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 (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.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
NPR
Spare a thought for the poor U.S.-Russia Joint Impenetrable Cybersecurity Unit, which didn't even survive an entire news cycle this weekend.
President Trump pitched the joint cyber-team with Russia in a tweet on Sunday.
He went on to rule out the idea in a second tweet on Sunday evening.
Then again, the notion had about as much chance of acceptance in the U.S. national security world as ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago.
"It's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's pretty close," said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, appearing on Meet the Press.
"Partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit,' " wrote Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Twitter.
"A cyber security working group with the very perpetrators of the attack on our election? Might as well just mail our ballots to Moscow," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. He also sounded off on Twitter.
US NEWS
In case you missed today’s bombshell news item:
New York Times
WASHINGTON — Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.
There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers.
Bloomberg
Although he’s been thwarted so far on his legislative agenda before Congress, most notably on health care, President Donald Trump has a big opportunity to reshape another branch of government outside his control: the federal judiciary. He has already moved swiftly to fill an unusual, inherited vacancy on the Supreme Court, and now his aides are working their way through a large number of openings on the lower federal courts. Some of his first picks are up for a Senate committee vote this month.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, with only a few months on the high court under his belt, already embodies the kind of influence Trump seeks to have on the third branch. Gorsuch, who replaced the late Antonin Scalia, reestablished the 5-4 advantage conservatives long enjoyed when it came to most hot-button social issues. Gorsuch has cast consistently conservative votes on such topics as Trump’s travel ban, gun rights, and the separation of church and state. And he doesn’t even turn 50 until August.
It’s actually quite rare for a new president to find a Supreme Court vacancy already waiting. Trump, of course, encountered his good fortune courtesy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented 10-month refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee, U.S. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland. The last time a new president had an inherited vacancy was back in 1881, when the beneficiary was President James Garfield.
The Sacramento Bee
The heads of six caucuses in the California Legislature are asking lobbying firms to provide them with demographic data – including race, ethnicity, gender and openly gay or lesbian orientation – on their employees.
A letter sent late last month to more than 400 lobbying firms, associations and major groups that employ lobbyists begins with an admittance that the Legislature itself needs to do more work to accurately reflect the makeup of California residents.
Leaders of the Legislative Asian Pacific Islander, Black, Jewish, Latino, LGBT and Women’s caucuses provide the number of members in their own groups. They ask the Capitol’s powerful third house to respond with a similar numerical breakdown of staff members at their private companies to help with the “worthy cause” of making California’s workforce representative of its residents.
The request, which lawmakers said is intended to expand conversation about cultural diversity in the Capitol workforce, elicited a range of responses from Sacramento lobbyists.
Some applauded the caucuses for forcing a male-dominated industry to think about its workforce and hiring practices. Others consider the request government overreach and expressed concern about how the data could be used against them if their employees aren’t diverse enough for the caucus chairs. Lawmakers currently aren’t required to report such information about their own staff members.
McClatchy DC
It’s been well over a year since the Pentagon announced its historic decision to open up all combat jobs in the military to women, but Congress is still dithering over whether women should register for the draft.
That’s by design, because House Republicans are blocking every congressional effort to force women to join men in signing up when they turn 18.
“You're not talking about whether or not a lady can serve, you are talking about whether or not a mother has to go to war during a time of a draft,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a House Armed Services Committee member, at a committee hearing, in June.
Last year, the House and Senate both approved plans to draft women if necessary, but Republicans later used a procedural maneuver to scrap them.
Lawmakers did, however, create an independent, 11-member National Commission on Military, National and Public Service to study, among other things, extending the draft to include women.
The commission, created when the law was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2016, is just getting off the ground. President Donald Trump sent a memo in April outlining his “principles for reform,” and the commission could take more than two years to produce a final report.
When Tommy Curry woke up one day in May, he found a slew of death threats and hate mail on his voicemail and in his email inbox.
Although it wasn't the first time Curry, an African-American philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, had received death threats, he was shocked by the "constant barrage" of messages threatening his life and those of his wife and children.
Curry says he received threats that said: "You and your family of African baboons might need to get killed" and "Crackers are coming to get your black ass."
For weeks, he received these messages, often accompanied by images of monkeys with guns in their mouths or African Americans being lynched.
It all started after a seven-year-old podcast in which he discussed the history of slave rebellions and black self-defence against white supremacy in the United States, suddenly resurfaced on right-wing news sites and blogs.
"I said [in the podcast] that black people didn't simply fantasise about killing their owners, and that we should understand the role that violence played in the liberation of black people," recalls Curry, whose research focuses on modern black civil rightsstruggles and the history of black self-defence in the US.
Reuters
President Donald Trump on Monday prodded the Republican-led U.S. Congress to pass major healthcare legislation but huge obstacles remained in the Senate as key lawmakers in his party voiced pessimism about the chances of rolling back the Obamacare law.
The House of Representatives approved its healthcare bill in May but the Senate's version appeared to be in growing trouble as lawmakers returned to Washington from a week-long recess.
"I cannot imagine that Congress would dare to leave Washington without a beautiful new HealthCare bill fully approved and ready to go!" Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the seven-year Republican quest to dismantle Democratic former President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement.
Trump appeared to be referring to the August recess that lawmakers typically take.
Senate Republican leaders have faced a revolt within their ranks, with moderate senators uneasy about the millions of Americans forecast to lose their medical insurance under the legislation and hard-line conservatives saying the bill leaves too much of Obamacare intact.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey said a new version of the legislation is expected to be released on Monday, telling the CNBC program "Squawk Box" that "there's a shot" of getting to the 50 votes his party needs to win passage in the 100-seat Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence casting a tie-breaking vote.
NPR
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing President Trump's vote fraud commission, charging that the body isn't following federal law requiring it to be open to the public. The lawsuit joins a growing number concerning the commission that have been filed by civil liberties groups in recent days.
It also comes as an email was sent by Vice President Mike Pence's office to states telling them to hold off on sending voter data requested last month.
Although the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, led by Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has held only an initial meeting by telephone since it was created two months ago, that first meeting was not open to the public, the ACLU charges. "Since the [law] applies to all meetings, even telephonic meetings, the commission has already violated [the Federal Advisory Committee Act]," ACLU staff attorney Theresa Lee tells NPR.
NPR
Wells Fargo bank has struck a settlement to reimburse customers who were harmed when bank employees created unwanted accounts in their names. A federal judge has granted a preliminary approval for the settlement in the class action case.
Wells Fargo says compensation will depend on the financial harm customers suffered. Someone who paid an improper $35 dollar fee likely will receive less money than someone whose credit score was damaged and had to accept a home loan with a higher interest rate.
That process of determining what to pay which customers will be overseen by an independent expert hired by class the action lawyers. Wells Fargo, which is an NPR financial supporter, says it may end up paying more to customers if the $142 million isn't enough.
Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan said in a statement: "We are pleased that the court found the settlement to be fair, reasonable and adequate. This preliminary approval is a major milestone in our efforts to make things right for our customers." He added that the settlement is "fundamental to restoring trust."
BBC
Donald Trump Jr denied issuing inconsistent statements about last year's meeting.
He also suggested it was normal practice to receive information about a political opponent.
US officials are investigating alleged Russian meddling in the US election.
The president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign head, Paul J Manafort, were also at the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Mr Trump Jr insists she provided "no meaningful information" on Mrs Clinton, his father's rival for the presidency.
On Monday he tweeted sarcastically: "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent."
He then tweeted: "No inconsistency in statements... In response to further Q's [questions] I simply provided more details."
And he linked to a piece in the New York Post headlined "The Times' exposé' on Donald Trump Jr is a big yawn".
Later, Mr Trump Jr tweeted: "Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know", after a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said it should interview him.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
Iraqi forces fought to eliminate the last pockets of Islamic State group resistance in Mosul on Monday after the premier visited the devastated city to congratulate troops on securing victory.
With the jihadists surrounded in a sliver of territory in Mosul's Old City, attention was turning to the huge task of rebuilding the city and of helping civilians, with aid groups warning that Iraq's humanitarian crisis was far from over.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited Mosul on Sunday and hailed Iraq's "heroic fighting forces" after months of difficult battles that have left much of the city in ruins.
The Old City in particular has been devastated, with many buildings reduced to little more than concrete shells and rubble littering the streets.
Soldiers armed with machineguns and sniper rifles fired from atop ruined structures in the Old City on Monday, and air strikes sent plumes of smoke rising over Mosul's historic centre.
A senior commander said on Monday that Iraqi forces were engaged in "heavy" fighting with the remnants of jihadist forces, but that the battle was near its end.
Agence France Presse
Turkey marks one year on July 15 since a coup attempt aiming to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that failed within hours but etched far-reaching consequences into its society and politics.
The country is in the throes of the biggest purge in its history against alleged coup supporters while Erdogan has seen his grip on power tightened rather than weakened.
But Turkey is also facing some isolation on the diplomatic stage, experiencing tense relations with the European Union and the United States, and now trying to limit the damage from an explosive crisis over its ally Qatar in the Gulf.
"One year on from the coup bid, President Erdogan is stronger than ever," said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara office director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
But he added the crackdown has "unavoidably weakened Turkey's international standing particularly vis-a-vis Europe and the United States."
Deutsche Welle
A British study has found that Saudi Arabia plays a key role in the radicalization of Muslims. The Wahhabi influence, fueled by oil money, can be seen in Germany as well, says researcher Susanne Schröter.
DW: After the bloody terror attacks in Great Britain, there are an increasing number of studies being conducted on the cause of radicalization. Britain's Henry Jackson Society, a think tank, has published a report on foreign funding for extremist branches of Islam in Great Britain. Saudi Arabia has been clearly named as one of the greatest supporters. In the past 50 years, Riyadh has invested at least 76 billion euros ($86 billion) in Wahhabi extremism, the ideological basis of extremist and jihadist movements throughout the world. Are you surprised about these findings?
Susanne Schröter: The findings do not surprise me at all. It has long been known that Saudi Arabia has been exporting Wahhabist ideology - largely similar to the ideology of the so-called "Islamic State" (IS). Propaganda material and organizational expertise are being sent along with money. People are being hired to build mosques, educational institutions, cultural centers and similar organizations, so that Wahhabist theology can reach the public – with great success.
Al Jazeera
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has arrived in Kuwait at the start of a four-day visit to Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to help seek a resolution to the ongoing Gulf crisis.
Tillerson will first "meet with senior Kuwaiti officials to discuss the ongoing efforts to resolve the Gulf dispute" on Monday evening, before heading to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the state department announced.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar on June 5 and imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the country.
The quartet accuse Qatar of funding "terrorism", an accusation Qatar rejects as "baseless".
On June 22, they issued a 13-point list of demands, including the shutdown of Al Jazeera, as a prerequisite to lift the sanctions.
Doha rejected the demands and the countries now consider the list "null and void".
But Kuwait is still trying to mediate the dispute.
Spiegel Online
Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron hope to reinvigorate the Franco-German partnership. Yet even as military cooperation moves forward, the two countries are still far apart on eurozone reforms.
When Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron talk about their relationship, it's easy to get the impression that they are a pair of lovers. "There's a bit of magic in every new beginning," warbled the German chancellor during Macron's visit to Berlin. The French president, for his part, wasn't at a loss for ardor when he went before the press with Merkel at the end of the last EU summit. "When France and Germany speak with one voice, Europe makes headway," he gushed.
It's hardly surprising that Brussels no longer speaks of two people when the pair comes up in conversation. "Mercron" or "Emmangela" is how the two are now referred to in the European Union capital, names that reflect the hope that Merkel and Macron, the German chancellor and French president, will re-start the German-French EU motor and finally bring the bloc forward. And the current situation is propitious: The election of Donald Trump in the United States and the ongoing political disaster unfolding in Britain has recently reminded many Europeans of just how important the EU really is.
Spiegel Online
The Hamburg summit is over. Overshadowed by the violence on the streets outside, Angela Merkel and the rest of the G-20 leaders managed to find mini-compromises on major issues. But the question remains: Was it worth it?
Unfettered violence. Unbridled brutality. Outside our democratic community. When Angela Merkel held her closing address on Saturday afternoon at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, she used clear words to denounce what had taken place on the streets of Hamburg during the preceding day and night.
Cars and barricades ablaze, shops plundered, water cannons in constant operation, injuries, devastated city quarters, heavily armed special police units: The images of the violence in Hamburg have circled the globe. And they stood in stark contrast to those of the 20 heads of state and government who, at the same time, were listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" in Hamburg's chic new Elbphilharmonie concert hall. Classical music inside, clashes outside.
The question that must now be asked, which the chancellor must also answer, is this: Was it all worth it? Or was the price too high?
NPR
In a cold, isolated Himalayan plateau where three countries converge, an old rivalry is heating up.
New Delhi and Beijing are locked in heated verbal exchanges over a slice of land near the narrow passage that connects India's northeast states with the rest of the country — a strategic link called the Siliguri Corridor but more commonly known as the "Chicken's Neck."
The area in disagreement is where three countries — India, China and Bhutan — converge in a tri-junction, and all three are parties to the simmering dispute.
Tensions flared in mid-June, when China began constructing a road in the disputed Doklam Plateau. Both Beijing and Bhutan claim this territory. The Bhutanese note that the process of the boundary settlement is still under negotiation, and the status quo cannot be changed.
The tiny Himalayan country turned to India, its long-time ally, for help.
"India is de facto responsible for Bhutan's security," explains Sameer Patil, the director of Gateway House, an Indian foreign policy think tank. "China's territorial incursions in the Bhutanese territory threaten Bhutanese — and therefore Indian — security."
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central
LONDON — One of Africa's driest regions — the Sahel — could turn greener if the planet warms more than 2 degrees Celsius and triggers more frequent heavy rainfall, scientists said on Wednesday.
The Sahel stretches coast to coast from Mauritania and Mali in the west to Sudan and Eritrea in the east, and skirts the southern edge of the Sahara desert. It is home to more than 100 million people.
The region has seen worsening extreme weather — including more frequent droughts — in recent years.
But if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the resulting global warming — of more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — could change major weather patterns in the Sahel, and in many different parts of the world, scientists say.
Some weather models predict a small increase in rainfall for the Sahel, but there is a risk that the entire weather pattern will change by the end of the century, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said.
"The sheer size of the possible change is mindboggling — this is one of the very few elements in the Earth system that we might witness tipping soon," said co-author Anders Levermann from PIK and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of New York's Columbia University.
The Guardian
World leaders have made clear the US’s isolated stance on climate change, with 19 of the G20 countries affirming their commitment to the “irreversible” Paris climate agreement.
After lengthy negotiations that stretched well into Saturday, the final joint statement from the meeting in Hamburg notes Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris deal while stating that the world’s other major economies all still support the international effort to slow dangerous global warming.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said on Saturday she “deplored” the US exit from the agreement and added that she did not share the view of Theresa May, the British prime minister, that Washington could decide to rejoin the pact.
“I think it’s very clear that we could not reach consensus, but the differences were not papered over, they were clearly stated,” Merkel told reporters at the end of the two-day meeting. “It’s absolutely clear it is not a common position.”
The communique reads: “We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris agreement,” adding: “The leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris agreement is irreversible” and “we reaffirm our strong commitment to the Paris agreement”.
Reuters
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted pictures of the first Model 3 sedan to roll off the assembly line.
Tesla board member Ira Ehrenpreis was the first to put down a $1,000 deposit on the Model 3 and gifted the car to Musk for his 46th birthday, Musk said in a tweet. (bit.ly/2v3RyDX)
Musk has high hopes for the $35,000 Model 3, aimed at the mass market, and expects the rollout to help the company deliver five times its current annual sales volume.
Tesla's shares have taken a beating in the last few weeks, as investors have become increasingly concerned that demand for the company's existing Model S sedan is weakening.
Reuters
Microsoft Corp on Monday unveiled a new service that allows customers to use its cloud technology on their own servers, part of the company's efforts to refocus its product line to compete more effectively with rivals Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google.
The world's biggest software maker is looking to carve out a niche among customers who cannot or do not want to move all their computing operations to the massive shared data centers that are collectively known as the cloud.
“One of the key differentiations we have with Azure versus our two biggest competitors in the cloud platform space is our ability to support true hybrid solutions,” Judson Althoff, Microsoft's executive vice president of worldwide commercial business, told Reuters.
Azure is Microsoft's cloud-computing platform, pegged by most market share studies as second in cloud computing behind Amazon Web Services.
Dell EMC, Lenovo Group Ltd and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co will provide new servers and equipment needed to run the service, Microsoft said. The companies will ship the first systems to customers in September.
NPR
Scientists are about to get an up-close and personal look at the planet Jupiter's most famous landmark, the Great Red Spot.
NASA's Juno spacecraft will be directly over the spot shortly after 10 p.m. ET Monday, July 10, about 5,600 miles above the gas giant's cloud tops. That's closer than any spacecraft has been before.
The spot is actually a giant storm that has been blowing on Jupiter for centuries. It's huge, larger than Earth in diameter.
"It's lasted a really long time," says Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and principal scientist for NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter. "No scientists really understand exactly how that storm is created or why it could last so long."
Not only will Juno's camera be able to capture detailed images of the spot, but the probe also carries scientific instruments that can provide additional details about the storm. For example, the microwave radiometer can peer through the clouds and see what kinds of atmospheric structures underpin the spot.
NPR
In the epicurean world, Northern California is famous for two intoxicants — wine and weed. With recreational marijuana about to be legal in the Golden State, some cannabis entrepreneurs are looking to the wine industry as a model.
On the elegant terrace of a winery overlooking the vineyard-covered hills of Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, a dozen invited guests are sipping pinot noir, nibbling hors d'oeuvres and taking hits off a water pipe.
They have come for a farm-to-table meal of kale salad, roasted vegetables and grilled flatiron steak paired with wine and certain types of marijuana.
"What we've found so far is that sativas go well with whites, indicas go well with reds," says Sam Edwards, president of the Sonoma Cannabis Company.
He's part of the emerging pot-for-pleasure industry that seeks to grab a share of the nearly $2 billion tourism business in Sonoma Valley with events like this.
"What we're beginning is melding cannabis with wine and food in a curated meal that offers the best of all worlds," says Edwards.
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O) shares rose on Monday ahead of the world's largest online retailer's own version of Black Friday, while its new service to help set up 'smart homes' weighed on rival Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N).
Prime Day, a 30-hour sale set to start at 9:00 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT Tuesday), is Amazon's biggest marketing push of the year, with deals to draw new subscribers to its Prime shopping club. U.S. members pay $99 per year for streaming video and two-day shipping.
Amazon shares closed up 1.8 percent at $996.47 on Nasdaq.
"Prime Day is the big overriding story and what's moved the stock up today," said Trip Miller, managing partner at Gullane Capital Partners in Memphis, Tennessee, which has a long position in Amazon.
Miller said Amazon's dominance could be seen in how a long list of retailers' shares fell on Monday.
Baird Equity Research analysts have estimated that Prime has about 60 million U.S. members, based on an April survey. Amazon does not disclose the number.