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 Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Man Oh Man, 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.
BBC
Russia election: Vladimir Putin wins by big margin (Surprise, he got 103% of the vote, lol)
Vladimir Putin will lead Russia for another six years, after securing an expected victory in Sunday's presidential election.
With almost all the ballots counted, he had received more than 76% of the vote, the central election commission said.
The main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was barred from the race.
Addressing a rally in Moscow after the early results were declared, Mr Putin said voters had "recognised the achievements of the last few years".
Speaking to reporters, he laughed off a question about running again in another six years.
"What you are saying is a bit funny. Do you think that I will stay here until I'm 100 years old? No!" he said.
Washington Post
With Putin’s reelection, expect rising tensions with the West
MOSCOW — When Russian President Vladimir Putin took the stage on a square outside the Kremlin to claim victory in Sunday’s national election, he did so at an open-air concert celebrating the fourth anniversary of his annexation of Crimea.
He thanked the crowd for their support in the “very difficult circumstances” of recent years and then led a chant: “Russia! Russia! Russia!”
With his landslide win Sunday, Putin got the election show he wanted. As he figures out what’s next, expect rising tensions with the West.
In the weeks leading up to Putin’s reelection to six more years in power, the president hardly campaigned and offered few concrete plans for major domestic reforms. He did, however, awe Russians with displays of fantastic new weaponry while state-controlled television intensified a drumbeat of reporting about the threats allegedly posed by the United States and its allies.
The unified story line: Russia is under attack, and it needs a strong leader to survive.
BBC
Stem cell transplant 'game changer' for MS patients
Doctors say a stem cell transplant could be a "game changer" for many patients with multiple sclerosis.
Results from an international trial show that it was able to stop the disease and improve symptoms.
It involves wiping out a patient's immune system using cancer drugs and then rebooting it with a stem cell transplant.
Louise Willetts, 36, from Rotherham, is now symptom-free and told me: "It feels like a miracle."
A total of 100,000 people in the UK have MS, which attacks nerves in the brain and spinal cord.
Just over 100 patients took part in the trial, in hospitals in Chicago, Sheffield, Uppsala in Sweden and Sao Paolo in Brazil.
They all had relapsing remitting MS - where attacks or relapses are followed by periods of remission.
BBC
Somalia clans secure peace with death sentences and hefty fines
Two rival Somali clans have signed up to a groundbreaking peace deal which aims to end the cycle of revenge killings.
Following three weeks of mediation, the rival Sa'ad Yoonis and Ba'iido clans in the disputed Sanaag region reached an agreement on harsh new rules.
Now, anyone found guilty of carrying out a revenge killing or vendetta will face a death sentence.
The family of the perpetrator will also have to pay fine a $100,000 (£72,000).
There has long been tension between many Somali clans due to rivalry and competition over resources such as grazing land for livestock or access to water.
But vendettas going back generations have added to the violence and the cycle of revenge has been extremely hard to break.
BBC
Brazil ex-football star Romario seeks Rio state governor post
The Brazilian senator and former football star Romario de Souza is to run for election as governor of Rio de Janeiro in October.
The state has been racked by violence and is on the verge of bankruptcy.
The 1994 World Cup winner - known simply as Romario - says his campaign will focus on tackling those problems.
He will stand as a candidate for the centrist Podemos party. He has been praised as a senator for his battle against corruption in football.
"In these chaotic times, change is necessary, change is urgent... Rio always had safety problems, but never like now," the 52-year-old said on Saturday while announcing his candidacy. The former Barcelona footballer is currently under investigation for allegedly concealing assets to avoid paying debts, Brazilian media report.
The Guardian
Trump will pull out of Iran nuclear deal, leading senator predicts
The chair of the Senate foreign relations committee has predicted Donald Trump will pull the US out of the nuclear deal with Iran.
“The Iran deal will be another issue that’s coming up in May, and right now it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be extended,” Bob Corker told CBS’s Face the Nationin an interview broadcast on Sunday.
“I think the president likely will move away from it, unless our European counterparts really come together on a framework. And it doesn’t feel to me that they are. Now, as we get within two weeks of the 12 May date, that could change.”
Corker also said he did not think such a move would damage attempts to set up a meeting the same month between Trump and Kim Jong-un, the dictator of nuclear-armed North Korea.
The Tennessee senator has clashed repeatedly with Trump and will retire in November. He has been touted in some quarters as a presidential rival in 2020.
The Guardian
Florida bridge collapse: all bodies recovered from crushed vehicles
Police in Miami believe they have recovered all the bodies of those who died in a catastrophic bridge collapse on a busy highway on Thursday.
The Miami-Dade police chief, Juan Perez, told news media late on Saturday searchers had recovered all five bodies of people in vehicles that were crushed under the pedestrian bridge at Florida International University, when the structure fell on to a busy six-lane road connecting the campus to the community of Sweetwater.
A sixth person died in hospital. The search and rescue effort was continuing nonetheless, Perez said.
Three victims were found on Saturday morning in two vehicles. A third vehicle was pulled from the debris later in the day but police did not initially say whether they had found human remains inside.
As crews removed the bodies, one victim’s uncle raged against what he called the “complete incompetence” and “colossal failure” that allowed people to drive beneath the unfinished concrete span.
“Why they had to build this monstrosity in the first place to get children across the street?” said Joe Smitha, whose niece, Alexa Duran, was killed. “Then they decided to stress-test this bridge while traffic was running underneath it?”
The Guardian
Kim Jong-un has committed to denuclearisation, says South Korea
South Korea’s foreign minister has said that North Korea’s leader has “given his word” that he is committed to denuclearization, a prime condition for a potential summit with President Donald Trump in May.
Trump has agreed to what would be historic talks after South Korean officials relayed that Kim Jong-un was committed to ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons and was willing to halt nuclear and missile tests.
North Korea hasn’t publicly confirmed the summit plans, and a meeting place isn’t known.
South Korea’s Kang Kyung-wha said Seoul has asked the North “to indicate in clear terms the commitment to denuclearization” and she says Kim’s “conveyed that commitment.”
She told the CBS programme Face the Nation that “he’s given his word” and it’s “the first time that the words came directly” from the North’s leader.
The Guardian
Data scandal is huge blow for Facebook – and efforts to study its impact on society
The revelation that 50 million people had their Facebook profiles harvested so Cambridge Analytica could target them with political ads is a huge blow to the social network that raises questions about its approach to data protection and disclosure.
As Facebook executives wrangle on Twitter over the semantics of whether this constitutes a “breach”, the result for users is the same: personal data extracted from the platform and used for a purpose to which they did not consent.
Facebook has a complicated track record on privacy. Its business model is built on gathering data. It knows your real name, who your friends are, your likes and interests, where you have been, what websites you have visited, what you look like and how you speak.
It uses all that data to make it super easy for its customers – advertisers – to target you.
On the other hand, Facebook very much wants to keep that data – its competitive advantage – to itself, and so guards it carefully. Facebook has yet to face a major hack like Yahoo, Equifax or LinkedIn.
So protective is the site of its user data that it makes it very difficult for scholars to study its impact on society.
Reuters
Ten years after crash, Americans still have not fallen back in love with stocks
Ten years after the start of the financial crisis that erased $16.4 trillion in assets from U.S. households, Americans have yet to embrace the U.S. stock market with the same fervor as before, holding fewer individual stocks and putting less money into equities overall despite an uninterrupted 9-year bull market that has pushed the S&P 500 up nearly 310 percent from its 2009 lows.
Overall, U.S. households have $900 billion less invested in stocks than in 2007, according to Goldman Sachs research, leaving buying by U.S. corporations now the greatest driver of demand. In 401(k) retirement plans, meanwhile, investors now hold an average of 52.4 percent in equity-only funds, down from the 64.7 percent they held in 2007, according to Fidelity.
Raw Story
Top Mormon thinkers: Conservative Christians will never again be able to claim the moral high ground after Trump
Two prominent Mormon opinion leaders published a scathing rebuke of the loyalty conservative Christians have shown to Trump in today’s Salt Lake City Tribune.
“Donald Trump lies and is faithless to commitments and individuals, abandoning persons as quickly as he does promises, inventing reasons and accusations as though it were his right,” they write. “How can believers who condemn false witness and adultery while insisting on the sanctity of the family continue to support Donald Trump? And how can women of any faith or morality support so vulgar, abusive and inconstant a president?”
The piece is by Robert A. Rees, a Mormon theologian, and Clifton Jolley one of Utah’s “best loved essayists.”
The piece pulls no punches in laying out how conservative Christians reaction—or lack of reaction—to the Stormy Daniels scandal shows that people who have staked their political beliefs on being upright and moral have debased themselves by slavishly supporting a president who is at best amoral.
NPR
Turkish Forces Seize Syrian City of Afrin
Turkish forces have seized control of the Syrian city of Afrin. A source in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office said in a statement, that as of Sunday morning, the Turkish military and its Free Syrian Army allies have seized control of the city center. The northwestern, Kurdish-majority city has been the target of a two-month Turkish offensive against a Syrian Kurdish militia, known as the People's Defense Units, or YPG, despite calls from Europe and elsewhere for the operation to end.
The Turkish assault on Afrin raises tensions with the U.S. Turkey views the Kurdish fighters as terrorists, even though the U.S. has armed and trained some to fight against Islamic State forces in Syria.
Reuters reports that Erdogan said, "Units of the Free Syrian Army, which are backed by Turkish armed forces, took control of the center of Afrin this morning." He added that a "large number" of Kurdish fighters had "fled with their tail between their legs," and that de-mining operations in the city are underway.
N Y Times
Austria’s Far Right Wants the Freedom to Smoke
VIENNA — Three winters ago, during a highly public fight against lung cancer, Kurt Kuch, a smoker and prominent journalist in Austria, threw his popularity behind a “Don’t Smoke” campaign, hoping to spare others his fate.
After his death, at 42, the lobby succeeded, and the Austrian government agreed to ban smoking in bars and restaurants starting this May.
That was until the recent electoral success of the far-right Freedom Party, whose leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, himself an avid smoker, wants to give Austrians the choice to continue to puff away with a coffee or a meal.
As soon as his party entered a coalition government last year, Mr. Strache, vice-chancellor and sports minister, promised to step back from a total ban, saying he was acting “in the spirit of entrepreneurial freedom.”
The decision has stunned almost everyone involved — doctors, restaurant and cafe owners, and smokers themselves. Even the health minister, who is from Mr. Strache’s party, expressed concern.