Welcome to
Overnight News Digest, where the usual crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, side pocket, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, jlms qkw, and ScottyUrb, guest editors annetteboardman and Doctor RJ, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with tonight's news.
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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
From CNN: Lone wolf planned attack on U.S. Capitol, FBI says
Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, came to the FBI's attention several months ago for alarming social media posts in which he talked about his support for violent jihad, according to a criminal complaint. He allegedly wrote under the alias Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah.
The FBI engaged in an undercover operation, with the help of a person who began cooperating in exchange for favorable treatment on his criminal exposure on an unrelated case.
Cornell allegedly told that source he had been in contact with persons overseas, and that he had aligned himself with ISIS.
He did not think he would receive "specific authorization to conduct a terrorist attack in the United States, but stated that he wanted to go forward with violent jihad and opined that this would be their way of supporting ISIL," the complaint said, using another name for ISIS.
From the
New York Times:
Qaeda Claims of Key Role in Paris Attacks Are Scrutinized
The younger of the two brothers who killed 12 people in Paris last week most likely used his older brother’s passport in 2011 to travel to Yemen, where he received training and $20,000 from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, presumably to finance attacks when he returned home to France.
American counterterrorism officials said on Wednesday that they now believed that Chérif Kouachi, the younger brother, was the aggressor in the attacks — not Saïd Kouachi, the older brother, as they first thought — but that Saïd may also have traveled to Yemen, as American and French authorities have said.
The fuller portrait of the brothers has emerged as an international effort is focused on determining who may have been behind the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and what direct role, if any, Al Qaeda, its affiliates or their bitter rival, the Islamic State, had in planning and ordering the assault. In a video and written statement, the Qaeda branch in Yemen on Wednesday formally claimed responsibility for the deadly assault. It said the target had been chosen by the Qaeda leadership but did not specify which leaders.
From
NBC News:
American Newsstands Scramble for Copies of Charlie Hebdo
Florida newsstand owner Seth Cohen is a regular purveyor of French magazines, which are in high demand among the snowbirds who migrate there every winter from France and Canada. But he never had anyone ask for Charlie Hebdo.
Until now.
Customers have been flocking into his store, Bob's News & Books in Ft. Lauderdale, and plunking down deposits for a copy of the satirical magazine's latest issue, the first since its offices were attacked by Islamic militants last week. Cohen can't be sure he'll get any. But he has a close enough relationship with his distributor, LMPI, that he figures he has a shot at a small stack. "They told us they might be able to get us like 50 copies," Cohen said.
That would be a huge score, given the remarkable demand.
The normally 60,000-copy-circulation magazine is churning out millions of additional copies of Issue #1178 and has still been unable to keep up. In France, 700,000 copies were sold in the first hour they became available Wednesday.
From
The Guardian:
Obama to give federal employees six weeks' maternity leave
Federal employes will be given at least six weeks of paid leave to care for new children under plans unveiled by the White House to kick-start legislative efforts to close the gap in family benefits offered by the US and other wealthy countries.
Democrats have been pushing for better maternity and sick leave rights for over a decade in Congress with little success, but plans by Barack Obama to back the passage of a Healthy Families Act with the executive action for government workers and $2.2bn of new funding for state efforts would be the first time the president has acted on the issue.
The long-stalled legislation would also allow workers in the private sector to earn up to seven days a year of paid sick time and although it is still opposed by most Republicans, Obama’s intervention ahead of the State of Union address next week suggests Democrats hope to make the policy an issue for emerging 2016 presidential candidates.
From the
Washington Post:
Four top Secret Service executives told to leave their posts in agency shake-up
Members of the Secret Service follow President Obama in October as he arrives at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
The Secret Service is forcing out four of its most senior officials while two others are retiring — the biggest management shake-up at the troubled agency since its director resigned in October after a string of security lapses.
The departures will gut much of the Secret Service’s upper management, which has been criticized in recent months by lawmakers and administration officials who say it has fostered a culture of distrust between agency leaders and its rank-and-file and made poor decisions that helped erode the quality of this once elite agency.
Acting director Joseph P. Clancy on Tuesday informed the four assistant directors who oversee the Secret Service’s core missions of protection, investigations, technology and public affairs that they must leave their leadership positions. If they do not resign or retire, they can report for a new assignment with the Secret Service or its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the discussions.
From the
Los Angeles Times:
Body camera video of Arizona police officer's killing stirs ethical debate
The casket of Flagstaff, Ariz., police Officer Tyler Stewart at his funeral on Jan. 2.
The video footage is raw, showing Flagstaff, Ariz., police Officer Tyler Stewart chatting with a man accused of breaking a couple things in his girlfriend's apartment a day earlier. That's what body cameras do: capture the daily work of police officers up close.
"Do you mind if I just pat down your pockets real quick? You don't have anything in here?" Stewart, 24, can be heard asking the suspect, Robert Smith, 28, who had his hands jammed in his pockets. They had been talking in the cold for a few minutes outside Smith's home Dec. 27.
"No, no — my smokes," replies Smith, who had been chuckling moments earlier. Smith then draws a revolver so fast that the gun is almost a blur. The video stops. Stewart is shot five times before Smith fatally shoots himself. The graphic video altered the usual conversation about body cameras and police accountability by capturing — up close — a polite conversation that instantly turned into a deadly encounter in which the officer had little chance to react ... The Arizona footage raises questions about the balance between the public's right to know and privacy concerns for officers and bystanders as authorities around the country wrestle with how to regulate the rapidly spreading technology.
From the
Denver Post:
Family: Church in Lakewood stops woman's funeral because she was gay
Victoria Quintana carries a photograph of Vanessa Collier, right, and her partner, Christina Higley, during a rally outside New Hope Ministries in Lakewood, CO. January 13, 2015.
Hundreds of Vanessa Collier's friends and family gathered Saturday at New Hope Ministries, sitting before an open casket that held the woman they loved, when suddenly the minister overseeing her funeral stopped the service.
The memorial could not continue, Pastor Ray Chavez said, as long as pictures of Collier with the love of her life, the spouse she shared two children with, were to be displayed.
Chavez said there could be no images of Collier with her wife, Christina. There could be no indication that Collier was gay. Outraged, those who loved Collier, 33, picked up programs, flowers and eventually the dead woman's casket itself, moving the service to a mortuary that — thankfully, they say — happened to be across the street.
"It was humiliating," said Victoria Quintana, Collier's longtime friend. "It was devastating."
From the
Boston Globe:
Provocative statements from Rand Paul in N.H.
With the political world focused on a potential Republican presidential primary matchup between former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul traveled to New Hampshire on Wednesday and injected himself back into the national conversation with a series of provocative statements.
While state legislators ate eggs and drank coffee in a Manchester diner, Paul suggested that half of the recipients of federal disability relief are “gaming the system” because they are able to work. He also told them the arguments against building the Keystone XL pipeline are “this sort of Luddite, flat-earth, that my goodness we shouldn’t have cars” mentality.
To gun-rights advocates at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club, he talked about how the militarization of local police forces contributes to the nation’s poor race relations. In Ferguson, Mo., he said, “It looks like the Army is there, so if you are an African-American in Ferguson, you think the white police have an army and they are after me.” Speaking to education advocates at a Manchester charter school, he called for abolishing the US Department of Education, and whacked the Common Core educational standards because, he said, they stifle innovation.
If those comments didn’t get him attention, he also offered reporters quotable zingers about his potential presidential opponents, dismissing Bush and Romney as “yesterday’s news.”
From
JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories):
Approaching Titan a Billion Times Closer
The first minute shows a zoom into images of Titan from Cassini's cameras, while the remainder of the movie depicts the view from Huygens during the last few hours of its historic descent and landing.
It was October 15, 1997, when NASA's Cassini orbiter embarked on an epic, seven-year voyage to the Saturnian system. Hitching a ride was ESA's Huygens probe, destined for Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The final chapter of the interplanetary trek for Huygens began on 25 December 2004 when it deployed from the orbiter for a 21-day solo cruise toward the haze-shrouded moon. Plunging into Titan's atmosphere, on January 14 2005, the probe survived the hazardous 2 hour 27 minute descent to touch down safely on Titan's frozen surface. Today, the Cassini spacecraft remains in orbit at Saturn. Its mission will end in 2017, 20 years after its journey began.
From
BBC News:
Free climbers reach El Capitan peak and make history
Tommy Caldwell, left, and Kevin Jorgeson after completing their 19-day free climb of the 3,000-foot Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
Two US climbers - who spent more than two weeks scaling the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park - have finally reached the summit of the 3,000ft (914m) rock.
Kevin Jorgeson, 30, and Tommy Caldwell, 36 are the first climbers to do so without aids, except for harnesses and ropes to prevent deadly falls.
They began their historic half-mile ascent on 27 December 2014.
During the climb the pair slept in tents suspended from the mountain face.
From
Bloomberg:
North Koreans Walk Across Frozen River to Kill Chinese for Food
A spate of murders by North Koreans inside China’s border is prompting some residents to abandon their homes, testing China’s ability to manage both the 880-mile (1,400-kilometer) shared frontier and its relationship with the reclusive nation.
The violence reflects a growing desperation among soldiers, including border guards, since Kim Jong Un took over as supreme leader in Pyongyang three years ago. As well as seeking food, they are entering China to steal money.
“Bribes were one of the key sources of income for these guards to survive, but after Kim Jong Un came to power and tightened controls, it became difficult for them to take bribes, thus the criminal deviations,” said Kang Dong Wan, a professor of international relations at Busan’s Dong-a University in South Korea.
The murder of four residents of a border village last month prompted China to file a complaint with North Korea, risking tensions between the two allies in contrast to Kim’s recent overtures toward South Korea. Kim defied China in 2013 to conduct North Korea’s third nuclear test, and in the same year executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, who had promoted commercial ties with China.
From
Slate:
Even the Ruble Is a Better Investment Than Bitcoin These Days
In December, when the ruble crisis was really revving up, a small number of panicked Russians appeared to start moving their money into bitcoin. Even though the cryptocurrency was technically banned in the country, the volume of ruble-denominated trades shot up 250 percent, CNBC reported.
Bad call. While the ruble has had a wild ride lately, it's down just 3 percent against the dollar over the past month. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is in the midst of an epic collapse, having lost 44 percent of its value since Dec. 14, according to Coindesk. Russia might be in the midst of the crisis, but its currency has still been a safer bet than everyone's favorite online currency/speculative investment opportunity/digital fetish object for techno-liberterians.
What, exactly, is causing the plunge? Earlier in January, some people were blaming short-sellers. But now, the consensus seems to be that bitcoin is, as Business Insider's Rob Wile puts it, "stuck in a self-fulfilling downward spiral." The problem has to do with bitcoin miners—companies whose computers unlock new batches of the currency by solving complicated math problems. Mining takes money—computing power and electricity aren't free, you know—and because bitcoin's price has fallen so low, it may no longer be profitable. So miners are now selling off bitcoins in order to cover their dollar costs. But the further bitcoin's price falls, the more they need to sell in order to pay the bills.
From
The Atlantic:
What to Do With a Dying Neighborhood
There are hundreds of stories of failed subdivisions left empty by the housing bust, where homeowners are stuck staring into vacant lots of PVC pipes and weeds.
There are very few stories where a half-finished development has been saved from ruin.
The rescue of one such development, by the city in which it is located, is being heralded as a potential solution to some of the worst mistakes of the housing crisis. The local newspaper, the Covington News, praised the project, writing that “a community has been brought back from the dead.”
That Covington, a city 35 miles east of Atlanta, did anything at all is unusual, said Ellen Dunham-Jones, an architect and urban-design professor at Georgia Tech who has a chapter on the subdivision, Walker’s Bend, in a forthcoming book, Retrofitting Sprawl.
“I really applaud them tremendously, since its pretty unusual: Cities just aren’t in the business of being developers,” she said. “In conservative districts, there’s a philosophical sense that the city as master developer smacks of socialism.”
From
Al Jazeera:
Big demand for NYC municipal ID cards
New York City’s municipal identification card, launched Monday, quickly became a hot ticket, with thousands of residents eager to receive one lining up at distribution centers across the city — a volume that prompted city officials on Wednesday to start processing card applications by appointment only.
The nation’s largest city joins a handful of other municipalities — from San Francisco to Mercer County, New Jersey — that in recent years have issued their own ID cards to make life easier and safer for large populations of undocumented immigrants and anyone else in need of identification. Available free of charge to anyone 14 years or older in New York City, the cards also provide discounts at businesses and free access to some of the city's museums.
“It’s something good they should have done a long time ago," Alice King, 46, originally from Trinidad but a Brooklyn resident for the last 15 years, told local news site DNAInfo.
Based on its size alone, New York City’s program could become a model for municipal IDs in other U.S. cities, civil liberties advocates say. There are about 500,000 undocumented immigrants in New York City.
From
Variety:
Rosie Perez to Exit ‘The View’
After only four months on “The View,” Rosie Perez is leaving the ABC morning show, Variety has learned.
Perez had taken off the month of January to appear in the Broadway play “Fish in the Dark,” but it’s understood that she won’t be coming back to the Hot Topics table once she’s done. It’s unclear when ABC will announce her departure, but for now “View” producers have been trying other younger co-hosts in her seat.
A rep for “View” denied that Perez would be leaving the show. “Her status with the show has not changed,” ABC said ... The choice of Perez was a surprise given the other contenders that were in the mix last year. But Perez never got a hang of the show’s mixture of hard and soft news, and she had trouble reading from a TelePrompTer, insiders say.
In October, “The View” moved from ABC Daytime to a special production unit of ABC News. But the shift in management hasn’t resulted in any improvement in “View” ratings. More changes in staffing — both behind and in front of the camera — are said to be in the works.
From the
Indianapolis Star:
Colts linebacker Josh McNary in police custody on rape charge
An Indianapolis Colts linebacker has been charged with rape, according to court documents filed Wednesday by the Marion County prosecutor.
Josh McNary, 26, who has been with the team since 2013, faces one count of rape, one count of criminal confinement and one count of battery, court documents state.
McNary was taken into police custody Wednesday night after the charges were filed.
A 29-year-old woman told police that a man she met at a Downtown bar after a long night of drinking took her to his apartment and raped her. According to a probable cause affidavit, the two ended up in a bedroom, where the man tried to kiss her face and neck. The woman said he got upset and became aggressive after she turned down his advances.
"He scared me, intimidated me and scared me," the woman told detectives.
From
The Hollywood Reporter:
LAPD Will Investigate Sexual Assault Claims Against Bill Cosby
The LAPD will investigate the sexual assault claims made Wednesday against Bill Cosby by a woman named Chloe Goins, an LAPD spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Officer Norma Eisenman tells THR, "[The allegations] will be investigated. That is all that we are commenting."
As THR reported earlier, Goins visited LAPD HQ Wednesday morning with her attorney to make a statement to police in relation to a 2008 incident, during which she claims Cosby drugged and molested her at the Playboy Mansion. Goins was 18 years old at the time of the alleged assault.
Goins' attorney Spencer Kuvin told THR, "[The case] is in [LAPD's] hands now."
From the
New York Daily News:
2 Chainz, Nancy Grace get in heated debate over marijuana legalization
2 Chainz smoked Nancy Grace in a debate about marijuana legalization.
The Grammy-nominated rapper appeared on the host's HLN show Tuesday night to defend his pro-pot stance, refusing to agree with Grace's argument that the drug is to blame for many of society's ills.
The segment began on a surreal note, with the sharp-edged former prosecutor introducing 2 Chainz by both his real name, Tauheed Epps, and his former stage name, "Tity Boi." She then launched into an attack on the rapper's weed habit, asking how he could support marijuana legalization when, for example, there are viral videos that show parents giving their toddlers pot.
The 37-year-old rapper refused to back down.
"I have two beautiful little girls and I'm a great father," 2 Chainz said at one point. "I feel like everybody should basically take care of their own … it's about governing your own household, taking care of your own property, it's about having some kind of structure."
Later, he called Grace out for using videos of a small number of "imbeciles" to villify potheads.