I'm Chitown Kev and I'm substituting for regular OND editor maggiejean tonight.
OND is a 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.
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
Feel free to share some articles ans stories of your own in the comments.
New York Times: Ship Sinks in Chinese River; 8 of 457 Aboard Are Rescued
BEIJING — Most of the 458 people aboard a tourist ship that sank Monday night during a torrential rainstorm along a central section of the Yangtze River were still missing on Tuesday morning, according to a report by Xinhua, the state news agency.
Fewer than a dozen people had been rescued, local news media reported, indicating that this could be the worst shipping disaster in East Asia since the sinking of the South Korean ferry Sewol last year.
The ship, whose name translates to Oriental Star, was crossing Hubei Province in the middle of the country when it sank at 9:28 p.m., the report said, citing the Yangtze River Navigation Administration. Rescue work was hampered by strong winds and heavy rain.
The water where the boat sank is about 50 feet deep. Rescuers could hear the sounds of people trapped inside, according to a Twitter post by China Central Television, the main state network.
Chicago Sun-Times:
Former federal prosecutor picked to run Chicago Police Board
The board charged with taking disciplinary action against wayward Chicago Police officers is finally under new leadership.
Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot, who once ran the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards, is Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s choice to replace longtime Police Board President Demetrius Carney.
Critics have long argued that new blood is needed on the Police Board to restore public trust severely shaken by police abuse cases and by the board’s history of reversing the superintendent’s recommendations to terminate accused officers.
That is true now more than ever with the death of African-American suspects at the hands of police triggering demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore and New York City.
Lightfoot, 52, said she’s well aware that she’s taking the political hot seat “at a time when there is a heightened sense of awareness on issues that can be challenging for police departments” in cities large and small.
AlJazeera:
In the most diverse county in Texas, a big racial disparity in truancy
FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas — This suburb of Houston advertises its family-friendly environment and is lauded by demographers as a symbol of “the new America,” where black, Latino, Asian and white students are represented in similar numbers. Another, less-savory fact is invisible: racial disparity in the cases of truancy filed against students. According to its recent report on the criminalization of truancy in Texas, the social-justice-advocacy group Texas Appleseed found that these cases are disproportionately filed against minority students — and Fort Bend is the worst offender among large school districts. Here, African-Americans are the focus of more than half of truancy cases, although they make up only 29 percent of the student population.
Criticism of Fort Bend’s truancy system has already led to a class-action lawsuit on behalf of students. In late April, Fort Bend suspended new truancy filings indefinitely. In Texas, one of two states in the country that treats missing school as an adult criminal offense, children as young as 12 can face judges without counsel or parental intervention and can be put behind bars for unpaid fines or for being in contempt for missing court dates. As the state considers an overhaul of its truancy laws, Fort Bend’s school officials, lawmakers and families are doing some soul-searching to understand why so many of their African-American and Hispanic children are being pulled into truancy court and how to change that.
Associated Press: Watchdog says ex-Nazis got $20.2 million in Social Security
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a forthcoming report triggered by an Associated Press investigation, the top watchdog at the Social Security Administration found the agency paid $20.2 million in benefits to more than 130 suspected Nazi war criminals, SS guards, and others who may have participated in the Third Reich's atrocities during World War II.
The report, scheduled for public release this week and obtained by the AP, used computer-processed data and other internal agency records to develop a comprehensive picture of the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts paid out. The Social Security Administration last year refused AP's request for those figures.
The payments are far greater than previously estimated and occurred between February 1962 and January 2015, when a new law called the No Social Security for Nazis Act kicked in and ended retirement payments for four beneficiaries. The report does not include the names of any Nazi suspects who received benefits.
The large amount of the benefits and their duration illustrate how unaware the American public was of the influx of Nazi persecutors into the U.S., with estimates ranging as high as 10,000. Many lied about their Nazi pasts to get into the U.S. and even became American citizens. They got jobs and said little about what they did during the war.
New York Times/Dealbook Blog:
Justices Curb Bankruptcy Filers’ Ability to Have Second Mortgages Canceled
Handing banks a victory, the Supreme Court ruled that financially struggling homeowners who file for bankruptcy may not expect to have their second mortgage loans canceled, even if they owe more on their homes than the properties are worth.
In a unanimous decision on Monday, the court determined that second mortgages may not be “stripped off,” or voided, if the property is underwater, or worth less than the mortgage debt.
The ruling keeps intact a major protection for mortgage lenders, which extended tens of billions of dollars of second mortgages during the housing boom on homes that are now worth much less than their values when they were purchased. It also closes a legal avenue for homeowners with limited incomes and overwhelming debt to shed their underwater properties, bankruptcy lawyers say.
The ruling, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, stems from Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases filed in 2013 by homeowners who sought to strip off their second mortgages. One of the homeowners, David B. Caulkett, owed a first mortgage totaling $183,264 at the time of his bankruptcy filing, but his Florida home was valued at $98,000.
The Root:
Racist Dr. Seuss Drawing Fails to Draw Bids at Auction
Before Dr. Seuss became a popular children's author, he apparently worked as an illustrator of racist cartoons. Now one of the works is up for auction as his legacy take a major blow.
In a 1929 illustration for Judge magazine, he depicted black people for sale with a racist sign in the image's background, according to BET. "Take home a high-grade [n--ger] for your woodpile. Satisfaction guaranteed," reads the heading.
The Charlotte Observer:
Harriette Thompson, 92, sets marathon record
Harriette Thompson has told her 10 grandchildren plenty of stories over the years.
But on Sunday in San Diego, the 92-year-old Charlotte resident did something so remarkable that her grandkids will someday be telling their grandkids about it.
For 7 hours, 24 minutes and 36 seconds, Thompson hurried – as quickly as she could – along Southern California streets and highways, eventually crossing the finish line of the San Diego Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon on Sunday to become the oldest woman ever to complete a 26.2-mile race.
Dressed in a purple Team In Training T-shirt and ball cap, purple shoes and purple shorts over white tights (concealing bandages that covered wounds from radiation treatment for squamous cell carcinoma), Thompson was welcomed at the finish line outside the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park by confetti cannons and a throng of reporters.
“I can’t believe I made it!” Thompson said a few hours later, speaking to the Observer by phone.
“I was really tired at one point. Around Mile 21, I was going up a hill and it was like a mountain,” she said, laughing, “and I was thinking, ‘This is sort of crazy at my age.’ But then I felt better coming down the hill. And my son Brenny kept feeding me all this wonderful carbohydrates that kept me going.”
The Guardian: The heat and the death toll are rising in India. Is this a glimpse of Earth’s future?
Roads have twisted in the heat. Hospitals are overwhelmed by thousands of dehydrated people, the poor, the elderly and children among the worst hit. Urgent instructions to wear wide-brimmed hats and light-coloured cotton clothes, use umbrellas and drink lots of fluid have been issued by the government.
India is struggling to cope with one of the deadliest heatwaves to hit the subcontinent. And its attempt to do so is raising a question for the whole planet – how can humans cope with the kinds of temperatures that scientists fear may become ever more common?
In only 10 days, the death toll is reported to have reached around 1,800, a 20-year high. The brunt of the burden has fallen on the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where 1,300 people have died, the highest loss of life due to heat the state has known, according to officials. By comparison, 447 people in the state died from the heat last year.
The blistering temperatures may, mercifully, be about to break, as there are signs that the longed-for monsoon may be arriving in the form of showers and thunderstorms in the south. But as temperatures neared 50C in recent weeks, leave for doctors has been cancelled and the government has issued warnings for people to stay indoors and stay hydrated. For many, though, that isn’t an option.
Which reminds me that the 20th anniversary of Chicago's deadliest heat wave
ever is approaching.
Spiegel Online International: Refugee Abuse: Torture Scandal Rocks German Police
In his spare time, Torsten S. engaged in typically rural activities in his village near Hanover: fishing, raising chickens, chopping wood, speeding through the mud in his jeep. But if the accusations against him turn out to be true, the police sergeant had another, uglier side that came out at work. For several days now, the 39-year-old has been the centerpiece of an affair that could shake Germans' confidence in their police force.
"I smashed him."
"He squealed like a pig."
"Then the bastard ate the rest of the rotten pork out of the refrigerator. Off of the floor."
These and other, similar sentences were allegedly sent by Torsten S. to colleagues via the Whatsapp messaging service, as he boasted about the way he treated two men, an Afghan and a Moroccan, in the police station. The Norddeutscher Rundfunk, a German public broadcaster, was the first to publish the messages, along with a photo of one of the two supposed victims lying on the ground, hands tied, his face obviously contorted in pain.
Amnesty International described what happened in the police station, which is located at Hanover's main train station, as torture. It sounds like something that would happen in Abu Ghraib -- not in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, not in an official German police department in 2015.
The Guardian:
NYU confronts stereotypes with exhibition of racially charged art
Ellyn Toscano, who has served as the director of La Pietra since 2004, recalls being taken aback the first time she was confronted by the pieces that are now known as the “Blackamoors”, a collection of sculptures and paintings of black figures, elegantly dressed and depicted in acts of servitude – and are located throughout the villa’s grounds.
“You go to a room and there is a Blackamoor holding a lantern, lighting the way,” she says.
“I had been working in the south Bronx for 20 years, and [the statues] have these strange resonance with [black] lawn jockeys,” she adds, referring to the controversial – some say misunderstood – lawn statues in the US that are seen as romantacising the US’s history of slavery.
Work by Senegalese artist Omar Victor Diop-Part of Resignifications exhibit.
Toscano says that during her first tour of La Pietra, Italian art historians viewed the works as an afterthought and not particularly controversial because they were considered as minor decorative art in comparison with the “important” other works on display in the 15th-century villa.
“But to an American racialised consciousness, the Blackamoors are startling,” she says.
Now, NYU in Florence has assembled a thematic exhibit called ReSignifications in which both established and emerging artists are presenting new work inspired by the controversial decorative art.
Resignifications
BBC News:
Will dictators disappear?
Citizens living in democracies often associate dictatorships with repression, human rights abuses, poverty and turmoil. Indeed, dictatorships have cost untold lives, including up to 49 million Russian deaths under Joseph Stalin, and up to 3 million Cambodian deaths under Pol Pot.
Given these statistics, ending dictatorship once and for all would seem a worthwhile goal. But is that likely? What allows a dictator to thrive, and how might things change in the future for these leaders?
The terms ‘dictator’ and ‘dictatorship’ can, of course, be subjective – even pejorative. In the academic world, though, the words have more measurable and objective definitions. According to Natasha Ezrow, a senior lecturer in the department of government at the University of Essex, most experts who study dictatorships start with a simple definition: “When there’s no turnover in power of the executive, then it’s a dictatorship,” she says. This means dictatorships could be built around an individual who has established a personality cult, a single governmental party or a military-run oligarchy.
Reuters:
Police break up unsanctioned gay rally in central Moscow
Police broke up an unsanctioned gay rights rally in central Moscow on Saturday, detaining around 20 people, including anti-gay campaigners who attacked the activists.
The campaigners had requested permission to hold a gay pride parade today, but Moscow authorities blocked the request for the tenth year in a row - an annual ritual that has come to symbolize Russian authorities' hostility to public expressions of support for gay rights.
A 2013 law against gay "propaganda" also sparked an outcry among Russian rights activists and in the West. But partly reflecting the influence of the Orthodox church, many Russians back the law or have negative feelings toward gays.
Activists at Saturday's meeting on Tverskaya Square near the city center were heavily outnumbered by black-clad riot police who had lined the square in advance.
"It is lawlessness of Moscow's and Russian authorities - what is happening here is a complete lawlessness," said Nikolai Alexeyev, a leading Russian gay rights activist, as he was dragged into a police van with a bleeding hand. "We are just trying to hold a peaceful human rights action."
The Times of Israel:
Sex, drugs and Philistines: A biblical psychedelic scene
The now-lackluster central Israeli town of Yavneh was apparently once the center of a thriving drug scene, according to Israeli researchers.
Cutting-edge technology has allowed archaeologists to find traces of hallucinogenic materials, used over 3,000 years ago by the biblical Philistine people for spiritual rituals, Haaretz reported Thursday.
Mind-altering potions and plants were commonplace in many ancient cultures, which believed that using the substances intensified the mystical experience of worshipers. In some cases, in which adherents had to endure physically painful ceremonies, the substances also served to numb the pain.
In an upcoming symposium in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, aptly titled “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” archaeologists will discuss the analysis of findings from an incineration pit in Yavneh that was discovered a decade ago.
The findings constitute the oldest known ritual use of the intoxicating Hyoscyamus plant, which has an effect on the body similar to that of alcohol.
Thousands of artifacts used for worship were found inside the Yavneh pit, including clay and stone bowls, some of which served to hold the intoxicating plants, as well as hallucinogenic substances such as nutmeg. According to archaeologist Raz Kletter, who dug up the ancient site in 2002, the pit was part of an Iron Age temple, Haaretz reported.
The archaeological site at Yavneh.
Nutmeg is a hallucinogen? No wonder I always loved vanilla extract and nutmeg in my french toast as a kid!
And don't forget that Meteor Blades does an Open Thread for Night Owls at this time, as well.