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.
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Chicago Sun Times: Supreme Court denies bid to resentence Jason Van Dyke in Laquan McDonald murder by Jon Seidel and Andy Grimm
The nearly seven-year prison sentence handed to Jason Van Dyke for the killing of Laquan McDonald looked likely to stand Tuesday after the Illinois Supreme Court, without explanation, chose not to intervene in the case.
Still, two justices criticized Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan in their own written opinions. One even called Gaughan’s decisions during the sentencing of the former Chicago cop “clearly improper as a matter of law.”
The pair of dissenting justices suggested it would be appropriate for the Supreme Court to intervene with a supervisory order.
“This dispute clearly involves a matter of the utmost importance to the administration of justice,” Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. wrote.
Sacramento Bee: California is growing so much marijuana it could crash the market by Andrew Sheeler
California has too many marijuana farms — growing too much product — and if nothing is done it will devastate the industry, according to a 2019 cannabis harvest projection.
Vessel Logistics, a San Francisco-based cannabis distribution company, found that more than 1,142 acres of cannabis farms hold state permits. They can produce up to 9 million pounds of crop every year, but the permitted wholesale market can realistically support 1.8 million to 2.2 million pounds.
“Thus, even when a 50 percent cut in production is accounted for, a significant oversupply is unavoidable in 2019,” the report concluded.
California isn’t the only state to grapple with an overproduction of bud. A state audit found that Oregon growers are producing twice as much cannabis as the state market can support, and that there is “more than six year’s worth of supply sitting on shelves and farms,” according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Des Moines Register: 'The whole thing is trashed': Damaged levees along Missouri River could cost billions to fix by Kim Norvell and Austin Cannon
Twelve levees have breached along the Missouri River in three states, as historic flooding continues to inundate small towns and farms in southwestern Iowa.
Four of the levee breaches were on Iowa's side of the river. The floodwaters have ripped holes as wide as 200 feet in areas south of Highway 34.
One levee district official estimates the damage in Iowa could reach into the billions of dollars — and that's before flood waters have started to recede.
"The whole thing is trashed," said Pat Sheldon, president of the Benton/Washington Levee District, the group that oversees maintenance for the 42-mile levee that stretches from Thurman, Iowa, to the Missouri border.
As of Tuesday morning, 41 of Iowa's 99 counties spanning three corners of the state had received disaster declarations. Eight of those counties are along the Missouri River.
New Orleans Times-Picayune: New Orleans public school reforms increased expulsion rates: Tulane study by Wilborn B. Nobles III
A study from Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans claims post-Katrina public school reforms caused a short-term increase in the city’s expulsion rate until public pressure and litigation brought the rate down.
The November 2005 Louisiana Legislature shifted New Orleans' public school control from the locally-elected, predominantly black school board to a statewide, mostly white Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The state's Recovery School District gained control of 100-plus schools in the city and signed charter contracts with nonprofit organizations to manage schools as long as the private organizations showed satisfactory academic and financial performance.
The study used data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education to analyze expulsion and suspension rates from 2001 to 2015 for New Orleans’ publicly funded schools, including those governed by the state RSD and those still under the control of the Orleans Parish School Board. The data showed New Orleans had relatively high out-of-school suspension rates before the reforms, with 24 percent of students suspended out-of-school in 2005. The out-of-school suspension rate for the rest of Louisiana was 16 percent in the same year.
Providence Journal: Defacement of Jewish gravestones in Fall River being investigated as a hate crime by Amanda Burke
FALL RIVER — “Why here?” Jeffrey Weissman’s teenage grandson asked him Sunday, when they discovered dozens of headstones defaced with anti-Semitic epithets and swastikas at the Hebrew Cemetery on McMahon Street.
Weissman, who as president of Congregation Adas Israel is in charge of the cemetery, didn’t have an answer.
“How do you explain something like this to people?” he said Tuesday. “It’s right after (the mass shooting in) New Zealand. I’m almost positive it was connected in some way. The white supremacists had to show their ugly head again.”
Weissman and his grandsons, ages 14 and 17, had to drop off a few items at the cemetery that day. His older grandson ran ahead of him, past gravestones tagged with Holocaust references such as “Hitler was right,” past others marred with Swastikas, and others still defaced with an ethnic epithet, written in black marker.
He ran past one stone on which was written the phrase that jarred Weissman, “Oy vey! This is MAGA country,” an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Wired: Here's What It's Like to Accidentally Expose the Data of 230M People by Andy Greenberg
STEVE HARDIGREE HADN'T even gotten to the office yet and his day was already a waking nightmare.
As he Googled his company's name that morning last June, Hardigree found a growing list of headlines pointing to the 10-person marketing firm he'd founded three years earlier, Exactis, as the source of a leak of the personal records of nearly everyone in the United States. A friend in an office adjacent to the one he rented as the company's headquarters in Palm Coast, Florida, had warned him that TV news reporters were already camped outside the building with cameras. Ambulance-chasing security firms were scrambling to pitch him solutions. Law firms had rushed to assemble a class action lawsuit against his company. All because of one unsecured server. "As you can imagine," Hardigree says, "I went into panic mode."
The day before that scrum, WIRED had revealed that Exactis exposed a database of 340 million records on the open internet, as first spotted by an independent security researcher named Vinny Troia. Using the scanning tool Shodan, Troia identified a misconfigured Amazon ElasticSearch server that contained the database, and then downloaded it. There he found 230 million personal records and another 110 million related to businesses—more than two terabytes of information in total. Those files didn't include credit card information, passwords, or Social Security numbers. But each one enumerated hundreds of details on individuals, ranging from the value of people's mortgages to the age of their children, as well as other personal information like email addresses, home addresses, and phone numbers.
The Atlantic: The Unexpected Side Effects of Trump’s Trade War by Olivia Paschal
Several weeks ago, John Boyd’s combine broke down. The machine is an absolute necessity for Boyd—he, like most commodity farmers, uses it to harvest the soybeans, corn, and wheat he grows every year in Baskerville, Virginia. What he really needs is a whole new combine, which would allow him to harvest his crops more efficiently, and which would last him much longer than fixing his current machine or buying a used one. But a new combine would cost him more than $480,000. With his farm income down and equipment prices up, “I haven’t been able to buy anything at all,” Boyd says.
Like farmers around the country, Boyd is in the crosshairs of the trade war, caught between the 25 percent tariffs that the United States has imposed on imported raw materials such as steel and aluminum and the retaliatory tariffs that China and other countries have imposed on major American agricultural exports, especially soybeans. Though the United States and China have been trying to negotiate a new trade deal, a resolution isn’t likely to come until at least April.
The trade war almost couldn’t have come at a worse time for the agricultural industry: Farm debt is on the rise, farm income is in a three-year trough, and the American Farm Bureau Federation’s chief economist said last month that many farmers are dependent on off-farm income to keep their operations running. But farmers can’t push pause on their crops to try to wait out the trade war—they’re at the beck and call of the planting and harvesting seasons.
Bloomberg: Trump Emoluments Challengers Face Skeptical Appeals Court Panel by Andrew M. Harris
A panel of federal appeals judges was openly skeptical of two Democratic attorneys general challenging President Donald Trump’s ability to make money from foreign and domestic government visitors at his luxury hotel in Washington.
Opposition to the president might actually help drive up business at other local hotels because his detractors wouldn’t want to stay in an establishment bearing his name, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Dennis Shedd said at a sometimes contentious two-hour hearing in Richmond, Virginia.
The judges, all appointees of Republican presidents, repeatedly pressed and interrupted lawyers representing the District of Columbia and Maryland, who claim the president is violating the emoluments clauses of the Constitution, which prohibit him from receiving benefits from foreign governments without permission from Congress and state and local governments. Trump’s lawyers want the lawsuit dismissed.
When District of Columbia Solicitor General Loren AliKhan rose to address the court, the judges focused on what it was the attorneys general wanted from their lawsuit, beyond merely an order compelling the president to abide by the constitutional restrictions.
Last November, Florida
passed a ballot measure to reenfranchise as many as 1.4 million people with felony records, the largest expansion of voting rights in decades. But less than six months after the historic move, state lawmakers are considering legislation that would make it harder for some of them to vote by requiring them to first finish paying all court fines and fees.
Before the ballot measure went into effect in January, Florida was one of only four states that permanently blocked former felons from participating in elections, a policy that traced back to the Jim Crow era and kept 10 percent of Floridians—and 1 in 5 African Americans in the state—off the rolls. Amendment 4 restored voting rights to Florida citizens with felony records who had completed their sentences (except for those who were convicted of murder or sex crimes).
State lawmakers now argue that aspects of Amendment 4 are confusing and require clarification. On Tuesday, a House subcommittee approved a bill that would prevent people with felony records from voting until they finish paying all court fines and fees, including “any cost of supervision” like parole, even if those fines and fees were not spelled out by a judge as part of the person’s original sentence. Previously, people with felony records only had to pay back restitution to a victim to get their rights restored, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
CNN: New Zealand terror suspect planned third attack, police chief says by Joshua Berlinger and Hillary Whiteman
Christchurch, New Zealand (CNN)- The suspect accused of carrying out Friday's terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, was likely on his way to carry out a third shooting before he was stopped by authorities, New Zealand's top police official said.
Fifty people were killed when a gunman opened fire inside two mosques last week.
Authorities have charged Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian man, with murder in connection with the incident. More charges are expected.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Wednesday that authorities "absolutely" believe they stopped the suspect "on the way to a further attack."
"Lives were saved," he added, but declined to go into detail to not "traumatize others."
DW: Somalia: Amnesty International accuses US forces of possible war crimes by Ineke Mules
A damning new report by Amnesty International accuses US military forces of killing at least 14 civilians and injuring eight others in Somalia over the past two years.
The investigation, entitled The Hidden War in Somalia, investigated five out of a total of 100 US airstrikes carried out by Reaper drones and manned aircraft in the Lower Shabelle region outside the capital Mogadishu. The region remains largely under the control of the extremist group al-Shabab, which has remained the primary target of the United States' Africa Command (AFRICOM) since 2007.
The rights group collected evidence from 150 in-person interviews or encrypted voice calls placed from outside al-Shabab controlled territory — including with eyewitnesses, relatives of victims and experts within the US military — and also analyzed satellite imagery as part of its investigation.
Amnesty International says the attacks appear to violate international humanitarian law and has called on the US government to "carry out impartial, thorough investigations" based on the report's findings.
AlJazeera: 'Major humanitarian emergency' after cyclone slams south Africa
Cyclone winds and floods that swept across southeastern Africa have affected more than 2.6 million people and could rank as one of the worst weather-related disasters recorded in the southern hemisphere.
Rescue crews were still struggling to reach victims on Wednesday, six days after Cyclone Idai raced in at speeds of up to 170 kph from the Indian Ocean into Mozambique, then its inland neighbours Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Aid groups said many survivors were trapped, clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops in remote areas, surrounded by wrecked roads, flattened buildings and submerged villages.
"This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's recent history," said Jamie LeSueur, who is leading rescue efforts in the hard-hit city of Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Haaretz: Israel's Justice Minister Sprays 'Fascism' Perfume in Provocative Campaign Ad by Allison Kaplan Sommer
A new election ad for the far-right Hayamin Hehadash party featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in sultry poses, spraying herself with a perfume labeled “Fascism,” has the look and feel of a satiric sketch, echoing the 2017 “Saturday Night Live” send-up of Ivanka Trump in a mock commercial for the scent “Complicit.”
But the Shaked ad was no send-up: The images are accompanied by the seductively whispered phrases (in Hebrew) “Judicial reform,” “Separation of powers” and “Restraining the Supreme Court” — all meant to highlight her efforts to weaken the activist courts and give more power to the legislative branch.
Shaked then delivers the tagline to camera: “To me, it smells like democracy.”
The ad succeeded in what appears to be its goal — drawing attention to Shaked’s Hayamin Hehadash party, which is struggling in the polls. But an unintended side effect has been to leave thousands of viewers overseas confused and stunned after viewing the ad. Without understanding Hebrew — and one can’t Google Translate spoken words — it looks as if Israel’s attractive justice minister is, in fact, selling “Fascism.”
AFP: Pope rejects resignation of French cardinal convicted for sex abuse cover-up
Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of French cardinal Philippe Barbarin who was handed a six-month suspended jail sentence this month for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority, prompting surprise among Church leaders and condemnation from victims.
The pope's decision, announced by Barbarin in a statement and confirmed by the Vatican, comes ahead of a judicial appeal of the case.
But it also comes against the background of the Roman Catholic Church's struggle to restore trust in its efforts to fight child abuse, with the pope saying last month that "no abuse must ever be covered up, as has happened in the past".
In a statement issued from his see in the French southeastern city of Lyon, Barbarin said: "Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation."
Hollywood Reporter: Female Public Servants on TV Increase Political Participation, Study Finds by Katie Kilkenny
The period between 2014 and 2016 proved to be something of a golden era for female-led political dramas on television: Scandal, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, State of Affairs and Veep all starred women shaking things up in Washington at a time when female employees in the U.S. administration weren't so rare as they are now. Even on male-led shows House of Cards and Designated Survivor, female lawmakers pushed policy and rose to prominence in Hollywood's gloss on Washington.
Given the relative dearth of women in powerful public-servant roles on TV before this period (Geena Davis' President Mackenzie Allen being a notable exception), did these characters help inspire viewers to engage in the political system? Two researchers who have recently published a paper on the subject are answering in the affirmative.
In a new study of frequent viewers of three female-led political dramas — ABC's Scandal and CBS' Madam Secretary and The Good Wife — Purdue political communications assistant professor Jennifer Hoewe and University of Alabama communications and information sciences PhD candidate Lindsey Sherrill argue that "the influence of political dramas, particularly those featuring women in lead roles, can lead to increases in political engagement." The research, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, builds on previous studies that suggests depictions in entertainment can humanize presidents and influence support for select public policies, while a multiplicity of portrayals has been linked to increased tolerance for working women and minorities.
Phys.org: Abel Prize for maths awarded to woman for first time
The Abel Prize in mathematics was on Tuesday awarded to Karen Uhlenbeck of the United States for her work on partial differential equations, the first woman to win the award, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said.
"Karen Uhlenbeck receives the Abel Prize 2019 for her fundamental work in geometric analysis and gauge theory, which has dramatically changed the mathematical landscape," said Abel Committee chairman Hans Munthe-Kaas in a statement.
"Her theories have revolutionised our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as those formed by soap bubbles, and more general minimization problems in higher dimensions," he said.
Uhlenbeck, 76, is a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University, as well as visiting associate at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), both in the US.
The Cleveland native "developed tools and methods in global analysis, which are now in the toolbox of every geometer and analyst," the Academy said.
She is also a role model and a strong advocate for gender equality in science and mathematics.
She is the first woman to win the prize, which comes with a cheque for six million kroner (620,000 euros, $703,000).
Everyone have a great evening!