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: State's Attorney Kim Foxx calls on any R. Kelly accusers to come forward by Megan Crepeau
Saying she was “deeply, deeply disturbed” by a documentary series detailing longstanding allegations of sexual misconduct against R & B superstar R. Kelly, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx on Tuesday called on any accusers to come forward.
At an unusual news conference, Foxx said her office cannot launch an effective prosecution without the cooperation of victims and witnesses.
Foxx revealed that the relatives of two missing women have contacted her office with concerns about possible contact with Kelly. A spokeswoman later said both women have been missing for three to four years.
“We’re in the process of trying to get information and conversations going with those who have information,” said Foxx, urging anyone with information about Kelly to contact police or call the prosecutors' office at 773-674-6492.
Kelly's local attorney, Steve Greenberg, blasted the top prosecutor’s public call for victims, saying none have come forward because Kelly has not done anything wrong.
WBEZ: Mayoral Candidate Daley Wants To Merge Chicago Public Schools And City Colleges by Kate McGee
Chicago mayoral hopeful Bill Daley has an idea he believes will change the way the city thinks about public education: merge the city’s K-12 and community college systems.
Daley plans to formally announce the idea during a press conference Tuesday morning. Daley is one of nearly 20 candidates jockeying to make their positions known in the crowded field of mayoral hopefuls.
The unusual proposal would combine the two systems, both currently controlled by the mayor, under one CEO and governing board. All Chicago Public Schools graduates could also attend City Colleges of Chicago for free. It appears no other major city has tried this approach.
“We have such pathetic results of kids who go through the system, graduate, don't graduate from college, and may or may not be ready for the jobs that you need to be ready for,” Daley told WBEZ in a phone interview. Daley’s brother Richard M. Daley controlled the schools as mayor until he stepped down in 2011.
Los Angeles Times: Lawyers wrangle over teachers' strike date while school board eases volunteer rules by Howard Blume and Sonali Kohli
A Los Angeles teachers’ strike could be just two days away.
Or maybe six days?
On Tuesday, lawyers for the teachers union and school district were set to face off in Los Angeles County Superior Court over arcane legal points that could affect the union’s strike date and the lives of 30,000 union members and nearly half a million students and their families.
By midday, no determinations had been made.
At the same time, the Board of Education at district headquarters approved a new policy to relax vetting requirements for parent and community volunteers, which could come in handy in the event of a strike.
At issue in court is whether United Teachers Los Angeles — in setting the strike for Thursday — gave the Los Angeles Unified School District a legally required 10-day notice that its members would stop working under the existing contract.
Colorado Independent: New sheriff, new town: Jared Polis takes reins from Hickenlooper in a vastly different Colorado by Alex Burness and John Herrick
Colorado had never seen an Inauguration Day like it did on Tuesday.
It had never seen a governor-elect descend the Capitol steps in blue sneakers, which Jared Polis did on Tuesday.
Nor had it ever seen an openly gay governor, which Polis became when, with partner Marlon Reis by his side, he was sworn into office at noon. Neither had any other state.
Colorado had never seen a Jewish governor take state constitutional office, either. Three of the four executives sworn in on Tuesday — Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser and Secretary of State Jena Griswold — are Jewish.
And, as some noted during the inauguration ceremony, not in recent history had it seen so many Democrats in power at once.
When former Gov. John Hickenlooper gave his first inaugural address eight years ago, he was joined by three Republican executives: Attorney General John Suthers, Treasurer Walker Stapleton and Secretary of State Scott Gessler. The state legislature was split.
Not only does Polis enter office under opposite circumstances, but he inherits a very different Colorado than Hickenlooper did. In 2011, unemployment in Colorado was at 9 percent and the state was struggling to add jobs. The deficit stood at $1 billion.
Seven Days VT: Overdoses Prompt Policy Change in Vermont Prisons by Taylor Dobbs
Two inmates overdosed over the weekend in the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton, prompting corrections officials to place the prison on lockdown while Vermont State Police canines searched for drugs.
One inmate was discovered without a pulse, but both survived. Corrections Commissioner Mike Touchette said the drug they ingested was likely K2 or Spice — synthetic cannabinoids.
Corrections officials said both inmates were given the overdose-reversal drug Narcan. The department acknowledged that Narcan doesn’t have an effect in reversing a non-opiate overdose, but it’s policy to administer the drug whenever an inmate is found unresponsive with no apparent injuries.
Two other Vermont inmates have overdosed during the past six months or so. Staff quickly used Narcan to reverse those overdoses.
Detroit Metro Times: Michigan Dem Senators: Israel more important than the First Amendment by Tom Perkins
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib made headlines in December when she and another rep became the first members of Congress to publicly support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement targeting Israel.
Tlaib, the nation's first Palestinian-American Congresswoman, is part of the party's most progressive wing. It generally supports the international boycott movement designed to hit Israel over its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories, which has effectively turned them into open air prisons.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum in Michigan's Democratic Party, centrist senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters — who both receive a lot of money from the Israeli lobby — cosponsored a constitutionally questionable anti-BDS bill.
As The Intercept reports, the Michigan senators' legislation would have, among other things, given state and local governments "explicit legal authority" to boycott U.S. companies that are participating in BDS.
In other words, the government could punish those with whom it disagrees.
That’s one helluva headline!
Texas Tribune: Republican Congressman Mac Thornberry pushes back against idea of military building border wall by Abby Livingston
WASHINGTON — One of the most influential Texas Republicans in Congress, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, pushed back against a notion floating around the nation's capital that President Donald Trump might use the military to construct a border wall.
“In short, I’m opposed to using defense dollars for non-defense purposes,” said the Clarendon Republican on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. While emphasizing the necessity of border security, he added that “it is not a responsibility of the Department of Defense" to build the wall.
Thornberry is the top-ranking Republican on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee. Until Democrats took control of the chamber, he served as the committee chairman. Thornberry's tenure in that post was marked by a fierce protectiveness of Pentagon funding.
In a follow-up statement to the Tribune, Thornberry elaborated on his view.
Gay City News: In Newly Released Audio, Bayard Rustin Talks About His Gay Identity by Matt Tracy
Newly released audio of gay civil rights icon Bayard Rustin reveals the extent to which he valued the intersection of his racial and his sexual identity — and how his life as an openly gay man nearly derailed his ability to fight for equality.
Rustin, an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. who became more vocal on LGBTQ issues later in his life, said during an interview with the Washington Blade in the 1980s that he recalled a time in the 1940s when a mother warned her daughter not to touch him because he was black. He felt that it was important to educate the young child about race, and as a gay man he also realized that she needed to learn that gay people also existed. That attitude prompted him to be more open about his sexuality than was at all customary for public figures of his era.
“It occurred to me shortly after that that it was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality, because if I didn’t, I was a part of the prejudice,” he said several years before he died at age 75 in 1987. “I was aiding and abetting the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me.”
An activist who believed in nonviolent resistance, Rustin spearheaded the organizing effort of the 1963 March on Washington and helped play a major role in the civil rights movement alongside King. But his sexual orientation wound up becoming a serious roadblock in his work.
Buzzfeed: Another Man Has Been Found Dead At Democratic Donor Ed Buck's Home In West Hollywood by Claudia Rosenbaum
For the second time in as many years, a man was found dead inside the home of a longtime Democratic donor in California, sparking a homicide investigation, officials said.
Ed Buck, who led the campaign to impeach Arizona Republican Gov. Evan Mecham in 1987 and is well-known in Los Angeles LGBTQ political circles, was at his home in West Hollywood around 1 a.m. Monday when the man became unresponsive and he called 911, authorities said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene when paramedics arrived.
Officials have not identified the man, but media outlets are describing him as being black. The cause of death is pending autopsy and toxicology results.
In July 2017, a black man was also found dead in Buck’s apartment after overdosing on methamphetamine. Paramedics found 26-year-old Gemmel Moore naked on a mattress in the living room, which was littered with drug paraphernalia, the Los Angeles Times reported.
I have the heaviest of sighs about this story...and I may have more to say about Buck at another time...for now, I will post this tweet by LA lesbian blogger Jasmyne Cannick, who has written a lot about the Ed Buck story.
The Atlantic: U.S. Carbon Pollution Surged in 2018, After Years of Stasis by Robinson Meyer
Carbon-dioxide emissions from the United States spiked sharply in 2018, bucking a three-year trend and making it more likely that the country will fail to meet its promises under the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to a preliminary analysis published Tuesday.
The new study—written by the Rhodium Group, an energy-research firm—found that emissions of the heat-trapping gas leaped by 3.4 percent, the second-largest increase in more than two decades. The emissions surge was driven by a number of factors: Americans flew more, shipped more goods by truck, and burned more heating oil during a frigid winter.
Even emissions from power plants went up, after years of declines. A record number of U.S. coal plants closed in 2018, but a booming natural-gas sector gobbled up those declines and generated most of the year’s growth in electricity, too.
New York Times: De Blasio Unveils Health Care Plan for Undocumented and Low-Income New Yorkers by J. David Goodman
New York City will spend at least $100 million to ensure that undocumented immigrants and others who cannot qualify for insurance can receive medical treatment, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday, seeking to insert a city policy into two contentious national debates.
The mayor has styled himself, in his 2017 re-election campaign and during his second term, as a progressive leader on issues like education and health care, and as a bulwark against the policies of President Trump, particularly on immigration.
In making the announcement, first on national television, Mr. de Blasio appeared to be trying to heighten that contrast and thrust his efforts on behalf of undocumented New Yorkers into the national debate over immigration, hours before Mr. Trump was to go on television Tuesday night to make his case for a border wall.
“Everyone is guaranteed the right to health care, everyone,” Mr. de Blasio said during a news conference at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. “We are saying the word guarantee because we can make it happen.”
Reuters: Exclusive: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria by Steve Stecklow, Babak Dehghanpisheh and James Pomfret
LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) - The U.S. case against the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies, who was arrested in Canada last month, centers on the company’s suspected ties to two obscure companies. One is a telecom equipment seller that operated in Tehran; the other is that firm’s owner, a holding company registered in Mauritius.
U.S. authorities allege CFO Meng Wanzhou deceived international banks into clearing transactions with Iran by claiming the two companies were independent of Huawei, when in fact Huawei controlled them. Huawei has maintained the two are independent: equipment seller Skycom Tech Co Ltd and shell company Canicula Holdings Ltd.
But corporate filings and other documents found by Reuters in Iran and Syria show that Huawei, the world’s largest supplier of telecommunications network equipment, is more closely linked to both firms than previously known.
The documents reveal that a high-level Huawei executive appears to have been appointed Skycom’s Iran manager. They also show that at least three Chinese-named individuals had signing rights for both Huawei and Skycom bank accounts in Iran. Reuters also discovered that a Middle Eastern lawyer said Huawei conducted operations in Syria through Canicula.
Washington Post: Democrats threaten to subpoena Whitaker over Mueller probe, discussions with Trump by Karoun Demirjian
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler is preparing to subpoena acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker to testify before the panel about whether his relationship with President Trump influenced his oversight of the special counsel’s Russia probe if Whitaker does not agree to testify voluntarily in January.
“One could conclude that he is stalling,” Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday, stressing that the panel had been working since late November to set an interview date with Whitaker. “If we don’t reach a date in the next day or two, we will subpoena him.”
Nadler said he expects to inform Whitaker of his intentions in a letter that committee Democrats plan to send to him Wednesday. But they insist they will keep pressing Whitaker to testify, even if he attempts to avoid the subpoena, and regardless of whether Whitaker is still running the Justice Department by the time they can bring him to Capitol Hill.
AlJazeera: India's lower house passes citizenship bill that excludes Muslims
India's lower house of parliament has approved a bill that would grant residency and citizenship rights to non-Muslim immigrants, sparking protests that brought the country's populous northeast to a near standstill.
The legislation, which still needs the approval of the upper house, seeks to grant rights to Hindus, Jains, Parsis and several other non-Muslim religious groups who migrated without documents from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"They have no place to go except India," Home Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament on Tuesday. "The beneficiaries of the bill can reside in any state of the country."
Critics have called the proposal, contained in the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019, blatantly anti-Muslim and an attempt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to boost its Hindu voter base ahead of a general election due by May.
Guardian: Cross-party alliance of MPs tells May: we will stop no-deal Brexit by Heather Stewart, Jessicca Elgot and Daniel Boffey
Theresa May faces a concerted campaign of parliamentary warfare from a powerful cross-party alliance of MPs determined to use every lever at their disposal to prevent Britain leaving the EU without a deal in March.
The former staunch loyalist Sir Oliver Letwin signalled that he and other senior Conservatives would defy party whips, repeatedly if necessary, to avoid a no-deal Brexit, as the government suffered a humiliating defeatduring a debate on the finance bill in the Commons.
Letwin and 16 other former government ministers were among 20 Conservatives who banded together with the home affairs select committee chair, Yvette Cooper, and the Labour leadership to pass an anti no-deal amendment.
They defeated the government by 303 votes to 296 – a majority of seven – making May the first prime minister in 41 years to lose a vote on a government finance bill.
AFP: Australian minister hints Saudi teen likely to get asylum
Australia gave its strongest hint yet on Wednesday that an 18-year-old Saudi woman in Bangkok would be granted humanitarian asylum, despite efforts by Riyadh and her family to force her return home.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun has documented her bid to flee her allegedly abusive family with minute-by-minute social media updates, intensifying the global spotlight on Saudi Arabia's rights record.
As public pressure heightened, an Australian minister appeared to go beyond Canberra's initial bureaucratic promise to consider her case if and when UN experts judge her fear of mistreatment justified.
"If she is found to be a refugee, then we will give very, very, very serious consideration to a humanitarian visa," health minister Greg Hunt told public broadcaster ABC.
Guardian: Suspicious packages sent to embassies and consulates in Melbourne and Canberra by Calla Wahlquist
Emergency services in Melbourne are responding to reports that suspicious packages have been found at international embassies and consulates in Melbourne and Canberra.
The Emergency Management Victoria website showed that firefighters were responding to reports of hazardous materials at the British consulate general in Collins Street and at several locations on St Kilda Road, in the vicinity of the US, Turkish, Italian and Korean consulates.
Hazardous material warnings were also shown near the Indonesian, Thai, Greek, Egyptian and Japanese consulates in Melbourne.
Authorities did not confirm the specific locations or intended targets of any of the packages, but the Australian federal police confirmed it was investigating and would examine the packages.
The AFP said some embassies and consulates in Canberra had also been affected.
BBC: Guatemala expels UN-backed anti-corruption commission
Guatemala has said it is withdrawing from a UN-backed anti-corruption commission which has been investigating the country's President Jimmy Morales.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Sandra Jovel said on Monday that the UN body had 24 hours to leave the country.
She said Mr Morales would continue the fight against corruption, but that there had been a misunderstanding about the investigations into his affairs.
Elected three years ago, Mr Morales initially supported the UN commission.
The mandate of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) has helped prosecutors bring cases against dozens of senior officials and executives.
However, when Mr Morales became the subject of its investigations, the president said he would review its mandate.
and then deep in the body of the BBC story I read this…
The CICIG had sought to prosecute Mr Morales, who was a comedian before becoming president in 2016...
All I can do with that bit of news is shake my head and move on to the next story.
With a lot of the news going on in Africa (including the fatal train crash in South Africa and the disputed election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), I desperately tried to avoid posting this next story but I have failed.
BBC: Zambia seizes 'erection-causing' energy drink by Kennedy Gondwe
Authorities in Zambia have ordered a local manufacturer to stop the production and distribution of an energy drink that reportedly caused a prolonged erection in a man.
The move comes after the Uganda National Drug Authority (NDA) said in a letter dated 28 December that it had tested samples from a bottle of Natural Power SX after a customer complained of constant sweating and an erection lasting nearly six hours.
NDA said the drink contained sildenafil citrate used to treat erectile dysfunction.
The drink is manufactured by Revin Zambia Limited, a company located in Ndola in the north of the country.
The company's General Manager, Vikas Kapoor, told the BBC's Newsday programme that to the best of his knowledge the energy drink does not contain any drugs.
New York magazine/Grub Street: Shock: Naked Restaurant Closes Due to ‘Lack of Customers’ by Chris Crowley
The owners of Paris’s first nudist restaurant have learned the naked truth: dining in the nude doesn’t sell enough food. O’naturel will close on February 16, only 15 months after it showed up on the city’s restaurant scene, baring it all. It was certainly a unique idea to offer an upscale, three-course menu for $57.50, but it wasn’t meant to be.
The restaurant was opened — um — by twins Mike and Stéphane Saada, who are not actually nudists but just figured people would want to eat foie gras sans suits. In a statement posted to Facebook, the Saadas write, “We will only remember the good times,” which, if Grub were to guess, would not include any of the times people presumably spilled scalding hot soup on their naked bodies. Alas, Parisians will have to go back to eating with their clothes on.
Hollywood Reporter: Tom Hanks to Present Alan Alda With SAG Lifetime Achievement Award by Katherine Schaffstall
It was announced on Tuesday that Tom Hanks will present Alan Alda with the lifetime achievement award during the 25th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The two worked together in the 2015 Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies. Hanks starred in the film as James Donovan, the lawyer defending KGB agent Rudolf Abel, while Alda co-starred as Thomas Watters, a partner at the same law firm.
Alda is a three-time SAG Awards nominee, while Hanks has won two SAG Awards during his career. He will next be seen in the Mister Rogers biopic and is set to play Geppetto in Disney's live-action Pinocchio.
“It is an honor and privilege to announce that our SAG Life Achievement Award will be presented to the fabulous Alan Alda,” SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris said in a statement in October. “He is an artist whose body of work is a testament to the craft and the magic of our business. His ability to make us laugh, to think and to feel is extraordinary. From theater to television, movies, and new media, Alan’s dedication and talent are exceeded only by his contributions to a just and caring society.”
Everyone have a great evening and, as this coming Saturday is the second Saturday of the month, I will see you again this Saturday for...science!