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.
Chicago Tribune: She went to the ER for a rape exam. Her nurse didn't know how to do one. By Allison Brown
When she woke up, she was naked in a stranger’s apartment. Her body numb, she didn’t know how she’d gotten there, but she knew enough to feel fear.
Kaite O’Brien realized she wasn’t having a nightmare, but waking up into one. She feared she had been assaulted.
In a Chicago emergency room that morning in 2009, her attending nurse was kind, she recalled, but clearly nervous as she opened the evidence collection box known as a rape kit.
“It’s a little weird to hear, ‘Oh this is the first time that I’m doing this,’” said O’Brien, 34. “It makes you feel very unimportant. Like what had happened to me wasn't a big deal, so it doesn't require someone who really knows what they’re doing?”
O’Brien’s experience in the emergency room isn't unusual.
There are more than 196,000 registered nurses in Illinois. Only 32 nurses in the state are certified by the International Association of Forensic Nurses to work with adult sexual assault patients. Twelve of these sexual assault nurse examiners, known as SANE or forensic nurses, are certified to treat children.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Judge denies delay to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in calling two special elections by Patrick Marley
MADISON - For the second time in less than a week, a Dane County judge Tuesday told Gov. Scott Walker he must quickly order special elections to fill two legislative seats that have been vacant since December.
Under the orders, Walker has until Thursday to call the special elections, which would likely be held in June.
The governor and his fellow Republicans who control the Legislature are seeking to approve legislation next week that could cancel the need for special elections and give Walker broader powers to determine when to allow voters to fill vacancies in the Legislature.
Circuit Judge Richard Niess noted the legislation to avoid the elections is slated to be taken up without voters from those districts having representation in the Senate and Assembly.
"They have no say in that bill at all," Niess said.
In a late-night filing Monday, Walker asked the court to put off for a week the requirement that he call the special elections so the bill could get through the Legislature. Niess turned down the request.
Boston Globe: State Police will pay Troop F directly by Matt Stout and Matt Rocheleau
State Police troopers who patrol Logan International Airport, the Seaport, and other Massachusetts Port Authority properties will now be paid directly by the beleaguered law enforcement agency under a newly hatched agreement spurred by officials’ failure to disclose years of payroll records for the unit.
The deal, announced Tuesday after officials from both agencies huddled in a closed-door meeting, comes on the heels of a Globe report showing that neither the State Police nor Massport had publicly filed information on payouts for Troop F with the state comptroller since 2010.
The revelation sparked blistering criticism from lawmakers and Governor Charlie Baker, who charged that the lack of disclosure was “clearly deliberate,” and it highlighted the unusual pay structure for the 140-trooper division.
Miami Herald: Judge orders Gov. Scott, Cabinet to create system to restore felons’ voting rights by Steve Bousquet
TALLAHASSEE- A judge on Tuesday ordered Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet to dismantle Florida’s “fatally flawed” system of arbitrarily restoring voting rights to felons and to replace it by April 26.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee issued a permanent injunction in support of the Fair Elections Legal Network, which sued the state a year ago. The group successfully challenged the constitutionality of the state’s 150-year-old voting rights restoration process for felons in the nation’s third-largest state.
“This is a victory for the principle that the right to vote cannot be subjected to officials’ gut instincts and whims,” said Jon Sherman, senior counsel for the nonprofit voting rights group. “We are also heartened that the court prevented Florida from following through on its threat to be the only state in the nation with an irrevocable lifetime ban on voting for all former felons — what the court called ‘the ultimate arbitrary act.’ ”
A spokesman for Scott issued a statement that defended the current system.
SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith acknowledged Tuesday that federal immigration agents were “mistakenly” allowed to interview jail inmates earlier this month in violation of the county’s sanctuary policies, around the same time a similar headline-grabbing incident occurred in San Francisco.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were let inside the Main Jail in San Jose and Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas on March 7 and 8, the Sheriff’s Office said. They interviewed four inmates, but did not detain anyone.
It was unclear why the inmates were selected and contacted, but federal authorities described the interviews as a routine part of the Criminal Alien Program that targets undocumented residents with criminal records.
The entry revelation, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, raised the hackles of immigration advocates and prompted contrition from Smith who described it as an oversight, rather than a rogue move by jail staff upset with the county’s stance against direct cooperation with ICE.
“The County of Santa Clara has a policy of not cooperating with ICE operations,” Smith said in a statement. “The Sheriff’s Office does not accept ICE holds and has a longstanding policy of not allowing ICE agents access to our custody facilities. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago staff mistakenly permitted ICE entrance into our jail. Inmates were interviewed, but none were detained by ICE.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune: Segregation and inequality persist among Minnesotans with disabilities, study says by Chris Serres
Nineteen years after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened the doors to integration, thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities continue to live and work in segregated settings that keep them in poverty and limit their daily autonomy.
These are among the principal findings of the state’s first comprehensive survey examining the quality of life of nearly 50,000 Minnesotans with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities who spend most of their time in settings such as group homes, nursing facilities and cloistered workplaces known as sheltered workshops.
The survey, released this week, also found wide earnings gaps for Minnesotans with disabilities. People who labor in sheltered workshops and day training programs earned just $3.30 to $3.50 an hour, on average — less than half the earnings of those who worked in more-integrated settings in the community.
People in sheltered workshops were also more isolated socially, mostly limiting their daily interactions to other individuals with disabilities, the survey found.
Washington Post: Democrats did ‘duty’ in Md. redistricting. Now the Supreme Court will evaluate. By Robert Barnes
Maryland Democratic leaders set out in 2011 to redraw the state’s congressional districts to boost the likelihood that the party’s 6-to-2 edge in the delegation became 7 to 1, the state’s Democratic former governor Martin O’Malley recalled last year. It was nothing personal.
“I came to really like and respect and in many ways admire” the Democrats’ unlucky target, Republican Roscoe G. Bartlett, who had represented Maryland’s 6th Congressional District since 1993, O’Malley said.
But business is business, and this business was politics.
Hundreds of thousands of voters were shifted, Republicans became a distinct minority in the 6th District, and Bartlett, who had been reelected in 2010 by a 28-percentage-point margin, lost to a Democrat in 2012 by 21 points.
“As the elected governor, I did my duty within the metes and bounds” of Maryland law that set up redistricting as a partisan exercise, O’Malley said last spring in a deposition. He added that if the reconfigured district “would be more likely to elect a Democrat than a Republican, yes, this was clearly my intent.”
Buzzfeed: Trump’s Gun Laws Strengthen The Background Check Registry But Also Limit Mental Health Reporting by Paul McLeod
Congress’s main response to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting was to strengthen the national background check registry, but a bill passed last year prevents tens of thousands of people with serious mental illnesses from being added to the registry.
The result is that the only two significant pieces of gun control legislation signed into law by President Trump seem to pull in different directions — one requires federal agencies to report data to the registry, while the other bans the Social Security Administration from reporting certain people with serious mental illnesses to the same registry.
Last week Congress passed the “Fix NICS” bill as part of a massive spending package, and after briefly threatening to block it, Trump signed it into law. Fix NICS is intended to put pressure on federal agencies to contribute data to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS.
But the Social Security Administration is exempted from this law, and is not able to report its list of about 75,000 people with mental disorders who were deemed by a court to be dangerous or in need of a legal guardian to handle their affairs.
Former president Obama directed SSA to share this list with the background check registry in 2016.
The Atlantic: The Problems at Michigan State Went Far Beyond Larry Nassar by Alia Wong
A former Michigan State University dean—and the former supervisor to the serial sexual abuser Larry Nassar—is now facing his own set of sexual-harassment accusations. William Strampel, who served as dean of the university’s College of Osteopathic Medicine until December 2017, allegedly sexually harassed four MSU students and stored pornography on his university-issued computer, according to a court affidavit. Strampel, who stepped down as dean citing “medical reasons,” was arrested Monday night on four charges including criminal sexual conduct and willful neglect of duty.
The latter charge focuses on Strampel’s obligations as a public-university administrator who oversaw Nassar and allowed him to continue seeing patients even while he was the subject of a Title IX investigation into accusations that he had assaulted a female student. Nassar, the former MSU sports doctor, was in January sentenced to up to 275 years in prison for molesting dozens of young female athletes over his decades-long career. Strampel had been named as a defendant in earlier civil lawsuits against MSU contending the university failed to protect Nassar’s victims. Strampel, who was arraigned by video on Tuesday, is denying the charges, according to news reports.
The new revelations help explain how sexual harassment can fester at higher-education institutions like MSU. Rarely do acts of sexual assault happen in isolation; they proliferate, as The Atlantic contributing writer Marianne Cooper has pointed out, in part because such institutions tend to be “male dominated, super hierarchical, and forgiving when it comes to bad behavior.” To have one harasser in charge of another is a particularly extreme version of this dynamic, practically guaranteeing that harassment will last.
Mother Jones: California AG Launches Investigation Into Stephon Clark Shooting by Brandon E. Patterson
The California state Department of Justice will open an independent investigation into the fatal police shooting of 23-year-old Stephon Clark, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Sacramento’s police chief jointly announced on Tuesday. The decision was made at the request of the Sacramento Police Department, and comes amid growing national outrage over the killing of Clark, who was shot in his grandparent’s backyard after police apparently mistook his cell phone for a gun. Becerra’s office will also conduct a review of the Sacramento Police Department’s use of force policy.
Clark, a father of two, was shot on March 18, after two Sacramento police officers responded to a call about a man breaking into cars in a residential neighborhood. The Sacramento Police Department has since released videos of the shooting from two separate police body cameras. The videos show officers encountering Clark on the side of a house after airborne Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies identified Clark as the suspect. The house was later determined to be the home Clark shared with his grandparents and several siblings.
Clark is difficult to make out in the video, but an officer can be heard ordering Clark to show his hands, and then rushing to the back of the house, presumably in pursuit of Clark. The officer orders Clark to show his hands a second and third time in quick succession and then a flurry of bullets is heard after the officer says that Clark had a gun. Police officials have said that no gun was found at the scene, and that Clark was holding a cell phone when he was shot.
Reuters: Exclusive: Spurned by top lawyers, Trump's defense elevates Washington outsider by Karen Freifeld
Reuters - A little-known former prosecutor with a doctorate in medieval history will play a central role on U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal team, as many top-tier lawyers shy away from representing him in a probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
Andrew Ekonomou, 69, is one of a handful of lawyers assisting Jay Sekulow, the main attorney representing Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Sekulow told Reuters on Tuesday that after the departure of Washington attorney John Dowd from Trump’s personal legal team last week, Ekonomou will assume a more prominent role.
Ekonomou said he has been working with Sekulow on the Mueller probe since June.
The elevation comes at a crucial time in the Mueller probe, as Trump’s team is negotiating the terms under which the president himself may be interviewed. Sekulow is now the last man standing of a trio of personal lawyers hired last spring to assist Trump on the probe. Combative New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz exited the team last summer.
BBC: Data row: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before MPs
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to appear before MPs is "astonishing", said the committee chairman who invited him to attend.
Damian Collins, the head of a parliamentary inquiry into fake news, urged Mr Zuckerberg to "think again".
Facebook and data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica are at the centre of a row over harvesting personal data.
Mr Zuckerberg has apologised for a "breach of trust", but said he will not appear in front of the inquiry.
He will instead send one of his senior executives, Facebook's chief product officer Chris Cox, who will give evidence to MPs in the first week after the Easter parliamentary break.
Mr Collins, the chairman of the Department for Culture Media and Sport select committee, said: "Given the extraordinary evidence that we've heard so far today... it is absolutely astonishing that Mark Zuckerberg is not prepared to submit himself to questioning.
Guardian: Kim Jong-un paid 'unofficial' visit to Beijing, Chinese state media confirms by Lily Kuo
China has confirmed that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited Beijing, where he met Chinese president Xi Jinping and pledged his commitment to denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
Confirming several reports over the last two days, Xinhua state news agency said that Kim had been in China on an “unofficial visit” from Sunday to Wednesday.
According to Xinhua, Kim told Xi that the “situation on the Korean peninsula” is “starting to get better,” noting his country had made efforts to “ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks.”
“It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearisation on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il-sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong-il,” he said, according to Xinhua.
DW: Buddhists fan flames of Islamophobia in Southeast Asia by Rodion Ebbighausen
Sri Lanka was in a state of emergency for almost two weeks in response to days of clashes that erupted around the country after a Buddhist was attacked and seriously injured by four Muslims near the popular tourist town of Kandy. Radical Buddhists, including the nationalist organization of monks known as Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Force), took to social media to mobilize supporters.
Their messaging included conspiracies that Muslims were lacing food and clothing with contraceptives to eradicate Buddhists. A number of mosques, homes and Muslim businesses were destroyed during the clashes, in which two people were killed. As a result, the government imposed a curfew and blocked social media for 12 days.
Myanmar, too, has been the scene of repeated violence against Muslims since 2012. Although a number of Muslim groups have been targeted, the Muslim-minority Rohingya community has been most severely affected. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been forced to flee Myanmar since 2017. Radical Buddhist monks have played a key role here, too.
BBC: Stephen Hawking's final interview: A beautiful Universe by Pallab Ghosh
Last October I invited Prof Stephen Hawking to comment on the detection of gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. It turned out to be his final broadcast interview.
The collision was a really big story for many reasons, not least because within minutes of the detection the world's telescopes were trained on what was an incredible cosmic event.
This meant that as well as detecting the ripples in space-time from the merger, astronomers could see also for the first time what happens when two incredibly massive objects come together in a process that may be the only way of creating gold and platinum in the Universe.
It was definitely one for Prof Hawking to explain.
In recent years, he made comments about climate change, space travel and artificial intelligence. His interviews always captivated audiences. I was lucky enough to have interviewed him many times and for me he was at his most enthralling when he was on 'home turf' - talking about the physics he so loved and bending our minds with the implications of new discoveries. And I was so touched and honoured to hear from his staff that he had always enjoyed our encounters.
Everyone have a great evening!