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.
Credit Scores Based On AI and Your Social Media Profile Could Usher In New Way For Banks To Discriminate
Credit scores have a long history of prejudice. "Most changes in how credit scores are calculated over the years -- including the shift from human assessment to computer calculations, and most recently to artificial intelligence -- have come out of a desire to make the scores more equitable, but credit companies have failed to remove bias, on the basis of race or gender, for example, from their system," writes Rose Eveleth via Motherboard.
While credit companies have tried to reduce bias with machine learning and "alternative credit," which uses data like your sexual orientation or political beliefs that isn't normally included in a credit score to try and get a sense for how trustworthy someone might be, Eveleth says that "introducing this 'non-traditional' information to credit scores runs the risk of making them even more biased than they already are, eroding nearly 150 years of effort to eliminate unfairness in the system."
North Carolina man pleads guilty to killing 3 Muslim students
DURHAM, N.C. — Moments after a North Carolina man pleaded guilty to gunning down three Muslim university students, a prosecutor played a cell phone video of the slayings in the courtroom Wednesday as one of the victims’ relatives fainted, others wept openly and a man hurled an expletive at the confessed killer.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 50, entered the plea to three counts of first-degree murder in a packed Durham courtroom. It came two months after incoming District Attorney Satana Deberry dropped plans to seek the death penalty in hopes of concluding a case that she said had languished too long.
“I’ve wanted to plead guilty since day one,” Hicks told Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson. The judge said Hicks had agreed as part of his plea to accept three consecutive life sentences without parole and 64 to 89 months for the crime of discharging a gun into a building.
Yuck:
Arctic marathoner donates amputated toes for a hotel's infamous cocktail
Nick Griffiths didn't want his toes to go to waste.
Not all of them were going to make it home with him after he had to be evacuated from the Yukon Arctic Ultra by snowmobile in February 2018, suffering from deep frostbite during the 300-mile race. The 47-year-old ultramarathoner from Britain had been slogging through the snow and ice out in the Canadian wilderness for 30 consecutive hours when his hands and feet started to turn raw. He was pulling a sled of supplies in temperatures colder than 40-below zero, bent on crossing a finish line hundreds of miles away.
It was so cold that his eyes were frozen open, his eyelashes stuck together and his lids un-blinkable. Ice crystals were falling from the sky like missiles. Dehydrated, sleepless and numb, Griffiths surrendered at mile 50. The doctors soon informed him: Three of his toes would have to go.
But still, a nurse assured him, he didn't really have to lose them, at least not completely. Had he ever heard of the Sourtoe Cocktail? she asked.
Double yuck:
Patient dies from fecal transplant containing drug-resistant bacteria
One person has died after receiving a fecal transplant containing drug-resistant bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday.
The FDA is warning health care providers that the use of the so-called fecal microbiota for transplantation (FMT) can lead to serious or life-threatening infections.
Two patients with weakened immune systems who received FMT from the same donor developed serious infections, the FDA said. One patient died.
The FDA noted that the donor stool had not been tested for the drug-resistant bacteria, called extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing E. coli, prior to the transplantation. After the illnesses and death occurred, however, a stored preparation of the donor stool was tested, and found to be positive for the identical strain of bacteria found in the two patients.
Freedom Fries:
Who's paying for repair work at Notre Dame Cathedral? French billionaires? Nope, so far it's mostly U.S. donors.
The billionaire French donors who publicly promised flashy donations totaling hundreds of millions to rebuild Notre Dame have not yet paid a penny toward the restoration of the French national monument, according to church and business officials.
Instead, it's been mainly American citizens, via the charitable foundation Friends of Notre Dame, that have footed the bills and paid salaries for the up to 150 workers employed by the cathedral since the April 15 fire that devastated the cathedral's roof and caused its masterpiece spire to collapse. This month it is handing over the first payment for the cathedral's reconstruction of 3.6 million euros ($4 million).
"The big donors haven't paid. Not a cent," said Andre Finot, senior press official at Notre Dame. "They want to know what exactly their money is being spent on and if they agree to it before they hand it over, and not just to pay employees' salaries."
Almost $1 billion was promised by some of France's richest and most powerful families and companies, some of whom sought to outbid each other, in the hours and days after the inferno. It prompted criticism that the donations were as much about the vanity of the donors wishing to be immortalized in the edifice's fabled stones than the preservation of church heritage.
Russia is not alone in exploiting Africa
Foreign involvement in Africa is far from unique to Russia (Leaked documents reveal Russia’s efforts to exert influence in Africa, 12 June). The new scramble for Africa involves more powers than the first round over a century ago. This time it’s in part about securing resources such as oil, gas and rare earth metals crucial for military and civilian digital technology, and denying these resources to rival powers.
The United States Africa Command (Africom) now has 7,500 American troops active in all but one African country, up from 6,000 in 2017. Apart from its huge base in Djibouti, controlling the narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a vital chokepoint through which all shipping using the Suez Canal has to pass – most importantly (for the Americans) Chinese shipping – the US has constructed small “lily pad” bases, whose presence gives the US a strong military capability.
France, too, is keen to protect its control over north and west Africa, partly from encroachment by the US, while seeking to penetrate the anglophone sphere. Britain, likewise, is beefing up its diplomatic and economic presence in Africa, notably in francophone countries, and increasingly in response to a post-Brexit order.
Triple yuck:
'Like a horror film': vast swarms of flies plague Russian villages
Villages in Russia’s Urals region have been invaded by vast swarms of flies that have sparked health concerns and fears for local harvests.
“You can’t hang out your washing to dry or open your windows, let alone go outside,” a woman in Lazorevy told state television, which aired images of thick clouds of flies crawling and buzzing through the village.
Another local was shown sweeping up piles of dead and dying flies from the floor of his home. “Every day or two there’s enough to fill a bucket, half a bucket,” he said. Residents described scenes as “like something from a horror film”.
“It’s unbearable, the flies are everywhere,” said a woman holding a wailing child in her arms. “I’m afraid for my children. We need to poison the flies constantly [with chemicals], but then we all have to breath that air. It’s frightening.” State TV also said the flies could infect people with diseases.
Reports said the invasion began after a farmer illegally used tonnes of chicken droppings from a local poultry farm as fertiliser, in which flies laid millions of eggs. Some reports said dead chickens and chicken entrails had also been used. Investigators confirmed they had opened a criminal investigation into the unsanctioned use of “environmentally hazardous waste”.
They’re going to do this until it stops working:
Pro-Kremlin media 'spread false claims that EU has Nazi roots'
Pro-Kremlin social media accounts spread false claims that the EU has Nazi roots, the European commissioner for security has said in the first analysis of disinformation acts aimed at influencing last month’s EU elections.
Malicious actors sought to promote extreme views and polarise local debates, said Julian King, the British commissioner in Brussels.
Although there were no “spectaculars” such as the major email hacks that tarnished the 2016 US presidential election, social media accounts promoting a pro-Russian narrative were active in amplifying divisive content on the internet, King said.
Countries targeted by bots and fake accounts in the run-up to the elections at the end of May included the UK, Poland, Latvia, Spain and France.
King said: “There was an issue in Poland where false reports by [the Russian state news agency] Sputnik, which – let’s be polite, let’s call it as pro-Kremlin outfit – was reporting that the EU had made Poland poorer than it was under communism.
“Another story they were running was that President [Emmanuel] Macron wants to expel some current member states from the EU, therefore making any suggestion that others might join redundant.
“There was use of a fake account twitter account that is linked to Russia, and at the same time a pro-Russian Facebook group, to push an old report, a 2016 report, by the Katehon thinktank, claiming that the EU has Nazi roots. And that was accelerated and spread widely in the run-up to the elections.”
The Katehon thinktank, a Christian rightwing outfit, claimed three years ago that the Nazi vision of a “united Europe” had formed the basis for the foundation of the EU.
Another American tourist dies while staying at Dominican Republic resort
A woman died earlier this week in the Dominican Republic, amid a spate of reported illnesses and deaths at resorts in the Caribbean country, according to the U.S. State Department.
Leyla Cox, 53, was staying at the Excellence resort in Punta Cana when she died Tuesday, her son, Will, told NBC News.
Meanwhile, another family has reported that their loved one died in the Dominican Republic in January.
Jerry Curran, 78, checked into the Dreams resort in Punta Cana on Jan. 22, and died three days later, his daughter, Kellie Brown, told NBC affiliate WKYC in Ohio. The U.S. State Department confirmed Friday that an American died in the Dominican Republic in January.
“He went to the Dominican Republic healthy and he just never came back,” Brown said.
I hope they win:
After a 4-year-old took doll from store, video shows Phoenix police pulling gun on parents
A Phoenix couple has filed a $10 million lawsuit against the city after a video showed police officers arresting and drawing a gun on them after their 4-year-old daughter allegedly stole a doll.
Dravon Ames and his fiancee, Iesha Harper, had just left a dollar store on May 29 with their daughters, ages 1 and 4, and where in their car when they realized that the older girl had taken a doll from the store, according to a notice of claim filed Wednesday with the city.
The couple drove the girls to their babysitter at an apartment complex nearby, where they were stopped and confronted by police in the parking lot.
Phoenix police, who said they are conducting an internal probe of the incident, on Tuesday released a video, shot by a bystander, showing an officer appearing to push a handcuffed man — believed to be Ames — against the side of a car and kicking his legs.
Other officers could be seen handcuffing Harper after an unidentified woman came to take care of her two small children.
"When I tell you to do something, you f------ do it!" an officer could be heard screaming at the handcuffed Ames.
Still won’t pay for the wall:
Mexico ready to retaliate if U.S. imposes tariffs: minister
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico will be ready to retaliate in kind if the U.S. government imposes tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States, Mexican Economy Minister Graciela Marquez said on Friday.
Speaking in Congress, Marquez said Mexico’s government would also initiate bilateral and multilateral procedures to defend its trade interests if the United States were to introduce tariffs.
We’re holding out, naturally:
Eletro-belts (sic), spiked batons, even a gas chamber: EU seeks ban on trade in torture items
GENEVA (Reuters) - Trade in instruments for torture and execution should be illegal and could one day be banned under an initiative spearheaded by the European Union, Argentina and Mongolia, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told Reuters on Friday.
“Today, you can buy all kinds of things on the Internet. You can buy spiked batons, you can even buy a gas chamber,” Malmstrom said. “You can buy electro-belts, special batons, equipment or products that are only used to harm people. Their only one purpose is to torture.”
Malmstrom said almost 65 countries were backing the initiative and hoped to win a vote at the United Nations later this month to mandate U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to set up an expert study into developing a binding resolution.
Bombardier opening new California rail-car assembly site
(Reuters) - Canada’s Bombardier is opening a new facility in California that will assemble rail cars for San Francisco’s rapid transit system by year’s end, and potentially serve other West Coast rail projects.
The plane and train maker said in a news release that it will use the site for a 775-car contract with the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART).
Rail car work for the San Francisco contract will be transferred to the new site in Pittsburg, California from Bombardier’s existing plant in upstate New York, the company said.
Bombardier began renting space at the site this month, and it will be operational by the end of the year, a Bombardier spokesman said. The company is eying other California contracts as its rail division pursues high-single digit growth in North America.
Chilean bishop resigns after comments about Last Supper
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A Chilean auxiliary bishop appointed by Pope Francis less than a month ago resigned on Friday, the Archdiocese of Santiago said in a statement, just weeks after he made controversial comments about the lack of women in attendance at the Last Supper.
Carlos Eugenio Irarrazaval was appointed by the Pope in an effort to rebuild the Church’s credibility following a pervasive sex abuse scandal that exposed hundreds of allegations now being investigated by Chilean criminal prosecutors.
The Archdiocese of Santiago did not specify the reasons for Irarrazaval’s departure, but said Pope Francis had accepted the bishop’s resignation “in favor of unity and for the good of the Church.”
Swiss women stage mass strike demanding overdue equality
GENEVA/ZURICH (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of women across Switzerland held a strike on Friday to highlight their wealthy nation’s poor record on female rights, recreating the passion of the last such walkout 28 years ago.
In Zurich, the financial capital and the country’s biggest city, tens of thousands of protesters clogged the streets, blowing whistles and banging pots and pans. “Men, go do the ironing,” one sign read.
“It’s not just about wages. The equal opportunity is not there. At least for the next generation it needs to be there,” Zurich city councilwoman Karin Rykart said as hundreds of municipal workers and police officers demonstrated.
Hong Kong tycoons start moving assets offshore as fears rise over new extradition law
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Some Hong Kong tycoons have started moving personal wealth offshore as concern deepens over a local government plan to allow extraditions of suspects to face trial in China for the first time, according to financial advisers, bankers and lawyers familiar with such transactions.
One tycoon, who considers himself potentially politically exposed, has started shifting more than $100 million from a local Citibank account to a Citibank account in Singapore, according to an adviser involved in the transactions.
“It’s started. We’re hearing others are doing it, too, but no-one is going to go on parade that they are leaving,” the adviser said. “The fear is that the bar is coming right down on Beijing’s ability to get your assets in Hong Kong. Singapore is the favored destination.”
Hong Kong and Singapore compete fiercely to be considered Asia’s premier financial center. The riches held by Hong Kong’s tycoons have until now made the city the larger base for private wealth, boasting 853 individuals worth more than $100 million - just over double the number in Singapore - according to a 2018 report from Credit Suisse.
The extradition bill, which will cover Hong Kong residents and foreign and Chinese nationals living or traveling through the city, has sparked unusually broad concern it may threaten the rule of law that underpins Hong Kong’s international financial status.
U.S. farmers experimenting with hemp as China trade war drags on
HAYSVILLE, Kansas (Reuters) - A growing number of U.S. farmers battered by low grain prices and the threat of a prolonged trade war with China are seeking salvation in a plant that until recently was illegal: hemp.
A cousin of cannabis plants that produce marijuana, hemp is used in products ranging from food to building materials and cannabidiol, or CBD oil, which is being touted as a treatment for everything from sleeplessness to acne to heart disease.
Interest in hemp picked up with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill in December, which removed hemp from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of controlled substances and put it under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Unlike marijuana, industrial hemp doesn’t contain enough of the psychoactive chemical THC to give users a high.
The new rules call for the USDA to award hemp planting licenses to farmers but the agency has not yet regulated the process, meaning individual states are still issuing the licenses.
Noted dog breeder owns kennels where dogs found in squalor
KINGWOOD, N.J. (AP) — The co-owner of a once-renowned New Jersey dog kennel where authorities say nearly 200 terriers and dachshunds were living in squalor says the kennel fell on hard times and found itself with more animals than it could even give away.
Martin Strozeski told The New York Times that Rocky Ridge Russells became “a hobby turned bad” after some high-flying years. One of its Parson Russell terriers was named best of its breed at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in 2009.
Law enforcement officers and animal welfare groups went to the Kingswood home Tuesday to remove the dogs, which were mostly Russell terriers.
Officials said the animals seemed to have had limited human contact and minimal to no veterinary care. They noted that many were pregnant, had “masses and infections,” or both. But Strozeski said the condition of the dogs was exaggerated in reports.
Rash of child killings angers, frustrates St. Louis leaders
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The gunfire that has long haunted St. Louis streets has taken an even more disturbing turn, with a rash of shootings involving children, leaving the city’s police chief angered and frustrated by the lack of cooperation of witnesses.
Four children died from gunfire over the past week and two others were injured. Those killed included girls ages 3 and 11, along with a 16-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. The injured were girls ages 5 and 6. All six victims were black.
Police Chief John Hayden told The Associated Press Friday that it appears that some of the children were hit by gunfire intended for adults who were near the kids.
Premature migrant baby found at Texas Border Patrol facility
Advocates were shocked to find an underage mom and her tiny, premature newborn daughter huddled in a Border Patrol facility the second week of June 2019, in what they say was another example of the poor treatment immigrant families receive after crossing the border. The mother is a Guatemalan teen who crossed the border without a parent and was held at a facility in McAllen, Texas, with other families with children.
The teenage girl with pigtail braids was hunched over in a wheelchair and holding a bunched sweatshirt when an immigrant advocate met her at a crowded Border Patrol facility in Texas.
She opened the sweatshirt and the advocate gasped. It was a tiny baby, born premature and held in detention instead of where the advocate believes the baby should have been — at a hospital neonatal unit.
“You look at this baby and there is no question that this baby should be in a tube with a heart monitor,” said Hope Frye, a volunteer with an immigrant advocacy group who travels the country visiting immigration facilities with children to make sure the facilities comply with federal guidelines.
Lurid testimony wraps up in case against self-help guru
NEW YORK (AP) — After weeks of relentlessly lurid testimony, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn on Friday wrapped up their sex trafficking case against Keith Raniere, the former spiritual leader of the self-improvement group NXIVM.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers told the judge they were finished calling witnesses in a trial that has given a disturbing inside look at the bizarre world Raniere created for followers attracted to his cult-like group in upstate New York.
Closing arguments and jury deliberations will happen next week.
Since early May, jurors have been hearing testimony from what prosecutors say are former “sex slaves” who spoke about the torment of being branded with the Raniere’s initials — their “supreme master.”
Emails: Trump official pressed NASA on climate science
WASHINGTON (AP) — Once a skeptic about climate change, Jim Bridenstine came around to the prevailing view of scientists before he took over as NASA administrator. That evolution did not sit well with a Trump environmental adviser, nor a think-tank analyst he was consulting, according to newly disclosed emails that illustrate how skepticism of global warming has found a beachhead in the Trump White House.
“Puzzling,” says the May 2018 exchange between William Happer, now a member of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, and Thomas Wysmuller of the Heartland Institute, which disavows manmade climate change. Their exchange calls scientifically established rises in sea levels and temperatures under climate change “part of the nonsense” and urges the NASA head — who was copied in — to “systematically sidestep it.”
It cannot be discerned whether it was Happer or Wysmuller who put that pressure on the new NASA chief. Their exchange is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act and provided to The Associated Press.
But the emails show that Happer, who was then advising Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, kept up the pressure after he joined the National Security Council late last year.