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, Besame and jck. 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 featureon 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.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
US NEWS
Al Jazeera
Hundreds of migrants at an El Paso detention centre have been held in unsanitary conditions, including being kept outside, according to NBC News, citing United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents.
The news organisation reported on Monday that inspectors with the department's internal watchdog who visited the site on May 7 found more than half of the 756 immigrants being held at the facility were kept outside, and those inside were held in cells packed at five times their capacity.
Cells were so crowded - 155 adult males in a contained area meant to hold 35 people - that the men could not lie down and temperatures swelled to more than 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius), the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general found, according to the internal report, NBC said.
Washington Post
EL PASO — Congressional Democrats on Monday condemned postings made in a secret Facebook group for U.S. Border Patrol agents that targeted migrants and some prominent lawmakers with attacks that the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called “vulgar, disgusting and vile.”
The posts sparked special outrage among a delegation of more than a dozen House members who had just started a tour of federal immigration facilities in Southwest Texas when ProPublica broke the story.
Some of the Facebook posts discussed throwing burritos at the visiting lawmakers, while others joked in profane language about the deaths of migrants and included a vulgar illustration of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) being forced to engage in a sexual act by President Trump, according to images of the posts obtained by ProPublica.
NPR
Several dozen Central American migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border again, this time escorted by federal agents to an El Paso, Texas, courtroom as part of an unprecedented effort by the Trump administration to control migration.
During a hearing last week, the judge asked the migrants one by one if they had a lawyer. Nearly all of them said, "No."
That's not unusual. More than 6,000 migrants who came to the United States to ask for asylum have been sent back to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, to wait for their day in U.S. immigration court under the "Remain in Mexico" program. But only about 20 of them have lawyers, according to human rights groups and attorneys who work with the migrants.
Remain in Mexico is a key part of the Trump administration's plan to turn back a crush of migrants at the southern border, and it's a historic shift in how the asylum system works.
Al Jazeera
Vieques, Puerto Rico - At first glance, Vieques appears to be a Carribean paradise. The small island located less than 13km off of mainland Puerto Ricois home to stunning, undeveloped beaches with shimmering turquoise water.
Wild horses roam the tranquil, winding streets. Tourists from all over travel to take glowing night time kayak rides in the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world.
But there is a darker, lesser-known story of Vieques that I explored in my latest episode of AJ+'s Direct From. It involves the legacy of US militarism, which has left much of the island contaminated and its residents sick.
From the 1940s until 2003, the US Navy used Vieques as a training ground for war, pummeling the island with bombs as it conducted military training operations.
The Guardian
Donald Trump has been accused of taking nepotism to alarming new depths after giving his daughter, Ivanka, a prominent role in meetings with the G20 and Kim Jong-un.
On Saturday, the French government released a video from the G20 summit in Osaka that showed Ivanka awkwardly interjecting with French president Emmanuel Macron, British PM Theresa May, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and IMF director Christine Lagarde, whose icy expression spoke volumes. During the summit, Ivanka was also included in photographs of a group of leaders.
A day later, Trump’s 37-year-old daughter became one of the few Americans to set foot inside North Korea as her father held nuclear talks with Kim in the demilitarised zone. The first daughter described the event as “surreal”.
Then, addressing US forces stationed in South Korea, Donald Trump invited Ivanka on stage and promised: “She’s going to steal the show.”
Such brazenly dynastic displays caused concern among foreign policy experts who, noting Ivanka’s complete lack of diplomatic experience or training, warn of lasting damage to America’s credibility.
Reuters
Attorneys on Monday urged an Alabama court to throw out a criminal charge against a woman whose fetus died after she was shot during a dispute, calling the state’s legal rationale “flawed and twisted” and the case unsupported by the law.
The woman, Marshae Jones, 28, was arrested on Wednesday after a grand jury indicted her for manslaughter, concluding that she had intentionally caused the termination of her pregnancy in its fifth month by provoking an argument.
The same Jefferson County grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against the woman who shot Jones, Ebony Jemison, concluding that she acted in self defense during the Dec. 4 altercation in Pleasant Grove, just west of Birmingham.
The case is a test of a law in Alabama in which voters last November passed a constitutional amendment that gave fetuses the full legal rights and protections of people. The same principle prompted the state’s Republican-controlled state this year to enact a law banning abortion in all cases, including for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
WORLD NEWS
DW News
Iran has breached the 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium allowed under the 2015 international nuclear accord, both Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed on Monday.
The IAEA "verified on July 1 that Iran's total enriched uranium stockpile exceeded 300 kilograms," a spokesperson said.
The amount is well below that needed to produce one nuclear weapon. But the breach shows that Iran intends to ratchet up its response to the United States withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last year and its reimposition of harsh unilateral sanctions.
Fierce criticism from Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been highly critical of Iran's nuclear program, urged European countries involved in the Iran nuclear deal to impose "automatic sanctions."
"You committed to act the moment Iran violates the nuclear agreement, you committed to activate the mechanism for automatic sanctions that was set in the [UN] Security Council," he said in a statement.
Israel, he said, would "soon unveil more proof that Iran was lying all the time" about the program.
DW News
EU leaders are deeply divided over who should succeed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. More than 18 hours of talks in Brussels have failed to reach a breakthrough.
A European Council summit to choose a new European Commission president and other top posts was delayed again on Monday, after leaders were unable to reach a compromise during more than 18 hours of talks in Brussels.
EU Council President Donald Tusk, who is leading the talks, said leaders would reconvene on Tuesday.
The impasse is centered on the nominee to succeed outgoing Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This requires the approval of 21 of the 28 EU leaders, representing 65% of the bloc's population.
Once EU leaders nominate candidates, these must be approved by the European Parliament.
DW News
The meeting between Indian PM Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit reinforces the multilateral nature of the world today, say experts.
The three leaders' meeting in Osaka last week came days after they got together to discuss mutually relevant issues on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, which took place in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek earlier in June.
Over the past several years, Russia, China and India have all been adversely affected by growing tensions with the United States, especially after US President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese exports to the US and ended India's preferential trade status that allowed some of the South Asian nation's products to enter the US duty-free. In response, New Delhi imposed retaliatory duties on imports from the US.
Al Jazeera
Hundreds of Hong Kong police fired tear gas and surrounded the legislature after protesters smashed their way in and occupied the building in unprecedented scenes.
Police restored control early Tuesday after clashes with protesters on the streets of Hong Kong at the end of a day of unrest.
Demonstrators in their hundreds overran in the Chinese territory's legislature late on Monday, smashing walls, spray-painting graffiti, and taking over the chamber as the weeks-long crisis over a controversial extradition bill came to a head.
Police carrying riot shields, batons, and firing tear gas moved in shortly after midnight to clear surrounding streets. Plumes of smoke billowed across major thoroughfares and in between some of the world's tallest skyscrapers.
Reuters
VIENNA (Reuters) - OPEC agreed on Monday to extend oil supply cuts until March 2020, three OPEC sources said, as the group’s members overcame their differences in order to prop up the price of crude amid a weakening global economy and soaring U.S. production.
The move will likely anger U.S. President Donald Trump, who has demanded OPEC leader Saudi Arabia supply more oil and help reduce prices at the pump if Riyadh wants U.S. military support in its standoff with arch-rival Iran.
BBC
Sixteen men have been arrested after a female forest official was brutally beaten with sticks by a mob as police officers watched in the southern Indian state of Telangana.
The mob, led by a member of the state's ruling party, was protesting against a tree plantation drive on Sunday.
A video of the incident has gone viral, and the party has condemned the attack on Twitter.
The forest officer is being treated in hospital for severe injuries.
A video of the incident shows the mob attacking the officer with bamboo sticks, as she stands on a tractor and tries to placate them.
She is repeatedly hit with the sticks until forest officials and local police step in to disperse the mob and contain the attack.
The footage has gone viral in India and led to outrage across the country.
This prompted a high-ranking official of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) party, Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao, to condemn the incident on Twitter.
ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
The Guardian
The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic.
The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.
But researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought. Unlike the melting of ice sheets on land, sea ice melting does not raise sea level. But losing bright white sea ice means the sun’s heat is instead absorbed by dark ocean waters, leading to a vicious circle of heating.
Sea ice spreads over enormous areas and has major impacts on the global climate system, with losses in the Arctic strongly linked to extreme weather at lower latitudes, such as heatwaves in Europe.
The loss of sea ice in the Arctic clearly tracks the rise in global air temperatures resulting from human-caused global heating, but the two poles are very different. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents and is exposed to warming air, while Antarctica is a freezing continent surrounded by oceans and is protected from warming air by a circle of strong winds.
Antarctic sea ice had been slowly increasing during the 40 years of measurements and reached a record maximum in 2014. But since then sea ice extent has nosedived, reaching a record low in 2017.
Climate Central (6/26/2019)
With summer in full swing, millions of Americans are fishing in the nation’s streams, lakes, and coastal waters. However, many of these waterways are heating up, spelling trouble for fish and the nation’s $46 billion dollar recreational fishing industry.
Warming waters can push fish out of their optimum temperature ranges—forcing them to migrate if there’s room, or else struggle or even die. The graphics below depict these temperature ranges for three popular game fish (trout, bass, and salmon), but the concept applies to other species.
Stream temperatures are rising at 65% of the continental U.S. gauges with sufficient data since 1990. While many factors influence stream temperatures, from water source and depth to agriculture and dams, rising air temperatures can play a key role. Warming streams impact fish by intensifying some algae blooms and allowing viruses to affect more species. Inland fish are also moving north, altering predator-prey interactions and changing the timing of migrations and spawning.
Meanwhile, every Great Lake has warmed at least 1.5oF since 1995 (when data became available for all lakes), led by Lake Ontario at 2.2oF. In addition to the above impacts, warmer water has increased the size and feeding rates of the parasitic sea lamprey, which can latch onto and devastate large Great Lakes fish.
The Guardian
It was a beautiful winter day in San Francisco, and Zoe was grooving to the soundtrack of the roller-skating musical Xanadu as she rode an e-scooter to work. The 29-year-old tech worker had just passed the Uber building when, without warning, a homeless man jumped into the bike lane with his dog, blocking her path.
She slammed on the brakes, flew four feet into the air and landed on the pavement, bleeding. “It was one of those hardening moments where I was like, ‘Even I am being affected,’” she recalled.
It should be noted that Zoe, who asked not to be identified by her real name because she was not authorized by her employer to speak to the press, is not the stereotypical tech bro who moves to San Francisco for a job and immediately starts complaining about the city’s dire homelessness crisis. She arrived in 2007 to study at San Francisco State University and had a career in the arts before attending a coding bootcamp and landing a job at a major tech company.
But the fall and other incidents, including getting mugged and having her phone stolen, have all contributed to her growing sense of insecurity in the area. She told the Guardian the tale of her scoot, interrupted, because she said it was a perfect example of her own – and perhaps the broader community of tech workers’ – increasingly hate-hate relationship with San Francisco.
“This guy needed services to help him,” she said of the man who caused her to fall, “and we all suffer because of the issues that are not being addressed.”
A quarter of a century after the first dot-com boom, the battle for San Francisco’s soul is over and the tech industry has won. But what happens when the victors realize they don’t particularly like the spoils?
BBC
A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway's Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506 km (2,176 miles) in 76 days.
"The fox's journey has left scientists speechless," according to Greenland's Sermitsiaq newspaper.
Researchers at Norway's Polar Institute fitted the young female with a GPS tracking device and freed her into the wild in late March last year on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard archipelago's main island.
The fox was under a year old when she set off west in search of food, reaching Greenland just 21 days later - a journey of 1,512 km - before trudging forward on the second leg of her trek.
She was tracked to Canada's Ellesmere Island, nearly 2,000 km further, just 76 days after leaving Svalbard.
BBC
Many food-lovers worry about pasta making them fat. But could simply cooling and then reheating your meal make it better for you, asks Michael Mosley.
There are few things that really surprise me about nutrition, but one of the experiments from the latest series of Trust Me, I'm a Doctor really did produce quite unexpected results.
You are probably familiar with the idea that pasta is a form of carbohydrate and like all carbohydrates it gets broken down in your guts and then absorbed as simple sugars, which in turn makes your blood glucose soar.
[...]
So, according to scientist Dr Denise Robertson, from the University of Surrey, if you cook and cool pasta down then your body will treat it much more like fibre, creating a smaller glucose peak and helping feed the good bacteria that reside down in your gut. You will also absorb fewer calories, making this a win-win situation.
One obvious problem is that many people don't really like cold pasta. So what would happen if you took the cold pasta and warmed it up?
[...]
But then we found something that we really didn't expect - cooking, cooling and then reheating the pasta had an even more dramatic effect. Or, to be precise, an even smaller effect on blood glucose.
In fact, it reduced the rise in blood glucose by 50%.
This certainly suggests that reheating the pasta made it into an even more "resistant starch". It's an extraordinary result and one never measured before.
NPR
It's a disturbing question that haunts many shoppers with good intentions: What am I actually accomplishing by buying coffee or chocolate with the Fair Trade label? Does the extra money that I pay actually benefit the people who harvested those beans?
Researchers have been curious, too. They've found that, in fact, small farmers in Latin America and Africa do benefit from the minimum price that Fair Trade guarantees and the extra money it delivers to farmer cooperatives. Researchers have documented higher wages, greater participation in community decisions, and even greater gender equity.
Yet Eva Meemken, an agricultural economist currently at Cornell University, noticed a blind spot in all that research: "They mostly look at farmers. Almost nobody looks at workers" on those farms, she says.
Meemken spent several months filling in that blind spot, interviewing farmers and their hired workers in 50 different cocoa-growing cooperatives in Ivory Coast. About half of the cooperatives are Fair Trade-certified; the other half are not.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Guardian
The 15-year-old American Cori Gauff produced one of the biggest opening-day upsets in Wimbledon history on Monday as she upended five-times champion Venus Williams 6-4, 6-4 in the first round.
The teenager, the youngest player ever to qualify for the main draw, played brilliantly throughout and kept her nerve as she ousted the 39-year-old on Court No 1 in what was her debut performance in a grand slam event.
As Williams final forehand fell short in the net, Gauff crouched down at the back of the court, head in hands. “Honestly I don’t really know how to feel,” she said. “This was definitely the first time I ever cried after winning a match. I don’t even know how to explain how I feel.
“I had to tell myself to stay calm, I’d never played on a court so big. I had to remind myself that the lines are the same size.”
Williams had won four of her seven grand slam titles before Gauff, nicknamed Coco, was even born. The 15-year-old, who won the junior title at the French Open 12 months ago, has been tipped for the top for some time and she didn’t disappoint, serving beautifully, covering the court with effortless ease.