Welcome to Overnight News Digest where the usual crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors maggiejean, Chitown Kev, 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.
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From the Los Angeles Times: There's an Earth-like planet in our galactic neighborhood — and it may have conditions for life
Pale blue dot, meet pale red dot.
Astronomers have spent decades scouring the skies looking for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. And now they’ve found one, sitting smack in the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor.
Proxima b, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, could be one of the first planets where humans might find life outside our solar system.
“It’s the closest star. It has a potentially habitable world. I just think it’s amazing,” said Cornell astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, who was not involved in the discovery. “This is just such a great, exciting time to live in because we’ll figure out how we fit into all of this — and hopefully, also, if we’re alone in the universe.”
The discovery comes four months after the announcement of Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative to build and send tiny spacecraft to the nearest star system within the coming decades. Now the project has a tantalizing planetary target.
“The technology today is sufficient to begin thinking about these things,” said Pete Worden, Breakthrough Starshot’s executive director and the former head of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We are really excited, and, to use the U.S. term, pumped, about this discovery. We’re on our way.”
Proxima b orbits Proxima Centauri, the third wheel to the binary star pair known as Alpha Centauri AB. As its name suggests, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system, sitting a relatively close 4.2 light-years away. But as an M-dwarf — a dim, red, low-mass star — it can’t be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It has just 12% of the sun’s mass and 0.15% of its luminosity.
From the Washington Post: Colombian government and FARC rebels announce peace deal
After 52 years of fighting and nearly four years of grinding negotiations, the Colombian government and the country’s FARC rebel group declared Wednesday that they had reached an agreement to end the longest-running armed conflict in the Americas.
“The war is over,” said Humberto de la Calle, the government’s lead negotiator, after signing the accord with his guerrilla counterparts.
The two sides made the announcement in Cuba, where the negotiations began in 2012 and where Fidel Castro launched a communist revolution that inspired guerrilla insurgencies across the hemisphere. Colombia, a nation of 50 million that is among the closest U.S. allies in Latin America, is the one place where war has yet to end.
“We have finished fighting with weapons and will now do battle with ideas,” said FARC’s chief negotiator, Iván Márquez, a former member of Congress who took up arms after many other leftist Colombian politicians were assassinated by right-wing groups in the 1980s.
From CNN: Italy earthquake leaves 159 dead; rescuers racing against time
In the small Italian towns hit hard by a magnitude-6.2 earthquake that struck in the middle of the night, rescuers feverishly dug through the rubble of downed homes and apartments looking for survivors.
In one such rescue, shown on CNN affiliate Sky TG24, a firefighter in Amatrice clawed at the rubble, trying to get to a little girl.
He pulled back bricks and other debris as his co-workers and other men leaned in.
Suddenly there was a foot, and leg, then the other leg. In the video, a man seems to be talking to the girl, as someone repeatedly says the name "Julia." Several people wriggle in to help the firefighter.
The firefighter clutches a girl, said to be 8 years old, and walks her out of the huge pile of rubble as a volley of cheers erupts.
The girl silently holds on. It is impossible to tell what color clothes she is wearing because she is coated in gray dust. "Bella ragazza!" one bystander says as the girl is carried to safety. "Beautiful girl!"
From BBC News: Kabul raid: Seven students among 13 dead in university attack
Thirteen people, including seven students, died in an attack by gunmen on the American University in the Afghan capital Kabul, police say.
Two attackers were also shot dead by security forces nearly 10 hours after the assault began with an explosion on Wednesday evening.
Students and staff were trapped inside the university during the attack, which police said was now over.
No group has so far claimed responsibility.
The victims also included three police and three guards. Thirty-five students and nine police were injured and about 750 students and staff were rescued, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told the BBC.
From Reuters: Iran vessels make 'high speed intercept' of U.S. ship: U.S. official
Four of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vessels "harassed" a U.S. warship on Tuesday near the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. defense official said, amid Washington's concerns about Iran's posture in the Gulf and in the Syrian civil war.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that two of the Iranian vessels came within 300 yards of the USS Nitze in an incident that was "unsafe and unprofessional."
The vessels harassed the destroyer by "conducting a high speed intercept and closing within a short distance of Nitze, despite repeated warnings," the official said.
IRGC, the Islamic Republic's praetorian guard, is suspicious of U.S. military activity near Iran's borders and appears to be sticking to a familiar posture in the Gulf that predates last year's nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers, including the United States.
From Fortune: Here's Why Richard Branson Is at War With U.K. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn
Well, that escalated quickly.
British billionaire investor and philanthropist Sir Richard Branson has found himself in a bad-tempered spat with the U.K.’s answer to Senator Bernie Sanders over the state of Britain’s rail industry, much of which is controlled by Branson’s Virgin Rail Group.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn lashed out at Necker Island’s most famous resident at a press conferenceWednesday, threatening to confiscate Virgin’s franchises to run two of the most important intercity routes in the U.K. in the (unlikely) event of him being elected Prime Minister.
“I’m very pleased that Richard Branson has been able to break off from his holiday to take this issue seriously with the importance that it obviously deserves,” Corbyn said with heavy sarcasm. “I hope he’s very well aware of our policy which is that train operating companies should become part of the public realm, not part of the private sector.”
Corbyn was responding to the way Branson called him out over Twitter on Tuesday for making false claims about overcrowding on one of Virgin’s express trains from London to Newcastle. The patrician socialist had filmed a short piece to a hand-held camera while sitting in the entryway of a carriage, claiming that the train was “ram-packed” and that he had nowhere to sit.
From Military.com: Turkish Tanks Roll into Syria with US Air Support
Turkish tanks and troops backed by U.S. air support flying out of Incirlik Air Base crossed into Syria on Wednesday with the intent of taking the border town of Jarablus -- partly to stop it from falling to U.S.-backed Kurdish militias.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the cross-border action, called Operation Euphrates Shield, was in response to recent terror attacks claimed by ISIS in Turkey but was also aimed at the Syrian Kurdish PYD, or Democratic Union Party. The military wing of the PYD is the YPG, or People's Protection Units, which has been the most effective U.S.-backed opposition force in northeastern Syria.
In a speech to the Turkish parliament, Erdogan said the move against Jarablus targeted "terror organizations such as Daesh [an Arabic acronym for ISIS) and the PYD," Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper reported. "They challenged us. They said, 'This and that will happen to Turkey in Syria.' Now I am addressing them: You should think of what will happen to yourselves."
The cross-border action began with a barrage at 4 a.m. Wednesday from Turkish TSK 155mm self-propelled howitzers and rocket launchers, Turkey's Anadalou news agency reported. The barrage was followed by at least 12 airstrikes.
From The Verge: Does Facebook think you're liberal or conservative? Here's how to find out
You probably already know that Facebook shows you ads based on what it thinks you like and dislike, but you might not be aware that it also labels your political preferences — even if you don't state them yourself. Earlier this month, the social network made this information easier to find with a new ad preference tool. This lets you see what the company's algorithms have determined as your interests (covering art, music, and hobbies, as well as politics) and edit them to your liking.
To find out what Facebook thinks your political allegiances are, head over to www.facebook.com/.... From there, click on the "Lifestyle and culture" tab under the Interests section. There should be a box in that section titled "US politics" (you may have to click "see more" to find it), which will include, in parentheses, your political designation — for example, liberal, conservative, moderate, etc. (This information might also appear in a drop down menu.) As with the other ad preferences on this page you can remove it by clicking the X in the top right corner.
If you haven't directly indicated which political party you support by, for example, liking the page of a specific candidate, then Facebook will try to infer this information from your other activity on the site. Patrick Nancarrow, co-founder of ad-targeting firm TRGT Digital, told The Verge that exactly how this process works isn't clear, but it's likely based on other interests that correlate with political alignments. If you like the NRA's Facebook page, for example, then statistically speaking you're more likely to be right wing than left.
From The Daily Beast: The Hacking of Leslie Jones Exposes Misogynoir at Its Worst
Leslie Jones has given us so much, from hilarious Game of Thrones recaps toGhostbusters to her entire Twitter presence. She even provided a ray of hope at the Rio Olympics, patriotically swimming upstream against the river of shit and the riptide of white privilege that is Ryan Lochte. For summoning the kind of unbridled cheer usually reserved for Channing Tatum’s personal emails, Jones has been rewarded with a flood of hateful vitriol. The latest, ugliest attack came on Wednesday, when hackers covered the comedian’s personal website with images of her passport and driver’s license, alongside naked photos allegedly cribbed from her iCloud. They also uploaded a tribute video to immortal meme Harambe, likely as a racist troll.
Leslie Jones’s attackers are proving disturbingly persistent. While Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot triggered a hate campaign for having a largely female cast, Jones in particular provoked the ire of the alt-right. These meme-wielding white supremacists were enraged by the prospect of gender-flipping the popular franchise, let alone casting a black woman in one of the starring roles. Unsurprisingly, Cheeto-in-Chief Donald Trump was among the first to publicly condemn the film. Over a year later, the Playboy-loving family values candidate took to Instagram for a pop culture rant, fuming, “And now they’re making Ghostbusters with only women. What’s going on?!”
Rationally speaking, a Hollywood blockbuster is not a personal affront. But when you’re genuinely scared that the white man is losing a war against diversity and gender equality, there’s really no limit to what you can misconstrue as a personal attack. This is the sort of uninformed terror that gives Trump rallies their particular brand of je ne sais quoi—a toxic cocktail of xenophobia, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and sadness. Now picture that teeming mass of Trumpian inhumanity hidden behind computer screens, trolling to their hearts’ content—or until they run out of data on their parents’ family plan.
From Yahoo News: U.S. Soccer sends strong – and troubling – message with Hope Solo suspension
At what point is a superstar more trouble than she’s worth?
How many infractions of team rules does it take? How many run-ins with the law? And how many displays of poor sportsmanship and taste?
Before the collective heft of those actions outweighs the benefits of her contributions on the field?
Does Hope Solo the goalkeeper still justify having to deal with Hope Solo the person? The one who can’t keep her mouth shut after painful losses? The one whose criminal case for allegedly abusing her half-sister and her son has been reopened? The one who has had several other run-ins with the law? The one who has brought more negative attention to the United States women’s national team than every other player in its long and laureled history combined?
Those are the questions U.S. Soccer must have grappled with before deciding that Solo no longer justified the bother of having Solo on the team. On Wednesday, she was formally suspended from the women’s national team for six months, a year and a half after she was suspended for 30 days when her husband, former NFL player Jerramy Stevens, was arrested for driving a women’s national team van under the influence with Solo, reportedly also inebriated, in the passenger seat – an incident she failed to disclose to the federation before it was reported in the media.
From the New York Times: Bernie Sanders’s New Political Group Is Met by Staff Revolt
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, his presidential campaign behind him, looked to advance the movement he built during the Democratic primary race, with the public unveiling on Wednesday of a political organization focused on addressing economic inequality and taking on special interests.
But while the establishment of the new group, Our Revolution, had been eagerly awaited by many of his most ardent supporters, it has been met with criticism and controversy over its financing and management.
A principal concern among backers of Mr. Sanders, whose condemnation of the campaign finance system was a pillar of his presidential bid, is that the group can draw from the pool of “dark money” that Mr. Sanders condemned for lacking transparency.
The announcement of the group, which was live streamed on Wednesday night, also came as a majority of its staff resigned after the appointment last Monday of Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s former campaign manager, to lead the organization.
Several people familiar with the organization said eight core staff members had stepped down. The group’s entire organizing department quit this week, along with people working in digital and data positions.