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. And jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, palantir, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Man Oh Man, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke 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.
BBC
New York Pride: Bumper crowds attend LGBT march
Hundreds of thousands of revellers have thronged the streets of New York for WorldPride, one of the largest LGBT celebrations in the world.
Around 150,000 people took part in the march, 50 years on from the Stonewall riots, with many more watching.
The riots, after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, helped to energise the fight for gay equality. This year's march started outside the inn.
It was billed as the biggest Pride march in history.
LGBT groups held similar marches in other countries to mark the occasion, illustrating the global shift in attitudes towards gay rights.
WorldPride brings together lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people from all over the world to participate in a parade, rally and human rights conference. The event was last held in Lisbon in Portugal in 2017.
The New York march is the first WorldPride march to be held in the US.
This year's main parade - around 2.5 miles (4km) long - passed many LGBT landmarks, including the Stonewall National Monument and the New York City Aids
memorial.
New York Times
Cuomo signs a bill to end ‘gay panic’ defenses in murder cases.
Shortly before participating in the Pride march on Sunday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said he signed a bill to ban “gay panic” and “transgender panic” defenses from being used in murder cases in New York state courts.
New York is one of just a handful of states to bar the defense strategy, in which people accused of a crime claim they acted in a state of temporary insanity caused and justified by their victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell and State Senator Brad Hoylman, both gay Democrats from Manhattan who also marched in Sunday’s parade, had for years introduced bills that would stop people from mounting the defenses.
BBC
Venezuela crisis: Navy captain's death in custody condemned by opposition
Venezuela's opposition has denounced the death of a navy captain held over an alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro and called for an investigation.
Rafael Acosta, 49, was among six policemen and soldiers arrested on Wednesday.
They were detained weeks after a failed military uprising against Mr Maduro.
Facing charges of treason and sedition, Mr Acosta appeared in court on Friday, but fainted before proceedings began.
He was rushed to a military hospital in the capital, Caracas, but died in the early hours of Saturday morning, Venezuela's defence ministry said in a statement.
Mr Acosta's wife, Waleska Perez, says the navy corvette captain was barely conscious when he appeared at the military tribunal in a wheelchair, with signs of torture visible on his body.
"They tortured him so much that they killed him," Perez, speaking from Colombia, told TV channel EVTV Miami.
Al Jazeera
Japan resumes commercial whaling, but days could be numbered
Japan - As five fishing boats set sail from a port in northern Japan before dawn on Monday, it marked the end of an era.
After 31 years, Japan has officially resumed commercial whaling.
The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe first announced the country's withdrawal from the international convention on whaling last December, ending its membership of the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
"Japan's basic policy, of promoting the sustainable use of aquatic living resources based on scientific evidence has not changed," Yoshihide Suga, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said at the time. "Under that policy, we have decided to resume commercial whaling."
Introduced by the IWC in 1986 to protect the world's last remaining whales, the ban on commercial whaling nevertheless allowed Japan an annual whale quota for "scientific reasons."
Al Jazeera
Deadly European heatwave highlights global climate crisis
Wildfires have burned tracts of land in France and Spain, while a welcome dip in temperatures in parts of Europe has brought relief to areas facing a deadly heatwave for nearly a week.
Hot-weather warnings were lifted across northern and western France, days after the country posted all-time high temperatures as it sizzled along with Italy, Spain and some central European nations.
Six days of intense heat fuelled huge blazes and pollution peaks, and officially claimed four lives in France and two each in Italy and Spain, including a 17-year-old harvest worker, a 33-year-old roofer and a 72-year-old homeless man.
The Guardian
Amazon's Jeff Bezos pays out $38bn in divorce settlement
The world’s biggest divorce settlement will be made official this week as Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos hands over a 4% stake in the online shopping giant to his soon-to-be ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos.
A judge is expected to sign legal papers transferring the Amazon shares – worth $38bn (£29bn) – into MacKenzie Bezos’s name. It is by some distance the largest divorce settlement in history the previous record was $2.5bn paid to Jocelyn Wildenstein when she divorced art dealer Alec Wildenstein in 1999.
Following the settlement MacKenzie Bezos, 49, an author, will become the world’s fourth-richest woman, and has already promised to give away at least half of her fortune.
MacKenzie, who married Jeff in 1993, a year before he started Amazon from his garage in Seattle, has said she had “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and promised to work hard at giving it away “until the safe is empty”.
Reuters
In race for No. 10, Johnson and Hunt vow to splash the cash
LONDON (Reuters) - Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt vowed to spend billions of pounds on public services, infrastructure and tax cuts on Sunday as the two men battling to become prime minister pitched themselves as the best candidate to take on the opposition Labour Party.
The rivals to succeed Theresa May as leader of the ruling Conservative Party sought to win broader backing by setting out plans to invest in education, transport and defence, even at the cost of higher government borrowing. The race should be over by July 23.
Johnson, the favourite, vowed to increase spending on education, adding to earlier pledges to invest in transport, superfast broadband, more police and tax cuts.
“Believe me there is cash now available,” Johnson told Sky News. “(And) I’m prepared to borrow to finance certain great objectives but overall we will keep fiscal responsibility.”
Foreign Secretary Hunt also pledged to slash corporation tax to drive economic growth, enabling him to increase spending on social care, defence and education.
The Guardian
Captain defends her decision to force rescue boat into Italian port
An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.
“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.
Rackete, 31, from Germany, is accused of putting a military speedboat and the safety of its occupants at risk in the incident on Saturday.
“The situation was desperate,” she said. “My goal was only to bring exhausted and desperate people to shore. My intention was not to put anyone in danger. I already apologised, and I reiterate my apology.”
The Sea-Watch 3 had rescued the migrants off the coast of Libya 17 days earlier. They were finally allowed to disembark at Lampedusa and taken to a reception centre as they prepared to travel to either France, whose interior ministry said it would take in 10 of them, or to Germany, Finland, Luxembourg or Portugal.
The Guardian
Sri Lanka appoints executioners for return of death penalty
Sri Lanka has hired two executioners as it prepares to put four prisoners convicted of drug offences to death in what would be its first use of capital punishment for more than 40 years.
The executioners were picked from among 100 applicants who responded to an advertisement calling for male Sri Lankans aged between 18 and 45 with “excellent moral character” and “mental strength”.
The prisons department began the recruitment process in March after the last executioner quit in 2014, citing stress after seeing the gallows for the first time. Another, hired last year, never turned up for work.
President Maithripala Sirisena announced on Wednesday an end to a moratorium on the death penalty in force since 1976, a move political analysts said was meant to boost his chances of re-election if he stands again later this year.
New York Times
Fiery Plane Crash Kills 10 People in Texas
Ten people were killed when an airplane crashed and burst into flames shortly after taking off from an airport in Addison, Tex., local officials said.
The plane, which crashed into a hangar at the Addison Airport shortly after 9 a.m., was bound for St. Petersburg, Fla., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. There were no reports of injuries on the ground.
Emergency responders rushed to the scene, and video footageshowed fire trucks blasting water into the flaming hangar amid plumes of black smoke.
The crash killed everyone aboard the noncommercial flight, Ed Martelle, a spokesman for the city, said.
The Guardian
Kevin Durant to join Nets in shock move with Kyrie Irving reported to follow
The Brooklyn Nets appear to have turned themselves from outsiders to NBA contenders with the acquisition of one of the league’s best players, Kevin Durant.
Durant confirmed the news on the Instagram account of The Boardroom, an online series he co-produces, as the league’s free agency period started on Sunday evening. ESPN reported that two other All-Stars – Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan – are likely to join him. According to ESPN, both Irving and Durant will sign for four years for $141m and $164m respectively.Durant and Irving will form a formidable duo but there are caveats. Durant, who will be 31 in September, ruptured his achilles while playing for the Golden State Warriors in June’s NBA finals and is likely to miss the whole of next season. Irving, meanwhile, had a good season with the Celtics individually but clashed with some of his teammates, something that was blamed for Boston’s disappointing run in the playoffs. He also had a strained relationship with LeBron James during their time together at the Cleveland Cavaliers.