Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, 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.
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Reuters
A Native American leader asked thousands of protesters to return home after the federal government ruled against a controversial pipeline, despite the prospect of President-elect Donald Trump reversing the decision after he takes office.
A coalition of Native American groups, environmentalists, Hollywood stars and veterans of the U.S. armed forces protested the $3.8 billion oil project. They said construction would damage sacred lands and any leaks could pollute the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
The tribe still wants to speak with Trump about the Dakota Access Pipeline to prevent him from approving the final phase of construction, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault told Reuters.
"The current administration did the right thing and we need to educate the incoming administration and help them understand the right decision was made," he said.Trump's transition team said on Monday it would review the decision to delay completion once he takes office Jan. 20.
Ed. note: But then there is this:
The Guardian
Native American activists at the Standing Rock “water protector” camps vowed to remain in place the morning after the US Army Corps of Engineers denied a key permit for the Dakota Access pipeline, with many expressing concerns that the incoming Trump administration and potential legal action from the pipeline company could reverse their victory.
The Army Corps of Engineers announced Sunday that it would not grant the permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the Missouri river, handing a major victory to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe after a months-long campaign against the pipeline.
However, the companies behind the pipeline, who have the backing of the incoming Trump administration, have insisted the project would still go ahead. “Nothing indicates for us to pack up and go home,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Our native people have reason to be distrustful.”
Tara Houska, a member of the Couchiching First Nation, was similarly circumspect.
“I celebrate with caution,” the national campaigns director for Honor the Earth said. “We know that Trump is coming and with that, we know our fight will continue.”
US NEWS
McClatchy DC
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory announced Monday that he’s conceded the election to Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s attorney general, and will support transition efforts.
McCrory made the concession in a video message posted around noon Monday as a recount he requested in Durham County entered its final hours. Durham officials plan to finish the recount later Monday, but early results from the recount showed virtually no change in the vote tally there.
“I personally believe that the majority of our citizens have spoken, and we now should do everything we can to support the 75th governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper,” McCrory says in the video. “The McCrory administration team will assist in every way to help the new administration make a smooth transition.
“It’s time to celebrate our democratic process and respect what I see to be the ultimate outcome of the closest North Carolina governor’s race in modern history.”
With the concession, McCrory becomes the state’s first governor to lose a re-election bid. His defeat followed the nation’s second costliest gubernatorial race and North Carolina’s most expensive ever.
McCrory’s concession comes nearly a month after Election Day, following dozens of election complaints filed by Republicans with help from the governor’s campaign. The majority of them were dismissed by GOP-controlled county election boards.
McClatchy DC
When it comes to his most prominent cabinet pick, Donald Trump is keeping his options open.
After narrowing the potential secretary of state picks down to four finalists, he now plans to expand the search and interview additional candidates, a senior adviser said on Sunday.
The president-elect does not want to rush the decision and will be meeting with more people this week, Kellyanne Conway told reporters in Trump Tower.
“It is true that he's broadened the search, and the secretary of state is an incredibly important position for any president to fill,” she said. “He's very fortunate to have interest among serious men and women...so, he continues to talk to different people.”
The original shortlist included 2012 Republican presidential candidate and former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics during the campaign. After a high-profile dinner in a New York restaurant with the president-elect earlier this week, Romney said he was “very impressed” with Trump and his transition efforts.
BuzzFeed News
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Monday morning filed a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court seeking a statewide recount of the presidential race.
The move came after Stein withdrew on Saturday night the party’s recount request that was in state court.
“The Pennsylvania election system is a national disgrace. Voters are forced to use vulnerable, hackable, antiquated technology banned in other states, then rely on the kindness of machines. There is no paper trail. Voting machines are electoral black sites: no one permits voters or candidates to examine them,” begins the suit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Many — including the Hillary Clinton campaign — expect the Green Party’s recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin not to change any of the outcomes.
Donald Trump won Michigan by 0.3%, or 10,704 votes, and a recount is expected to begin there on Monday afternoon. He won Wisconsin by 0.7%, and a recount is underway there. He won Pennsylvania by 1.3%. The states represent 46 electoral college votes, and Trump’s victory wouldn’t change unless all of those those states moved to Clinton after the recount efforts.
The Guardian
The trial of the former police officer who shot dead Walter Scott, an unarmed African American, in an incident that was caught on cellphone video and reignited the debate on race and policing in the US, has ended in a mistrial.
Michael Slager, 35, was caught on film shooting Scott, 50, five times from behind after pursuing the father of four when he fled a traffic stop in South Carolina in April 2015. The video filmed by a witness, which propelled the case into the global spotlight, showed Scott was running away with his back turned when Slager, then an officer with the North Charleston police department, opened fire.
The jury of 11 white people and one black person was unable to reach a unanimous decision on the murder and manslaughter charges, meaning the case resulted in a mistrial. The result appears to have hung on the opinion of single juror who, on Friday, indicated in a note to the Judge Clifton Newman, that they could not “with good conscience consider a guilty verdict”.
The jury’s foreperson had pushed deliberations into a fourth day, after tense scenes in court on Friday, allowing jurors a weekend break after a monthlong trial.
Prosecutors have indicated they will seek a retrial.
The Guardian
A devastating warehouse fire that killed at least 36 people has shone a harsh light on a housing crisis in Oakland and its consequences for artists and low-income residents.
The fire, which broke out during a party at the ‘Ghost Ship’ warehouse on Friday night, sent shockwaves through the underground arts and music scene in the northern California city where rapidly rising rents have forced people to live and make art in shared and sometimes hazardous spaces.
Some reports have cast blame on the artists and residents associated with the warehouse where so many people died, trapped in a building that lacked basic fire safety mechanisms.
Long-time Oaklanders and tenants’ rights activists, however, said the tragedy was a symptom of a major affordability crisis and the long-term failure of urban housing policy to protect the most vulnerable people.
Grieving artists – many still waiting for official news about friends who went missing in the fire – said on Sunday the city must find a way to ensure that underground performance spaces, “live-work” warehouses and overcrowded homes were safe, without shutting down venues and evicting tenants.
Reuters
New York City asked the U.S. government for up to $35 million to cover security costs for protecting President-elect Donald Trump in his home atop a Manhattan skyscraper, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday.
Trump, a Republican, has spent most of his time since Election Day in his apartment at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, forcing police to work with the U.S. Secret Service to provide intensified security measures in one of the city's busiest neighborhoods.
The situation is "truly unusual," de Blasio said at a news conference.
Trump has used the tower for years as his primary residence and the headquarters of his global business empire. His presence there while receiving high-profile guests to interview for his administration has caused traffic jams and frustrated commuters and tourists.
De Blasio sent letters to President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders on Monday asking for federal funds to pay for security costs from the Nov. 8 election through Jan. 20, when Trump is to take the oath of office in Washington and become the 45th U.S. president.
The 75-day period puts the daily price tag for the New York Police Department at about $467,000. The figure is about half the $1 million daily tab previously estimated by New York media and cited in a petition by City Council members to Trump last week.
NPR
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Ben Carson to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development in his incoming administration.
"Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities," Trump said in a statement released Monday. "We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities."
The famed retired neurosurgeon is an unorthodox pick to lead the agency which oversees affordable housing programs and enforces fair housing legislation.
…
"I grew up in the inner city and have spent a lot of time there, and have dealt with a lot of patients from that area and recognize that we cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities," Carson said.
BBC
Descendants of West African slaves in South Carolina are fighting to prevent their land from being confiscated and auctioned. Can they save a traditional way of life that has survived for the one and half centuries since emancipation?
The first Lillian Milton knew about it was when she arrived at the local council offices to settle her tax bill.
She was told her home had been sold because she had not paid a $250 levy for a sewer service. She was shocked - at that point she had not even been connected to the sewer system.
"They had sold everything, the property, the house and all and when I offered to pay them with a cheque, they told me I couldn't. I had to get cash money - 880 some dollars that I had to pay them to get my place back.
"It's like they were saying if I didn't get on the system I wouldn't have no place to stay."
Milton suspects the heart attack she suffered in January was brought on by the stress of trying to get her home back.
New York Times
NORTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Jolted into action by a wave of hate crimes that followed the election victory of Donald J. Trump, American Muslims and Jews are banding together in a surprising new alliance.
They are putting aside for now their divisions over Israel to join forces to resist whatever may come next. New groups are forming and interfaith coalitions that already existed say interest is increasing.
Vaseem Firdaus, a Muslim who has lived in the United States for 42 years, spent Friday night at a Shabbat dinner for members of a women’s group called the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, in a home here filled with Jewish art and ritual objects.
Until Donald J. Trump was elected, Ms. Firdaus, who is 56 and a manufacturing manager at Exxon Mobil, felt secure living as a Muslim in America. She has a daughter who is a doctor and a son who is an engineer, and she recently traveled to Tampa with her husband looking to buy a vacation home. But Mr. Trump’s victory has shaken her sense of comfort and security.
WORLD NEWS
AFP
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said his goodbyes Monday after a ruinous referendum defeat that was cheered by populist leaders and sent shockwaves rippling around Europe.
"My experience of government finishes here," said a downcast Renzi after accepting a defeat of almost 60-40 percent over his constitutional reform bid.
The result, coming on the coattails of Brexit and Donald Trump's US election win, has plunged Italy into a period of political uncertainty and cast a shadow over the short- and long-term future of the eurozone's third-largest economy.
After a first meeting with President Sergio Mattarella to discuss his departure, Renzi posted a link on his Facebook page defending his record since he came to power in February 2014.
"1,000 difficult but wonderful days. Thanks to everyone. Viva l'Italia," he wrote.
Renzi, 41, was expected to formally tender his resignation to Mattarella after a final cabinet meeting set for 6.30 pm (1730 GMT).
Mattarella will then be charged with brokering the appointment of a new government or, if he is unable to do that, ordering early elections.
AFP
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to become the first Japanese leader to visit Pearl Harbor, announcing Monday a trip to the site of his country's surprise attack that launched World War II in the Pacific.
News of the journey comes just two days ahead of the 75th anniversary of the deadly December 7, 1941 assault on the US naval base in Hawaii.
The war ended in August 1945 after the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and, although the countries have forged strong ties in the seven decades since, how the war began and concluded has cast a long shadow.
Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor also comes as Japan prepares to build a new relationship with Donald Trump, who will take over from President Barack Obama next month.
Trump sent shockwaves through Japan earlier this year when he appeared to call into question the two countries' security alliance, prompting Abe to become the first world leader to meet him after the election to confirm the relationship.
His journey to Pearl Harbor will be part of a December 26-27 visit to Obama's home state, where they will hold talks and visit the war site together.
DW News
The international nuclear deal with Iran "should not be affected by any changes in the domestic situations of the countries concerned," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday at a news conference in Beijing with his Iranian counterpart, in an apparent reference to US President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump has called the Iran nuclear accord "one of the worst deals I've ever seen negotiated" and vowed to renegotiate or tear it up. Many Republicans in Congress want to scrap the deal entirely and impose sanctions to counter what they say are Iran's destabilizing activities in the Middle East and hostility towards Israel.
The nuclear deal signed last year between Iran and six world powers - China, Russia, the United States, France, Germany, and Britain - dropped crippling international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for Iran's giving up its nuclear capabilities. The deal went into effect in January and all sides have largely abided by it.
DW News
"My government ends today," said Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi just after midnight on Monday, in a televised address from the Palazzo Chigi. "I take full responsibility for this defeat."
Renzi said he could not refute the "extraordinarily clear" results of Sunday's referendum on constitutional reforms, and called on his rivals to provide clear proposals for ending the continuous cycle of political deadlock in Rome. He offered his condolences to those in his "Yes" camp, congratulating them on a hard-fought campaign.
"Good luck to us all," said the prime minister of two-and-a-half years, saying he would give his letter of resignation to President Sergio Mattarella later on Monday.
Europe calls for fast solution
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was saddened by Premier Matteo Renzi's defeat in the Italian constitutional referendum.
"I am sad that the referendum in Italy didn't turn out the way the premier wanted, because I have always supported his course of reform."
However, she said she believed that Europe as a whole was on the right track.
Al Jazeera
Forces aligned to Libya's UN-backed national unity government have gained full control of Sirte after months of fighting, in a major blow to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in the country.
"Our forces have total control of Sirte," Reda Issa, a spokesman for pro-government forces, told AFP news agency on Monday. "Our forces saw Daesh totally collapse," he said referring to the Arabic name of ISIL.
The battle for the coastal city, which was the last significant territory held by ISIL, also known as ISIS, in Libya, cost the lives of hundreds of loyalist troops as well as an unknown number of ISIL fighters, Issa said.
The government forces seized the coastal city's Jiza al-Bahrieh district, the last area where the armed group has been holding out, and were in the process of securing it, Issa said in a separate interview with DPA news agency.
"Daesh has totally collapsed and dozens of them have given themselves up to our forces," said a statement on the loyalist forces' official Facebook page.
Reuters
The White House said on Monday it had sought to reassure China after President-elect Donald Trump's phone call with Taiwan's leader last week, which the Obama administration warned could undermine progress in relations with Beijing.
The statement from a spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama highlighted concerns about the potential fallout from Trump's unusual call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday, which prompted a diplomatic protest from Beijing on Saturday.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said senior National Security Council officials spoke twice with Chinese officials over the weekend to reassure them of Washington's commitment to the "One China" policy and to "reiterate and clarify the continued commitment of the United States to our longstanding China policy."
Reuters
A newly identified spokesman for Islamic State urged sympathizers around the world to carry out a fresh wave of attacks, singling out Turkish diplomatic, military and financial interests as the Islamists' preferred targets.
Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer, whose role as the group's mouthpiece was disclosed for the first time on Monday, also told Islamic State fighters to stand their ground in the town of Tal Afar, where they are threatened by Iraqi forces bearing down on the city of Mosul, the group's last major Iraqi stronghold.
In a defiant online message, Muhajer described Islamic State's military losses this year as setbacks and said an array of forces in Iraq and Syria had failed to defeat the jihadists.
He said Islamic State supporters would target "the secular, apostate Turkish government in every security, military, economic and media establishment, including every embassy and consulate, that represents it in all countries of the world."
"Destroy their vehicles, raid them ... in their shelters so they can taste some of your misery and do not talk yourselves into fleeing," Muhajer said in an audio recording posted online.
He called on supporters of Islamic State to "redouble your efforts and step up your operations" around the world.
BBC
Many of the fake news websites that sprang up during the US election campaign have been traced to a small city in Macedonia, where teenagers are pumping out sensationalist stories to earn cash from advertising.
The young man sitting in the cafe looks barely more than a boy - he hasn't shaved for a few days, yet he's a long way off achieving designer stubble. The hair on his chin and cheeks is still soft and his smart navy blazer and clean white shirt make him look as if he's in school uniform.
It's not the image that 19-year-old university student, Goran, sitting far back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other wants to portray.
"The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them," he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he's fiddling with. "Who cares if they are true or false?”
…
Goran says he worked on the fakery for only a month and earned about 1,800 euros (£1,500) - but his mates, he claims, have been earning thousands of euros a day. When I ask him if he worries that his false news might have unfairly influenced voters in America, he scoffs.
"Teenagers in our city don't care how Americans vote," he laughs. "They are only satisfied that they make money and can buy expensive clothes and drinks!”
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (December 4, 2016)
Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of “unimaginable scale,” according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the “new normal”.
The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency.
Military leaders have long warned that global warming could multiply and accelerate security threats around the world by provoking conflicts and migration. They are now warning that immediate action is required.
“Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,” said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change and a former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh. He said one metre of sea level rise will flood 20 percent of his nation. “We’re going to see refugee problems on an unimaginable scale, potentially above 30 million people.”
Previously, Bangladesh’s finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, called on Britain and other wealthy countries to accept millions of displaced people.
Climate Central
From his claim that global warming was a gigantic hoax masterminded by China to his promise to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris agreement, Donald Trump’s surprise election win was widely decried by those who feared that recent progress in tackling climate change was about to come undone.
But a growing number of environmentally friendly American businesses – including major airlines and banks, as well as energy, tech and pharmaceutical companies – are pushing back against the president-elect’s attempts to dismiss climate change concerns and are planning to take the lead in the drive to make the U.S. a worldwide leader at slowing or reversing the damage.
At the first Companies vs Climate Change conference in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, a succession of company executives, sustainable business experts and environmental activists spoke of the need for corporate America to step up efforts to help guide policy and fight what many see as the biggest threat facing the world today.
“If they don’t then the people who are hellbent on rescinding regulations and just allowing the market to function without any guardrails are likely to undo all the progress that the United States has made over the past 70 years,” said Richard Eidlin, vice-president of policy and campaigns for the lobbying group American Sustainable Business Council.
“Businesses that are in favour of addressing climate change, and maintaining environmental safeguards need to really express their views and express the business case for doing so. Not only is it good for them, and they’re generating profit and mitigating their risk, but what is just as important is stepping into the policy process.”
Al Jazeera
Puebla, Mexico - Cholula is a seemingly unremarkable village three hours from Mexico City, the capital of Mexico. But it has one claim to fame: a large hill that awkwardly bulges out from the surrounding plains. There is more to this hill than what first meets the eye, however. In actuality, it is a massive pre-Columbian pyramid structure, almost twice the size of the largest of Egypt's Giza pyramids.
"The fact that the pyramid was abandoned [before the Spanish conquest] and was naturally converted into a natural-looking hill through erosion meant that it wasn't known that it was a human construction until relatively recently," explained Michael Smith, a professor in anthropology at Arizona State University.
The structure is known as the Great Pyramid of Cholula. It is so immense that generations of Mexican archaeologists dismissed it as a natural formation.
It's estimated to be well over 2,000 years old, but locals worry its end may be near.
The local community and activists have been opposing government-led development projects in the area intended to attract and cater to a new tourism industry.
"It's like putting a convenience store on Machu Picchu; it's totally ridiculous," Maria Refugio Paisano Rodriguez from the protest group, Cholula: Viva y Digna ('Alive and Dignified'), expressed her frustration to Al Jazeera.
The Guardian
The urgent threat of climate change means there is “no time to despair” over the election of Donald Trump, according to former vice-president Al Gore, who hopes that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will join an escalated climate campaign against the president-elect.
Gore told the Guardian he remained hopeful Trump would reverse some of his positions on climate change but predicted an unprecedented backlash from environmentalists over the next four years.
Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, has pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, dismantle the Clean Power Plan, slash renewable energy funding and somehow prop up the ailing US coal industry.
His advisers have also advocated cutting climate research at Nasa and completely exiting the international climate effort.
Gore said such threats mean there will “likely be a huge upsurge in climate activism. I’m encouraged that there are groups that are digging in to work even harder. Those groups working in the courts are even more important now; those organizing on campuses are even more important now.
NPR
The people of southern Madagascar are on the brink of a famine and need immediate humanitarian aid, according to United Nations food agencies. A three-year drought, exacerbated by this year's El Niño, has caused harvests to continue to fail. And people are left with no money and almost nothing to eat.
Just over half the region's population, about 840,000 people, is severely affected. And 20 percent of the population is in an emergency situation, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a standardized five-point scale used by scientists to rate the level of a region's food security. That segment of the population is in Phase 4, with Phase 1 denoting an abundance of food and Phase 5 meaning famine.
Despite its rich biodiversity, Madagascar is, in fact, one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the World Bank, nearly 60 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty and the vast majority live in rural areas, like the dry, drought-affected south. "Ninety percent of the population in the south is living under the poverty level," says Jeanluc Siblot, the emergency coordinator for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in Madagascar. "Forty percent of kids are suffering from malnutrition.”
Climate Central
When the skies open up and deluge an area, the results can be catastrophic, with roads washed out and homes destroyed by the resulting flash floods. Such extreme downpours are already occurring more often across the U.S., but a new study finds that as global temperatures rise, storms could dump considerably more rain and skyrocket in frequency.
The study, detailed Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that storms that now occur about once a season now could happen five times a season by century’s end, a 400 percent increase.
And when such storms do occur, they could produce up to 70 percent more rain. That means that an intense thunderstorm that would today drop about 2 inches of rain would drop 3.5 inches in the future.
Such massive amounts of rain occurring more often could put significant strain on infrastructure that already struggles to deal with heavy rainfall, as seen across the country this year in places from Louisiana to West Virginia.
“I think this is one of the most severe consequences of climate change, at least in the U.S.,” study co-author Andreas Prein, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said.