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: Accused sex trafficker wants trial delayed, argues he can't get impartial jury amid #MeToo movement by Jason Meisner
With the national focus on alleged sexual misconduct by high-profile men, is it possible for an accused sex trafficker to get a fair shake?
That’s the unusual question being posed by attorneys for Benjamin Biancofiori, who cited the #MeToo movement in asking a federal judge in Chicago to postpone Biancofiori’s upcoming trial on charges alleging he used death threats, vicious beatings and other abuse to force women into sexual servitude.
Biancofiori is hardly a household name, but the seven-page motion sought to draw a link between his case and allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the cascade of male celebrities that followed, from Kevin Spacey to Matt Lauer.
“In view of the extraordinary attention to and enflamed (sic) societal passion on the subject of male sexual misconduct, Mr. Biancofiori cannot hope to select a jury that is untainted by the veritable flood of reporting on the subject,” Biancofiori’s attorney, Andrea Gambino, wrote in her recent motion.
Dude is so full of himself, he even wrote a ‘’pimp manifesto.’’
Detroit Free Press: NCAA sends letter of inquiry to Michigan State over Larry Nassar case by Chris Solari
Michigan State’s athletic department is under investigation by the NCAA for its handling of the Larry Nassar situation.
MSU spokesman Jason Cody confirmed the university received a letter of inquiry from the NCAA regarding the case of the former Michigan State doctor.
“I have not seen it,” Cody said. “We are reviewing it for a response.”
Cody said the letter sent from the NCAA concerns the Nassar case, but he cannot confirm its specific contents.
The New York Times first reported the letter being sent to MSU.
Messages to Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis and the NCAA have not yet been returned.
At least a dozen former Spartan athletes — from the gymnastics, volleyball, rowing, softball and track and field programs — were among the women and girls who have given victim-impact statements during the first six days of Nassar’s sentencing hearing in Ingham County Circuit Court.
Portland Press Herald: Jackman selectmen fire town manager who made racist remarks by Emily Higginbotham
JACKMAN — Town Manager Tom Kawczynski was fired Tuesday morning in a unanimous vote of the town’s selectmen that followed an uproar about his racist views made public in recent days.
After his firing, Kawczynski lambasted the news media for what he called inaccurate portrayals of his remarks while also pledging that his cause is now advocating for “white civil rights.”
A standing-room only crowd of about 50 people at the Jackman Town Office watched as the selectmen, in open session just before 10 a.m., moved to terminate Kawczynski’s employment. The motion carried unanimously, 4-0. There did not appear to be anyone in the crowd who supported Kawczynski.
The town will pay him an additional $30,000 severance in an agreement that he signed stating he will not take legal action against the town.
Baltimore Sun: Baltimore police officials in charge of reform, consent decree implementation resign after commissioner's firing by Kevin Rector
The two highest-ranking Baltimore police officials in charge of instituting reforms, overhauling policies and ensuring compliance with the city’s consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice have both resigned following Mayor Catherine Pugh’s firing of Police Commissioner Kevin Davis last week.
Deputy Commissioner Jason Johnson, the head of the department’s Strategic Services Bureau, was in charge of implementing “key reforms in the areas of professional accountability, training, recruiting, technology and data management,” and with “the development of organizational policies and practices reflective of progressive, constitutional policing,” according to the department’s website.
Johnson confirmed his resignation on Tuesday, but otherwise declined to comment.
Chief Ganesha Martin, the head of the Department of Justice Compliance, Accountability and External Affairs Division, served as a key point of contact with the Justice Department and other stakeholders in the consent decree process, helping to identify reforms and best practices “that serve to enhance BPD's internal capacities and external relationships with the community,” according to the department’s website.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Owner of Atlanta gay bar under fire after controversial posts surface by Becca J.G. Godwin
Several people are expressing outrage after controversial Facebook posts surfaced on the account of the owner of Burkhart’s Pub.
Palmer Marsh, 70, has owned the gay and drag bar in Atlanta’s Ansley Square for decades. A screenshot that appears to show him using a racial slur about former President Barack Obama has been widely circulated in recent days. That post did not appear on Marsh’s page Tuesday afternoon.
Other posts in the screenshot do appear on Marsh’s account, including one that reads: “If the South had won, we would be a hell of a lot better off.” Another says: “My Confederate money that I inherited is on my kitchen counter. RIGHT NOW! Steal the money, if you like, but don't try to take my flag because you might get seriously injured by doing so.” The posts are both from 2015.
Marsh did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday.
Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama House votes to end special U.S. Senate elections by Bryan Lyman
The Alabama House of Representatives Tuesday evening approved a bill that would end special elections for the state’s two U.S. Senate seats when vacancies occur.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark and coming after last year’s special election for U.S. Senate, would allow a governor’s appointee for a Senate vacancy to serve until the next general election in the state, rather than have the governor call a special election. The appointee would go through regularly scheduled primaries for that contest.
It passed 67 to 31 on a largely party-line vote after a two-hour filibuster from Democrats who said it would diminish voters’ voices in the process.
“You’re taking away from citizens the right to vote,” said Rep. Louise Alexander, D-Bessemer.
The bill does not address other offices in the state. Clouse said the bill aimed to save the state the costs of a special election, saying last year’s contest for U.S. Senate cost the state $11 million. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 other states use the methods outlined in Clouse's bill.
Lawd...
The Oregonian: Proposed law would make Trump reveal tax return to be on Oregon's 2020 ballot by Gordon R. Friedman
Donald Trump was the first presidential candidate since Richard Nixon not to reveal his federal income tax return. Some Oregon Democrats want to try to make him the last.
A bill introduced Monday in Salem would require candidates for president and vice president to give a copy of their most recent tax return to the Oregon Secretary of State with written permission that the document can be made public. Alternatively, the candidate could fill out Oregon’s standard income disclosure form for public officials.
The requirement would apply to candidates on primary and general election ballots and those wishing to be in the voters’ pamphlet.
At least one political bigwig is already on board: Gov. Kate Brown.
“Governor Brown supports the principle of a financial disclosure requirement for presidential candidates,” said Bryan Hockaday, a spokesman for the governor.
Guardian: One ruled a US citizen, the other not: gay couple's twins face unusual battle by Sam Levin
Aiden and Ethan Dvash-Banks were born four minutes apart. The twins, now 16 months old, love chasing each other around the house, wear the same clothes and share an obsession with Elmo.
In the eyes of the US government, however, the boys are not equal. Aiden is a citizen – and Ethan is undocumented. The boys’ parents are a married gay couple, and even though they legally share the same two fathers, the government has ruled only one is eligible to be a citizen.
In a new federal lawsuit, the Los Angeles family is challenging a policy that they say discriminates against LGBT people by denying birthright citizenship to the children of gay couples based on blood relationships. The fathers, a US citizen and an Israeli citizen, are both listed on the birth certificates of the twins and legally are the exclusive parents of the boys, who shared a surrogate. But because Ethan has the DNA of the Israeli father and Aiden has the DNA of the US father, the government has denied Ethan.
“The message is that you’re not fully equal. Your family is less than other families,” said Andrew Dvash-Banks, the father with US citizenship, who was born and raised in Los Angeles. “My son has been wronged here by the government. We’re fighting this to protect our son and our family.”
Buzzfeed: Philadelphia Just Became The Second US City To Allow "Safe Injection Sites" by Azeen Ghorayshi
Officials in Philadelphia announced on Tuesday that the city will allow "safe injection sites," in an effort to reduce a staggering epidemic of fatal opioid overdoses.
The facilities, also known as "supervised injection sites" or "safe consumption sites," provide clean needles and space for people who inject illicit drugs. If an overdose occurs, trained staff can administer naloxone, which reverses the overdose. The facilities also test for HIV, provide wound care, and refer users to substance abuse treatment.
“We cannot just watch as our children, our parents, our brothers, and our sisters die of drug overdose,” Thomas Farley, Philadelphia's health commissioner, said in a statement. “We have to use every proven tool we can to save their lives until they recover from the grip of addiction.”
Philadelphia has the worst fatal overdose rate in the nation among large cities, Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement. He applauded the city's "bold action to help save lives."
Make of this next story what you will…
CNN: Exclusive: New signs Gates may be negotiating with Mueller's team by Katelyn Polantz
Washington (CNN)-Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has quietly added a prominent white-collar attorney, Tom Green, to his defense team, signaling that Gates' approach to his not-guilty plea could be changing behind the scenes.
Green, a well-known Washington defense lawyer, was seen at special counsel Robert Mueller's office twice last week. CNN is told by a source familiar with the matter that Green has joined Gates' team.
Green isn't listed in the court record as a lawyer in the case and works for a large law firm separate from Gates' primary lawyers.
Green's involvement suggests that there is an ongoing negotiation between the defendant's team and the prosecutors. At this stage, with Gates' charges filed and bail set, talks could concern the charges and Gates' plea. The defense and prosecution are currently working together on discovery of evidence.
Single-sourced and mostly speculative...but tantalizing, nevertheless.
Washington Post: Google for the first time outspent every other company to influence Washington in 2017 by Hamza Shaban
Google for the first time spent more than any other company in 2017 to influence Washington, highlighting both the sprawling reach of the country's thriving tech industry and the rising concern by regulators and lawmakers of its ascendance.
All told, the search giant broke its own record by allocating more than $18 million to lobby Congress, federal agencies and the White House on issues such as immigration, tax reform, and antitrust. It also spent money to weigh in on an effort by lawmakers and regulators to regulate online advertising, which is at the core of Google's business, according to disclosures filed to the Senate Office of Public Records.
The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics said Tuesday no technology firm had ever claimed the top spot since it began tracking lobbying expenditures by individual companies in 1998.
Reuters: Senate confirms Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair by Howard Schneider
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the next head of the central bank, succeeding Janet Yellen, a move likely to provide continuity in U.S. monetary policy with the economy growing now for nine years straight.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 84-13 to approve the 64-year-old lawyer to a four-year term as Fed chair beginning early next month.
It was the most lopsided of recent Fed chair votes, signaling both Powell’s bipartisan appeal and the ebbing of some of the tensions raised by the central bank’s aggressive response to the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession.
Controversy over those Fed policies led to a narrower 56-26 vote margin when Yellen became chair in 2013, and a 70-30 vote when former chair Ben Bernanke was named to a second term.
BBC: Venezuela: Maduro ready to stand in early presidential poll
Venezuela's pro-government Constituent Assembly has ordered fresh elections before the end of April.
President Nicolas Maduro told thousands of his supporters at a rally that he is ready to seek another six-year term.
"It's the right decision. Imperialism and the right were plotting to take over the economy," said Mr Maduro.
The opposition is weakened and divided and many of the president's main potential challengers are in self-imposed exile or in jail.
But former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said the government was so unpopular that it could lose the vote.
"The government and its leaders annoy the majority of Venezuelans," he tweeted, urging the opposition to "unite to save democracy".
Bloomberg: Berlusconi Learns New Tricks as Italy Braces for Shock Comeback by John Follain
One Monday morning just before Christmas, Silvio Berlusconi walked into an elegant salon at his home near Milan to complete the preparations for a major shift in political strategy.
Beneath a grand oil painting of the Italian aristocrat who once owned his villa in Arcore, long-time advisers and outside specialists were huddled round a table discussing Facebook and Twitter, according to senior members of his campaign team. Projecting laptop data onto a large screen, the team talked the 81-year-old TV mogul through likes, followers and potential lines of attack as they put the finishing touches to a three-month project to transform his campaign.
Six years after he was forced from office at the height of the financial crisis, Berlusconi is back. And though the four-time premier is banned from public office himself, he could still control the next government from behind the scenes, after leveraging the social media that helped bring Donald Trump to power in the U.S.
“We have to reach as many people as we can,” said 50-year-old Sestino Giacomoni, who’s worked for Berlusconi throughout his time in government and opposition. “And that means social media as well as TV.”
Just what we need nowadays…
Hindustan Times: Major call centre racket duping US citizens busted in Gurgaon, 33 arrested by Abhishek Behl
Gurgaon- A major call centre racket operating separately from different buildings in Udyog Vihar Phase 5, which allegedly duped American and other foreign citizens by offering them loans, lotteries and tax benefits, was busted by Gurgaon police late on Monday night.
The police got a whiff of this scam while investigating a fraud concerning foreign clients of a multi-national firm based in Gurgaon, who were being duped by the Gurgaon-based operators.
In the raids on Monday night, police said 33 persons working as managers and team leaders were arrested from these call centres while over 250 employees were included in the investigation. The police also seized a large number of laptops, computers and other IT equipment used in the con operation. The accused were booked under sections 406, 419 and 66 of the IT Act.
Upon questioning the employees, the police found that the owners of Gurgaon-based racket were Nitin Dahiya, a Gurgaon resident, Rohit Kumar resident of Noida and Shahrukh Khan a Delhi resident. The owners of another call centre were identified as Rohit Rajvansh, a resident of Lodhi Colony and Rahul Shrivastav, resident of Dwarka.
AFP: Turkey in deadly Kurdish militia clashes as US sounds alarm
The Turkish army on Tuesday clashed with Kurdish militia in Syria in an operation that has already left three of its soldiers dead, as the United States voiced alarm that the offensive could endanger attempts to end the Syrian civil war.
Amid growing international concern over the four-day-old cross-border campaign into Turkey's neighbour, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that Ankara would emerge victorious.
Turkey on Saturday launched operation "Olive Branch" aimed at rooting out the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia, which Ankara sees as a terror group, from its Afrin enclave in northern Syria.
The campaign has caused ripples of concern among Turkey's NATO allies, especially the United States which is still working closely with the YPG to defeat Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria.
In his strongest comments yet on the offensive, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged Turkey to show "restraint" and warned it could harm the fight against the jihadists.
Hollywood Reporter: Oscars: Academy Embraces Outsiders as 'The Shape of Water' Gets 13 Noms by Gregg Kilday
The Academy embraced outsiders with the nominations it announced Tuesday for the 90th Oscars as it lavished 13 on Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, a romantic fantasy in which a mute woman, a black cleaning lady and a gay man join forces to save a mysterious sea creature from ominous government forces.
And the Academy’s sometimes halting progress toward diversity was also in evidence as it included Jordan Peele’s Get Out, a horror movie that explores racial fears, among the nine best picture nominations.
The elite best picture circle included four films in which women play the central roles — in addition to Shape, they included Lady Bird, writer-director Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical look back at a smart girl growing up in Sacramento, California.; The Post, in which best actress nominee Meryl Streep plays Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham; and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, in which Frances McDormand, another of the best actress nominees, stars as a woman bent on seeking justice for the rape and murder of her daughter. And although Phantom Thread, another of the best picture nominees, centers on a male fashion designer, the women in his life, played by Vicky Krieps and best supporting actress nominee Lesley Manville, are every bit his equals.
Atlas Obscura: Putting Ancient Recipes on the Plate by Jessica Leigh Hester
TODAY THE BREAD IS CRISPED black as charcoal, and run through with cracks. A baker had kneaded and shaped the squat, round loaf, known as a panis quadratus, and slid it into an oven one day in A.D. 79, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. We all know what happened next.
Over the last couple of hundred years, since the ash-shrouded cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered, dozens of these loaves, carbonized by the sudden, searing heat of pyroclastic flows, have turned up. They’re relics of an astounding disaster, but there’s something intimate and familiar about them that collapses time and distance. You can imagine the routine of mixing and rolling the dough, the smell of fermenting starter, the sound of a perfect crust cracking under your thumb.
That scene had lodged itself in Farrell Monaco’s mind when she volunteered at the seemingly endless archaeological site last summer, with the Pompeii Food and Drink project. Monaco, who chronicles her adventures and research in ancient food on her blog, Tavola Mediterranea, helped document features there related to eating—from a restaurant to a small peasant kitchen to altars where animals were sacrificed. “If you gave me a huge research grant and a lifetime supply of water and sunscreen, you’ll likely find me camped out, alongside Enzo the stray dog, in one of Pompeii’s 35 bakeries,” she wrote.
Don’t forget that Mr. Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Same to you, Ms. Ryan and to everyone here...have a great evening!