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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
Washington Post
Ed. Note: I remember when Trump referred to Fahrenthold as a “nasty guy” after Fahrenthold wrote about Trump’s attempt at cheating veterans.
Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold remembers being struck by Donald Trump’s pledge to donate $6 million, including $1 million of his personal funds, to veterans groups during a televised fundraiser before the Iowa caucuses early last year. Did Trump follow through? he wondered. So, weeks after the event, Fahrenthold started asking questions.
For several months, he found, the answer was no, despite assurances to the contrary from Trump’s campaign. When Trump finally made the donation in late May, the reporter set off on a broader inquiry. In a detailed series of articles, he found that many of Trump’s philanthropic claims over the years had been exaggerated and often were not truly charitable activities at all.
On Monday, Fahrenthold’s investigative digging was rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s most prestigious award. His work documenting the future president’s charitable practices won the award for national reporting.
US NEWS
McClatchy DC
The swearing-in of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on Monday restores the Supreme Court to full strength for the first time in nearly 14 months and sets the stage for further conservative victories that could start accumulating quickly.
A Second Amendment challenge out of California, a religious liberty test from Missouri and a voter ID law problem from North Carolina now await Gorsuch and his eight high-court colleagues. Following a pair of private and public swearing-in ceremonies Monday morning, Gorsuch began digging into the first of the cases that could consume him for decades to come.
“I am humbled by the trust placed in me today,” Gorsuch said in the White House Rose Garden. “I will never forget that to whom much is given, much will be expected.”
Gorsuch’s impact could become apparent as early as Thursday, when justices meet for their near-weekly private conference to consider petitions. If at least four justices agree, a case can be accepted and added, at this point in the year, to the court’s oral argument docket for the term that starts next October.
McClatchy DC
A Democratic group is launching a new ad designed to help turn out the vote for Jon Ossoff, the marquee Democratic candidate in a Georgia special election that has captured nationwide attention as the nation’s first bellwether race since President Donald Trump took office.
The ad, from End Citizens United, emphasizes Ossoff’s pledge to change the country’s campaign finance system while cleaning up corruption. Coming a week before the April 18 election, it’s aimed at motivating core Democratic voters to support the candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.
“In Congress, Jon Ossoff will help end the rigged campaign-finance system, taking on special interests and calling out pay to play in Washington,” the ad says.
The 30-second ad will run online. A spokeswoman declined to say how much money the group was spending.
End Citizens United isn’t the only Democratic-aligned group to jump into the Georgia contest with a last-minute ad: House Majority PAC, a super PAC with ties to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, last week announced its own digital ad aimed at getting Democratic voters to the polls.
Al Jazeera
Ed. note: Why would anyone fly United after this happened?
Videos posted to social media showing security guards violently removing an Asian man from a United Airlines flight in the United States have sparked outrage.
The incident took place on Sunday, before the departure of Flight 3411 from Chicago's O'Hare Airport to Louisville.
Several clips posted online by fellow passengers show the officers forcibly removing the man by pulling him out of his seat and dragging him by his arms down the aircraft's aisle.
Passengers said the man, who can be heard screaming, was injured as he was being dragged off, with blood coming out of his mouth.
Passengers said on social media that United had overbooked the flight and wanted four passengers to give up their seats to make way for airline employees.
When no one volunteered, four passengers were selected and asked to leave.
The Guardian
Lawyers representing seven death row prisoners in Arkansas who are all scheduled to die within 11 days of each other starting next week are entering the final stretch of an epic legal battle in which they try to stop the most intense bout of judicial killings in modern US history.
Should the attorneys fail in their mission, two prisoners, Don Davis and Bruce Ward, will be put to death by lethal injection on 17 April. Three days later it will be the turn of Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee, followed by Marcel Williams and Jack Jones on 24 April, and Kenneth Williams on 27 April.
On Monday, lawyers for the seven will present a collective case to a federal judge in the eastern district of Arkansas in which they will call for a permanent block on the planned killings which they denounce as “execution by assembly line”. In a bold expression of disgust directed at the Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, they state: “Our country does not participate in mass executions.”
The Guardian
Exclusive: Sebastian Gorka told proposal would be ‘the worst solution’ when he suggested it to senior European diplomat
A senior White House foreign policy official has pushed a plan to partition Libya, and once drew a picture of how the country could be divided into three areas on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat, the Guardian has learned.
Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump under pressure over his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, suggested the idea of partition in the weeks leading up to the US president’s inauguration, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. The European diplomat responded that this would be “the worst solution” for Libya.
Gorka is vying for the job of presidential special envoy to Libya in a White House that has so far spent little time thinking about the country and has yet to decide whether to create such a post.
Reuters
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley resigned on Monday after pleading guilty to two misdemeanors charges related to campaign finance violations that have been linked to his relationship with a former adviser.
Lieutenant Governor Kay Ivey will replace Bentley, 74, Alabama House Representative Ed Henry told reporters before Bentley made the announcement at the state capitol in Montgomery.
Ivey would become the second woman to serve as Alabama's governor. The first was Laurleen Wallace, wife of George Wallace, who served from January 1967 until her death in May 1968.
Ellen Brooks, a special prosecutor appointed to investigate Bentley, told reporters that the governor had pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor campaign finance violations as part of a plea agreement that called for him to step down.
New York Times
The New York Times won three Pulitzer Prizes, and The New York Daily News and ProPublica shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service, as journalism presented its highest honors on Monday at a time of financial challenges for the industry and unabashed antagonism toward the news media from a new administration.
The Daily News-ProPublica won for a series on the New York Police Department’s widespread abuse of a decades-old law to force people from their homes and businesses over alleged illegal activity.
The investigation, which involved the examination of more than 1,100 nuisance abatement cases, found that the Police Department almost exclusively targeted households and shops in minority neighborhoods. The reporting drove New York City to re-examine the nuisance law and pass sweeping reforms.
The Guardian
A gunman entered an elementary school classroom in San Bernardino, California, and fatally shot his estranged wife, who was a teacher, and an eight-year-old student on Monday, before he killed himself, according to law enforcement.
The student, Jonathan Martinez, was airlifted from North Park elementary school to a hospital where he later died, police said. Another wounded student is in stable condition.
Cedric Anderson, 53, shot his wife, Elaine Smith, a 53-year-old teacher in a special-needs classroom for students in the first through fourth grades, according to Jarrod Burguan, chief of the San Bernardino police department.
Anderson said nothing when he arrived with a large-caliber revolver, before he opened fire, police said. The two children were standing behind Smith when they were struck by gunfire. Authorities did not name the surviving student.
“The children we do not believe were targeted,” police Capt Ron Maass told reporters.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
China's top nuclear envoy arrived in Seoul Monday for talks on the North Korean threat, as the US sent a naval strike group to the region and signalled it may act to shut down Pyongyang's weapons program.
President Donald Trump, fresh from a missile strike on Syria that was widely interpreted as a warning to North Korea, has asked his advisors for a range of options to rein in its ambitions.
Speculation of an imminent nuclear test is brewing as the North marks major anniversaries including the 105th birthday of its founding leader on Saturday -- sometimes celebrated with a demonstration of military might.
Wu Dawei, China's Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Affairs, will meet with his South Korean counterpart later Monday to discuss the nuclear issue.
Deutsche Welle
DW: Bishop Damian, in the course of two attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt, more than 40 people were killed. Are you in contact with the communities in question, and what are they telling you?
Bishop Anba Damian: We have close relations with our communities in Egypt. Some of our community members in Germany even have relatives in Egypt. We are currently in a state of shock. We have learned that, in Tanta, the explosives had been hidden inside a lectern, and how, in Alexandria, the perpetrator entered the church in which the Pope (Editor's note: Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Church) was celebrating Palm Sunday.
What are the repercussions of such attacks with respect to the coexistence between Copts and Muslims in Egypt?
Prudent Muslims express compassion, dismay and sympathy. Christians have a long tradition when it comes to peaceful coexistence. We are Egyptians, we're living together in the same spot, and we try to treat one another peacefully. But what you get is a wide variety of reactions. The majority of Muslims are sympathetic and saddened. The extremists, however, rejoice when, from their point of view, the "process" (Editor's note: of killing Copts) is successful. They call out "Allahu akbar" and, speaking metaphorically, wave the flag of victory. Others, yet again, show a very faint reaction. You really get a variety of reactions.
Al Jazeera
G7 foreign ministers were to send a "clear and coordinated message" to Russia over its stance on Syria as the US ratcheted up the pressure following a suspected chemical attack in the war-torn country.
The UK's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson set the tone for the meeting, describing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as "toxic" and saying it was "time for (Russian President) Vladimir Putin to face the truth about the tyrant he is propping up".
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven main industrialised countries are meeting in the Italian town of Lucca later on Monday before US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson flies to Moscow on Tuesday.
But the agenda is now likely to be dominated by last week's suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held Syrian town that killed at least 87 civilians, and the US cruise missiles fired at a Syrian air base in retaliation.
Al Jazeera
The annual "March of Return" by Palestinians in Israel , commemorating the Nakba - the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, has been blocked by the Israeli police for the first time in its history.
The police have denied the organisers a permit, saying there is a shortage of officers to oversee the march.
But Palestinian leaders in Israel accuse the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu of being behind the decision, in what they believe is the latest move to silence their commemoration of the events of 69 years ago.
The Nakba - Arabic for "catastrophe" - refers to Israel's creation on the ruins of the Palestinians' homeland in 1948. Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled outside the new state of Israel's borders, and more than 500 villages razed to prevent the refugees from returning.
The march has rapidly grown in size over the past few years, in defiance of increasingly repressive measures from the Israeli authorities.
Spiegel Online
Around the same time that the British representative in Brussels handed over the letter officially notifying the European Council of the UK's intention to leave the EU, in late March, ambassadors of the 27 remaining member states were meeting a couple of floors below. They planned to discuss the post-Brexit future of the European Union over lunch. To focus the conversation, the European Commission had posed a concrete question for the ambassadors to debate: Does the bloc need to become more socially minded?
All of the ambassadors present had their say, with a wide variety of proposals ranging from an EU tax to a standard minimum wage to joint European unemployment insurance. Only the German representative had nothing to say. The German government's position, he said, hadn't yet been determined, he told his puzzled counterparts.
The delay wasn't the experienced ambassador's fault. The blame lay with a burgeoning dispute in far-off Berlin, between the Chancellery of Angela Merkel, of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), and the Foreign Ministry of Sigmar Gabriel, of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). An internal government paper described a "fundamental disagreement": While Gabriel's officials were insisting on "introducing proposals from Germany," the Chancellery was opposed to going beyond statements that had already been made.
Agence France Presse
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres marks his first 100 days in office on Monday, facing a long list of worsening conflicts worldwide and still many unanswered questions about where US foreign policy is headed.
The former prime minister of Portugal and head of the UN refugee agency took office on January 1 with a promise to change the United Nations to make it more effective in confronting world crises.
Since then, wars in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan have all taken a turn for the worse, while the administration of US President Donald Trump has imposed the first in a series of potentially crippling funding cuts to the world body.
A suspected chemical attack last week brought a new level of horror to the six-year war in Syria, prompting the United States to fire missile strikes on a Syrian air base in retaliation.
The UN-brokered peace process however remains in a stalemate.
Reuters
The United States has made slight adjustments to its military activities in Syria to strengthen protection of American forces following cruise missile strikes last week on a Syrian air base that heightened tensions, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday.
The officials, citing the need to safeguard operations in Syria, declined to specify exactly what measures the United States has taken after the strikes, which Damascus, Tehran and Moscow have roundly condemned. They spoke on condition of anonymity.
Asked about the Reuters report, a U.S. military spokesman later told a Pentagon news briefing that the U.S. commander for the campaign has been "calling in the resources that he needs" to protect U.S. forces in the wake of the strikes.
The spokesman, Colonel John Thomas, also said U.S. strikes in Syria had become more defensive and acknowledged the pace had slowed somewhat since last Friday.
"I don't think that is going to last for very long, but that is up to (Lieutenant General Stephen) Townsend," Thomas said, stressing there had been no attempts by Syria or its allies to retaliate against U.S. troops so far.
The Guardian
North Korea has warned of “catastrophic consequences” in response to any further provocations by the US, days after a US navy battle group was sent to waters off the Korean peninsula.
The decision to divert the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and other battleships from a planned visit to Australia to the western Pacific came after tensions increased over ongoing military drills involving American and South Korean forces that Pyongyang regards as a dress rehearsal for an invasion.
“We will hold the US wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions,” North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. “(North Korea) is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the US.”
The spokesman cited Washington’s refusal to rule out a pre-emptive strike against North Korean missile sites as justification for its nuclear programme.
“The prevailing grave situation proves once again that (North Korea) was entirely just when it increased in every way its military capabilities for self-defence and pre-emptive attack with a nuclear force as a pivot,” the spokesman said, according to KCNA.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
Climate change is putting one of the wonders of the world in a vice. For an unprecedented second year in a row, Great Barrier Reef coral have been decimated by a wave of warm water.
Last year’s mass bleaching was fueled in part by a powerful El Niño, but would have been nearly impossible without climate change bumping up background temperatures. Research showed that climate change made warm waters in the Coral Sea up to 175 times more likely.
While no similar attribution has been done for this year’s mass bleaching, 2017’s heat is occurring in the absence of El Niño. And there’s one main culprit scientists are pointing to.
“The bleaching is caused by record-breaking temperatures driven by global warming,” said Terry Hughes, a director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
The Guardian
Scientists have unpicked the regions of the brain involved in dreaming, in a study with significant implications for our understanding of the purpose of dreams and of consciousness itself. What’s more, changes in brain activity have been found to offer clues as to what the dream is about.
Dreaming had long been thought to occur largely during rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, a period of slumber involving fast brain activity similar to that when awake, but dreams have also been reported to occur during non-REM sleep, leaving scientists scratching their heads as to the hallmark of dreaming.
“It seemed a mystery that you can have both dreaming and the absence of dreaming in these two different types of stages,” said Francesca Siclari, co-author of the research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
Now it seems the puzzle has been solved.
In addition the team found that dreaming about faces was linked to increased high-frequency activity in the region of the brain involved in face recognition, with dreams involving spatial perception, movement and thinking similarly linked to regions of the brain that handle such tasks when awake.
NPR
After you see a case of elephantiasis, you can never forget it.
People's legs, feet and toes swell up so much that they can't walk. Or move easily. The skin thickens and breaks open, creating ulcers and infections.
"It causes so much pain. So much pain," says epidemiologist Christine Kihembo, at Makerere University School of Public Health in Kampala, Uganda.
The trigger for the disease is typically a tiny worm. About the width of human hair, the worm lodges inside lymph nodes. Instead of the bodily fluid draining and moving around the body properly, it gets trapped in the extremities but also sometimes around the genitals.
So when Kihembo started hearing reports of farmers with swollen extremities and thickened skin in western Uganda back in 2015, she and her colleagues thought they knew right away what the problem was: an outbreak of elephantiasis.
They traveled out to the community, which lives high in the foothills of western Uganda. "This is a very remote community in tropical forest," Kihembo says. "They receive about four feet of rain each year and live at an average elevation of 4,000 feet."
NPR
President Trump wants America to use more "clean coal" to make electricity. He hasn't elaborated on what kind of coal that might be.
But there is, in fact, a way to capture and contain or reuse one of coal's worst pollutants — carbon dioxide, which warms the atmosphere. Though "carbon capture" has been slow to catch on among those who run coal-fired power plants (despite billions spent on research), entrepreneurs are now starting to adapt the technology for natural gas — coal's biggest competitor.
Bill Brown, co-founder of the venture capital firm 8 Rivers Capital, in Durham, N.C., is one of those entrepreneurs. I met him on a construction site near Houston. He's a big guy in steel-toed boots and a hard hat, and he's got a big idea: Build a demonstration power plant that burns fossil fuels without dumping carbon dioxide into the air.
"We're doing something that no one else has thought of before," he told me.
Brown had a hard time persuading people to give him money to build the plant.
"They thought we were nuts," he said. "I mean, it's funny. The look that comes across their face at that moment is, 'This guy is deluded.' "
It didn't help that Brown is a lawyer and former investment banker — not an engineer. Plus, no one before him has ever built such a thing.
NPR
How important is it to have a role model?
A new working paper puts some numbers to that question.
Having just one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade reduced low-income black boys' probability of dropping out of high school by 39 percent, the study found.
And by high school, African-American students, both boys and girls, who had one African-American teacher had much stronger expectations of going to college. Keep in mind, this effect was observed seven to ten years after the experience of having just one black teacher.
The study is big. The authors, Seth Gershenson and Constance A. Lindsay of American University, Cassandra M.D. Hart of U.C. Davis and Nicholas Papageorge at Johns Hopkins, looked at long-term records for more than 100,000 black elementary school students in North Carolina.
Then the researchers checked their conclusions by looking at students in a second state, Tennessee, who were randomly assigned to certain classes.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Guardian
The United States, Mexico and Canada announced details for a joint bid for the 2026 World Cup at a news conference on Monday on the 102nd floor of One World Trade Center in New York City.
“This is a milestone day for US Soccer and for Concacaf,” the US Soccer president, Sunil Gulati said. “We gave careful consideration to the prospect of bidding for the 2026 World Cup, and ultimately feel strongly this is the right thing for our region and for our sport. Along with our partners from the Canadian Soccer Association and the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol, we are confident that we will submit an exemplary bid worthy of bringing the World Cup back to North America. The United States, Mexico and Canada have individually demonstrated their exceptional abilities to host world-class events. When our nations come together as one, as we will for 2026, there is no question the United States, Mexico and Canada will deliver an experience that will celebrate the game and serve players, supporters and partners alike.”
Washington Post
Fox News Channel's parent company is investigating the network's top-rated host Bill O'Reilly after a Los Angeles radio personality leveled sexual harassment accusations against him.
Wendy Walsh, host of the "Dr. Wendy Walsh Show" on Southern California airways, said O’Reilly pulled a job opportunity from her in 2013 after she declined to visit his hotel room — a charge the conservative pundit has vehemently denied.
21st Century Fox said it was looking into Walsh's complaint. "21st Century Fox investigates all complaints and we have asked the law firm Paul Weiss to continue assisting the company in these serious matters,” the company told the Post in a statement Monday.
The Paul Weiss firm previously handled the channel’s investigation into Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman who was ousted after six women told lawyers he engaged in predatory behavior at work.
New York Times (4/9/2017)
One of the most surprising turnaround stories in recent television history began on one of the most surprising nights in political history.
On Nov. 8, Stephen Colbert was hosting a live election night special for CBS’s sister cable network, Showtime. A program that was built around an expected Hillary Clinton victory went off the rails almost as soon as it went on the air at 11 p.m. As election returns came in, audience members, who had been asked to shut off their phones an hour earlier, gasped as it became clear that Donald J. Trump could very well become president. Mr. Colbert looked dumbstruck.
Sensing the gravity of the moment, Chris Licht, the executive producer of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” walked over to Mr. Colbert’s desk during a musical performance.
“Stop being funny and go and just be real,” Mr. Licht told the host.
What followed was what Mr. Licht described in a recent interview as the turning point for Mr. Colbert, who had struggled to gain his footing on CBS after shedding the pompous-pundit character that made him famous on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.”
“I think it’s when he became himself,” he said.