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, Besame, and annetteboardman. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke, Man Oh Man, 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 (or sometimes slightly later).
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Chicago Tribune: Video played in court shows Jon Burge taking 5th in alleged torture case by Megan Crepeau
Wearing a gray and white prison jumpsuit, Jackie Wilson sat in a Cook County courtroom Tuesday and watched video of disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge — the man he accuses of taking part in his torture — repeatedly decline to answer questions about how he handled Wilson’s interrogation in 1982.
Burge, an oxygen tube hooked to his nose, looked directly into the camera and answered repeatedly in a gravelly voice: “I exercise my Fifth Amendment right.”
Video of the 2016 deposition was played in court Tuesday at an ongoing hearing to determine whether Wilson was beaten into confessing over his role in the fatal shooting of two Chicago police officers in 1982. Wilson's lawyers argue he should be given a new trial and his confession tossed — a development that would likely make it difficult for prosecutors to retry him.
Wilson, 57, who is serving a life sentence for the killings of Officers Richard O'Brien and William Fahey, sat next to his lawyers with his chin in his hand, eyes fixed on Burge’s image.
Clips from three depositions of Burge were played in Judge William Hooks’ courtroom. At the most recent deposition in 2016, G. Flint Taylor, one of Wilson’s attorneys, asked Burge a litany of questions about his alleged role in Wilson’s interrogation.
Detroit News: Suspected meteorite buzzes Metro Detroit
The flashing light and loud boom felt by Metro Detroiters across the region appears to have been a meteorite hitting the earth Tuesday night, according to a local homeland security office.
The Ingham County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management said it received multiple calls about a meteor having passed overhead. "All indications are that it was just a natural meteor fireball," it said on Tuesday night onTwitter.
The National Weather said they received multiple reports from around Metro Detroit of “a flash and a boom” beginning about 8:10 p.m. They could not confirm that a meteorite had hit the earth.
“I saw an extremely bright light,” said Mike Tarkowski of Milford. “Everyone’s calling the police about it. I was sitting watching TV and it was pitch dark out. All of the sudden, the whole yard started getting brighter, kind of yellowish-orange, like a flashbulb, then got black …
New York Daily News: De Blasio defends plan for homeless shelter on posh street near Central Park by Jillian Jorgensen
Mayor de Blasio defended plans to open a homeless shelter on a tony street a block from Central Park — saying his administration was following its procedure for notifying neighborhood officials.
“The notification process that we laid out about a year ago is what we’re following now,” de Blasio said of his plans to turn the former Park Savoy Hotel on W. 58th St. into a permanent shelter facility for 150 single adult men.
De Blasio rolled out a policy of giving at least 30 days’ notice before opening new shelters when he first pledged to open 90 throughout the city last year.
A spokeswoman said officials were notified on Jan. 9. But Councilman Keith Powers said he first learned of the shelter from constituents — and only heard from the Department of Homeless Services after he called them.
Albuquerque Journal: Protesters interrupt State of the State address by Dan McKay
SANTA FE — Immigration advocates interrupted Gov. Susana Martinez’s annual State of the State speech Tuesday afternoon, chanting and unfurling banners before they were escorted out by police officers.
The interruption came at the beginning of the speech, as protesters stood and shouted from a gallery that overlooks the House floor, where state legislators had gathered for the State of the State.
Jaqueline Zambrano, an 18-year-old college student from Santa Fe, said she joined the demonstration to encourage U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich to vote for passage of the Dream Act, which would offer protections for young immigrants.
Zambrano, who described herself as an undocumented immigrant, said she was brought to the United States as a baby.
Passage of the Dream Act “means everything to our community,” Zambrano said. “It would change our whole lives.”
San Diego Union-Tribune: More Navy collision fallout: Rowden out, sailors face possible charges by Carl Prine
Vice Adm. Tom Rowden, the Navy’s top surface warfare officer, will depart the service on Thursday, and a slew of fellow sailors face possible criminal charges, the latest fallout in an ongoing probe into a rash of collisions in the Western Pacific that killed 17 sailors over the summer.
Nicknamed the “SWO boss” because of his perch atop all Navy surface warfare officers, Rowden also was tasked with training and equipping the crews of most of the the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s warships at his Coronado-based command.
On Sept. 14, Rowden asked Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson to let him retire earlier than planned — around April instead of in the summer.
"Today, I have informed the chief of naval operations that this Thursday I will step aside earlier than previously planned as the commander, Naval Surface Forces, and commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet,” Rowden told The San Diego Union-Tribune in an emailed statement.
Reuters: 21 states sue to keep net neutrality as Senate Democrats reach 50 votes by Davi Shepardson
(Reuters) - A group of 21 U.S. state attorneys general filed suit to challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to do away with net neutrality on Tuesday while Democrats said they needed just one more vote in the Senate to repeal the FCC ruling.
The state attorneys, including those of California, New York and Virginia as well as the District of Columbia, filed a petition to challenge the action, calling it “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion” and saying that it violated federal laws and regulations.
The petition was filed with a federal appeals court in Washington as Senate Democrats said on Tuesday they had the backing of 50 members of the 100-person chamber for repeal, leaving them just one vote short of a majority.
Even if Democrats could win a majority in the Senate, a repeal would also require winning a vote in the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a greater majority, and would still be subject to a likely veto by President Donald Trump.
New York Review of Books: The Assault on Reason by Zia Haider Rahman
Most of us grasp rudimentary principles of reasoning. We apply such principles in our daily lives, usually without reflection. Yes, the cognitive scientists tell us that human beings are irrational, and, if we’re not slaves to our passions, then at a minimum we’re led by an unruly twinning of reason and emotion. Nevertheless, whenever we stop ourselves and look at something shrewdly, we are capable of seeing basic errors of reasoning.
Consider the “whataboutism” of Donald Trump. Reporters might question him about the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but the American president seems unable to restrain himself from fulminating against Hillary Clinton. What about her and her lies, he asks? Why don’t you go after her? says the most powerful person on the planet.
One hopes most people would understand that his rejoinder is irrelevant. My beloved godson might misbehave and incur my gentle reprimand, but if he were to complain in defense that his friend Jeremy had done what he’d done, I would explain that Jeremy’s conduct does not provide the standards he should apply to himself. Jeremy’s conduct is irrelevant. Besides, Jeremy is a teddy bear and, as everyone knows, teddy bears can be quite naughty.
Roll Call: Freedom Caucus Members Withholding Votes GOP Needs to Pass CR by Lindsey McPherson
While a majority of House Republicans appear ready to support a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open through Feb. 16, enough Freedom Caucus members remain uncommitted to make passage questionable.
“The votes are not currently there to pass it with just Republicans,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said before a crucial House GOP conference meeting on the topic Tuesday night. After the meeting, he offered no indication that view had changed.
“Obviously, we know this is going to come down to just a few Republican votes and the number of Freedom Caucus members that are undecided could make the difference on whether we pass it or not,” the North Carolina Republican said.
“At some point, you have to figure out why is the fourth CR going to be any different than the second or the third, and I don’t know that there’s been a compelling case for that,” Meadows said.
Indeed, if passed, the four-week CR that House GOP leaders pitched to their conference Tuesday night would be the fourth stopgap funding measure Congress has deployed since the start of fiscal 2018 on Oct. 1.
New York magazine: New Jersey Governor Vows to Legalize Weed, Cuomo Promises to Think About It by Eric Levitz
New Jersey is moving “full weed ahead” toward legalizing recreational marijuana. In his inauguration speech on Tuesday, newly elected Democratic governor Phil Murphy said that his vision for a “stronger and fairer New Jersey … includes a process to legalize marijuana,” as part of a broader package of criminal-justice reforms.
While Murphy frames his support for marijuana legalization primarily as a means of combating mass incarceration and racial disparities in criminal justice, there is also a fiscal component to his pitch: By some estimates, a legal pot market could provide the Garden State with an additional $300 million in revenue by 2020. Given New Jersey’s pension obligations, myriad public-sector needs, and already-high property and income taxes (which are set to bite harder, thanks to the GOP tax bill), the revenue argument for bringing the cannabis trade into the legitimate economy may prove the most salient.
Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era policy that had enabled states to pursue marijuana legalization without threat of federal interference (so long as they took measures to prevent reefer from getting into the hands of minors or criminal gangs). But Sessions’s memo still afforded U.S. Attorneys the prosecutorial discretion to leave dispensaries be. And, for the moment, they appear to be taking a laissez-faire approach to policing the weed trade in the eight states that have legalized recreational marijuana.
AFP: Macron gets tough on migrants, vowing 'no more Jungles'
President Emmanuel Macron vowed Tuesday that France would no longer allow migrant camps like the notorious "Jungle" as he defended a tougher line on immigration that has attracted sharp criticism from some of his allies.
In a closely watched speech in Calais, Macron promised a more orderly immigration policy with zero tolerance for camps like the Jungle, the squalid shantytown near the northern city's port that was once home to some 10,000 migrants dreaming of Britain.
"There will be no reconstruction of the Jungle and no tolerance for the illegal occupation of public space," Macron said in a speech at a Calais police station.
While the Jungle was demolished in late 2016, hundreds of migrants remain in Calais, trying night after night to stow away on trucks heading across the Channel to England.
Calais has long been a sore point in relations with Britain and ahead of his first trip to London as president on Thursday, Macron called for better cooperation in managing the border.
DW: Romania's democracy in danger after Mihai Tudose resignation by Peter Janku
He certainly would not be available to serve as interim Prime Minister, Mihai Tudose said Monday when asked what was going to happen now in Romania. He was leaving with his "head held high," he said, just a day before his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe was scheduled to visit Romania.
His petulant demeanor in the wake of being fired by his party's executive committee comes as no surprise. The 50-year-old only managed for seven months to avoid his predecessor Sorin Grindeanu's fate.
Both had repeatedly dared to stand in the way of the Social Democratic Party's (PSD) increasingly controversial and powerful leader Liviu Dragnea. Both thwarted his favorite project, the judicial reforms that the opposition, the judiciary, civilian society, the EU and the US criticize as harmful to the constitutional state. And both ended up paying with their office for the short-term independence they enjoyed.
AlJazeera: US cuts UNRWA funding by more than half
The US government is cutting more than half of its planned funding to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, a move that could prove catastrophic for millions of people in need.
The State Department announced on Tuesday it was withholding $65m out of a $125m aid package earmarked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
In a letter, the department said that additional US donations will be contingent on major changes by UNRWA.
Those funds are "frozen for future consideration", Heather Nauert, State Department spokeswoman, told reporters.
For nearly 70 years, UNRWA has been the lifeline to the more than five million registered Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories and in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
BBC: Rohingya crisis: Bangladesh and Myanmar agree repatriation timeframe
Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed a timeframe for repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled crackdowns from the military.
Myanmar has agreed to accept 1,500 Rohingya each week, Bangladesh says, adding that it aims to return all of them to Myanmar within two years.
More than 740,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh amid violence in Rakhine state in 2016 and 2017.
Aid agencies have raised concerns about forcibly repatriating them.
Bangladesh says it aims to repatriate families together, as well as orphans and "children born out of unwarranted incidence" - meaning children conceived as a result of rape.
However, displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh have expressed concerns about returning to Myanmar.
Guardian: Doctors in Uganda warn 'crisis level' blood shortage is putting lives at risk by Samuel Okiror
Uganda is grappling with a critical shortage of blood that is affecting services and putting patients’ lives at risk.
The health ministry’s blood bank facility in the capital, Kampala, which stores and distributes supplies to hospitals, is practically empty. It has just 150 units of blood remaining, not enough to meet requirements on an average day in the city.
Nationally, Uganda needs at least 340,000 units of safe blood annually, but usually only collects 200,000 a year.
A six-day countrywide blood collection drive was launched by the ministry on Monday.
The Uganda Medical Association, an umbrella organisation of doctors in public health facilities, said the shortage was “almost [at] crisis level”, resulting in the cancellation of hospital operations and prioritisation of cases.
Atlas Obscura: Found: Two New Drawings by Vincent van Gogh by Vittoria Traverso
IN 1886 AND 1887, VINCENT van Gogh lived with his beloved brother Theo in an apartment in Montmartre, Paris’s iconic hilltop neighborhood famous at the time for its vibrant art scene. That’s where he composed a series of works in which he depicted rural subjects such as windmills and vegetable gardens, as well as views of the city skyline that he could see from his window. Thanks to new research from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, we can now add two more works to the Postimpressionist’s Montmartre period.
Hill of Montmartre with Stone Quarry, a 1886 sketch of Paris’s heights with a quarry below, was acquired by the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation in 2014. Four years on, experts from the Van Gogh Museum have confirmed that the drawing indeed came from his hand. This, in turn, helped to authenticate another sketch, The Hill of Montmartre, which was held at the museum but had previously been rejected as a Van Gogh—partly because it was so unlike his other work. “It is fantastic news that two drawings can now definitively be added to Van Gogh’s oeuvre,” said museum director Axel Rüger, in a press release.
VICE/Broadly: The Designer Behind the Stunning Afro-Futurist 'Black Panther' Costumes by Zing Tsjeng
When the first teaser for Marvel’s Black Panther movie dropped during Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Ruth E. Carter wasn’t even watching the match. “I didn’t know the trailer was going to drop when it did, so I had to hurry up and turn the TV on,” she laughs. The clip was barely two minutes long, but it ignited a frenzy of interest in the upcoming superhero film that well-established franchises like Spider-Man and Superman have struggled to keep up with—thanks in no small part to Carter’s Oscar-nominated costume design skills.
Drawing on the traditional dress of the Maasai, Tuareg, Turkana, Xhosa, Zulu, Suri and Dinka peoples, Carter created a vision of Wakanda—a fictional techno-futurist African state somewhere to the east of Uganda—that has deep roots in African history but feels breathlessly contemporary. Think Lupita Nyong'o in intricately beaded armor and gold neck rings that recall those worn by Ndebele women in South Africa—but equipped with deadly weapons made of Vibranium, the powerful metal that powers Wakanda’s immense wealth and technological superiority.
Or, in the words of one fan: “These costumes are THE ABSOLUTE FLYEST BADDEST SWAGGEST SMASHEST costumes in a Superhero film ever! E-VER!”
Smithsonian: What the Batmobile Tells Us About the American Dream by Ryan P. Smith
Few figures of American pop culture have cast shadows as long as that of DC Comics’ Dark Knight. Every year, fresh material is added to the Caped Crusader corpus, ranging from the madcap comedy of Adam West’s classic TV show to the LEGO Batman franchise to the gritty drama of Christopher Nolan’s films and finally, to the critically lauded Batman: Arkham video game series.
Whether he’s bantering with the Boy Wonder or breaking the bones of baddies, we can’t seem to get enough of this guy. There is something perennially mysterious about the cowled crime-fighter, and something viscerally American in the way he dispenses justice.
Batman also epitomizes the concept of cool, thanks in large part to his vast assortment of tailor-made gadgets.
Scaling sheer walls with a grapnel gun, gliding through the night in a state-of-the-art wingsuit, disarming foes with Batarangs. . . nothing is out of the question for the constantly tinkering hero. His most famous invention of all is the Batmobile, a sleek means of rapid transport that comes equipped with a suite of defensive, offensive and computational capabilities.
Guardian: Man Ray in LA: what happened when the pioneering artist hit Hollywood by Alex Rayner
In the autumn of 1940, Man Ray met a travelling tie salesman at a party in New York. The American artist had arrived back in the US earlier that summer, having spent nearly two decades in Paris. The salesman said he was planning a cross-country trip to Los Angeles; Man Ray decided to catch a lift.
LA was an odd choice for an artist who had been a pioneering figure in the French capital, then the centre of the international art world. “Most of the surrealists who left Europe during the war came to New York,” explains Max Teicher, curator of Man Ray’s LA, a new exhibition of Man Ray’s photography taken between 1940 and 1951, at the Gagosian Beverly Hills. “Some of his best friends, [Marcel] Duchamp, [Salvador] Dalí, all went to New York. He made the very distinct decision to go to Los Angeles. He was the only one who did that.”
Quite why the artist, born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, spent 11 years on the west coast is unclear. The climate may have attracted him. “It was like some place in the south of France,” he later wrote, “with its palm-bordered streets and low stucco dwellings. Somewhat more prim, less rambling, but the same radiant sunshine.”
Don’t forget that Mr. Meteor Blades is hostiing an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!