Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) 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.
Chicago Sun-Times: Grieving Chicago police officers direct their anger at CPD’s second-in-command by Fran Spielman and Frank Main
Chicago police officers upset with Mayor Lori Lightfoot over her reform policies are also directing their anger at the Chicago Police Department’s second-in-command.
First Deputy Police Supt. Eric Carter infuriated officers gathered Saturday night at the Cook County medical examiner’s office to give their slain colleague, Ella French, a final send-off.
Ignoring a sacred ritual, Carter impatiently declared: “We don’t have 20 minutes for this s---.” He demanded the Chicago Fire Department ambulance bearing French’s body be taken directly into the medical examiner’s office, skipping the Emerald Society’s traditional playing of bagpipes.
“We’re not waiting on the bagpipes. Go ahead and get the vehicle inside,” Carter is heard saying on a recording.
“Take it all the way inside. Do not stop.”
Detroit Free Press: US Senate passes $1-trillion infrastructure bill: Here's what Michigan would get by Todd Spangler
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's campaign pledge of three years ago to "Fix the Damn Roads" got a boost Tuesday as the U.S. Senate capped months of negotiations by passing a $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill.
It now goes to the U.S. House, where the pressure to accept the proposal — which could send $7.3 billion to Michigan for highway repairs and more than $500 million for bridge work over the next five years, among other investments — will be enormous.
"(It) will create millions of good-paying jobs; fix crumbling roads and bridges; help us build a clean, resilient energy grid; bolster public transportation; deliver clean drinking water to millions of families, and ensure every home has access to high-speed internet," Whitmer said.
Earlier this year, she pressed the Senate to pass a bill, noting 40% of the state's roads and bridges were in poor or mediocre condition, a circumstance every Michigander is well aware of.
Washington Post: All population growth in U.S. driven by minorities, upcoming census data is likely to reveal by Tara Bahrampour and Ted Millnik
For the first time in the history of the country’s census-taking, the number of White people in the United States is widely expected to show a decline when the first racial breakdowns from the 2020 Census are reported this week.
For five years now, the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual updates of the 2010 Census have estimated that the nation’s White population is shrinking, and all population growth has been from people of color.
The new census data, planned for release on Aug. 12, will show definitively how the ethnic, racial and voting-age makeup of neighborhoods shifted over the past decade, based on the national house-to-house canvass last year. It is the data most state legislatures and local governments use to redraw political districts for the next 10 years.
If the White decline is confirmed by the new data, that benchmark will have come about eight years earlier than previously projected, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
Texas Tribune: “I am frightened by what is coming:” Texas hospitals could soon be overwhelmed by COVID-19 caseload, officials say by Joshua Fletcher
Texas hospitals are on the brink of catastrophe, close to being completely overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, leaders of some of the state’s largest hospitals told state lawmakers Tuesday.
Official after official used their strongest descriptions to get the point across to legislators: Hospitalizations are rising too fast for them to keep up with, and it may be too late to do anything about it.
"While more vaccination is the only thing that can ultimately bring this pandemic to an end, we need more decisive actions now to prevent a catastrophe the likes of which we only imagined last year," Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, CEO of Harris Health System in Houston, told the Texas Senate Health & Human Services Committee on Tuesday.
“This crisis right now is really driving us to a place where it is really unsustainable,” said Dr. Joseph Chang, chief medical officer for Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas.
The number of COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals is accelerating faster than at any other point in the pandemic as the contagious delta variant spreads unchecked, primarily among the unvaccinated.
Weather.com: Tropical Storm 'Fred' Is Expected to Form Tonight; Warnings In Effect For Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands
A disturbance in the eastern Caribbean Sea is likely to become Tropical Storm Fred tonight as it brings heavy rain and gusty winds to parts of the Caribbean Islands over the next few days. Crucially, what impact it might bring to Florida this weekend has yet to come into focus, but will do so over the next couple of days.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has designated a low-pressure system spreading showers and thunderstorms into the eastern Caribbean Sea as "Potential Tropical Cyclone Six".
This "potential tropical cyclone" procedure allows the NHC to issue watches and warnings ahead of time for a system that hasn't become well organized enough to be deemed a tropical depression or storm but is forecast to become one.
Tropical storm watches and warnings have been issued from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to the southeast Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. This includes a tropical storm warning for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where tropical storm conditions (winds of at least 39 mph) are expected Tuesday night.
BBC News: Wagner: Scale of Russian mercenary mission in Libya exposed by Ilya Barabanov and Nader Ibrahim
A new BBC investigation has revealed the scale of operations by a shadowy Russian mercenary group in Libya's civil war, which includes links to war crimes and the Russian military.
A Samsung tablet left by a fighter for the Wagner group exposes its key role - as well as traceable fighter codenames.
And the BBC has a "shopping list" for state-of-the-art military equipment which expert witnesses say could only have come from Russian army supplies.
Russia denies any links to Wagner.
The group was first identified in 2014 when it was backing pro-Russian separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Since then, it has been involved in regions including Syria, Mozambique, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.
Wagner's fighters appeared in Libya in April 2019 when they joined the forces of a rebel general, Khalifa Haftar, after he launched an attack on the UN-backed government in the capital, Tripoli. The conflict ended in a ceasefire in October 2020.
France 24: More than 40 killed in Algeria wildfires, prime minister says
Forty-two people, including 25 military men, have died in wildfires that erupted east of the Algerian capital, Algiers, Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane said on Tuesday.
Photographs posted on social media show huge walls of flame and billowing clouds of smoke towering over charred trees in the forested hills of the Kabylie region, east of the capital Algiers.
Algeria joins a string of countries to be hit by major blazes in recent weeks, including Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Russia and the United States.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted his condolences for 25 soldiers who were killed as they rescued people in the areas of Bejaiea and Tizi Ouzou, the epicentre of the blazes.
"It is with great sadness that I have learned of the martyrdom of 25 soldiers after they were successful in rescuing around 100 citizens from the flames in the mountains of Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou," the president said.
The Taliban has captured two more cities in Afghanistan, taking the number of provincial capitals the group has seized since Friday to eight.
Farah city of the eponymous southwestern province and Pul-e-Khumri of the northern province of Baghlan both fell to the armed group on Tuesday. Local sources confirmed the capture of both provincial capitals to Al Jazeera.
“This afternoon the Taliban entered the city of Farah after briefly fighting with the security forces. They have captured the governor’s office and police headquarters,” Shahla Abubar, a member of Farah’s provincial council, told the AFP news agency on Tuesday.
The Taliban has captured the province’s central prison, according to parliamentarian Abdul Nasri Farahi.
Farah is now the second provincial city in the southwest of Afghanistan that the group has taken. On Friday, the Taliban captured neighbouring Nimruz province.
Everyone have a good night.