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 (RIP), 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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New York Times
Donald F. McGahn II, now President Trump’s White House counsel, made $2.4 million as a lawyer with a client list loaded with deep-pocketed conservative groups, from Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch, to the Citizens United Foundation.
Mr. Trump’s legislative affairs director, Marc Short, earned $78,000 from Freedom Partners, a Koch-linked group where he once served as president, plus nearly $380,000 for consulting work, listing clients such as the Club for Growth and Susan B. Anthony List, both right-leaning activist groups, as well as the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida.
And Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, reported earning more than $1 million in income tied to conservative-oriented work, with at least $500,000 of that from entities linked to the conservative megadonor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, including the Breitbart News Network and Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm partly owned by Mr. Mercer that worked for the Trump campaign.
Those disclosures, contained in 92 personal financial statements of Trump administration staff members released starting Friday night, offer a hint of how an explosion in spending has expanded the lucrative array of private political work in Washington, enriching even the anti-establishment activists and operatives who sided with Mr. Trump.
US NEWS
BuzzFeed
The adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian intelligence operative named Victor Podobnyy, who was later charged by the US government alongside two others for acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government. The charges, filed in January 2015, came after federal investigators busted a Russian spy ring that was seeking information on US sanctions as well as efforts to develop alternative energy. Page is an energy consultant.
A court filing by the US government contains a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Podobnyy speaks with one of the other men busted in the spy ring, Igor Sporyshev, about trying to recruit someone identified as “Male-1.” BuzzFeed News has confirmed that “Male-1” is Page.
The revelation of Page’s connection to Russian intelligence — which occurred more than three years before his association with Trump — is the most clearly documented contact to date between Russian intelligence and someone in Trump’s orbit. It comes as federal investigators probe whether Trump’s campaign-era associates — including Page — had any inappropriate contact with Russian officials or intelligence operatives during the course of the election. Page has volunteered to help Senate investigators in their inquiry.
Washington Post
The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.
Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.
Agence France Presse
President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner visited Iraq Monday with the top US military officer to meet Iraqi leaders and review the fight against the Islamic State group, officials said.
The visit comes as Iraqi forces battle to retake Mosul from IS with support from US-led air strikes that have recently been criticised for causing civilian deaths in the city's west.
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked Kushner and White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert to accompany him on the trip, Navy Captain Greg Hicks said in an emailed statement.
"General Dunford invited Mr Kushner and Mr Bossert to meet with Iraqi leaders, senior US advisors, and visit with US forces in the field to receive an update on the status of the counter-ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria," Hicks said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
The Guardian
The US Senate appeared on the threshold of going “nuclear” on Monday as 41 Democrats announced their support for a filibuster of the supreme court nomination of Neil Gorsuch.
This sets the stage for a showdown on the Senate floor later in the week, which could involve the so-called nuclear option, a change to Senate rules that would prevent filibusters of nominees to the supreme court. This milestone was reached after the Senate judiciary committee approved Gorsuch’s nomination by a party-line vote of 11-9.
A supermajority of 60 senators is required to avoid a filibuster, which involves extending debate indefinitely on a nominee or a bill. And with three previously undecided Democrats having announced their support for a filibuster during the judiciary committee’s hearing on Gorsuch’s nomination – the committee’s ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California; Patrick Leahy of Vermont; and Chris Coons of Delaware – there is no mathematical path for Gorsuch to reach that threshold.
Reuters
Lawmakers in Kansas on Monday failed to override Republican Governor Sam Brownback's veto of a bill expanding eligibility for Medicaid for the poor under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The Kansas House of Representatives voted 81 to 44 in favor of overriding the veto, falling three votes short of the 84 needed to advance the override.
State lawmakers in the Republican-controlled senate voted in favor of the measure last week, just days after President Donald Trump's efforts to repeal and replace the ACA, also known as Obamacare, ended with the bill being pulled from a vote.
The Republican-controlled House also voted in favor of the measure, but Brownback quickly vetoed the bill on Thursday. The House took up a debate on overriding the veto that day, but postponed a vote until Monday.
"It is disappointing that the Kansas House failed to override the veto because a small group of representatives chose to side with the Governor instead of the 82% of Kansans who support expanding KanCare and the vast majority of their colleagues in both chambers," David Jordan, the executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, a coalition of groups that backed Medicaid expansion, said in a statement on Monday.
NPR
As President Trump moves to fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally, they'll most likely include Mexicans whose children were born in the U.S.. Over half a million of these kids are already in Mexico.
Researchers call them "los invisibles", the invisible ones, because they often end up in an educational limbo of sorts. Most don't read or write in Spanish, so they're held back. Many get discouraged and stop going to school. In some cases schools even refuse to enroll them.
In the border city of Tijuana, however, there's a model program designed to help these children.
At 20 de Noviembre Elementary, for example, roughly one-tenth of the school's 700 students were born in the U.S. Administrators and teachers here have embraced kids like Anthony David Martinez, a skinny 9-year-old who recently arrived from Barstow, Calif. That's where he was born.
Anthony could have stayed in California because he's a U.S. citizen, but his parents are not. They were forced to return to Mexico and didn't want to split up the family.
Vox
One of my most surprising moments recently on the health care beat came late last month, when opinion researcher Michael Perry and I were running a focus group with Obamacare enrollees who voted for Trump.
We were in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sitting in a sparse conference room at a big white table. Perry, who co-owns the research firm PerryUndem, asked the six-member group a question: Who likes Canada's health insurance system? Who wishes we had something like that?
Half of the hands shot up.
This surprised both of us! We hadn't planned to bring up single-payer health care; the focus group was about the Affordable Care Act. But one Trump voter had raised the idea that we'd be better off if we had a health care system like Canada's — where the government runs one health insurance plan for everyone — and wanted to see who agreed.
NPR
When he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans.
"So that way whenever you're trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it's much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures," Watts told the panel, which is investigating Russia's role in interfering in the U.S. elections.
In an interview Monday with NPR's Kelly McEvers, Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says the Russian misinformation campaign didn't stop with the election of President Trump.
NPR
A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit against Mississippi over the use of the Confederate battle flag in the state flag.
A black Mississippi resident said that the use of the Confederate symbol amounted to state-sanctioned racial discrimination. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that any emotional harm caused by the flag is irrelevant, legally speaking, and doesn't give him grounds to sue.
Mississippians have been debating their flag for a very long time. In 2001, the state voted to stick with the controversial design. But some official bodies — cities, counties and universities, including the flagship University of Mississippi — refuse to fly the banner.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
Russia opened a probe into a suspected "act of terror" Monday after 10 people were killed and dozens more injured in a blast that rocked the Saint Petersburg metro.
Authorities shut down the metro system in Russia's second city as security services said they had also defused a bomb at a second metro station.
Russia's Investigative Committee said it was probing an "act of terror" but added it would look into all other possible causes of the blast.
Pictures screened on national television showed the door of a train carriage blown out, as bloodied bodies lay strewn on a station platform.
Above ground, emergency services vehicles rushed to the scene at the Technological Institute metro station, a key transport hub in the city centre.
Health minister Veronika Skvortsova said the blast had killed seven people on the spot, with three more succumbing to their injuries later.
Thirty nine people were hospitalised, including a 15-year-old girl, Skvortsova said.
Above ground, emergency services vehicles rushed to the scene at the Technological Institute metro station, a key transport hub in the city centre.
Agence France Presse
President Donald Trump put human rights controversies aside to warmly welcome Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to the White House Monday, the first such visit from an Egyptian president in almost a decade.
Greeting Sisi in the Oval Office, Trump heaped praise on the former general's leadership and embarked on a charm offensive designed to fix ties strained by revolution and security crackdowns.
"You have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me," Trump told Sisi, sweeping aside his predecessor's concerns about democratic abuses in Egpyt.
"I just want to let everybody know that we are very much behind President al-Sisi, he has done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation," Trump added.
The meeting symbolizes an end to years in which the Egyptian leader had been kept at arm's length by Washington amid rights concerns.
Deutsche Welle
As he prepares to meet China's leader Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump says his administration is ready to act unilaterally on North Korea. But analyst Günther Hilpert says Trump's threat would amount to nothing.
US President Trump said if China will not cooperate in ending North Korea's nuclear and missile threat, the US will move to do so alone. What is your take on this?
Hanns Günther Hilpert: The statement is a clear contradiction. If the US could solve the North Korean problem without Chinese help, then Trump wouldn't need to discuss the issue with President Xi at all.
Basically, the US has various options to tackle the North Korean issue. But all those options would either pose high risks or be ineffective and produce no desired outcomes.
What options would Trump have should he choose to act unilaterally?
President Trump could be thinking of conducting preemptive strikes to destroy North Korea's nuclear and conventional arsenal. But this strategy carries with it substantial military and political risks.
Another possibility is to obstruct the North's uranium enrichment, although it's unclear whether or not this can be done.
There are also other options such as imposing a sea blockade, shooting down a North Korean rocket when it is midair or a further tightening of the already stringent sanctions regime.
Al Jazeera
Toronto, Canada – Nearly 200 theatres worldwide will simultaneously screen the film version of George Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984, on Tuesday to protest US President Donald Trump.
The idea, which is being called "National Screening Day", is the brainchild of Dylan Skolnick, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre on Long Island, New York, and Adam Birnbaum, director of film programming at the Avon Theatre Film Centre in Connecticut.
The pair began talking after the US presidential election about organising a film event to express how they felt about the new administration.
Skolnick told Al Jazeera that he realised 1984 would be the perfect film to show given the current political climate in the US.
"In particular, this undermining of the concept of facts and the demonisation of foreign enemies" by the Trump administration "really resonate in 1984", Skolnick said.
Al Jazeera
Tensions are rising between the UK and Spain in a row over the future of Gibraltar, as the UK embarks on negotiations to leave the European Union.
The dispute escalated since the circulation of the EU's draft Brexit negotiating guidelines on Friday appeared to offer Spain a right of veto over Gibraltar's future trade relations with the bloc.
The move prompted fury in the UK, where ministers described it as "utterly unacceptable".
A former leader of the UK's Conservative party, Michael Howard, said on Sunday that British Prime Minister Theresa May would even be prepared to go to war to defend the territory, as Britain did with Argentina over the Falkland Islands 35 years ago.
Howard's comments followed an interview on Sunday by Michael Fallon, the UK's defence secretary, in which he said: "Gibraltar is going to be protected all the way because the sovereignty of Gibraltar cannot be changed without the agreement of the people of Gibraltar and they have made it very clear they do not want to live under Spanish rule.”
Spiegel Online
Until recently, Haci Boydak was a popular man. The 56-year-old operated several dozen companies, including Istikbal and Boytas, two Turkish competitors to IKEA. Politicians used to ask him for advice and his hometown of Kayseri in central Anatolia even named a football stadium after him.
But that chapter has now come to a close. If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets his way, all references to Boydak in the country are to vanish. Last spring, police arrested the businessman along with two other senior executives from the family's holding company and locked them up in a prison near Ankara. Boydak's assets were confiscated and his companies were placed in receivership. Even Boydak Arena in Kayseri got a new name.
Erdogan suspects Boydak of having supported the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who the Turkish president blames for the failed military coup in the country on July 15, 2016.
The businessman's case clearly shows the direction Turkey has taken since the events of last summer and how Erdogan has set about transforming his country into a dictatorship. Around 130,000 civil servants have either lost their jobs or been suspended while 45,000 people have been arrested.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
New York Times (4/2/2017)
NORTH BAY, Ontario — The tiny log house alongside the Trans-Canada Highway is easy to miss among the strip malls, fast-food outlets and car dealers. But 83 years ago, it was the eye of a publicity maelstrom because of a one-in-a-billion event: the birth of five identical baby girls.
The Dionne quintuplets — the first known to survive — were a flash of miraculous happy news in the depths of the Great Depression. Journalists descended on North Bay, Ontario, to make them the most famous babies on earth. They were front-page news around the world and filled newsreels.
The province of Ontario swooped in and took them from their parents, declaring that they had to be protected from exploitation. Then it exhibited the children three times a day in a human zoo called Quintland, to be raised as a sort of science experiment. Three million visitors came in the 1930s.
[...]
For much of their lives, respect was in short supply. A trust fund that was supposed to sustain them in later life was frittered away. When they were eventually returned to their parents, the girls were mistreated and, they say, sexually abused by their father, Oliva.
[...]
Mr. Fournier started an online petition to save the house, which spawned a group that is pressing the city to keep it intact and move it to a new park on the shore of Lake Nipissing, on which North Bay lies.
Mr. McDonald, the mayor, said he liked the idea but remained opposed to the city’s helping to pay for the operation of the house.
The debate has divided the city. Miles Peters, who read an appeal to the Council from Annette and Cécile Dionne, was a close friend of Mark King, the head of the committee deciding the house’s fate, who is adamant that the city cannot afford to keep it. Both men now say the issue has shattered their friendship.
Climate Central (4/1/2017)
Wastewater treatment plants are energy hogs. A 2013 study by the Electric Power Research Institute and Water Research Foundation reported that they consumed about 30 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, or about 0.8 percent of the total electricity used in the United States.
Wastewater treatment’s high energy footprint is ironic because the organic matter in wastewater contains up to five times as much energy as the treatment plants use, according to the American Biogas Council. Reducing treatment plants’ energy footprints through energy efficiency and using the currently wasted energy could save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite all that energy seemingly there for the taking, reducing the fossil fuel demand of treatment plants is challenging and requires myriad approaches. Around the world, the industry is experimenting with new technologies, evaluating them for not just energy benefits but also cost and unintended consequences, such as additional waste streams to be managed.
The Guardian
Children in a region of the US were born smaller after the area switched from nuclear plants to coal-fired power stations, new research has found.
The study looked at of the impact of nuclear power plant closures in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 – the most serious such accident in US history – in which one of the power station’s reactors underwent a partial meltdown.
“At the time policymakers thought they were protecting public health by scrutinising nuclear power plants, given the partial meltdown that happened in Three Mile Island,” said Edson Severnini, author of the research from Carnegie Mellon University in the US. “But they didn’t anticipate this indirect effect that happened through the relocation of electricity generation from nuclear to coal.”
While the study is based on a historical incident, experts say the results are pertinent given the shift from nuclear to coal power in Japan and Germany following the Fukushima accident in 2011, and the eagerness of the Trump administration to embrace coal.
NPR
New research published Monday adds fuel to an ongoing debate in the public health community over whether a few extra pounds are good, or bad, for you.
Earlier research found that being somewhat overweight, but not obese, may result in a longer life.
But today's study in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that being slightly overweight may actually decrease a person's life span, which is more in line with conventional wisdom about weight.
So who's right? It's all about study design and statistical analysis.
Let's start with the newest study, headed by demographer Andrew Stokes at Boston University School of Public Health. His group found a 6 percent increased risk of dying from any cause among individuals with a history of being overweight.
NPR
The world is doing a much better job of keeping babies alive long enough to become children, children alive long enough to become teens and teens alive long enough to fully grow up, according to a report in today's JAMA Pediatrics. "I think that the overall highlight of the report is good news," says Dr. Nicholas J. Kassebaum, an author of the report by members of the Global Burden of Disease Child and Adolescent Health Collaboration. "Without exception child mortality has improved throughout the world for the last 25 years."
But it's not all good news. The children in poor countries who might have died as babies or toddlers a few years ago live long enough to suffer from the effects of birth defects or develop mental health problems or cancer. And increasingly, they live long enough to bear the burden of war and violence in their countries.
We talked with Kassebaum, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, about how child and adolescent health has changed since 1990.
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
Reuters
A Democratic political consultant and Fox News contributor on Monday sued the network and its former chairman, Roger Ailes, accusing them of denying her a permanent hosting job after rebuffing Ailes' sexual advances.
Julie Roginsky also said in her lawsuit filed in New York state court that a misogynistic culture at Fox News, a unit of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (FOXA.O), had not changed since Ailes resigned last year in the wake of a separate sexual harassment lawsuit by former anchor Gretchen Carlson.
Roginsky, 43, has appeared regularly on Fox News programs since 2011 and writes a column for the network's website.
Susan Estrich, a lawyer for Ailes, said in a statement that Roginsky's claims were "total hogwash."
"This is about someone who wants to pile-on in a massive character assassination in order to achieve what she did not accomplish on the merits," Estrich said.
Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For those who missed it yesterday:
NPR (4/2/2017)
By now, it's fair to say South Carolina is a better team than Mississippi State. The Gamecocks' 67-55 win in the national title game Sunday was South Carolina's third — and most convincing — win over the Bulldogs this season.
The women's first basketball championship is all the more impressive since the team lost senior center Alaina Coates to an ankle injury before the tournament started.
A'ja Wilson, the tournament's deserving Most Outstanding Player, led the Gamecocks' fourth-quarter surge that put the game away. Six-foot-five-inch Wilson, who scored eight of her game-high 23 points that final quarter, came out in force with rebounds and blocked shots.
NPR
The NHL won't be pausing its season to allow players to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics, officials announced on Monday.
Many pro players have expressed a desire to compete in the Games at Pyeongchang, South Korea. But the league says it doesn't see a benefit to the sport — and does see a risk of injuries.
The NHL has allowed players to participate in every Olympic Games since 1998.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, disputes over money played a role in the decision not to continue.
The International Olympic Committee has previously paid for players to travel to the Olympics, and covered their insurance costs. But the IOC wasn't planning to foot the bill for 2018.
The International Ice Hockey Federation offered to cover the costs instead. But one NHL writer says "there was concern the funds would come from assets that would otherwise be used to grow the game at the grassroots level.”
The Guardian
Final: Gonzaga 65-71 North Carolina
And it’s over! North Carolina have won their sixth national championship with a 71-65 victory over Gonzaga!
The Tar Heels survived a foul-filled, back-and-forth second half, scoring the final eight points of the game to pull out the victory.