned whether Beach’s access to officials and advocacy for policy changes were made possible by the president’s son’s influence and could also benefit the Trump family.
The Guardian
The pilot of the helicopter that crashed in New York City’s East river, killing five people, has reportedly said a passenger’s bag could have caused the accident.
Richard Vance told investigators a bag may have struck the emergency fuel shutoff button on the Eurocopter AS350, a law enforcement official told CNN.
The Liberty Helicopters aircraft landed in the water at about 7pm. Vance was the sole survivor. In a radio transmission released after the crash, the pilot can be heard saying “Mayday, mayday, mayday” and “East river engine failure”.
Video taken by a bystander showed the red helicopter descending slowly into the water, before listing on to its right-hand side. Vance was able to free himself and was rescued by a tugboat.
Reuters
A 17-year-old boy was killed and a woman injured in a package bomb explosion on Monday at a home in Austin, and police responded to reports of a second blast in the Texas state capital, authorities said.
Austin police said there was no clear motive for the explosion on Monday but they believed it was linked to a March 2 blast in the city that killed a man and both incidents were being investigated as homicides. The two homes that received the packages belonged to African-Americans, the police said.
“We cannot rule out that hate crime is at the core of this but we are not saying that that is the cause,” Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told a news conference.
Austin police tweeted on Monday that they were responding to another reported explosion in the Montopolis area of the city.
Reuters
President Donald Trump said on Monday he put off action on raising the minimum age for gun purchases, one of several measures he had backed after the latest U.S. school shooting but skirted after heavy opposition from gun rights groups.
The proposal to raise the minimum age for buying guns from 18 to 21 was not part of a modest set of Trump administration school safety plans announced on Sunday and which were closely aligned with National Rifle Association (NRA) positions.
The administration plan also included training teachers to carry guns in schools, an idea already in place in some states and backed by the powerful gun lobby.
“On 18 to 21 Age Limits, watching court cases and rulings before acting. States are making this decision. Things are moving rapidly on this, but not much political support (to put it mildly),” Trump wrote on Twitter.
BBC
The Russian president faces a backlash after suggesting minority groups, including Jews, may be responsible for meddling in the 2016 US election.
Vladimir Putin made the comments during a US TV interview with Megyn Kelly.
US lawmakers and Jewish groups are among those criticising him.
Some are publicly asking US President Donald Trump to push Mr Putin for a clarification on what he meant when questioning whether certain groups were actually Russian.
Mr Putin was being asked during the NBC interview about charges of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election after 13 nationals were charged by the US special counsel's office last month.
"I couldn't care less because they do not represent the government, I could not care less. They do not represent the interests of the Russian state," Mr Putin said.
Ed. note: I’m sure the final report will mention that Russian interference in 2016 was all Hillary Clinton’s fault.
Vox
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have concluded their year-long investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Their key finding: Neither President Donald Trump nor anyone involved in his campaign colluded with Russia.
“We’ve found no evidence of collusion,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), the leader of the committee’s investigation, told reporters on Monday, adding that there was “perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment at taking meetings,” but nothing that amounted to a coordinated and deliberate effort to work with Russians to win the White House.
“[O]nly Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take these series of inadvertent contacts with each other, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a fiction and turn it into a page-turner spy thriller,” Conaway said.
He also said that while Republicans on the committee agree that Russia did interfere in the 2016 presidential election, they “disagree with the narrative that they were trying to help Trump.”
WORLD NEWS
Bloomberg
In a move that threatens to worsen already tense relations between the Kremlin and the West, Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Russia for poisoning a former spy and his daughter eight days on British soil.
May told Parliament on Monday that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia had been targeted with a “military grade” nerve agent known as “Novichok” that was developed by Russia.
She said gave the Russian government until Wednesday to respond before deciding on retaliatory measures that could range from expulsion of diplomats to further sanctions. Russia wasted little time in responding. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called May’s statement a
“circus act.”
“Should there be no credible response, we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the U.K.,” she said. “And I will come back to this House and set out the full range of measures that we will take in response.”
Agence France Presse
Russia warned the British government Monday it was playing a "dangerous game" that risked harming bilateral ties as Prime Minister Theresa May prepared to update MPs on a spy attack that politicians and the media have linked to Moscow.
May will make a statement to the House of Commons after chairing a meeting of her national security council to discuss the nerve agent poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
Senior politicians have pointed the finger at Russia for trying to kill the 66-year-old Russian, who sold secrets to Britain and later moved here in a 2010 spy swap, prompting repeated denials from Moscow.
The prime minister has declined to cast blame while the investigation runs its course, but there is widespread media speculation that she is now set to name Russia and outline how Britain intends to respond.
"If we get to a position when we are able to attribute this attack then we will do so and the government will deliver an appropriate response," May's spokesman said on Monday, shortly before her statement was confirmed.
Agence France Presse
Syria's regime pressed its relentless offensive on Eastern Ghouta Monday as diplomats at the United Nations pushed for new efforts to end the "bloodbath" in the rebel enclave.
Pounding two towns with new bombardment, government troops advanced in several areas of the besieged enclave, as a monitor reported more than 350,000 now dead in Syria's seven-year civil war.
On another front in the conflict, hundreds were seen fleeing a Turkish-led advance in the northern area of Afrin, where a Kurdish-majority city is also under threat of being besieged.
Syria's civil conflict enters its eighth year this week with fighting in several areas, but the assault on Eastern Ghouta has been one of the most ferocious of the war.
Since February 18, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have retaken nearly 60 percent of the enclave, whittling down rebel territory to three isolated pockets.
Agence France Presse
The EU on Monday said Europe would not waver against trade "bullies" as a row with US President Donald Trump over controversial steel and aluminium tariffs deepened.
The jab from Brussels came after the US tycoon singled out Europe in the surging trade dispute, threatening to tax German cars if the European Union doesn't lower barriers to US products.
European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said that in some places, trade has been blamed "for the pains of globalisation, or they used it as a scapegoat or they think we can live behind walls and borders".
"Recently we have seen how it is used as a weapon to threaten and intimidate us. But we are not afraid, we will stand up to the bullies," she told a trade conference in Brussels.
Deutsche Welle
Germany's two biggest political parties — the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), together with the Bavarian sister part the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) — agreed on a 177-page paper that lays out the policies the new government has committed to pursuing over the next four years in power.
The agreement, which was finalized more than five months after September elections, represented an important victory for Angela Merkel, who is expected to serve her fourth and final term as chancellor at the helm of another "grand coalition." The SPD rank-and-file voted in favor of the deal in early March, the last major hurdle for forming the government.
Deutsche Welle
Chancellor Angela Merkel wants a renewed push for peace in Ukraine as conflicting sides fail to live up to the Minsk agreements. The optimistic tone comes as the EU renewed sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that she hoped to relaunch peace talks over Ukraine following Sunday's Russian election, which Vladimir Putin is expected to win.
"I am confident that after the election in Russia next Sunday we can have a fresh impetus and we can see how we can achieve qualitative progress in the Minsk process," Merkel told reporters Monday.
Read more: Putin's certain victory: What you need to know about the Russian presidential election
The 2015 Minsk peace accords – brokered between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany – have failed to end fighting in eastern Ukraine that has killed 10,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Deutsche Welle
A more aggressive and drug-resistant HIV subtype is behind skyrocketing HIV infection rates in the Philippines. Epidemiologist Edsel Salvana tells DW that the new strain is threatening to spark a new epidemic.
Remarkable advancement in the prevention, management and treatment of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has led to a global decline in HIV as well as new infection rates. The Philippines, however, remains an outlier.
The country has the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the Asia-Pacific region.
The total number of new HIV infections in the Philippines increased by 140 percent from 2010 to 2016, according to the Philippine Department of Health (DOH) and UNAIDS, the United Nations agency on HIV and AIDS.
The Guardian (3/11/2018)
New York City is the beating heart of global finance, a cultural behemoth, and home to more than 8.5 million people who create an enormous amount of poo. Some of this expelled waste has been causing a major stink 900 miles away, in Alabama.
Residents in and near Birmingham have been in uproar over sewage that is transported by train and truck from New York and New Jersey to be dumped in the southern state.
The treated sewage – euphemistically known in the industry as “biosolids” – has plagued residents with a terrible stench, flies and concerns that spilled sludge has leaked into waterways.
“On a hot day, the odor and flies are horrific,” said Charles Nix, mayor of West Jefferson, a town near the landfill that accepts the waste. “It’s better in winter time but if the wind blows in the wrong direction you get the smell. It’s like dead, rotting animals.
“If you get close to the trucks the liquid would blow off on to your windshield and fill your car with a stink. It spilled out on to the road. Some people were saying they just wanted to move away, they were so miserable.”
Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - Tesla’s shift to a magnetic motor using neodymium in its Model 3 Long Range car adds to pressure on already strained supplies of a rare earth metal that had for years been shunned because of an export ban by top producer China.
Efforts by governments around the world to cut noxious emissions produced by fossil fuel-powered cars is driving demand for electric vehicles and the metals used to make them, such as lithium and cobalt which are key ingredients for batteries.
Now the spotlight is on neodymium. Several auto makers already use permanent magnet motors that rely on the metal because they are generally lighter, stronger and more efficient than induction motors that are based on copper coils.
But it is the switch to neodymium by Tesla, an auto maker that has staked its future solely on the electric vehicle, that is showing the way the industry is moving and the direction of demand for the rare earth metal.
C/NET
Elon Musk wants to save humanity.
That is, in part, what his quest to establish bases on the moon and Mars is all about.
"There's likely to be another dark age," he told the crowd Sunday at the South By Southwest festival. Particularly if there's another world war in our future, he said, we need to make sure "there's enough of a seed of human civilization to bring human civilization back."
While Musk was quick to clarify that he's not exactly making a prediction, he does feel we need to get going before World War III rolls around.
This was just some of the ground Musk covered with moderator Jonathan Nolan, co-creator of HBO's "Westworld." Musk,the founder of multiple companies including SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring Company, is tackling some of the biggest challenges and technological advances of the modern age, like space travel and autonomous vehicles.
NPR
Eventually it happens to everyone. As we age, even if we're healthy, the heart becomes less flexible, more stiff and just isn't as efficient in processing oxygen as it used to be. In most people the first signs show up in the 50s or early 60s. And among people who don't exercise, the underlying changes can start even sooner.
"The heart gets smaller — stiffer," says Dr. Ben Levine, a sports cardiologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, in Dallas.
Think of the heart muscle as a rubber band, Levine says. In the beginning, the rubber band is flexible and pliable. But put it in a drawer for 20 years and it will emerge dry and brittle.
"That's what happens to the heart and blood vessels," he says. And down the road, that sort of stiffness can get worse, he notes, leading to the breathlessness and other symptoms of heart failure, an inability of the heart to effectively pump blood to the lungs or throughout the body.
NPR
While the orcas of Puget Sound are sliding toward extinction, orcas farther north have been expanding their numbers. Their burgeoning hunger for big fish may be causing the killer whales' main prey, chinook salmon, to shrink up and down the West Coast.
Chinook salmon are also known as kings: the biggest of all salmon. They used to grow so enormous that it's hard now to believe the old photos in which fishermen stand next to chinooks almost as tall as they are, sometimes weighing 100 pounds or more.
"This has been a season of unusually large fish, and many weighing from 60 to 70 pounds have been taken," The Oregonian reported in 1895.
Now, more than a century later, "it's not impossible that we see individuals of that size today, but it's much, much rarer," University of Washington research scientist Jan Ohlberger says.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Guardian
Will anyone stop Villanova? Who is this year’s Cinderella team? Our writers break down the bracket for the NCAA tournament?
South regional
Favorite
Virginia. The Cavaliers have been the nation’s best team for the last two months and play ferocious defense. But as good as they’ve been – and they have been verygood – history is not on their side. Despite several outstanding regular seasons, they never seem to have enough to make the Final Four. Will this one be different? LC
Virginia. The Cavaliers are the No1 overall seed in the tournament for good reason. They’re 31-2, just won the ACC regular season and tournament, and boast the nation’s best defense – allowing just 53.4 points per game. Their issue in tournaments past has been scoring enough to beat highly talented teams. Last year’s 39-point output in a second-round loss to Florida remains an all-time horror show of offensive basketball. DG
BBC
Country star Tim McGraw collapsed on stage during a performance in Dublin on Sunday night.
The singer had just performed his hit single Humble and Kind when he sat down near his keyboard player, then slumped to his knees as he walked off stage.
McGraw's wife, singer Faith Hill, later came out to tell the audience he could not continue with the performance.
"He's been super dehydrated," she said. "I apologise, but I made the decision that he cannot come back out on stage."
…
Recently, McGraw made headlines as being one of the few mainstream country artists to voice support for gun control.
On 3 March, he praised the US sporting goods store Dick's, after it raised the minimum age for anyone buying guns or ammunition to 21 years.
"Thank you @Dicks for taking a stand to promote a meaningful discussion for the safety of our kids!" McGraw wrote on Twitter, tagging other major retailers including Walmart, Kroger and LL Bean.
Those outlets later followed Dick's lead.