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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
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ScienceBlog
After almost five years and 1.7 billion million miles (2.7 billion kilometers), NASA’s Juno mission is about to enter into orbit around the biggest planetary inhabitant in our solar system — Jupiter. Approaching the massive planet from above, Juno will be within 300,000 miles of Jupiter by 2:14 p.m. PDT (5:14 p.m. EDT). A minute later, Juno will cross the orbit of Jupiter’s innermost Galilean moon (Io), at 2:15 p.m. PDT (5:15 p.m. EDT). Juno closes the distance between it and the gas-giant world to 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) by 4:17 p.m. PDT (7:17 p.m. EDT) and is only 100,000 miles (161,000 kilometers) away by 6:03 p.m. PDT (9:03 p.m. EDT).
“As planned, we are deep in the gravity well of Jupiter and accelerating,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Even after we begin firing our rocket motor, Jupiter will continue to pull us, making us go faster and faster until we reach the time of closest approach. The trick is, by the end of our burn, we will slow down just enough to get into the orbit we want.”
US NEWS
McClatchy DC (June 30, 2016)
By January of 2004, when German citizen Khaleed al Masri arrived at the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prison in Afghanistan, agency officials were pretty sure he wasn’t a terrorist. They also knew he didn’t know any terrorists, or much about anything in the world of international terror.
In short, they suspected they’d nabbed the wrong man.
Still, the agency continued to imprison and interrogate him, according to a recently released internal CIA report on Masri’s arrest. The report claims that Masri suffered no physical abuse during his wrongful imprisonment, though it acknowledges that for months he was kept in a “small cell with some clothing, bedding and a bucket for his waste.” Masri says he was tortured, specifically that a medical examination against his will constituted sodomy.
The embarrassing, and horrifying, case of Masri is hardly new. It has been known for a decade as a colossal example of CIA error in the agency’s pursuit of terrorists during the administration of President George W. Bush.
But the recently released internal report makes it clear that the CIA’s failures in the Masri case were even more outrageous than previous accounts have suggested.
The Guardian
Misty Plowright believes she will live long enough to see people like herself run for public office and only be asked about real election issues: immigration and gun control, taxing the rich and nuclear energy, universal healthcare, abortion.
Someday the other questions won’t come up, because voters just won’t care anymore.
“When did you realize you were born in the wrong body? How long did it take you to become a woman? What’s it like to be the first transgender candidate for congress/senate/governor/president? Do you really think voters are ready for someone like you?”
Plowright has reason to be hopeful. Even as the battle over access to public bathrooms rages on across the country, transgender rights took a few big steps forward in recent days.
The Guardian
Donald Trump responded on Monday to a swirling controversy over an apparently antisemitic tweet featuring Hillary Clinton which he subsequently deleted.
Using Twitter again, Trump said: “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!”
...
The image in Trump’s original tweet was traced by the news site Mic to a white supremacist message board. Trump’s tweet was deleted on Saturday and replaced by a similar image featuring a circle rather than a star.
Clinton, whom Trump’s tweets labelled “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”, has not commented. On Monday her campaign’s director of Jewish outreach, Sarah Bard, issued a statement.
“Not only won’t he apologize for it,” Bard said, “he’s peddling lies and blaming others. Trump should be condemning hate, not offering more campaign behavior and rhetoric that engages extremists. The president should be someone who brings Americans together, not someone who sends signals and offers policies of division.”
The Guardian
A firework that exploded and seriously injured the foot of a 19-year-old man who stepped on it in Central Park on Sunday was probably created by someone with a basic knowledge of chemistry but not designed to intentionally hurt people, police said.
The homemade explosive probably was designed to “make a large noise, maybe make a flash”, said Lieutenant Mark Torre, commanding officer of the New Yorkpolice department’s bomb squad. It was like an “explosive experiment” put together by someone with some knowledge of chemistry, he said.
The injured man, who police did not identify, was walking in the park with two friends when he stepped on a rock covering the explosive. He was to undergo surgery to his left foot at a hospital and was in stable condition, fire officials said.
The 11am blast on the east side of Central Park could be heard for blocks, leaving some with the belief that it was part of a Fourth of July celebration.
Reuters
The United States celebrated the July Fourth holiday on Monday with parades, baking contests and picnics draped in red, white and an extra layer of blue, as police ramped up patrols because of concerns about terrorism and gun violence.
Millions of Americans marked independence from Britain with celebrations as boisterous as a music-packed party by country music legend Willie Nelson for 10,000 people at a race track in Austin, Texas and as staid as colonial-era costumed actors reading the Declaration of Independence at the U.S. National Archives in Washington.
"It's a good day for reflecting on the positive things about America - the sense of freedom that you can go after and achieve whatever you want," said Helen Donaldson, 48, the mother of a multi-ethnic family of four adopted teens living in Maplewood, New Jersey.
NPR (July 3, 2016)
As a little girl growing up in a lovely house in Kansas City, Kansas, Audrey Cooper knew nothing about life with no place to call home. One day, her family took a trip out of state and her 8-year-old eyes beheld something she never forgot.
"The first homeless person I ever saw was on the streets of San Francisco," Cooper recalls.
Long after that trip ended, Cooper left Kansas City for college in Boston and after graduation started a career in journalism ending up in of all places – San Francisco. She's now the editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle. And three decades after that image was etched in her mind as child, it became one of the reasons she spearheaded what is being described as the most unprecedented effort by the media to address homelessness.
On Wednesday, June 29, The Chronicle and almost 80 other news organizations launched the SF Homeless Project – publishing stories exploring possible solutions to reducing or ending homelessness and improving the quality of life for the approximate 6,686 people living on San Francisco Streets.
Reuters
The mayor of an Ohio town at the center of an incident that prompted the United Arab Emirates to warn citizens against wearing traditional robes abroad apologized and said on Monday some of those involved could face criminal charges.
Police in Avon, Ohio, last week pinned to the ground and handcuffed an Emirati businessman, Ahmed Al Menhali, after receiving reports he was pledging allegiance to Islamic State militants while speaking on his cellphone in a hotel lobby.
According to Avon Mayor Bryan Jensen and Julia Shearson, head of the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the 911 calls were placed by relatives of a female clerk at the hotel who was unnerved by his appearance.
"We came to find out that those statements were never heard by anyone, the statements were never said," Jensen told Reuters on Monday. "A person who makes a false accusation like that endangers not only the person that they are making them about but (also) it frustrates us and angers us that we're going into a situation that puts our police officers in a position they would never want to be in.”
The Guardian
The body of an American teenager was found in Rome on Monday, after a four-day search for the student who went missing hours after arriving in Italy to attend a summer school program.
The body of Beau Solomon, 19, was found by police in the Tiber river. He had arrived in the Italian capital on Thursday evening and went missing later that night, after going out with fellow students.
The group had walked around 10 minutes from John Cabot universityaccommodation to G-Bar in the Trastevere neighbourhood, a picturesque area popular with American students and tourists, where Solomon was last seen at around 1am.
Assuming he had gone home, John Cabot students returned to their residence. On realising Solomon was missing they returned to the bar to look for him. The alarm was raised on Friday after he failed to turn up for registration at the university.
WORLD NEWS
AFP
Iraqis on Monday mourned more than 200 people killed in a Baghdad suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group and accused the government of not doing enough to protect them.
The search continued for bodies at the site of the attack, which ripped through the Karrada district early on Sunday as it teemed with shoppers ahead of this week's holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced efforts to address longstanding security flaws in Baghdad following the blast, which came a week after Iraqi forces recaptured the city of Fallujah from IS.
But on the streets, Iraqis were angry at the government's inability to keep residents safe, even as its forces push IS back outside the capital.
DW News
A founder of the main euroskeptic party in the UK and a major force behind the Brexit referendum has said he's quitting UKIP. Nigel Farage had left UKIP last year but returned to help lead its pro-Brexit campaign.
Farage had stepped down last year as UKIP leader after failing to be elected into the British House of Commons. He withdrew his resignation three days later.
Speaking to a scrum of reporters in London, Farage said he'd only returned to UKIP to campaign for Britons to vote to leave the European Union.
"I was persuaded to come back for one reason and that was to fight this referendum," Farage, 52, said. "And I'm very pleased I changed my mind just over a year ago and came back and fought this referendum - I won't be changing my mind again, I can promise you.”
DW News
Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Uganda on Monday as the first Israeli prime minister to visit sub-Saharan Africa in 30 years. For personal reasons, this could be an emotionally-charged visit for the 66-year-old leader.
This visit to Uganda has an element of personal tragedy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Forty years ago, on July 4, 1976, his brother Yonatan was killed while leading a commando raid in Entebbe to free passengers aboard a plane hijacked by Palestinian and German militants. About 100 Israeli and Jewish hostages were freed in the raid but 20 Ugandan soldiers and seven hijackers were killed, along with several Ugandan civilians. Yonatan Netanyahu was the sole casualty among the Israeli assault team.
Spiegel Online
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, discusses the consequences of Brexit for Europe and why he believes the British should be given the time they need to contemplate the consequences of their vote to leave the EU.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Altmaier, on Wednesday, the European Council, the powerful body made up of leaders from EU member states, met for the first time in 40 years without Britain. In your view, can Brexit still be prevented?
Altmaier: The result of the referendum was clearly in favor of withdrawal. That disappointed us, but we must respect it. But we can also see that the debate over how to handle the results is only just beginning. Wisdom demands that we wait and see the outcome of this debate.
SPIEGEL: Would it please you if there were still a political means for keeping Britain in the EU?
Altmaier: I have always desired for Britain to be a strong member state in the EU, especially from a German perspective. The Brits must first decide if and when they want to submit a request to withdraw. No one knows what demands the new government will put forward. Advice from the outside would be entirely out of place.
Reuters
Suicide bombers struck three cities across Saudi Arabia on Monday, killing at least four security officers in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks as Saudis prepared to break their fast on the penultimate day of the holy month of Ramadan.
The explosions targeting U.S. diplomats, Shi'ite worshippers and a security headquarters at a mosque in the holy city of Medina followed days of mass killings claimed by the Islamic State group in Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. The attacks all seem to have been timed to coincide with the approach of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that celebrates the end of the Islamic holy month.
A suicide bomber detonated a bomb at a parking lot outside the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, the second-holiest site in Islam, a Saudi security spokesman told state news agency SPA.
BBC
More than 180 people have been killed in flooding along the Yangtze River in China following torrential rain, officials say.
Between 10cm and 50cm of rain has fallen in seven provinces, and storms stretching 1,600km (1,000 miles) are sweeping across central and southern China.
At least 45 people are missing and 33 million are affected, officials say.
The rain has also washed away railway lines and shut down road networks.
The dead included 23 people who were killed in a mudslide in Guizhou Province and eight who died in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province when a section of a wall collapsed, state media said.
Heavy rain is forecast to continue until Wednesday across parts of southern and western China, the South China Morning Post reported.
Al Jazeera
The Gulf Arab countries have announced that the Eid al-Fitr festival, which marks the end of holy month of Ramadan, will be celebrated on July 6.
The official news agencies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait quoted religious authorities as saying on Monday that the annual feast will begin on Wednesday after failing to sight the moon that marks the start of the three-day festival.
The starting day of Eid varies every year and from country to country depending on geographical location.
Eid al-Fitr means "festival of breaking the fast" and marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. It is an official holiday in all Muslim-majority countries.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
The Arctic had its warmest winter on record in 2015-16. Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate that by September could see it beat the record low set in 2012. The maximum extent of sea ice in winter was at a record low, and the extent in May was the lowest for that month ever, by more than 500,000 sq km.
Since October, every month has been the hottest on record. Every month this year has been the hottest on record globally for that month. May, data published by NASA revealed, was no exception. NASA’s dataset, one of three main global surface temperature records, shows February recorded the highest anomaly against long term average temperatures.
The Guardian (July 2, 2016)
The reeking carcass of a dead humpback whale was towed back out to sea some 24 hours after it washed up at a popular Los Angeles County beach on Friday.
Authorities used boats pulling ropes attached to the tail to pull the whale off the sand during the evening high tide, taking the animal far out to sea and avoiding a foul stench and grim scene on the beach as Fourth of July weekend crowds began arriving.
Authorities had attempted the procedure at midday, with a bulldozer pushing the carcass, but were unsuccessful because of the low tide.
The huge whale washed on to Dockweiler beach, a long stretch of sand near the west end of Los Angeles international airport, just before 8pm on Thursday. Holiday beachgoers began arriving in the morning.
Lifeguards posted yellow caution tape to keep people away and biologists took samples to determine what caused the death of the humpback, an endangered species. Beachgoers watching from a distance covered their noses.
The Guardian
Mars might once have boasted a massive, third moon that eventually spiralled back into the planet, according to scientists. The theory offers a new explanation as to how Mars ended up with its two small satellites.
The red planet has two potato-shaped moons called Phobos, meaning “fear”, and Deimos, meaning “terror”. But scientists have long debated where they came from.
With their odd shapes and diameters of just 22km and 12km respectively, Phobos and Deimos, some scientists argue, are asteroids that were captured by Mars. But others say the nature of their orbits makes that unlikely, suggesting instead that the moons formed in the region surrounding Mars, potentially after a collision between the planet and an enormous object. A similar event formed the Earth’s moon around 4.5bn years ago.
Reuters
In the high tech hub of Tel Aviv, where companies have been responsible for ground-breaking advances like the USB stick, Or Offer never thought it would be hard to find workers for his fast-growing Internet data firm SimilarWeb.
But an alarming lack of engineers, technicians and even doctors, which is jeopardizing Israel's place among the world's technological elite, sent him looking abroad.
"There's a brutal fight over skilled employees," said Offer, whose company has quadrupled in size in the past two years, hiring over 200 new people.
To boost the technical side of the business that analyzes website data, he set up a development center in Ukraine.
Without the huge populations of emerging markets like India or the vast network of foreigners who call Silicon Valley home, Israel's high tech enterprise seems to have dried out the well.
NPR
Episiotomy, a once-routine surgical incision made in a woman's vaginal opening during childbirth to speed the baby's passage, has been officially discouraged for at least a decade by the leading association of obstetrician-gynecologists in the United States.
Nonetheless, despite evidence that the procedure is only rarely necessary, and in some cases leads to serious pain and injuries to the mother, it is still being performed at much higher than recommended rates by certain doctors and in certain hospitals.
In one recent case, Kimberly Turbin, a 29-year-old dental assistant who lives in Stockton, Calif., is suing her former obstetrician for assault and battery after he performed an episiotomy on her in 2013. A video of the birth, with Turbin begging the doctor not to cut her, has been viewed more than 420,000 times.
After the episiotomy, Turbin says, "I had major, major, major, major pain."
NPR
At Edgewood Summit retirement community in Charleston, W.Va., 93-year-old Mary Mullens is waxing eloquent about her geriatrician, Dr. Todd Goldberg.
"He's sure got a lot to do," she says, "and does it so well."
West Virginia has the third oldest population in the nation, right behind Maine and Florida. But Goldberg is one of only 36 geriatricians in the state.
"With the growing elderly population across America and West Virginia, obviously we need healthcare providers," says Goldberg.
That includes geriatricians — physicians who specialize in the treatment of adults age 65 and older — as well as nurses, physical therapists, and psychologists who know how to care for this population.
Vox
Sometimes the world really can get together and avert a major environmental catastrophe before it's too late. Case in point: A new study in Science finds evidence that the Earth's protective ozone layer is finally healing — all thanks to global efforts in the 1980s to phase out CFCs and other destructive chemicals.
This is one of the great green success stories of all time. Back in the 1970s, scientists first realized that we were rapidly depleting Earth's stratospheric ozone layer, which protects us from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.
The culprit? Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a chemical widely used in refrigerators and air conditioners. These chemicals had already chewed a massive "hole" in the ozone layer above Antarctica, and the damage was poised to spread further north.