Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, 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.
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Chicago Sun-Times: CPS teachers frustrated by deal to reopen classrooms, but union leaders urge passage by Nader Issa
Chicago Public Schools students are headed back to classrooms Wednesday after a week away while the district and the Chicago Teachers Union negotiated stronger COVID-19 protections. But with educators holding mixed feelings about the deal, there aren’t any guarantees kids stay there.
Teachers returned to their classrooms Tuesday after the union’s House of Delegates voted 389-226 Monday night to suspend their work action that had refused in-person work because of concerns with the raging Omicron variant and a poorly run COVID-19 testing program.
“I’m just glad to be back,” said one teacher outside Blaine Elementary School on the North Side Tuesday morning.
Electronic ballots went out to the union’s 25,000 members to vote through 4 p.m. Wednesday on whether to approve a safety agreement with CPS and officially end the CTU’s third major labor dispute with Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 27 months.
Washington Post: In deadly fires in New York and Philadelphia, experts see long-neglected safety challenges by Joanna Slater
When Chris Jelenewicz learned that at least 17 people had been killed in a fire at a high-rise apartment building in the Bronx on Sunday, his reaction was one of angry disbelief.
Jelenewicz is the chief engineer at the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. “It’s inconceivable to me that it’s 2022 already and we have a building” where so many can perish in such a fire, he said.
It has been a week of shock and dismay for fire experts. Two of the deadliest residential fires in the United States
in decades unfolded within a span of four days. On Jan. 5, a blaze in a century-old Philadelphia rowhouse
killed 12 people, followed by
the fire at Twin Parks North West, a 19-story building in New York that opened in 1972. Sixteen of the victims in the two fires were children.
New York Times: A Vivid View of Extreme Weather: Temperature Records in the U.S. in 2021 by Krishna Karra and Tim Wallace
Temperatures in the United States last year set more all-time heat and cold records than any other year since 1994, according to a New York Times analysis of Global Historical Climatology Network data.
Heat waves made up most of these records. All-time heat records were set last year at 8.3 percent of all weather stations across the nation, more than in any year since at least 1948, when weather observations were first digitally recorded by the U.S. government.
The world has been warming by almost two-tenths of a degree per decade. Extreme-temperature events can often demonstrate the most visible effects of climate change.
“We do not live in a stable climate now,” said Robert Rohde, the lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, an independent organization focused on environmental data science. “We will expect to see more extremes and more all-time records being set.”
NBC News: Map: Covid hospitalizations double in more than a dozen states in two weeks by Joe Murphy and Elliott Ramos
Covid-19 hospitalizations have doubled in 15 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., over the past two weeks, contributing to a new national record for pandemic hospitalizations.
Across the country, average Covid hospitalizations increased by more than 60,000 from Dec. 27 to Jan. 10, according to an NBC News analysis of Department of Health and Human Services data. The U.S. set a record for single-day Covid hospitalizations on Sunday, when more than 142,000 hospitalizations were reported.
Guardian: Furious Tories pile pressure on Boris Johnson over No 10 parties by Heather Stewart, Severin Carrell, Nicola Davis, and Peter Walker
Boris Johnson is facing intense pressure from senior Conservatives to publicly confess he attended a rule-breaking garden party in Downing Street, with the Scottish Tory leader suggesting the prime minister should resign if he broke Covid rules.
A string of Conservative MPs openly expressed anger and humiliation about the “bring your own booze” gathering for up to 40 people on 20 May 2020 after it emerged in a leaked email. Others called on him to come clean and apologise on Wednesday in the hope of stemming rising fury.
Johnson has declined to say whether he and his then fiancee, Carrie Symonds, attended the event. About 100 Downing Street staff were invited by Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s principal private secretary, to “make the most of the lovely weather”.
The former minister Johnny Mercer described the revelations as “humiliating”, while the MP for Keighley, Robbie Moore, said: “The email from Martin Reynolds infuriates me. I have no idea what these people were thinking.”
AlJazeera: State win for Venezuela’s opposition masks deeper problems by Chris Arsenault
Venezuela’s opposition has won an important symbolic battle in securing the governorship in Barinas State, but analysts say they are still losing the broader political war with government forces.
On the home turf of the oil-rich country’s late leader, Hugo Chavez, opposition candidate Sergio Garrido late on Sunday defeated the governing socialist party’s Jorge Arreaza, who served as Venezuela’s vice president and foreign minister.
Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves but its economy lay in ruins due to what critics have said is mismanagement of the nation’s oil riches under Chavez and his successor, current President Nicholas Maduro.
Venezuela’s economy shrank by more than 75 percent between 2014 and 2020, according to the US government’s congressional research service, “the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years”. More than 5.9 million people have fled the South American nation in search of food and security, creating the Western Hemisphere’s worst refugee crisis, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Reuters: Djokovic travelled across Europe before Australia trip, at odds with declaration by Aleksander Vasovic
BELGRADE, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Novak Djokovic was in Serbia in the two weeks before flying to the Australian Open from Spain, according to three Belgrade residents, whose accounts to Reuters backed social media posts that contradict information contained in his immigration declaration on arrival in Melbourne.
The accounts from two eyewitnesses and another individual, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday and previously unreported, corroborated earlier social media posts that appear to show Djokovic in Belgrade less than two weeks before he headed to Spain and then on to Australia.
These accounts of his travel history are at odds with a declaration submitted as part of immigration formalities for Djokovic's entry to Australia that stated he had not travelled in the 14 days prior to leaving for Australia.
Giving false or misleading information in the form is an offence, carrying a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison, and a fine of up to 6,600 Australian dollars (US$4,730) and can lead to cancellation of the offender's visa.
Variety: Oscars Will Have a Host in 2022, According to ABC by Michael Schneider
After three years without a host, the Oscars will have one when the ceremony airs this March 27 on ABC.
Craig Erwich, president, Hulu Originals & ABC Entertainment, announced that the Oscars would indeed return to a host (after three years without one) on Tuesday morning, during ABC’s portion of the winter Television Critics Association virtual press tour. But he didn’t elaborate on who it might be. “It might be me,” Erwich quipped, before touting his confidence in Oscars executive producer Will Packer.
“Will really has his pulse on popular culture and entertainment,” Erwich said. “I know he has a lot in store and we’ll have more details to share soon.”
Jimmy Kimmel served as the last host of the Academy Awards, having emceed the ceremony in 2017 and 2018 to generally positive reviews. Other hosts over the past decade included Chris Rock (2016), Neil Patrick Harris (2015), Ellen DeGeneres (2014), Seth MacFarlane (2013), Billy Crystal (2012) and James Franco/Anne Hathaway (2011). The MacFarlane and Franco/Hathaway stints were seen as a bid by ABC and the Academy to attract a younger audience, but critics did not give those outings high marks, to say the least.
Everyone have a great evening!