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.
I have to pack and tighten up the house a bit before I fly to Philly for Netroots Nation in the morning so...this will be shorter than usual, tonight.
Chicago Sun-Times: Alligator rescue underway in the Humboldt Park Lagoon by Tom Ackerman and David Struett
Yes, an alligator was seen swimming in the Humboldt Park Lagoon.
No, authorities don’t know how it got there.
And yes, definitely, they are trying to catch it — with a little help from a guy called “Alligator Bob.”
Onlookers had been speculating since Tuesday morning if the reports of the alligator were true. Some witnesses said they saw the creature lift its head above water. One person pointed from the shore and said, “Look, did you see it?”
By the evening, Chicago police confirmed that a 4-foot-long alligator was indeed inside the lagoon. Animal experts watched video purported to show the alligator and verified it was real.
The reptile would be trapped overnight and relocated to a zoo for veterinary evaluation, police said in a news conference.
Philadelphia Inquirer: After Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf announces $90 million to upgrade voting machines, GOP pushes back by Sasha Hupka and Jonathan Lai
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced a $90 million bond issue Tuesday to fund a statewide voting machine upgrade effort that he ordered more than a year ago to ensure that every vote cast creates a paper trail that can be checked by voters and audited.
Republicans who control the state legislature pushed back immediately, questioning the legality of Wolf’s maneuver.
The new money would cover around 60 percent of the estimated $150 million cost for the state’s 67 counties, and answer to months of uncertainty over funding.
“Everybody in this building recognizes that we’ve got to support the counties,” Wolf said. “This cannot be an unfunded mandate.”
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor (R., York), however, called it an “executive overreach.”
“So far, the governor has not stated his legal authority to bond $90 million without legislative approval,” he said in a statement.
Sacramento Bee: Never mind those earthquakes: Atmospheric rivers could put Sacramento 30 feet under water by Candace Wang
The biggest freshwater rivers on Earth don’t flow along the planet’s surface.
Instead, they surge and whip through the atmosphere thousands of feet above our heads, carrying 2½ times the amount of water that gushes through the Amazon River at any given time.
They’re called atmospheric rivers, or, more aptly, rivers in the sky.
These rivers are capable of burying Sacramento under 30 feet of water.
A research team led by Sasha Gershunov at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego published a new study on atmospheric rivers in Nature Scientific Reports this week that places atmospheric rivers under scrutiny as the driving cause behind California’s increasingly extreme, infrequent bouts of precipitation.
Gershunov’s team used 16 global climate models to analyze the expanding role of atmospheric rivers as contributors to precipitation in California. The results show that atmospheric rivers are getting stronger and wetter, and catastrophic events like the Great Flood of 1862 could happen again.
“In 1862, Sacramento was underwater,” Gershunov said. “It was most certainly due to an atmospheric river.”
Buzzfeed: "Tiger Mandingo,” Who Got 30 Years For Not Telling Sex Partners He Had HIV, Is Free 25 Years Early by Steven Thrasher
BOONVILLE, Missouri — Michael Johnson, who was sentenced to an unprecedented 30.5 years for failing to disclose his HIV status to his sexual partners, was released today, 25 years early, after an appeals court condemned his original trial as “fundamentally unfair.”
“I feel great,” Johnson said with a big smile as he left Boonville Correctional Center on Tuesday, sweating in the intense Missouri heat. “Leaving prison is such a great feeling.”
Handed a cellphone to call his parole officer, Johnson looked at it and said, “When you get arrested and have your phone taken away, you have dreams when you think your phone is ringing.”
Johnson, a onetime college wrestler who was known online as “Tiger Mandingo,” was arrested in October 2013 for “recklessly” transmitting HIV to two men and exposing four others to it. Johnson is black, and four of the six men were white. As chronicled in a BuzzFeed News investigation, his trial was racially charged, and jurors were shown images of his penis. Despite an absence of genetic fingerprinting to connect him to the other men’s HIV strains, he was convicted of one of the two transmission cases and of all four exposure cases. The resulting sentence was longer than the state average for second-degree murder — though he is not accused of killing anyone.
Dallas Morning News: Ross Perot, self-made billionaire, patriot and philanthropist, dies at 89 by Cheryl Hall
Ross Perot, self-made billionaire, renowned patriot and two-time independent candidate for U.S. president, has died after a five-month battle with leukemia.
He was 89.
The pioneer of the computer services industry, who founded Electronic Data Systems Corp. in 1962 and Perot Systems Corp. 26 years later, was just 5-foot-6, but his presence filled a room.
"Describe my father?" Ross Perot Jr., his only son and CEO of the Perot Group, asked rhetorically in an interview. "Obviously a great family man, wonderful father. But at the end of the day, he was a wonderful humanitarian.
"Every day he came to work trying to figure out how he could help somebody."
Perot was diagnosed with leukemia in February. A massive secondary infection the next month nearly killed him, according to the family.
Bloomberg: DNA-Testing Service Exposed Thousands of Customer Records Online by Nico Grant
DNA-testing service Vitagene Inc. left thousands of client health reports exposed online for years, the kind of incident that privacy advocates have warned about as gene testing has become increasingly popular.
More than 3,000 user files remained accessible to the public on Amazon Web Services cloud-computer servers until July 1, when Vitagene was notified of the issue and shut down external access to the sensitive personal information, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg. The genealogy reports included customers’ full names alongside dates of birth and gene-based health information, such as their likelihood of developing certain medical conditions, a review of the documents showed.
Vitagene said that the files dated from when the company was in “beta” testing and represented a small fraction of its customer base.
Reuters: Trump associate Sater, House panel spar over his testimony by Jan Wolfe and Nathan Lane
(Reuters) - Russian-born real estate developer Felix Sater, who worked on a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow, testified on Tuesday before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, but a panel spokesman said he had not fully cooperated.
Sater said he spoke “fully and completely” about the unbuilt Moscow tower, which Donald Trump pursued while running for president despite denying at the time any links to Russia.
“All of the knowledge I had about the deal I revealed to the committee,” Sater said. “I answered every question that was asked of me.”
Patrick Boland, a spokesman for the committee, disputed Sater’s assertion that he testified fully.
We “must correct the record,” Boland said. “Mr. Sater has not fully cooperated with the committee, and he will remain under subpoena until he does so.”
Guardian: Bitter blue-on-blue as Hunt and Johnson clash on live TV by Jessica Elgot
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt escalated the blue-on-blue warfare in Tuesday night’s televised debate, trading blows on which potential prime minister could see through a no-deal Brexit, as Hunt repeatedly emphasised his rival’s refusal to answer questions.
The bitter back-and-forth, which will raise questions over whether Hunt could serve in a Johnson government after the aspersions he cast on his rival, saw the foreign secretary accuse Johnson of putting personal ambition above the welfare of the country.
In the hour-long ITV broadcast, Johnson swerved questions repeatedly on whether he would resign if he failed to deliver Brexit by 31 October and declined to condemn Donald Trump for his attacks on the British ambassador.
Johnson also gave equivocal answers on issues including HS2, Heathrow’s third runway, and abortion and LGBT rights in Northern Ireland.
Johnson said that committing to resign if he fell short of his Brexit promise would play into the hands of the EU, and he also refused to rule out proroguing parliament to deliver no deal, calling it “absolutely bizarre” to take the option off the table.
DW: Mexico's Finance Minister Carlos Urzua quits
Mexican Finance Minister Carlos Urzua offered his resignation on Tuesday, citing conflicts of interest within President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's administration.
Urzua tweeted: "There were too many disagreements in economic matters. Some of those were because in this administration public policy decisions have been taken without sufficient substance."
The 64-year-old was also critical of Obrador's recruitment policy with the "unacceptable hiring of officials with no knowledge of the Public Treasury."
"This was caused by influential people in the current government with a patent conflict of interests," added Urzua, without specifying exactly whom he was referring to.
AlJazeera: Nigeria: Parliament on lockdown after shots fired by Eromo Egbejule
Nigeria's National Assembly was on lockdown on Tuesday after shots were fired outside during clashes between police and a group of Shia Muslim protesters.
Police used tear gas on the protesters and smoke could be seen rising from the area.
The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), a group that represents Nigeria's minority Shia Muslims, tried to enter the complex, sparking the confrontation with police.
IMN members protest regularly outside the National Assembly in the capital, Abuja, calling for the release of their leader, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, who has been in detention since 2015.
Hollywood Reporter: Lester Holt to Receive Walter Cronkite Journalism Award
Arizona State University is awarding its 2019 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to Lester Holt, news anchor for NBC.
Holt has anchored NBC's flagship Nightly News broadcast since 2015, following eight years as anchor of the newscast's weekend edition and 12 years as co-anchor of Weekend Today.
The university's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication announced Tuesday that Holt will receive the award Nov. 4 in Phoenix.
Cronkite dean Christopher Callahan called Holt "a fantastic role model for our students and all journalists for his insightful, caring, fact-based journalism and stories that focus on the impact of major news events on everyday Americans."
And prior to Weekend Today, Holt anchored the desk at WBBM-TV in Chicago for 12 years...always like to see those newscasters in Chicago going on to bigger and better things.
Everyone have a great evening!