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.
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Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
Al Jazeera
On Monday, the US celebrates the life and legacy of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, who would have turned 89 years old.
The Baptist minister, Nobel Laureate and civil rights activist dedicated his life to "work for peace, social justice, and opportunity for all Americans".
Beginning in 1971, three years after he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, many US cities and states began to mark what is now known as "MLK Day".
In 1983, then-President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that created a federal holiday in King's honour. It was first observed three years later and continues to be celebrated on the third Monday of January. The day was chosen because it is often around King's birthday, January 15.
NPR
In December 1955, after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black ministers and community leaders organized a citywide bus boycott in protest. That part is well known.
Less well-known is the story of Georgia Gilmore, the Montgomery cook, midwife and activist whose secret kitchen fed the civil rights movement.
When King and others held meetings of the Montgomery Improvement Association at the Holt Street Baptist Church, Gilmore was there, selling fried chicken sandwiches and other foods to the African-American men and women gathered there who'd pledged not to use the city's buses until they were desegregated. Gilmore poured those profits back into the movement, as John T. Edge recounts in his book The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South.
US NEWS
McClatchy DC
The unexpected departure of a top ranked diplomat is shaking up an already unsteady diplomatic corps and raising questions about who will be next to leave.
News of John Feeley’s resignation’s Friday sent shock waves through the State Department where the ambassador of Panama was seen as a rising star and a potential future assistant secretary — and more than a dozen State staffers said it caused them to question their own commitment to an administration they feel is undercutting the department’s work and U.S. influence in the world.
“Given what happened in the last few days, people are wondering how are they going to be effective in an environment like this,” said a U.S. official who works regularly with the State Department. “It’s one thing for us to go in and slam our hands on the table and say this is what we want ... It’s another to denigrate them and make it crystal clear this is what our leadership thinks about them in the vulgarest of terms.”
McClatchy DC
Lead us not into temptation, conservative lawmakers are warning colleagues. Please don’t make us bring earmarks back.
Earmarks involved slipping local projects into massive budget bills. They came to symbolize corruption and runaway government spending, and critics worry their revival could spark a fresh round of scandals.
“Just because all things are lawful, doesn’t mean they are expedient,” said Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, which has about 150 House members.
Walker invoked the Apostle Paul to argue against giving lawmakers the “power of the purse” that the Constitution bestows on Congress. There’s too much “temptation to abuse” them, Walker said.
The Guardian
Canadian author Margaret Atwood is facing a social media backlash after voicing concerns about the #MeToo movement and calling for due process in the case of a former university professor accused of sexual misconduct.
Writing in the Globe and Mail, Atwood described the #MeToo movement, which emerged in the wake of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, as a “massive wake up call” that is a symptom of broken legal systems.
However, she wondered where North American society would go from here. “If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers?” Atwood asked.
She raised the possibility that the answer could leave women divided. “In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn’t puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated.”
The Guardian
The University of Iowa is caught up in a legal fight with Business Leaders in Christ, a conservative Christian group that denied a leadership position to a gay student.
The case pits a university policy barring discrimination based on sexual orientation against the religious beliefs of the 10-member group, which sued after the state’s flagship university in Iowa City revoked its campus registration in November.
The group says its membership is open to everyone, but that its leaders must affirm a statement of faith that rejects homosexuality.
The university says it respects the right of students, faculty and staff to practice the religion of their choice but does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.
Business Leaders in Christ, which was founded in the spring of 2015 by students at the university’s Tippie College of Business, met weekly for Bible study, to conduct service projects and to mentor students on “how to continually keep Christ first in the fast-paced business world”.
Reuters
DETROIT (Reuters) - Global automakers on Monday urged the Trump administration not to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement and expressed hope the United States, Canada and Mexico can successfully conclude a modernized and improved trade pact.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA) Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, who announced last week plans to shift heavy pickup truck production from Mexico to Michigan by 2020, said he hoped the Trump administration would “retune” some of its trade talk demands.
Trump has threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, which is heavily utilized by automakers that have production and supply chains spread across the three countries.
NPR
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose popularity soared during his first term but then fell from grace, leaves office Tuesday.
The Republican served a term-limited eight years in a majority blue state and spent much of that time in the national limelight as he built a reputation as a "tell-it-like-it-is" politician. But the Bridgegate scandal, a losing campaign for president and a day spent on a closed beach during a government shutdown left him with the lowest approval ratings for any governor in New Jersey history.
In Christie's first year, a YouTube video of a press conference went viral when a columnist asked if the governor's confrontational tone might hamper his ability to get bills passed.
"You must be the thinnest skinned guy in America," Christie told Tom Moran of theStar-Ledger newspaper. "Because if you think that's a confrontational tone, then you should see me when I'm really pissed!”
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called Monday for the elimination of jihadist "sleeper cells" after a twin suicide bombing killed 31 people in Baghdad in the second such attack in three days.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but most such attacks in Iraq are the work of the Islamic State jihadist group.
The bombing comes after Abadi's government declared victory over IS in December and as the country gears up for parliamentary elections.
"Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Tayyaran Square in central Baghdad," said General Saad Maan, spokesman for the Joint Operations Command (JOC) which includes the army and police.
A police officer reported "31 dead and 94 wounded".
Agence France Presse
Palestinian leaders met Monday to plan a response to what they see as US President Donald Trump's attack on their long bid for statehood, after Mahmud Abbas denounced White House peace efforts as the "slap of the century".
The rare meeting of the Palestinian Central Council -- a high-ranking arm of the Palestine Liberation Organisation -- was called after Trump's controversial December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Palestinians want the annexed eastern sector of the city as the capital of their future state, and president Abbas has said Trump's stance means the US can no longer be the mediator in peace talks with Israel.
The US president has sought to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, with talks stalled since 2014.
Speaking late Sunday at the opening of the council, which brings together Palestinians from multiple political parties, Abbas told delegates: "We said 'no' to Trump, 'we will not accept your project.'”
Deutsche Welle
Prime Minister Tudose is forced out by his Social Democratic Party, as he loses a power struggle with party boss. Liviu Dragnea rules over the party but is barred from political office because of a criminal conviction.
Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose resigned on Monday after his own party abandoned him in an internal power struggle with the party's all-powerful chairman who, himself, is barred from political office because of a vote-rigging conviction.
The political battle in the Social Democratic Party came into public view last week after Tudose called on his Interior Minister Carmen Dan to resign, accusing her of lying. She refused and sought the backing of party kingpin Liviu Dragnet.
Deutsche Welle
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has sharply criticized the US for trying to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal. Washington is still using ultimatums and failing to recognize the emerging "multipolar world," he said.
Moscow will work to preserve the Iran nuclear deal despite Donald Trump's recent pledge to change it,Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at his annual news conference.
Russia also hopes that France, Germany and the UK would also resist US pressure to alter the arrangement, Lavrov added. The three European powers, alongside US, Russia, and China, reached the 2015 deal to limit Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions after years of laborious talks.
Al Jazeera
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the US is working to form a "terror army" on his country's southern border by training a new force in Syria that includes Kurdish fighters.
"What we are supposed to do is to drown this terror army before in comes into being," he said in an address in the capital, Ankara, on Monday, calling the Kurdish fighters "back-stabbers" who will point their weapons to the US in the future.
His comments came after reports revealed Washington's plan to establish a 30,000-strong new border security force with the involvement of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
Al Jazeera
Boko Haram has put out a video that it says shows some of the girls kidnapped from a town in northeastern Nigeria nearly four years ago.
The armed group seized 276 pupils from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok in April 2014.
Fifty-seven of them managed to escape in the immediate aftermath of the abduction. Some of the schoolgirls have since been released, while others managed to escape. Around 100 are still believed to be held by Boko Haram.
"We are the Chibok girls, you have been crying we should be released. But by the grace of Allah, we will not return home," one of the girls said in the undated footage, which was released on Monday.
Reuters
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece’s parliament on Monday passed a swathe of reforms demanded by international lenders in exchange for fresh bailout funds, a success for the government but a blow to thousands of people protesting outside.
The bill introduces a new electronic process for foreclosures on overdue loans and arrears to the state, opens up closed professions, restructures family benefits and makes it harder to call a strike.
About 20,000 people rallied outside parliament during the vote. Bus, subway and city rail services were disrupted and some flights were grounded as workers went on strike to protest against the bill.
Reuters
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday Moscow will not support attempts by Washington to modify the Iran nuclear deal, arguing such a move could also complicate diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Lavrov spoke days after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would waive nuclear sanctions against Iran for the last time to give Washington and its European allies a chance to fix the “terrible flaws” of the 2015 nuclear deal.
“We will not support what the United States is trying to do, changing the wording of the agreement, incorporating things that will be absolutely unacceptable for Iran,” Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Bloomberg
Sergio Marchionne, one of the longest-serving CEOs in the automotive industry, has a blunt warning: Carmakers have less than a decade to reinvent themselves or risk being commoditized amid a seismic shift in how vehicles are powered, driven and purchased.
Developing technologies like electrification, self-driving software and ride-sharing will alter consumers’ car-buying decisions within six or seven years, the
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV chief executive officer said in an interview in Detroit, ahead of this week’s North American International Auto Show. The industry will divide into segments, with premium brands managing to hold onto their cachet while mere people-transporters struggle to cope with the onslaught from disruptors like
Tesla Inc. and Google’s Waymo.
Agence France Presse
Chinese ships scrambled Monday to clean up a massive and expanding oil spill after an Iranian tanker sank off China, raising fears of devastating damage to marine life.
The Sanchi, carrying 136,000 tonnes of light crude oil from Iran, went under on Sunday after a new and massive fire erupted, sending a cloud of black smoke as high as one kilometre above the East China Sea.
The bodies of only three of the 32 crew members have been found since the vessel collided with the CF Crystal, a Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter, on January 6, sparking a fire that Chinese rescue ships struggled to extinguish.
Iranian officials said there was no hope of finding survivors among the crew of 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis, prompting grief and anger among families of the sailors in Tehran.
The Guardian
Jeanette Abney owns a big, fancy house and Elizabeth Terry rents a room in a boarding house. But this week they both ended up sleeping on cots in the same American Red Cross evacuation centre, sipping the same instant coffee, nibbling the same pastries and huddling under the same blankets. A rain-sodden poster at the entrance declared “disaster services”.
Both women were in need. A storm had drenched the Verdugo mountains, a rugged, rustic outpost of Los Angeles, and unleashed a massive mudslide, forcing them to flee to an improvised evacuation centre in the San Fernando valley.
“It was like a war zone, like Niagara Falls. I’ve never experienced anything like that,” said Abney, 88.
She counted herself lucky to be safe and warm in a shelter. So did Terry, 63, who lives a few miles from Abney in a boarding house for women on the verge of homelessness. “The mud was pouring down the hill. I knew it was time to go.”
Rich and poor thrown together, if only briefly, by a force oblivious to class distinction: nature.
NPR
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has postponed a planned Tuesday session on nuclear attack preparedness, deciding instead to focus the workshop on influenza.
The agency announced the switch in topics late Friday, citing the spike in flu cases as the reason for the pivot.
"To date, this influenza season is notable for the sheer volume of flu that most of the United States is seeing at the same time which can stress health systems," according to a CDC statement. "The vast majority of this activity has been caused by influenza A H3N2, associated with severe illness in young children and people 65 years and older."
NPR
In 1545, people in the Mexican highlands starting dying in enormous numbers. People infected with the disease bled and vomited before they died. Many had red spots on their skin.
It was one of the most devastating epidemics in human history. The 1545 outbreak, and a second wave in 1576, killed an estimated 7 million to 17 million people and contributed to the destruction of the Aztec Empire.
But identifying the pathogen responsible for the carnage has been difficult for scientists because infectious diseases leave behind very little archaeological evidence.
"There have been different schools of thought on what this disease was. Could it have been plague? Could it have been typhoid fever? Could it have been a litany of other diseases?" says Kirsten Bos, a molecular paleopathologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and an author of a new study published Monday in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
NPR
People diagnosed with cancer understandably reach for the very best that medical science has to offer. That motivation is increasingly driving people to ask to have the DNA of their tumors sequenced. And while that's useful for some malignancies, the hype of precision medicine for cancer is getting far ahead of the facts.
It's easy to understand why that's the case. When you hear stories about the use of DNA sequencing to create individualized cancer treatment, chances are they are uplifting stories. Like that of Ben Stern.
In the spring of 2016, Stern was diagnosed with a deadly brain cancer, glioblastoma. His doctors at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins promptly treated him with surgery, then over the months, chemotherapy and radiation. He even got on a clinical trial to see if a leading edge drug called a checkpoint inhibitor would work.
ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS
The Guardian
The news was confirmed by her publicist in a statement, but no cause of death has yet been announced. O’Riordan, who had to cancel a tour with a reunited Cranberries in 2017 because of a back problem, had been in London for a recording session.
The statement described the death as sudden, and added: “Family members are devastated to hear the breaking news and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
A Metropolitan police statement also confirmed the news, and that O’Riordan’s body was found at a Park Lane hotel. “At this early stage the death is being treated as unexplained,” the statement read.
A spokeswoman for the London Hilton on Park Lane said: “It is with deep regret that we can confirm a guest sadly passed away at the hotel on Monday 15 January. We offer our sincere condolences to their family at this difficult time.”
The Guardian
“The state of racism will never die, but what we cannot do is allow it to conquer us as people,” James said before the Cleveland Cavaliers’ game against the Golden State Warriors on Monday night. “We can’t allow it to divide us. The guy in control has given people and racism … an opportunity to be out and outspoken without fear. And that’s the fearful thing for us because it’s with you, and it’s around every day, but he’s allowed people to come out and just feel confident about doing negative things. We can’t allow that to stop us from continuing to be together and preach the right word of living and loving and laughing and things of that nature. Because would we want to live anywhere else? I don’t think so. We love this place.”
This is what this country has become.