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.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: As Frey calls for officer's arrests, violence intensifies in Minneapolis by Liz Navatril and Libor Jany
Hours after Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for a police officer's arrest and charges in the death of George Floyd, violent protests re-erupted, causing widespread damage and looting at south Minneapolis storefronts.
A Target and Cub Foods anchoring the corner of E. Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue were looted, along with other small businesses, including Hiawatha Lake Wine & Spirits.
Flames and smoke shot into the air when a nearby AutoZone auto parts store was set ablaze. As some protesters tried to put out the AutoZone fire, others danced gleefully in front of it, snapping selfies.
The violence followed a daylong protest outside the Third Precinct police headquarters, where officers sought to disperse crowds with flash-bang grenades, tear gas and projectiles through the day and night.
Earlier, Frey called for the arrest and charging of now-fired police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's neck as he pleaded to breathe in a video that has drawn international outrage.
Chicago Sun-Times: Four in 10 CPS students take part in online learning 2 days a week or fewer, new data shows by Nader Issa
Newly released and long-awaited data from the nation’s third-largest school system shows what many have suspected: In the best circumstances, remote learning has been an uneven and dubious replacement for in-person instruction; and in the worst, it has left students entirely disconnected from their teachers.
Fewer than 60% of all Chicago Public Schools students are engaging with online remote learning three or more days per week, data unveiled Wednesday shows. Vulnerable populations, such as kids who are homeless and black and Latino students whose families have been disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus pandemic, are logging on at lower rates. Tens of thousands of students aren’t being reached by their schools at all despite computer and internet access having largely been achieved.
The report, which includes some of the most detailed metrics in the country, measures 294,000 students at district-run schools and focuses on the week of May 11, the most recently measured time span which also saw the best engagement thus far. Officials said they don’t have access to data for another 60,000 kids who attend charters.
MLive: Midland flood victims who ‘literally lost their life’s savings’ face new reality by Gus Burns
MIDLAND, MI — On some Midland streets, it looks like everyone has been evicted.
Precarious walls of debris and waterlogged personal belongings, some stacked six feet high, line the streets in the hardest-hit neighborhoods.
"Flood” is written in orange spay paint on a front-loading washer placed among a mound of torn-out wood flooring in one lawn — presumably to deter scrappers and garbage pickers who have become a growing nuisance for residents.
As neighbors rip out soggy floorboards and strips of insulation, they take stock of what’s left and do the math. Some are left with the realization they’ll never be able to afford to live in their homes again.
In downtown Midland, life is returning to normal a little more quickly.
Sacramento Bee: Remote California county abruptly halts reopening plans, citing first COVID-19 cases by Jason Pohl
One of California’s most remote counties for months has prided itself on not having any confirmed cases of COVID-19. Earlier this month, it was among the first to win the go-ahead to begin reopening.
And now, Lassen County in the state’s northeastern reaches is believed to be the first in California forced to retract its plan to reopen because of a potential new outbreak.
Test results on Friday confirmed that two people from the same household had been infected with the virus, Lassen County officials announced Tuesday evening. The county began contacting and testing people who’d come in contact with those two people who tested positive and found that two more people had been infected.
It was the first time the coronavirus was confirmed to have been spreading in Lassen County. Although four cases represent a small proportion of a county with 30,000 full-time residents, health officials are still alarmed at the development.
Boston Globe: A mysterious old photograph in Cambridge is identified, and an old epidemic echoes forward to today by Emily Sweeney
The old photograph turned up in an odd place in Juliette Kayyem’s home.
Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said it was tucked away in an attic space in her Cambridge home.
“It was totally intact,” Kayyem said in a telephone interview. When she looked at the man in the photo, “it looked like there was an interesting story there.”
She was right: The photograph would be the key to unlocking the secret history of her Cambridge home, and a tragic death that occurred there over a century ago during the Spanish flu pandemic, which claimed the lives of more than 600,000 people in the United States in 1918 and 1919.
NOLA.com: French Quarter as pedestrian-only zone? LaToya Cantrell says she's for it, task force to study by Jessica Williams
Mayor LaToya Cantrell wants to turn the French Quarter and other city areas into pedestrian-only zones, the mayor said Wednesday.
Speaking in town hall with The Times Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, Cantrell said she has asked a task force to study the idea of reshaping the French Quarter and other city areas to exclude vehicular traffic.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell wants to turn the French Quarter and other city areas into pedestrian-only zones, the mayor said Wednesday.
Speaking in town hall with The Times Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, Cantrell said she has asked a task force to study the idea of reshaping the French Quarter and other city areas to exclude vehicular traffic.
New York Times: The Bird Watcher, That Incident, and His Feelings on the Woman’s Fate by Sarah Maslin Nir
His binoculars around his neck, Christian Cooper, an avid birder, was back in his happy place on Wednesday: Central Park during migration season. He was trying to focus on the olive-sided flycatchers and red-bellied woodpeckers — not on what had happened there two days earlier.
That was when Mr. Cooper, who is black, asked a white woman to put her dog on a leash. When she did not, he began filming. In response, the woman said she would tell the police that “an African-American man is threatening my life” before dialing 911.
On Tuesday, the video went viral on Twitter and garnered over 40 million views, setting off a painful discourse about the history of dangerous false accusations against black people made to police.
The birds were a welcome distraction from thinking about what had happened next: By that day’s end, the woman, Amy Cooper (no relation) had surrendered her dog and had been fired from her high-level finance job. As he wandered the park’s North Woods on Wednesday shortly after dawn, he said he felt exhausted, exposed and profoundly conflicted, particularly about Ms. Cooper’s fate.
BuzzFeed: The Trump Administration Wants To Cut Back A Billion-Dollar Healthcare Program. Hospitals Say Now Is A Really Bad Time. by Zoe Tillman
WASHINGTON — In 2018, Park Ridge Health, a not-for-profit healthcare network in western North Carolina that serves a large population of lower-income patients, delayed plans to buy a new CT scanner for stroke patients.
The Trump administration had drastically scaled back a federal drug reimbursement program that benefitted public and not-for-profit hospitals. Park Ridge, now called AdventHealth Hendersonville, stood to lose $3.3 million per year, the hospital’s chief financial officer wrote in a court affidavit, and it wasn’t just the CT scanner on the line — that money went toward a variety of services for elderly and poor patients, including new cancer treatment facilities, women’s healthcare, and partnerships with nonprofits on issues like prescription drug abuse.
Park Ridge and other hospitals have been battling with the administration in court for three years over a plan to slash by nearly 30% the reimbursement rate that hospitals get for certain drugs prescribed to Medicare patients. The hospitals won the first round. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard arguments in November and has yet to rule, and for now the cut is still in effect. In the meantime, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is exploring another way to make the cut if they lose the case, over the objection of hospitals.
USA Today: Theme parks will look different when they reopen. Disney, Universal, others unveil plans by Curtis Tate
After closing for more than two months due to the coronavirus pandemic, theme parks are getting ready to open up again. But as their plans have revealed, they will be a very different experience for visitors.
Disney World and SeaWorld Orlando became the latest to announce their plans Wednesday. Those parks have proposed to reopen to the public on July 11 and June 11, respectively, subject to the approval of state officials in Florida.
Disney World plans to reopen the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom on July 11, followed by Epcot and Disney Hollywood Studios on July 15.
The Universal Orlando and a Six Flags park in Oklahoma are set to open June 5.
State and local officials in Florida have approved Universal's plan to reopen June 5 and Legoland's plan to reopen June 1. In Oklahoma City, Six Flags Frontier City will reopen June 5.
History was set to be made today as NASA and SpaceX geared up to launch Americans into space from American soil and on American equipment for the first time in nearly a decade.
The launch has been called off for the day, less than 20 minutes before scheduled liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, due to inclement weather. It has been rescheduled for Saturday, May 30, at 3:22 p.m.
If all goes well on Saturday, the SpaceX Demo-2 launch will send NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station on a Crew Dragon spacecraft propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket.
New York Times: Tropical Storm Bertha Could Cause Dangerous Flooding in the South by Michael Levenson
A tropical storm named Bertha could bring heavy rain, whipping winds and potentially life-threatening flash floods to parts of the Carolinas and Virginia on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
After quickly gathering strength off the coast of South Carolina, Bertha was named a tropical storm less than two hours before it made landfall about 20 miles east of Charleston, S.C., at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday. At the time, it was packing sustained winds of 50 miles an hour.
By Wednesday afternoon, it had weakened to a tropical depression but remained a potentially deadly threat, the Weather Service said.
Meteorologists warned that downpours from the storm could cause rivers to flood before it gradually weakens over the next 48 hours.
BBC News: Coronavirus: Von der Leyen calls €750bn recovery fund 'Europe's moment'
A recovery fund worth €750bn (£670bn; $825bn) has been proposed by the EU's executive Commission to help the EU tackle an "unprecedented crisis".
The package will be made up of grants and loans for every EU member state.
Economies across the 27-nation EU bloc have been ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, but several southern states had big debts even before the crisis.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said "this is Europe's moment".
"Things we take for granted are being questioned. None of that can be fixed by any single country alone," she told the European Parliament. "This is about all of us and it is way bigger than any of us."
The Commission has dubbed the plan Next Generation EU. Without the backing of all 27 EU member states, it cannot go ahead. But Germany and France have backed plans for the money to be raised on the capital markets.
AlJazeera: 'All-out combat' feared as India, China engage in border standoff by Saif Khalid
On May 5, a scuffle broke out between Indian and Chinese troops at the Pangong Tso lake, located 14,000 feet (4,270 metres) above the sea level in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.
A video shot by an Indian soldier and shared on social media showed soldiers from both nations engaged in fistfights and stone-pelting at the de facto border, known as Line of Actual Control (LAC). The incident, which continued until the next day, resulted in 11 soldiers being injured on both sides.
Three days later and nearly 1,200km (745 miles) away to the east along the LAC, another fight erupted at Nathu La Pass in the Indian state of Sikkim after Indian soldiers stopped a patrol party from China's People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Both countries downplayed the incidents, and the issues were resolved at the local commander level, as has generally been done in the past.
But in the weeks since then, the India-China border has seen soldiers from both sides camping along several disputed areas, with each side accusing the other of trespassing.
Guardian: Brazil police target key Bolsonaro supporters in fake news raids by Tom Phillips
Brazilian police have raided addresses linked to some of Jair Bolsonaro’s most ardent online cheerleaders as part of an investigation into a fake news network investigators reportedly suspect could be linked to the president’s son.
The operation’s targets were an eclectic and influential cast of hardcore Bolsonaristas including a former Femen activist-turned-anti-abortion-militant; a comic and musician whose repertoire includes a sexually explicit JK Rowling parody called “Harry Fucker”; a gun-toting, communist-bashing congressman; a hard-right blogger; and a multimillionaire retail magnate famed for placing giant replicas of the Statue of Liberty outside his stores.
There was rejoicing among the president’s opponents and outrage among followers as federal police investigators executed 29 search warrants around Brazil as part of an inquiry into the alleged group and its financial backers.
Mobile phones and computers were reportedly seized in homes and offices in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, and five states.
Reuters: As Japan reopens, coronavirus testing slowed by bureaucracy and staff shortages by Ju-min Park and Kiyoshi Takenaka
TOKYO (Reuters) - At the beginning of April, a young Japanese sumo wrestler known as Shobushi came down with a fever. His coaches tried calling a local public health centre to get him a coronavirus test, but the phone lines were busy.
For four days, he was turned away by clinics in Tokyo overwhelmed during a surge of COVID-19 cases. He was finally admitted to hospital on April 8 when he began coughing up blood, but died of the disease on May 13, the Japan Sumo Association said.
Shobushi’s death caused a public outcry over Japan’s testing limitations and reliance on overstretched public health centres at a time when most experts say widespread virus checks are crucial to contain the pandemic.
With Japan lifting its state of emergency and reopening its economy this week, its pandemic response has been hailed as an unlikely success. In a global death toll of more than 300,000, Japan has confirmed around 800 deaths from 16,000 cases.
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting a Wednesday night owls thread tonight.
Everyone have a good evening!