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 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: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lays out 100-day ethics agenda: ‘Change is necessary’ by Gregory Pratt and Lisa Donovan
A day before Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was set to preside over her first City Council meeting, the former federal prosecutor on Tuesday again took aim at curbing aldermanic power and promised to push long-stalled ethics reforms.
Lightfoot said her administration would push for reforms to prevent officials from personally profiting off their elected positions, strengthen the city’s inspector general’s office and raise penalties for ethics violations, among other measures.
“Make no mistake about it: Change is hard, but change is necessary,” Lightfoot said during a wide-ranging speech before the City Club of Chicago.
Referring to a moment in her inaugural address last Monday, when she turned to the newly sworn-in aldermen and urged them toward reform, Lightfoot said, “I turned to the gathered City Council members a week ago because I felt like they needed to see that people in this city expect us to put the public first.”
Lightfoot also emphasized the need to reduce Chicago’s gun violence, fix the city’s fines and fees programs, which she said hurt the city’s poor families, increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 and pass so-called “fair workweek” legislation that tightens rules around workplace scheduling — two measures that the business community has heavily opposed.
The Oregonian: Portland high school students walk out, say they’re fed up with lackluster responses to racist incidents by Eder Campuzano
Synceire Bivens just wanted the world to know what happened.
In late April, a girl at Wilson High School yelled the n-word at a group of black boys, and video of the incident began circulating on Snapchat. The footage started fights, eventually putting the school on lockdown as police heard another brawl may be brewing.
Administrators issued a statement, saying the lockout was a “precautionary measure” made necessary by a “potential threat by a student.”
“They didn’t say anything about the n-word,” Bivens, a sophomore and president of the school’s Black Student Union, said. “Instead, a lot of parents only learned about it when they read it in The Oregonian.”
So on Friday, Bivens and at least 100 other students walked out of class and rallied in the cafeteria to demand action. They want administrators to begin forthrightly describing incidents and drop vague statements about “precautionary measures” and “potential threats.”
The Post and Courier: Charleston too hot for horses amid heat wave, earliest 100-degree days on record by David Slade
You know it’s really hot in Charleston when carriage horses are ordered off the streets, and that happened for the third day in a row Tuesday as a record-breaking southern heat wave continued.
In 2018, the horses and mules that pull tourist carriages around Charleston were ordered to stop operations only once, for less than an hour. It takes four consecutive temperature readings of 95 degrees or more to halt the tours.
“I have not seen a spike like it did today from 94 (degrees) to 97 a few minutes later,” said Dan Riccio, who enforces the rules as director of Charleston’s Department of Livability and Tourism.
“It was getting pretty dangerous and unpredictable,” he said.
Thermometers hit triple digits at the Charleston and Savannah airports for three consecutive days — something that hasn’t happened since 2011. Another 100-degree day at the Charleston airport would break a 1986 record, and it’s not yet June.
Des Moines Register: Steve King says all cultures do not contribute equally, to claim otherwise is to devalue the 'founding fathers' by Robin Opsahl
At a Webster County town hall on Tuesday, Rep. Steve King said presuming all cultures are equal devalues the 'founding fathers,' and tangled with an event attendee who said King discriminated against Mexican and non-white Americans.
The Kiron Republican said, as he has before, that he cares about history and Western civilization — not race.
"If we presume that every culture is equal and has an equal amount to contribute to our civilization, then we're devaluing the contributions of the people that laid the foundation for America and that's our founding fathers," King said in Fort Dodge. "It is not about race, it's never been about race. It is about culture."
Christina Russell, a Fort Dodge resident, said that his Facebook posts suggest he represents conservatives rather than all 4th District residents — including those who don't share his views. King responded that many people like his presence on Facebook.
New York Daily News: High school student killed herself after bullies tormented her and school officials turned their backs: lawsuit by Leonard Greene and John Annese
A Bronx high schooler who jumped to her death was relentlessly bullied at school for five months and sexually assaulted on the day of her death — and her school administrators repeatedly ignored her cries for help and never told her mom and dad about her torment, a lawsuit by her parents alleges.
School was still in session on Feb. 28, 2018, when Mya Vizcarrondo-Rios’ broken body was found on the ground 34 stories from the rooftop of the apartment building in which she lived.
The ninth-grader still had her backpack on.
Her father, Heriberto Rios, was home at the time, certain that his little girl was still in school.
The Nation: I Can’t Sleep Through All the Honking, and I’m Beeping Mad by Liza Featherstone
Dear Liza,
My husband and I moved into a new rental home on the outskirts of Philadelphia about eight months ago. Everything is great, except for one issue on our street. Every weekday morning before 6, one of my neighbors gets picked up by a driver who honks to announce their arrival: BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEEP!
I am trying not to “Becky” the situation by overreacting, as white people so often do. (I am white, and almost all of my neighbors are black.) I’ve tried ignoring it. We even sleep with a sound machine now, which helps drown out the quieter honks. But I am still woken up two to three times a week. Is there an appropriate way to talk to my neighbor about this?
—Sleepless in the Suburbs
This particular Liza Featherstone advice column is a little dated now but I just read this today and thought that I would include it.
Reuters: British ex-spy will not talk to U.S. prosecutor examining Trump probe origins: source by Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former British spy who produced a dossier describing alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia will not cooperate with a prosecutor assigned by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review how the investigations of Trump and his 2016 election campaign began, a source with knowledge of the situation said.
Christopher Steele, a former Russia expert for the British spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham, named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations into Trump and his campaign team, said the source close to Steele’s London-based private investigation firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
Trump has given Barr broad authority to declassify intelligence materials related to the investigations. Last week Trump ordered the heads of U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies to cooperate with Durham.
Steele, who had previously collaborated with the FBI on issues such as corruption in the global soccer organization FIFA, was hired in 2016 by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based private investigations firm working for lawyers representing the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
NBC News: What's fueling the spate of recent tornadoes across the U.S.? By Denise Chow
A series of devastating tornadoes that hit western Ohio late Mondaymarked the 12th consecutive day of such severe storms in the United States, with an average of 27.5 tornadoes occurring each day over that time period. If that seems like a lot, that’s because it is.
Scientists have found that since the 1950s, the annual number of tornado outbreaks has remained roughly the same, but the number of tornadoes per outbreak — or the number of days with multiple tornadoes — is increasing.
James Elsner, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, said that on average, four to five tornadoes typically strike as part of a cluster. But he and his colleagues found that since 1950, the number of days with a cluster of at least 32 tornadoes has more than doubled, while smaller clusters have declined.
“The overall trend is not upwards, but what was surprising and sharply up is the fact that when conditions become favorable for tornadoes, we’re seeing more tornadoes per outbreak,” Elsner, who was the lead author of a 2014 study about this phenomenon, said.
Bloomberg: A Summer From Hell Is Coming to U.S. Airports by Justin Bachman
Summer living is supposed to be easy, according to George Gershwin, but millions of air passengers during this year’s peak travel season may beg to differ thanks to a confluence of events that are making airlines and airports nervous.
The U.S. carriers’ trade group, Airlines for America, estimates that a record257.4 million people will fly from June 1 through the end of August, the tenth consecutive summer increase. Those throngs—totaling on average 2.8 million people each day—will confront two unique challenges: the possible reassignment of hundreds of aviation security personnel to the Mexican border, and the continued worldwide grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max.
Airlines are expected to be robustly profitable during the summer season, a period when heavy demand keeps fares higher and planes fuller than during other parts of the year. But this year, all bets are off.
Regulators are still investigating the
safety of the 737 Max following two crashes over five months that killed a total of 346 people. Three of the four largest U.S. carriers are grappling with how to cover their busy summer schedules with the loss of six dozen Boeing Co. 737
Max aircraft. The lack of those planes—which many airlines purchased to be their new workhorse of the skies—adds further pressure to carriers and customers at a time when the air travel system traditionally operates at full throttle.
Guardian: New Zealand schools hit by 'mega-strike' as 50,000 teachers walk out by Eleanor Ainge Roy
More than 50,000 primary and high school teachers have gone on strike in the biggest industrial action ever seen in New Zealand’s schools.
Since a Labour coalition government took power in late 2017, teachers have held three strikes calling for pay rises, better working conditions and more respect for their profession.
But Wednesday’s one-day strike is the first time primary and high school teachers have united in action, dubbing Wednesday’s protest a “mega-strike”.
The protesters have so far turned down three pay rise offers from the government of 3%, and say they want 15% or more to continue their work. But the government says it has no more money to give.
Khali Oliveira, a primary teacher at Gladstone primary in Auckland, said the strike was a last resort. Oliveira has been a teacher for more than 20 years and said burnout was becoming common-place. If the teachers’ demands were not met she would be forced to quit and work in the private sector.
BBC News: UN staff caught up in Kosovo police anti-smuggling sweep
The UN mission in Kosovo (Unmik) has expressed "great concern" after two of its members were held in a police raid on suspected organised crime gangs.
It said "any harm" to its staff would have serious diplomatic consequences.
The two members were detained on Tuesday in northern Kosovo, an area with mainly ethnic Serbian inhabitants.
They were then taken to hospital "for treatment of injuries", Unmik said. One of the staff members, a Russian national, was later released.
Police director Rashit Qalaj said his force had arrested 19 police officers and nine civilians for offences including smuggling goods, organised crime, bribes and abuse of power.
Seven more were arrested for "preventing police from performing their duties", he said, adding that UN staff were in a vehicle that was being used as part of a "barricade" in the predominantly Serb town of Zubin Potok.
DW: France, Germany spar over EU leadership
A rift between France and Germany was apparent at an informal summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Tuesday, as French President Emmanuel Macron looked certain to protest the replacement of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker with German politician Manfred Weber.
Macron told reporters that he preferred someone who has "experience either in their country or in Europe that allows them to have credibility and savoir faire," an apparent dig at Weber, who has never served in government or an institution as big as the commission.
"The key for me is for the people at the most sensitive positions to share our project and be the most charismatic, creative and competent possible," Macron said, adding that he wants two men and two women to fill the top four EU positions.
"I want to unite. If everyone remains stuck on names as they are, we'll be blocked."
He also said that the bloc needs "renewal" after traditional parties suffered badly in the weekend's EU elections.
AlJazeera: Why Dutee Chand's 'coming out' is more complicated than it seems by Depti Misri
Star Indian sprinter Dutee Chand recently made global headlines for the second time in her competitive career, when she announced to the press that she had found her life mate.
Before that, Dutee was also in the international news in 2014, when she was disqualified from competing in the Commonwealth Games because her testosterone levels were deemed elevated, as per the rules of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). Dutee challenged the IAAF rules on "hyperandrogenism" and succeeded in having them temporarily suspended in 2015. Earlier this month, those rules came freshly to light when the South African runner Caster Semenya's challenge was rejected.
There are many things that make Dutee's announcement a momentous one, arriving not only on the heels of the Semenya ruling but also on the eve of an Indian election that has expectedly brought back a conservative Hindu nationalist government.
The Modi government has been no friend to the queer and trans community, let alone Indian minorities or the poor who form the most vulnerable of India's "LGBTQ" population. At the same time, it has successfully peddled myths of development and modernity to much of the Indian electorate, including some segments of the Hindu queer community.
The Atlantic: The Tragedy of Edmund Morris by Andrew Ferguson
I often think of Edmund Morris, the master biographer who died this weekend at the age of 78, as the man whom Ronald Reagan, the subject of his most famous biography, drove crazy.
Reagan drove a lot of people crazy. Anyone who spent time in the faculty lounges and graduate seminars of the 1980s, as I did, can tell you all about it. You had to see it to believe it, the intensity of it, especially now that Reagan has been declawed into the kindly, unexpectedly shrewd, avuncular master of misdirection that we know from pop biographies and second-rate TV documentaries. Back then, though, the mere mention of his name could send professional eggheads, especially the ideological kind, into a scarlet fury. The dunce! Ignoramus! He’s gonna get us all killed!
The fury was unique for its time, but I suppose we’ve all gotten used to it, after the revulsion most Republicans felt toward Barack Obama, and the revulsion everyone else felt toward Donald Trump.
Reagan didn’t drive Morris crazy in that way, even metaphorically. Before and after his years with Reagan, Morris remained soft-spoken, cerebral, amused—only mildly eccentric. And unlike the Reagan-era eggheads, or the Obama- and Trump-haters of our own day, he didn’t have an ideological bone in his body.
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!