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.
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US NEWS
The Guardian
All men are created equal. But one is created more equal than others. And his name is Donald Trump.
The US president’s unique interpretation of the declaration of independence was on full display on Thursday when he staged a militaristic, jingoistic and untraditional jamboree at the Lincoln memorial in Washington to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Trump did not fulfil his critics’ worst fears of a politically partisan, campaign-style rally with his “Salute to America” event. Indeed, in a rare plea for unity as he spoke beneath the statue of Abraham Lincoln, he told the crowd: “We are one people chasing one dream and one magnificent destiny. We all share the same heroes, the same home, the same heart, and we are all made by the same almighty God.”
The president did, however, provide the bombastic show of military might that had been widely predicted. Whereas he once liked to build suspense as host of the reality TV show The Apprentice, Trump now has the world’s most fearsome arsenal at his disposal – and he showed it off.
The Guardian (7/3/2019)
Donald Trump plans to go on the offensive against criticism of his industry-friendly rollbacks of environment protections in a speech on Monday, according to three sources familiar with the plans.
Trump will tout America’s clean air and water, although his administration has advanced many efforts that experts say have undercut the country’s environmental record.
As Democrats make the environment and the climate crisis key to their presidential campaigns, Republicans are feeling pressure from voters from across the political spectrum who worry about the planet and public health.
Trump has little to point to in terms of environmental achievements. He could discuss a US effort to clean up marine debris, much of which is coming from Asia. The issue could fit well with Republican arguments that developing nations like China are currently contributing far more to the climate crisis than the US.
The Guardian
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, hit out at the Democratic party’s left wing on Friday, suggesting firebrand progressives cannot win in battleground states.
Biden meanwhile admitted he wasn’t prepared for the attack by risingchallenger Senator Kamala Harris on his historic handling of race issues in the first primary debates last week – and said Donald Trump was a bully and he would “smack him in the mouth”.
The former vice-president, sounding defensive and angry at times, casual and confident at others, suggested the policies of the new socialist-leaning breakout stars of the party, such as the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would not prevail in key swing states needed to retake the White House for the Democrats in 2020.
Seeking to reignite his campaign after a faltering performance in the first presidential primary debates, Biden suggested policies from “way left” did not have widespread support.
“It’s centre-left, that’s where I am,” he said of the Democratic party, during an interview with CNN broadcast on Friday morning.
NPR
Facing persecution, violence, lack of health care and myriad other barriers to safety, millions of refugees leave home each year seeking a better life in a different country.
As of 2017, more than 2 million Somalis have been displaced, in one of the world's worst refugee crises, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Aden Batar, 52, was born in Baidoa, Somalia. After civil war broke out in 1990, staying in the country became virtually impossible for his young family.
"We had to flee our home due to heavy artillery fire," Aden says. "For the next two years, my family and I were in hiding, moving from place to place."
Aden's decision to leave Somalia was ultimately influenced by a family tragedy.
His eldest son, Mohamed, suffered injuries from a household accident involving boiled water when he was 2. Because of the war, Aden could not take him to a hospital for treatment. Mohamed died five days later.
Aden decided then to move to the U.S., where he became one of the first Somalis to resettle in the state of Utah.
Reuters
(Reuters) - An Oregon state senator who was among Republican lawmakers who fled the Capitol last month to scuttle a vote on a bill to fight climate change faces a conduct hearing over remarks tinged with threats of violence about any efforts to force the senators to return.
Senator Brian Boquist, who is a former U.S. Army special forces officer, ahead of the Republicans’ departure said on June 19 to the state Senate’s Democratic president: “If you send the State Police to get me, hell is coming to visit you personally.”
[...]
Boquist also told a reporter from a Portland television station that if police came looking for him, “Send bachelors and come heavily armed.”
The Senate Special Committee agenda for Monday calls for its two Democrats and two Republicans to consider a recommendation from an outside counsel that Boquist not be allowed to return to the “workplace” during an investigation.
WORLD NEWS
DW News
There is little hope a key nuclear arms treaty can be saved, as Russia refuses to come back into compliance, says NATO's Jens Stoltenberg. He spoke after a NATO-Russia Council meeting on the INF arms control treaty.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a key Cold War-era deal between the Soviet Union and the US on limiting the use of ballistic and cruise missiles, is in serious jeopardy as Russia still refuses to comply, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday.
"We didn't see any sign of Russia being willing to come back into compliance with the INF treaty," he told reporters after a closed-door meeting of the NATO-Russia Council.
The "ongoing Russian violation" was the only reason the 1987 treaty was under threat, he added.
DW News
The German lender is planning to cut thousands of jobs and shed whole business lines as part of a major reorganization. Analysts say cost cutting alone is not going to rid Deutsche Bank of its current woes.
Less than a decade after giving its US rivals — then reeling from the global financial crisis — a run for their money, Deutsche Bank is significantly scaling back its global ambitions.
The troubled German lender is planning to cut 15,000 to 20,000 jobs — about a fifth of its global workforce — as Chief Executive Christian Sewing seeks to stop the bleeding at the lender's beleaguered investment banking division, which contributed more than half of the bank's revenue last year.
The bank is also in talks with Citigroup, BNP Paribas and others to sell parts of its once-prized US equities business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The business posts annual pre-tax losses of €200 million ($225.8 million) to €300 million, according to a JP Morgan estimate.
Deutsche, which was the world's biggest bank by assets at its peak, is reported to be working on setting up a so-called bad bank to house between €30 billion and €50 billion of riskier assets.
DW News
Prosecutors in Dresden have begun an investigation into Pegida supporters who scoffed at the murder of Walter Lübcke, likely at the hands of a far-right extremist. Supporters said he had it coming.
State prosecutors in the eastern German city of Dresden in Saxony announced on Friday that they had begun investigations against far-right activists for publicly condoning criminal activities. They left the door open to possible charges of incitement to violence and disparaging the name of a deceased person.
Spokesman Lorenz Haase said the State Prosecutors' Office had initiated the investigation on its own, adding that he could not say whether any further complaints had been filed.
The move came in reaction to interviews conducted by German public television channel ARD at a weekly anti-immigrant Pegida rally in Dresden on Monday.
Reporters from the monthly ARD show "Kontraste" asked supporters about their thoughts on the June murder of regional Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician Walter Lübcke and broadcast their reactions to a national audience on Thursday evening.
Al Jazeera
Sudan’s ruling generals and a coalition of protest and opposition groups have reached an agreement to share power during a transition period until elections, in a deal that could break weeks of political deadlock since the overthrowing of autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April.
Both sides agreed to establish a joint military-civilian sovereign council that will rule the country by rotation "for a period of three years or slightly more", Mohamed Hassan Lebatt, African Union (AU) mediator, said at a news conference on Friday.
Under the agreement, five seats would go to the military and five to civilians, with an additional seat given to a civilian agreed upon by both sides
The ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the civilian leaders also agreed to launch a "transparent and independent investigation" into the violence that began on June 3 when scores of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed in a brutal military crackdown on a protest camp in the capital, Khartoum.
Al Jazeera
The head of Iran’s elite National Guard said the United States is worried about the prospect of war with Iran and has instead pursued an economic conflict.
Major-General Hossein Salami on Wednesday said Iran had "completely closed the path for the enemy" in the military sphere, Iran's Fars news agency reported.
"In the current situation it is the enemies who are worried about the outbreak of war and this worry is apparent in their physical and tactical behaviour... At the current crossroads, economic war is the main field for the enemy to confront us," he said.
Tensions have soared between Washington and Tehran since President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of a nuclear deal last year and reimposed sanctions on Tehran in a bid to reduce international sales of Iranian oil to zero.
ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Raw Story
“This is unprecedented. I tease people that Anchorage is the coolest city in the country—and climatically that is true—but right now we are seeing record heat,” said Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz
With Alaska in the midst of an unprecedented heat wave that experts say is driven by the climate crisis, Anchorage—the state’s largest city—reached an all-time high temperature of 90 degrees on Thursday.
“At 5 pm [Thursday] afternoon, Anchorage International Airport officially hit 90 degrees for the first time on record,” the Anchorage National Weather Service announced in a tweet early Friday.
“We are in a climate emergency, America,” wrote meteorologist Eric Holthaus in response to the news.
Climate Central
(6/26/2019)
America’s inland streams, the Great Lakes, and coastal waters are heating up—spelling trouble for fish and the nation’s$46.1 billion dollar recreational fishing industry.
Data analyzed by Climate Central show that water temperatures in the Great Lakes and coastal surface waters are warming throughout the United States, as well as in many freshwater streams. Those warming waters are impacting the health of fish, their ecosystems, and the economies that depend on them.
Many fish are sensitive to temperature and can survive only in specific temperature ranges. As waters in oceans, streams, and the Great Lakes warm, fish seek out cooler waters in higher latitudes or elevation, or when possible, in greater depths. But there are limitations to how far north, or high in elevation, fish can travel before running out of water, let alone water in a suitable temperature zone. Also, water composition changes with rising temperatures. For example, oxygen levels drop and algae blooms grow.
In addition to the direct impacts of hotter water, rising temperatures contribute to more heavy rainfall, which leads to increased runoff that washes pollutants and nutrients into waterways. Warmer winters and earlier springs also result in decreased snowpack, removing a source of cool water to replenish streams, rivers, and lakes in the Western U.S., accelerating the warming of waterways.
DW News (7/4/2019)
In a world first, scientists in the US were able to completely remove HIV from a living animal using gene editing. The research is a major milestone, giving hope that a cure could be on the horizon.
Mice infected with HIV ended up virus-free after US researchers were able to remove it from their cells for the first time, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications this week.
Researchers at Temple University in Pennsylvania and the University of Nebraska developed a two-step approach to eliminate the AIDS-causing virus from the genomes of the mice.
In the first part of the treatment, a special slow-release form of antiretroviral medication (known as LASER ART) was administered. The drugs halt the progress of HIV by targeting the virus' lifecycle, but they do not eliminate it.
In the second part, scientists used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to remove HIV DNA from infected cells.
Over a third of the mice examined in the study had no signs of HIV DNA in their cells following the combination treatment.
The Guardian
The ancient city of Babylon and an Icelandic national park replete with glaciers, ice caves and volcanoes are among the sites that have been added to Unesco’s world heritage list.
More than 1,000 sites around the world – some cultural, some natural, some both – are protected by listing. Landmarks or areas are chosen for their value to humanity.
On Friday, the World Heritage Committee announced the addition of the first of this year’s batch. More sites will be named over the weekend.
Perhaps the most famous site to be added to the list is the city of Babylon in Iraq. The city was first mentioned in the 23rd century BC and may have been home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – the Hanging Gardens.
But while Babylon has a history dazzling with palaces and temples, there is little to see of its oldest era and what is left has sustained substantial damage. Saddam Hussein built a replica palace there, while US-led military forces in the area during the Iraq war crushed ancient pavements with their vehicles and filled sandbags with material that included archeological fragments.
NPR
Mameyes is a small community of about a thousand people high in Puerto Rico's central mountains. But in its own way, it's one of the leaders of Puerto Rico's energy future.
Francisco Valentin grew up in Mameyes where he runs a small store. Even before Maria he had big ambitions for his town. After Maria, he knew he wanted his community to run on solar power and with the help of foundations, charities and the University of Puerto Rico — not the government — he's done that, converting the town's school, health clinic and several other buildings.
The move to solar was important, Valentine says, because after Maria it took months before power was restored to the area. This makes Mameyes self-sufficient and able to respond to residents' needs in future disasters. "The whole school is fully solar energy" and can serve as a shelter, he says.