Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, 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.
Chicago Tribune: After 13 days of snow, temperatures plummet in Chicago area as polar vortex cold snap begins by Hannah Leone and Elvia Malagon
A fresh blast of frigid arctic air sent temperatures plummeting overnight and produced dangerously cold conditions that prompted schools, cultural institutions and government buildings including courthouses to call off business for Wednesday.
All of northeast Illinois, northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin was under a wind chill warning starting at 6 p.m. Tuesday until noon Thursday, with a wind chill advisory in effect until the warning period begins. Wednesday was expected to see air temperatures that range from minus 15 to minus 26, according to the National Weather Service.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a disaster proclamation Tuesday to provide resources to officials across the state.
“This storm poses a serious threat to the well-being of people around the state, and we will use every tool at our disposal to keep our residents safe,” Pritzker said in a statement. “This disaster proclamation ensures that the state of Illinois has the flexibility to effectively and efficiently respond to the needs of local governments during this extreme weather event.”
Dear Tom,
In the winter of 1991-92, I recall some very low temperatures and Lake Michigan came very close to freezing over. Details?
Dear ---------,
Wave action and wind, combined with the vast reservoir of heat contained in Lake Michigan, have so far prevented it from completely freezing over, but it has come close in several winters. However, the winter of 1991-92 was not one of them and you are probably remembering the winter of 1993-94. That winter, the lake achieved maximum ice coverage of more than 95 percent following some incredibly cold weather in January and February. In Chicago, those months produced a total of 17 subzero days that included an eight-day January stretch with subzero low temperatures; seven of them minus 10 or lower. January averaged nearly eight degrees below normal and February nearly six.
I remember standing out at the bus stop waiting for the Halsted bus the morning of January 18, 1994 and I will never forget that….So….yeah, it’s pretty cold here in Chicago right now. Anyone in the Midwest, stay warm and stay safe; this weather ain’t playin’!...but we’ll hit 40 degrees (above zero, that is!) by Sunday…
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Minnesota Health Department signals tougher stance on elder abuse by Chris Serres
The state's unusually swift and vigorous discipline of a northern Minnesota care facility where a vulnerable adult is believed to have been subjected to a fatal beating signals a larger effort by the Minnesota Department of Health to follow through on promises of tighter scrutiny over the senior care industry.
In early November, state health investigators arrived at Chappy's Golden Shores, a small assisted-living facility south of Grand Rapids, to investigate complaints of maltreatment. They uncovered what appeared to be alarming levels of violence — including physical, sexual and verbal abuse — and repeated coverup efforts by facility administrators.
By Dec. 6 they had suspended the facility's license — an unusual step that, in effect, caused it to shut down — and had begun working to relocate all 38 residents.
"I've never seen the [Health Department] come down this quickly and this forcefully on the side of protecting our vulnerable adults and the elderly," said Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, chairman of the Senate Human Services Reform Committee. "There was an urgency here that we haven't seen in the past."
The episode reflects a broader shift at the agency, which came under sharp criticism a year ago for insufficient efforts to protect tens of thousands of vulnerable adults in senior care facilities across the state.
Of course, the current weather system is affecting more than the Midwest.
AL.com: Alabama schools closing Wednesday due to sub-freezing temperatures by Anna Beahm
Some Alabama school systems will be closed Wednesday due to the threat of dangerous road conditions due to sub-freezing temperatures.
Barbour County Schools and Coosa County Schools will be closed Wednesday. Coosa County on Monday announced its decision to close on Wednesday. Barbour County made its announcement Tuesday afternoon.
“The decision has already been made to not have school Wednesday. Hopefully, the extra day will help everyone with sickness,” Coosa County school officials said on a post on the district Facebook page Tuesday morning.
According to the Barbour County EMA, Eufaula City Schools and the Barbour County Courthouse will operate on a normal schedule Wednesday.
Schools across north and central Alabama were closed Tuesday in anticipation of snow. However, the snow didn’t materialize like meteorologists predicted.
No comment.
Colorado Independent: Denver teachers union asks Colorado labor officials to stay out of dispute with district by Erika Meltzer
Arguing that intervention would be “futile,” the Denver teachers union has formally asked state labor officials to stay out of a contract dispute between the union and the Denver school district over how to pay the district’s teachers.
Intervening in the matter — which would further delay a teacher strike that was originally set to begin Monday — “would be an endorsement” of the district’s “recent abusive tactics,” the union wrote in a response filed Monday to the district’s request for state intervention.
The district and the union are at odds over how to revamp Denver Public Schools’ teacher pay system, known as ProComp. The union wants to invest significantly more money into teachers’ base salaries. The district has also proposed increasing base salaries, but has pushed to keep sizable bonuses that incentivize teachers to work in hard-to-fill positions and high-poverty schools. The union argues that relying on bonuses makes teachers’ pay unpredictable.
“The philosophical difference behind the salary schedules is preventing the parties, as it has for many months, from reaching agreement on a new compensation scheme,” says the response from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.
Buzzfeed: The Nation’s Biggest Utility Has Filed For Bankruptcy After Devastating California Wildfires by Claudia Koerner
LOS ANGELES — Pacific Gas & Electric, the biggest utility company in the country, filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday as it faces unprecedented challenges from climate change, billions of dollars in payouts to California wildfire victims, and calls that it can’t be trusted to prevent more death and destruction.
It was the first time a major corporation has filed for bankruptcy at least partially as a result of climate change, and it comes as a federal judge is requiring the California utility to plan for this summer’s wildfire season, proposing drastic prevention measures in a stop-gap effort to save lives. In recent years, PG&E has been found responsible for 17 wildfires, some of them deadly, and it’s still under investigation for the record-breaking Camp fire that killed 88 people.
“Throughout this process, we are fully committed to enhancing our wildfire safety efforts, as well as helping restoration and rebuilding efforts across the communities impacted by the devastating Northern California wildfires,” said PG&E interim CEO John Simon.
The potential for future fires has spooked investors, and the company’s stock has plummeted as it finds itself needing reserves of cash to settle lawsuits and upgrade its vast infrastructure. But even as the company has acknowledged it needs to change the way it does business, it has pushed back against a proposal to inspect all its power lines and trim millions of trees that could spark fire wildfires.
The Advocate: The Attack on Jussie Smollett Is an Attack on All Black Queers by Preston Mitchum
Jussie Smollett, one of the stars of the Fox television show Empire, was attacked in Chicago early Tuesday morning by two people who yelled racist and homophobic epithets and tied a noose around his neck.
It's rumored that during the attack, one assailant screamed, “This is a MAGA country” and yelled: “Aren’t you that faggot Empire (anti-black slur)?” The Chicago Police Department and FBI are now conducting an investigation into whether this incident was a hate crime, however we as Black queer people know the truth: It was.
We know this because everyday our multiple marginalized identities increase our chances of facing racist, homophobic vitriol — and this fact has only intensified under the Trump administration with their dog whistle politics. So as we wait to see if justice is served for Smollett, we as Black queer people wait to see if America will finally see our lives as worth protecting.
Because history has rarely been on the side of Black queer folk.
Bloomberg: U.S. Government Seen as Most Corrupt in Seven Years by Zoltan Simon
The U.S. plunged in an annual global corruption index as a surge in support for populist leaders and the erosion of democracy hobbled efforts to tackle graft around the world.
The U.S. under President Donald Trump dropped six places to 22nd globally in the 2018 corruption-perception index published by the Berlin-based Transparency International. Denmark came in first, trading places with New Zealand, which was deemed least corrupt in 2017.
The rise of nationalist leaders has led to deteriorating transparency when it comes to public finances, including via the dismantlement of checks and balances on power, according to the graft watchdog. It said examples include Turkey and Hungary, which in the last seven years have seen their corruption ratings plummet in line with worsening scorecards on democracy.
“Our research makes a clear link between having a healthy democracy and successfully fighting public-sector corruption,” said Delia Ferreira Rubio, the chair of Transparency International. “Corruption is much more likely to flourish where democratic foundations are weak and, as we have seen in many countries, where undemocratic and populist politicians can use it to their advantage.”
I’m not a fan of the headline on this Bloomberg story.
Talking Points Memo: Ex-Voter Fraud Commissioners Spar With Voting Rights Advocates On House Panel by Tierney Sneed
Election law attorneys who often oppose each other in court had the opportunity Tuesday to spar from the same witness table.
On one side were two members of President Trump’s bogus voter fraud commission, which was disbanded under a bevy of lawsuits. On the other were voting rights advocates who have led legal challenges to to restrictive election laws.
The occasion was a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Democrats’ package of voting-rights-oriented legislation.
Hans von Spakovsky — an ex-Trump voter fraud commission member, who is involved in various organizations that push restrictive voting laws — accused an voting rights advocate on the panel of “wildly exaggerating” the issue of discriminatory voting practices.
Later on in the hearing, Vanita Gupta — an alum of the Obama Justice Department who now leads the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — shot back.
Reuters: White House to seek big domestic spending cuts; budget will be late by David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House will propose significant non-defense spending cuts in its 2020 budget proposal, officials said on Tuesday, but it will miss the Monday, Feb. 4 deadline for submitting its plan to U.S. Congress, where the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives plans to oppose it.
White House National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow told Fox Business Network that the administration would propose a “very tough spending” budget “in a few weeks” and call for at least 5 percent across-the-board cuts in domestic spending. “Let’s minimize government where possible,” Kudlow said.
A senior White House budget official who asked not to be named cited the 35-day partial government shutdown as the reason for the delay in submitting its 2020 budget proposal.
The administration’s proposal will face stiff resistance from Democrats who have repeatedly opposed across the board spending cuts, congressional aides said.
AlJazeera: US spy chiefs break with Trump on several threats to the US
China and Russia pose the biggest risks to the United States, and are more aligned than they have been in decades as they target the 2020 presidential election and American institutions to expand their global reach, US intelligence officials told senators on Tuesday.
The spy chiefs broke with President Donald Trumpin their assessments of the threats posed by North Korea, Iran and Syria. But they outlined a clear and imminent danger from China, whose practices in trade and technology anger the US president.
While China and Russia strengthen their alliance, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said some American allies were pulling away from Washington in reaction to changing US policies on security and trade.
The directors of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies flanked Coats at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. They described an array of economic, military and intelligence threats, from highly organised efforts by China to scattered disruptions by terrorists, hacktivists and transnational criminals.
Guardian: Brexit: May goes back to Brussels but EU says nothing has changed by Heather Stewart and Daniel Boffey
Theresa May was handed a two-week deadline to resuscitate her Brexit deal last night after she caved to Tory Eurosceptics and pledged to go back to Brussels to demand changes to the Irish backstop.
With just 59 days to go until exit day, MPs narrowly passed a government-backed amendment, tabled by the senior Tory Graham Brady, promising to replace the Irish backstop with unspecified “alternative arrangements”.
But within minutes of the Commons result the European council president, Donald Tusk, announced that the EU was not prepared to reopen the deal.
“The withdrawal agreement is, and remains, the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union,” a spokesman for Tusk said. “The backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement, and the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.”
Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, said the EU needed to “hold our nerve”.
DW: Brazil: Five arrested after deadly dam disaster
Five people were arrested on Tuesday as part of a criminal investigation into a deadly dam rupture, Brazilian prosecutors said.
The arrested include three employees of the Vale SA mining company which owned and operated the dam and two engineers who worked forTÜV Süd, an internationally operating German service company. Two of the three Vale employees were senior managers at the Corrego do Feijao mine located near the collapsed dam, according to Reuters news agency.
The five will be detained for 30 days while officials investigate possible criminal liability, authorities said.
Rescue crews have been searching for survivors since the dam, located near the town of Brumadinho in southeast Brazil, burst on Friday. The collapse caused a sea of mud to bury a company cafeteria and other Vale buildings as well as submerge houses and roads in the nearby town.
The death toll rose to 84 and 276 people remained unaccounted for, rescue workers said on Tuesday. The overwhelming majority of the victims were workers at the mine.
BBC: Venezuela top court curbs opposition leader Juan Guaidó
Venezuela's Supreme Court has banned opposition leader Juan Guaidó from leaving the country and frozen his bank accounts.
The move comes amid an escalating power struggle, after Mr Guaidó declared himself interim president last week.
He has been backed by the US and other countries. President Nicolás Maduro has major allies too, including Russia.
A group of North and South American countries has meanwhile opposed any outside military involvement.
Peru's foreign minister Nestor Popolizio said the Lima Group - a 14-country body including Canada set up in 2017 to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Venezuela - was opposed to "military intervention".
US officials have stated that all options to resolve the crisis "are on the table".
Venezuela has been facing acute economic problems and there has been an upsurge in violence in recent weeks.
AlJazeera: Southern Philippines mosque hit by deadly grenade attack
At least two people have been killed and four others wounded in a grenade attack on a mosque in the southern Philippines, say local officials.
The attack in Zamboanga city took place in the early hours of Wednesday, just days after deadly twin blasts at a Roman Catholic cathedral on a nearby island and a vote backing wider Muslim self-rule in Mindanao, the country's volatile southernmost region.
"A grenade was lobbed inside a mosque killing two persons and wounding another four," regional military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Besana told AFP news agency of the attack in Zamboanga.
The victims were reportedly sleeping inside the mosque at the time of the attack, which drew immediate condemnation from local officials.
Spiegel Online International: A Growing Workload for Alpine Mountain Rescuers by Gerhard Pfeil
Sometimes, says mountain rescuer Regina Poberschnigg, 55, she'll speak quietly to the dead. "Why did you take such a risk? Why did you walk up here? Why did you ignore all the warnings?"
When recovering the bodies of, say, a climber who has fallen to their death or an avalanche victim, talking to them, Poberschnigg says, is her way of dealing with the situation -- of keeping the images, the tragedy, at arm's length.
Poberschnigg, the head of the mountain rescue team in the Tyrolean village of Ehrwald at the foot of the Zugspitze, is forging a trail through the deep snow, leading a group of snowshoers up from the valley to a mountain inn called the Ganghoferhütte. The tourists from Germany, the Netherlands and France are walking through a fairytale landscape, with the slopes and trees covered in deep snow. Even the strong branches of the surrounding spruce trees are bent almost to the ground under its weight.
To ensure their safety, the group is hiking up only slight inclines; the avalanche danger on slopes of 30 degrees or less is rather low. "We aren't taking any risks," says Poberschnigg.
Vulture: Artists React to Grammy-Winner James Ingram’s Death by Anne Victoria Clark
Grammy-winning singer and songwriter James Ingram passed away on Tuesday at the age of 66, according to his creative partner Debbie Allen on Twitter. The R&B singer collected two Grammys and an Oscar nomination during his long career, which included collaborations with Quincy Jones and Michael McDonald. Among his myriad of contributions to music over the years, he also co-wrote the Michael Jackson song ‘P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)’, and played keyboards for Ray Charles. News of his passing reverberated swiftly through the industry as artists and fans reacted to the loss. “He was, & always will be, beyond compare,” Quincy Jones wrote in a tweet. Shonda Rimes, Barry Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Josh Groban, Magic Johnson were among those who also paid tribute to Ingram’s life and work.
Finally, tonight, Michigan did beat Ohio State...in basketball, that is...and the final score was not even close…
but I do have to note that Michigan’s basketball team gave up fewer points to the hated Buckeyes than its football team...which sounds like The End Times to me.
Don’t forget that Meteor blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a good...and warm evening!