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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Guardian: Oakland fire: warehouse manager 'incredibly sorry' for blaze that killed 36 by Nicky Woolf
The manager of an Oakland warehouse that was destroyed in a devastating fire last week has said he is “incredibly sorry” for the blaze, which erupted during a party and killed at least 36 people.
The fire, in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, was the deadliest in the city’s history, shocking the area’s vibrant underground arts scene. Many of the victims were artists or musicians and were part of a tight-knit community.
The warehouse, known as the “Ghost Ship”, had a history of complaints for alleged violations of the fire code. The fire started there at around 11.30pm on Friday, authorities said, and firefighters were unable to extinguish it until around 4am.
In an emotional interview, Derek Almena, the manager and leaseholder of the warehouse, told the Today show’s Matt Lauer: “I’m only here to say one thing – I’m incredibly sorry and that everything that I did was to make this a stronger and more beautiful community and to bring people together.”
Almena, who lived in the warehouse with his partner and children but had been staying at a hotel for the weekend of the party, said he had opened the space to low-income artists who “can’t pay [their] rent because your dream is bigger than your pocketbook”.
He became more distressed as the interview wore on and grew defensive at the perception that he might have some responsibility for the fire.
DNAInfo-Chicago: Street Signs Honoring Trump Taken Down — Finally by Heather Cherone
DOWNTOWN — City crews Tuesday have removed the remaining street signs honoring President-elect Donald Trump outside Trump Tower, officials said.
On Nov. 1 — a week before Trump shocked the world and defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — the City Council unanimously voted to revoke the honor bestowed on the reality television star in 2006 while the 98-story Trump Tower and Hotel was under construction.
But the signs at Wabash Avenue and Hubbard Street as well as at Wabash Avenue and Illinois Street sat untouched for 36 days, leading to speculation that the plans to take the signs down would be quietly shelved so as to not anger Trump.
Last week, city officials said crews hadn't gotten around to taking down the sign because it wasn't a high priority.
Reuters: California Democrats propose series of infrastructure bills by Robin Respaut
Democrats in California's state Senate announced on Tuesday a series of infrastructure funding bills that would invest billions in roads, bridges, housing and water projects.
Infrastructure investment has been at the forefront of political agendas this year, from President-elect Donald Trump's promise to unveil a massive national infrastructure spending plan to voters' support of billions of dollars of infrastructure bonds in November's election.
Both Trump and his rival, Hillary Clinton, campaigned promising infrastructure investment. Trump called for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending over 10 years, but it remains unclear how much would come from the federal budget.
Democrats in the California Senate proposed five bills on Tuesday, including one that would use $6 billion a year over the next decade to repair roads and bridges and improve transit systems across the state.
According to the proposal, the bulk of the money is to be raised through a phased-in 12 cent per gallon gas tax increase, along with increases to the diesel excise tax and vehicle registration fees.
California's freeway system faces a $59 billion maintenance shortfall over the next decade and local governments face another $78 billion shortfall for local highways and bridges. The need for infrastructure funding is echoed across the country.
"Our transportation infrastructure is in dire condition. The longer we wait to fix it, the more it will cost us,” State Senator Jim Beall of San Jose and sponsor of the transportation bill, said in a statement.
Washington Post: Hospitals warn Trump, Congress of massive losses with Affordable Care Act repeal by Amy Goldstein
The nation’s hospital industry warned President-elect Trump and congressional leaders on Tuesday that repealing the Affordable Care Act could cost hospitals $165 billion by the middle of the next decade and trigger “an unprecedented public health crisis.”
The two main trade groups for U.S. hospitals dispatched a letter to the incoming president and Capitol Hill’s top four leaders, saying that the government should help hospitals avoid massive financial losses if the law is rescinded in a way that causes a surge of uninsured patients.
The letter, along with a consultant’s study estimating the financial impact of undoing the Affordable Care Act, makes hospitals the first sector of the health-care industry to speak out publicly to try to protect itself from a sharp reversal in health policy that Trump is promising and congressional Republicans have long favored.
When it was enacted in 2010, the health-care law was a product of a delicate balancing act among various parts of the health-care industry. Each essentially agreed to sacrifices in exchange for the prospect of millions of Americans gaining insurance to help cover their medical expenses.
Fusion: How a Ben Carson-run HUD could be terrible for homeless LGBTQ youth Nidhi Prakash
In his latest anti-LGBTQ cabinet nomination, President-elect Donald Trump confirmed yesterday that his pick for secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development is Ben Carson.
Trump reportedly first floated Carson as secretary of Health and Human Services—a post that Carson declined, according to a close advisor of his, because he said he didn’t have the experience to run a federal agency. But he appears to have changed his mind.
“I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly by strengthening communities that are most in need,” he said in a statement he posted to Facebook. “We have much work to do in enhancing every aspect of our nation and ensuring that our nation’s housing needs are met.”
Carson, as many observers have pointed out already, is completely lacking the experience or qualifications that secretaries of HUD have had in the past.
What he does bring to the table is an array of homophobic and transphobic opinions, grounded in his evangelical Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs, which, he made clear on his presidential campaign trail, he believes should have a place in directing federal government policies.
He could place a greater emphasis on religious organizations and charities providing housing assistance and aid for the homeless,limiting the role of the federal government in a way that could leave low-income and homeless LGBTQ people in particular at risk.
Denver Post: Former Colorado Buffaloes star Rashaan Salaam has died at age 42 by Nick Kosmider
Chad Brown knew Rashaan Salaam was fearless long before the running back rushed for 2,000 yards and won a Heisman Trophy.
“I remember the first time Rashaan came to my apartment and saw my snakes,” said Brown, a University of Colorado teammate of Salaam’s in the 1990s. “So many of my other teammates had a fear of them. He was curious and wanted to get close to them. He asked questions about them. He was just a nice, good, personable dude.”
Salaam, the 1994 Heisman winner, was found dead Monday night in Eben G. Fine Park in Boulder of a suspected suicide. He was 42.
Salaam’s life had remarkable highs, and by his own admission significant struggles.
Salaam won the award given to college football’s best player as a junior and was selected in the first round of the 1995 NFL draft by the Chicago Bears. As a junior, he rushed for 2,055 yards and 24 touchdowns as the Buffaloes finished 11-1.
“The Buff family will miss Rashaan,” Brown said. “Not just for the Heisman Trophy, but for the person he was. And he certainly helped establish us as one of the best football programs in the country.”
The Boulder County Coroner’s office said in a release that a body found in Eben G. Fine Park on Monday was positively identified as Salaam’s. The release said the coroner’s office would be conducting an autopsy and that the cause of death are pending further investigation.
Mother Jones: This Case May Decide Whether People of Color Have a Vote That Counts A J Vicens
The 2016 election cycle might be over, but that doesn't mean voting rights issues are resolved. The first general election since the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act was replete with voter access issues, voter registration problems, and Election Day technical problems, but issues around partisan redistricting and racial gerrymandering largely flew under the radar. Not anymore.
Two gerrymandering cases were argued before the US Supreme Court on Monday.Each of them will try to sort out how much state redistricting bodies can and should take race into account while drawing new legislative districts. Determining voting districts to preserve partisan control is not illegal, but depriving a racial group of its broader electoral voice as the motivating factor for redistricting is.
"If it's politics, it's fine," Justice Elena Kagan said, according to the New York Times. "If it's race, it's not."
On Monday, the court heard arguments in Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections and McCrory v. Harris. The first case stems from the redistricting of state legislative districts in Virginia after the 2010 census. The Republican dominated state Legislature redrew the districts so the state's 12 majority-minority districts that were already 55 percent African American included some African Americans from other districts. The dozen parties in the case each live in the 12 majority-minority districts. They argued that the Legislature's redrawn districts effectively diluted African American voting power in the surrounding districts, thereby ensuring Republican control. Republicans in the state explained they were merely trying to maintain African American voting power, and that by doing away with the 55 percent majority distribution they risked running afoul of the Voting Rights Act by creating districts in which minority voters were no longer the majority.
AFP: Brexit deal needed by October 2018, says EU negotiator
Britain must broker its deal to leave the EU by October 2018, the bloc's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Tuesday, warning that time for talks was running out.
Frenchman Barnier added that an interim deal to soften the blow of Britain's departure was "difficult to imagine" unless it quickly told Brussels what it wanted from a Brexit deal.
Despite the tight new timeline Prime Minister Theresa May pledged a "red, white and blue Brexit" following Britain's shock June 23 referendum vote to leave the European Union.
"Time will be short. It's clear that the period of actual negotiations will be shorter than two years," Barnier said in his first news conference since his appointment by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
Speaking in a mix of French and English, former finance minister Barnier said the EU was "ready" for May to trigger the official two-year divorce process as promised in March 2017.
But Barnier said that much of that time would be spent getting any deal approved by the remaining 27 EU countries plus the European Parliament and then British MPs.
"All in all there will be less than 18 months to negotiate -- once again that is short," added Barnier, once dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by a British newspaper when he was the EU's financial services commissioner.
Deutsche Welle: Support, sarcasm after Merkel calls for banning burqas
Angela Merkel attacked Germany's right-wing populists Tuesday - first by criticizing opponents of her refugee policies and then by nicking one of their panaceas. The chancellor told fellow members of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that she supported a proposal by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere to outlaw full-face covering garments worn by some Muslim women.
"'Cheer storm' at Merkel's AfD demand for a ban on full-face veils," Beatrix von Storch, a member of the European Parliament for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), wrote in a tweet, implying that the chancellor's proposal is not just disingenuous but unoriginal.
On Tuesday, Merkel was once again endorsed as the CDU's candidate for chancellor, this time around with 89.5 percent support from delegates. In the days leading up to the party's convention in Essen, senior CDU officials had struck an increasingly right-wing tone - particularly on the broad topic of refugees.
AlJazeera: India's demonetisation: 'Modi didn't think of the poor' by Vaibhav Sharma
Bangalore, India - On November 8, as the world waited anxiously to find out whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States, in India, a radical economic decision was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The decision: that 500 ($7.30) and 1,000 ($14.60) rupee notes - about 86 percent of India's currency in circulation - would no longer be considered legal tender. The move would come into effect less than four hours after Modi's announcement.
It has been described by Lawrence Summers, the former US treasury secretary, writing in the Financial Times, as "the most sweeping change in currency policy that has occurred anywhere in the world in decades".
The rationale for the decision, the government explained, was a war against unaccounted cash, known as "black money".
The ban would counter "anti-national and anti-social elements", Modi said, and combat the widespread use of counterfeit currency and illicit income.
"[These] will become mere pieces of paper," Modi said.
To reimburse those with the now-useless currency, Modi announced a period of 50 days, in which the old notes could be exchanged for new 500 rupee and 2,000 rupee ($29) ones.
BBC News: Yemen conflict: UN official accuses world of ignoring crisis by Fergal Keane
In the hands of the doctor, baby Ibrahim's head seems impossibly small. He cradles the child gently, conscious of his fragility. Everything around him seems improbably large.
The nappies Ibrahim wears are the smallest available but are still too big. With his large eyes and hollowed out face, with ribs which press against his skin, the baby looks as if he is shrinking back into himself.
It seems perverse to describe a child in this state of as "lucky". But Ibrahim has survived 21 days and doctors are hopeful he will endure. His twin brother died soon after he was born.
His mother, Wafaa Hatem, sits on the bed with her son, stroking his fingers when he cries.
Like three million other Yemenis, the family was displaced by the war. Their daily existence is circumscribed by the challenge of finding food to eat.
Ibrahim's father is a taxi driver but with a collapsing economy he struggles to find customers.
"Sometimes my husband gets work," says Wafaa, "sometimes he can't find any. We eat sometimes, and sometimes we cannot provide anything."
It is one testimony from a war that has caused child malnutrition rates to jump by 200% in two years.
Fifty per cent of medical facilities no longer function. Some have been bombed by the Saudi-led coalition, others have ground to a halt because there is no funding.
Key roads and bridges are frequently attacked, making the delivery of assistance even more difficult.
Don’t forget that Hunter is hosting an open thread for night owls this evening.
Everyone have a great night!