Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community featureon 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.
NPR
First lady Melania Trump's Slovenian-born parents were sworn in as U.S. citizens Thursday, benefiting from a path to citizenship known as family-based immigration that the president and others have derisively dubbed "chain migration."
Viktor and Amalija Knavs, both in their 70s, attended a private swearing-in ceremony in Manhattan, according to their lawyer, Michael Wildes, who said the couple had "travailed a wonderful journey" to become Americans.
"This golden experiment, these doors that are in America, remain hinged open to beautiful people as they have today," Wildes said after the ceremony, according to The Associated Press.
The lawyer acknowledged that the Knavses had obtained citizenship via the very pathway that their son-in-law, the president, has so publicly denounced. Wildes called chain migration a "dirtier" way of characterizing "a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification," according to The New York Times
US NEWS
The Guardian
Donald Trump has expressed his displeasure after player demonstrations took place during the national anthem in the first round of NFL preseason games on Thursday night.
“The NFL players are at it again – taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem,” the US president tweeted on Friday morning. “Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their ‘outrage’ at something that most of them are unable to define. They make a fortune doing what they love......”
While players from several teams protested, only two – Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson of the Miami Dolphins – knelt during the anthem. Their teammate Robert Quinn stood for the anthem before the game with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers but raised his right fist as it played. In Philadelphia, Malcolm Jenkins and De’Vante Bausby raised their fists during the anthem, and the defensive end Chris Long placed his arm around Jenkins’s shoulder. Their fellow Eagles player Michael Bennett, who has been vocal on social issues, walked out of the tunnel during the anthem. Elsewhere, several players from the Seattle Seahawks and the Jacksonville Jaguars stayed in the locker room while the Star-Spangled Banner played before their games.
The Guardian
Donald Trump is a “racist” who has used the “N-word” repeatedly, Omarosa Manigault Newman, once the most prominent African American in the White House, claims in a searing memoir.
The future US president was caught on mic uttering the taboo racial slur “multiple times” during the making of his reality TV show The Apprentice and there is a tape to prove it, according to Manigault Newman, citing three unnamed sources.
Trump has been haunted from around the time of his election in 2016 by allegations that outtakes from the reality TV show exist in which he is heard saying the N-word and using other offensive language.
Reuters
Joan Fenton knows she will not make much money at her Charlottesville gift shop this weekend, when the downtown district will be virtually locked down for the anniversary of last year’s deadly white nationalist rally. But like many other owners, she will be open anyway.
“They want to be open in solidarity with the community,” Fenton said. “They feel that not being here is giving in to fear and terror.”
Officials in Charlottesville have vowed a massive police presence – with some 1,000 personnel assigned – to deter any violence.
The “Unite the Right” rally last August, called to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, turned the picturesque Virginia college town into a chaotic scene of street brawls, and one woman was killed when an Ohio man rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters.
Reuters
Americans view Russia as a greater threat than Iran, Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls showed, as the Trump administration this week reintroduced sanctions on Tehran and slapped new ones on Moscow.
[...][...]
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults said in a poll conducted in July 2018 that Iran poses a "moderate," "serious" or "imminent" threat to the United States. That was down from 75 percent in March 2015, months before the Obama administration signed a nuclear deal lifting sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear program.
Seventy-one percent of Americans said in a similar poll taken in July 2018 that they viewed Russia as a threat to the United States, up from 67 percent in March 2015.
US President Donald Trump has announced higher tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Turkey. The move added pressure to that nation's already troubled economy and came amid a diplomatic row with Washington.
Donald Trump said Friday his administration had doubled steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey, imposing a 20 percent duty on aluminum and a 50 percent levy on steel.
Turkey exported $1.04 billion (€0.91 billion) worth of steel and $60 billion worth of aluminum to the US in 2017, according to the Hurriyet newspaper.
"I have just authorized a doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency slides rapidly downward against our very strong dollar," The US president said on Twitter.
Agence France Presse
Two Palestinians including a medic were killed by Israeli fire on the Gaza border Friday, but away from protests the calm reached after a deadly flare-up between the enclave's rulers Hamas and the Israeli army mainly held.
At least 40 Palestinians were shot by Israeli fire in the protests, Gaza's health ministry said, with volunteer medic Abdullah al-Qatati killed after being hit in the chest east of Rafah in southern Gaza.
A 55-year-old Palestinian, Ali al-Alul, was killed by Israeli fire on the same stretch of the border.
A few thousand protesters had gathered in different locations along the border with Israel, setting tyres ablaze and throwing stones, but there were fewer people demonstrating that in previous weeks, AFP correspondents said.
Agence France Presse
Two police officers were among four people killed Friday in a shooting that sparked panic and a police lockdown in a sleepy town in eastern Canada.
Residents of the Brookside neighborhood of Fredericton, New Brunswick reported waking to the sounds of multiple gunshots.
Witnesses described to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) seeing the barrel of a rifle or shotgun poking out from the window of a low-rise apartment building and firing into a courtyard, while the bodies of two officers lay on the ground nearby.
Heavily-armed police, paramedics and firefighters quickly descended on the scene and a lockdown of the neighborhood was ordered, trapping some early risers in daycare facilities, coffee shops and other businesses.
Agence France Presse
Zimbabwe's MDC opposition party lodged a court bid Friday to overturn the results of presidential elections that it alleges were rigged to ensure victory for Robert Mugabe's successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused the ruling ZANU-PF party and the election commission of ballot fraud in the July 30 vote, Zimbabwe's first poll since the ousting of Mugabe in November.
Mnangagwa's inauguration -- planned for Sunday -- was immediately postponed until the court makes its ruling, which is due within 14 days.
Deutsche Welle
Saudi Arabia will investigate whether one of its airstrikes in Yemen was responsible for the killing of 40 children, state news agency SPA reported on Friday.
An airstrike hit a school bus at a market in Yemen's northern province of Saada on Thursday, killing at least 51 people, including the children. Yemen's Houthi rebels blamed the Saudi-led coalition for the attack, part of a fierce bombing campaign.
"The coalition has a firm commitment to conducting investigations into all incidents about which there are claims of mistakes, or violations of the international law," an unnamed coalition official was quoted as saying by SPA.
The Saudi military had earlier defended the strike as a "legitimate military action" and blamed the Houthis for using children as battlefield cover.
Al Jazeera
The death toll from a devastating 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia's Lombok island has risen to at least 321, according to officials.
In a statement issued on Friday, the country's disaster mitigation agency said that more than 270,000 people had been displaced and 1,033 were hospitalised with injuries due to a series of tremors that struck the island of 3.3 million people in the past two weeks.
Nearly three-quarters of residential structures in North Lombok had been destroyed, Sutopo Nugroho, the agency's spokesperson, said.
On Thursday, a third strong earthquake in two weeks' time hit Lombok, a popular tourist destination.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Al Jazeera
There are winners and losers in the current spell of extreme heat across the continent.
For many people a summer heatwave means a chance to enjoy sunny weather at the beach or in the park.
A lot of people suffer from low levels of Vitamin D, the "sunshine" vitamin. So the fine weather tends to result in an elevated mood in many people, especially as sunshine records have been broken across the continent.
The fine weather may have been good news for sun-worshipers and the seaside holiday trade, but many other aspects of everyday life have been impacted.
Water shortages have begun to hit agricultural output. Poor grazing has forced farmers to bring out fodder saved for the winter months to supplement the meagre grazing available to cattle. Scandinavia has been particularly badly affected. Sweden has strict rules on the importation of animal feed.
Although much of Europe has been exceptionally dry and sunny, there have been some exceptions. Southern Europe, from Iberia through southern Italy to the Balkans and Turkey, has seen twice the average rainfall through the period from May to July.
The Guardian
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel took aim at the administration for rolling back various environmental regulations.
“Maybe the most destructive thing these people are up to involves climate change,” he said. “Not only is it hotter than ever, but levels of carbon dioxide hit new all-time highs last year, we have abnormally warm temperatures around the globe, arctic ice is melting at an unprecedented rate.”
“Last month,” he added, “was the hottest month ever recorded in the state of California.”
“But not only won’t Trump address this, he keeps rolling back regulations that were designed to slow it down,” Kimmel explained, referring to the removal of various Obama-era regulations on asbestos and toxic coal ash. “And this is bigly important, so somebody needs to get through to the president before it’s too late.”
The Guardian
Nestled between a chemical factory and sparkling blue ocean sits a wonderland filled with rowdy goats, sturdy passionfruit plants and tiny chive blossom flowers that when bitten, erupt with garlicky flavor 50 times more potent than their size.
That this farm in Manatí, Puerto Rico, exists at all is a marvel, considering owners Efrén Robles and Angelie Martínez could not enter the property after Hurricane Maria tore through on 20 September. The couple said the hurricane destroyed 80% of the farm’s infrastructure and leveled its production capacity to zero.
“We lost a lot of material things but we created a lot of experiences,” said Robles, who is part of a movement to strengthen Puerto Rico’s agricultural economy after the worst natural disaster in the island’s history.
About 80% of Puerto Rico’s crops were destroyed in the hurricane, according to the island’s agricultural department, driving packs of farmers to retire or leave the island for the mainland. Those who remained, however, saw an opportunity to build from the ground up and, in turn, iron out obstacles within the island’s food economy.
BBC
Two anti-Semitic posts have been deleted from fringe social network Gab after Microsoft, citing the content, threatened to take the site down.
The posts were made by Patrick Little, who says he is running for US president and wants to remove Jewish people from America.
Microsoft hosts Gab on its Azure cloud service.
Gab's founder Andrew Torba said that one of the posts "unquestionably" broke the site's rules.
The BBC has sent a request to Gab for comment.
The social network describes itself as a platform for free speech, but much of the content on the site presents far-right viewpoints, including racist and anti-Semitic posts.
BBC
A neat feature of many modern laptops is the ability to power them up through the USB port. Unlike the rectangular USB ports of old, the newer type - USB-C - can carry enough power to charge your machine.
That’s great news: it means you don’t need to add a separate port just for charging. And when the USB port isn’t being used for power, it can be used for something useful, like plugging in a hard drive, or your phone.
But while you and I may look at that as an improvement, hackers see an opportunity to exploit a new vulnerability.
One researcher, who goes by the name MG, showed me how a Macbook charger could be booby-trapped. Modified in such a way it was possible to hijack a user's computer, without them having any idea it was happening.
It’s the kind of hack that gives security professionals the chills. The ubiquitous white, square chargers for MacBooks are seen in the offices and coffee shops of the world. They are borrowed, lost and replaced on a regular basis.
NPR
A key initiative of the Affordable Care Act was a program designed to help control soaring Medicare costs by encouraging doctors and hospitals to work together to coordinate patients' care. This led to the formation of what are known as accountable care organizations or ACOs.
The program was expected to save the government nearly $5 billion by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
It hasn't come anywhere close.
On Thursday, the Trump administration proposed an overhaul to the program. The move could dramatically scale back the number of participating health providers.
Trump administration officials say ACOs have led to higher Medicare spending.
NPR
The American West appears to be moving east. New research shows the line on the map that divides the North American continent into arid Western regions and humid Eastern regions is shifting, with profound implications for American agriculture.
In western Oklahoma, farmers like Benji White and his wife, Lori, have become ranchers.
The Whites run 550 head on about 5,000 acres at B&L Red Angus, the family's seedstock and commercial ranching outfit near the town of Putnam in western Oklahoma. The Whites used to grow wheat and other grains, but they've stopped farming to expand the ranching business.
"Farming is kind of a one-shot deal," said Benji White. "If you don't get rain, where we're completely dry-land, you lose everything. Crop insurance doesn't really pay for all the expenses.”
Reuters
A California jury on Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a man who alleged the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, caused his cancer and ordered the company to pay $289 million in damages.
The case of school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging glyphosate causes cancer. Monsanto, a unit of Bayer AG following a $62.5 billion acquisition by the German conglomerate, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.