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, jck, 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.
There are debate threads all over the place here as well as Markos’ recap so for more info about tonight’s debate, you can check out a number of threads on the main board.
Chicago Reporter: Jussie Smollett case obscures Kim Foxx’s record and Bill Conway’s conflicts by Curtis Black
There’s no doubt Kim Foxx mishandled the Jussie Smollett case. There were inappropriate contacts between Foxx and a politically-connected friend of Smollet’s family, a bumbled recusal by Foxx, and the sudden announcement of a resolution with no explanation.
On the other hand, the actual disposal of the case by Foxx — despite the opinions of others, including former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and special prosecutor Dan Webb — fell within prosecutorial discretion and was completely consistent with her policy of seeking pre-prosecution resolutions to reduce incarceration of nonviolent offenders — including on disorderly conduct charges.
Indeed, taxpayers might question the use of thousands and thousands of dollars on a special prosecutor for a minor crime while the county’s criminal justice system is so strapped for resources and violence plagues communities. And the timing of Smollett’s arraignment, just before a sensitive election in which the case is a major issue — when there’s no apparent reason it couldn’t have waited a few weeks — is worth questioning too.
Reuters: Rivals question front-runner Sanders' electability at rowdy South Carolina Democratic debate by Jarrett Renshaw and Trevor Hunnicutt
CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Surging Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders came under withering fire in a boisterous debate in South Carolina on Tuesday, as rivals attacked the high cost of his ambitious economic agenda and warned he would cost the party the White House and control of Congress.
In a debate that featured candidates repeatedly shouting over one another and ignoring their time limits, Sanders’ opponents united in attacking the independent senator and self-avowed democratic socialist as a risky choice to lead Democrats against Republican President Donald Trump in November.
“Bernie will lose to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump and the House and the Senate and some of the statehouses will all go red,” billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, adding that would be “a catastrophe.”
Pete Buttigieg, the moderate former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, criticized Sanders for the shifting estimates on the costs of his proposals such as government-run healthcare and questioned how he could get his agenda passed.
“I can tell you exactly how it all adds up. It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said, adding that a Sanders race against Trump would be devastating to the country.
Washington Post: Coronavirus’s spread in U.S. is ‘inevitable,’ CDC warns by Erica Werner, Yasmeen Abutaleb. Lena H. Sun and Lenny Bernstein
Federal health officials urged the public Tuesday to prepare for the “inevitable” spread of the coronavirus within the United States, escalating warnings about a growing threat from the virus to Americans’ everyday lives.
The warnings from officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, contrasted sharply with assessments from President Trump and other White House officials, who have largely dismissed concerns about the virus. The mixed messages continued Tuesday as dire warnings issued to senators and reporters early in the day gave way to a more positive assessment, after the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 3.4 percent, bringing the two-day loss to more than 1,900 points — the worst in two years.
“We believe the immediate risk here in the United States remains low, and we’re working hard to keep that risk low,” Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said during a hastily convened afternoon news briefing.
Christian Science Monitor: Beyond Weinstein conviction, how #MeToo changed America by Harry Bruinius and Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
State Rep. Allison Nutting-Wong says she has witnessed a lot of progress in American society since the #MeToo movement sent a jolt through the decadeslong battle against sexual harassment.
A new mother, the New Hampshire Democrat recently succeeded in getting the House to pass a bill addressing online harassment – part of a wave of legislation passed in other states as well. “Only a few years ago, a similar idea had a lot of opposition,” Representative Nutting-Wong says. ”This year when no one noticed, it went through – that says a lot about what has changed in the past few years.”
Yet even as she and many others witnessed two guilty verdicts in the trial of Harvey Weinstein on Monday, Representative Nutting-Wong was reminded just last week how subtle and pervasive a culture of workplace harassment can be.
New York Times: To Save Louisiana’s Vanishing Coast, Build a Mini Mississippi Near Boston by John Schwartz
HOLDEN, Mass. — We were standing on the levee of the Mississippi River, about an hour west of Boston.
Of course, the actual Mississippi River is a half-continent away. We were in fact in a vast, warehouse-size laboratory above a scale model of a bend in the river in Louisiana, painstakingly recreated at 1/65th scale, right down to the simulated sand.
The model is one of the most striking parts of an ambitious project to rebuild Louisiana’s vanishing coast, which is rapidly being lost to rising seas and sinking land. Engineers want to be sure their design for a river “diversion” — an enormous mechanism for restoring eroded wetlands — will work.
A diversion is a set of gates in a river levee that can be opened and closed. The escaping river water is supposed to sweep sand, sediment and clay into nearby wetlands being annihilated by climate change and other environmental disasters.
HIndustan Times: How violence spread from main road to maze of lanes in North-east Delhi by Abhishek Dey
Around 7pm on Tuesday, a large posse of security personnel marched towards Chand Bagh, a Muslim-dominated locality in north-east Delhi, as reports of violence reached their wireless sets. In another half-hour, an armed mob gathered near a petrol pump in Gokalpuri and torched two vehicles, forcing the police to send a fresh deployment in the neighbourhood, less than 2km from Chand Bagh.
It continued over 24 hours as the violence spread from the Main Jafrabad Road and localities in vicinity to the large maze of narrow interconnected lanes across north-east Delhi in the last 24 hours.
On several occasions, as the epicentre of the violence kept changing within a 5-km radius from time to time throughout Tuesday – rioters could often be spotted dispersing on being chased by the police and rapid action force teams, disappearing in the lanes and then re-appearing as a group behind police teams.
AlJazeera: Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak dies at 91
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president for almost 30 years who stepped down after a popular revolution in 2011, has died. He was 91.
Mubarak served as Egypt's fourth president starting in 1981 until his removal in what became known as the Arab Spring revolution.
He was jailed for years after the uprising, but was freed in 2017 after being acquitted of most charges. The acquittal stunned many Egyptians, thousands of whom poured into central Cairo to show their anger against the court.
The Arab Spring protests convulsed regimes across the Middle East.
State television said Mubarak died at a Cairo hospital where he had undergone an unspecified surgery. The report said he had health complications but offered no other details. One of his sons, Alaa, announced over the weekend the former president was in an intensive care after undergoing surgery.
DW: Coronavirus hits heart of Italy's economy by Sergio Matalucci
Many locals, especially elderly people, keep flocking to supermarkets in northern Italy to stock up on food items before retreating home in a self-inflicted quarantine. "This is crazy," says a woman pointing at the chock-full shopping cart of the person before her. "Better safe than sorry," answers the man wearing a military jacket with an Italian flag. He is about to buy 9.5 gallons (36 liters) of water, several kilos of pasta, tins of tomato sauce, honey and propolis-based candies.
This sort of panic buying has been very much in evidence over the last four days in Milan, Italy's second-biggest city.
Just a few hours after the final show of the Fashion Week on Monday evening, the city's key transportation lines were crippled. Trains departed from Centrale (Milan Central Station) with a four-hour delay on average. The new coronavirus is paralyzing northern Italy.
"Lombardy and Veneto, the regions currently hit, are among the richest, the most dynamic and the most export-intensive in Italy. The economic effects of the coronavirus crisis on Italy's economy may be serious. It is the heart of Italy's economy being hit," Francesco Daveri, professor of macroeconomics at SDA Bocconi School of Management, tells DW.
BBC News: Who wants to follow in Merkel's footsteps?
The race is on to succeed Angela Merkel, by becoming leader of Germany's centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and potentially chancellor.
She will not run again in Germany's next general election, due by October 2021.
It is the end of an era: Mrs Merkel has been steering Germany and shaping EU policy since 2005.
Now three candidates, all men, have joined the race to lead her party.
The woman she favoured to succeed her as chancellor - Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer - resigned as party leader this month when the CDU was tainted by a political scandal in the state of Thuringia.
A deal with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), now annulled, put a liberal in charge of Thuringia thanks to AfD and CDU votes. It broke a post-war German taboo: no deals with the far right or far left.
Then came a humiliating blow to the CDU in Hamburg: in the regional election there the CDU got 11.2%, far behind the centre-left Social Democrats, who won, and the Greens.
Everyone have a great evening!