These are some of tonight’s news:
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'Progressives Won't Leave Working Families Behind': Jayapal Stands Ground Against Pelosi-Biden
- Glasgow summit raises stakes for Biden deal
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Biden arrives in Rome as domestic agenda still unfulfilled
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China offers few new climate targets ahead of UN conference
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Oil giants deny spreading disinformation on climate change
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Florida sues Biden over contractor vaccine mandate
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US to pay $88M to families, victims of SC church massacre
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Violence targeting Indigenous people surges 61 percent in Brazil
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Russia ‘weaponising’ gas supply in Moldova dispute, EU says
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Ali al-Nimr: Saudi child protester who faced death penalty released
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California school safety officer charged with murder after fatally shooting 18-year-old woman
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American flight diverted after passenger assaults attendant, airline says
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PA Boy Who Survived Crocodile Attack Going As One For Halloween
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Photographer Captures the Incredible Peak of a Meteor Shower as Sparks Are Seen Shooting Across the Night Sky
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, 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.
Common Dreams
'Progressives Won't Leave Working Families Behind': Jayapal Stands Ground Against Pelosi-Biden
In the wake of President Joe Biden's announcement Thursday of a new framework for a dramatically pared-down Build Back Better package, disappointed but resolute progressives vowed they "won't leave working families behind" and reasserted that the budget reconciliation and much narrower infrastructure bills must be passed in tandem.
"Progressives won't leave working families behind," insisted Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) "We've been clear since the spring: the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better Act pass together—and that hasn’t changed."
While Jayapal said that members of the Progressive Caucus "enthusiastically" endorsed the "many good things" in the framework announced by Biden, she expressed hope that Democrats in the Senate would still be able to save certain elements of the package, including prescription drug pricing.
The Hill
Glasgow summit raises stakes for Biden deal
Next month’s climate summit in Glasgow has significantly raised the stakes for Democrats to reach a deal on President Biden’s social spending measure, which the White House wants to tout as a U.S. achievement on the international stage.
Sending Biden to Scotland without anything close to a deal would land another blow on a president already suffering from falling approval ratings that have not been helped by the Democratic infighting over his agenda.
Lawmakers expressing optimism this week that a deal could be reached highlighted the summit, saying they wanted to help Biden deliver.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who plans to attend the conference in Glasgow along with several of his Senate Democratic colleagues said it will be “critical” to get “an agreement in principle next week that clearly articulates what we’re committed to and how that will build momentum” to address global warming.
AP News
Biden arrives in Rome as domestic agenda still unfulfilled
President Joe Biden promised to show the world that democracies can work to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As he prepares to push that message at a pair of global summits, his case could hinge on what’s happening in Washington, where he was struggling to finalize a major domestic legislative package.
After a fitful day of talks over the fate of twin infrastructure and social spending bills that he cast as a choice between “leading the world, or letting the world pass us by,” Biden landed in Rome aboard Air Force One in the dark early Friday with the answer still undetermined.
Headed first to a Group of 20 summit in Rome and then to Glasgow, Scotland, for a U.N. climate summit, Biden will be pressed to deliver concrete ideas for stopping a global pandemic, boosting economic growth and halting the acceleration of climate change. Those stakes might seem a bit high for a pair of two-day gatherings attended by the global elite and their entourages. But it’s written right into the slogan for the meeting in Rome: “People, Planet, Prosperity.”
China offers few new climate targets ahead of UN conference
China is offering no significant new goals for reducing climate-changing emissions ahead of the UN climate summit set to start next week in Glasgow.
China, the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause global warming, formally submitted its goals Thursday. The highly-anticipated announcement includes targets previously established in speeches by President Xi Jinping and domestic policy documents.
China says it aims to reach peak emissions of carbon dioxide — which is produced mainly through burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation, electric power and manufacturing — “before 2030.” The country is aiming for “carbon neutrality” — no net emissions of CO2 — before 2060.
Oklahoma resumes executions, kills inmate for 1998 slaying
Oklahoma ended a six-year moratorium on executions Thursday, administering the death penalty on a man who convulsed and vomited as he was executed for the 1998 slaying of a prison cafeteria worker.
John Marion Grant, 60, who was strapped to a gurney inside the execution chamber, began convulsing and vomiting after the first drug, the sedative midazolam, was administered. Several minutes later, two members of the execution team wiped the vomit from his face and neck.
Before the curtain was raised to allow witnesses to see into the execution chamber, Grant could be heard yelling, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He delivered a stream of profanities before the lethal injection started. He was declared unconscious about 15 minutes after the first of three drugs was administered and declared dead about six minutes after that, at 4:21 p.m.
Legal experts see strong self-defense claim for Rittenhouse
When Kyle Rittenhouse goes on trial Monday for shooting three men during street protests in Wisconsin that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake last summer, he’ll argue that he fired in self-defense.
Legal experts say under Wisconsin law he has a strong case. What’s less clear is whether prosecutors will be able to persuade the jury that Rittenhouse created a deadly situation by showing up in Kenosha with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle — and that in doing so he forfeited his claim to self-defense.
Rittenhouse, 18, of Antioch, Illinois, faces six counts including homicide charges in the Aug. 25, 2020, deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and he could face life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge.
Rittenhouse, then 17, was among people who responded to calls on social media to travel to Kenosha bearing weapons to protect the city from damaging protests that followed a white police officer shooting Blake, a Black man, in the back on Aug. 23. (A prosecutor later cleared the officer, ruling that Blake was turning toward the officer with a knife.)
Oil giants deny spreading disinformation on climate change
Top executives of ExxonMobil and other oil giants denied spreading disinformation about climate change as they sparred Thursday with congressional Democrats over allegations that the industry concealed evidence about the dangers of global warming.
Testifying at a landmark House hearing, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said the company “has long acknowledged the reality and risks of climate change, and it has devoted significant resources to addressing those risks.″
The oil giant’s public statements on climate “are and have always been truthful, fact-based ... and consistent” with mainstream climate science, Woods said.
Democrats immediately challenged the statements by Woods and other oil executives, accusing them of engaging in a decades-long, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming.
Pandemic restrictions fuel recall efforts on fall ballots
Hospitals in Missouri were inundated with COVID-19 patients last summer when a group opposed to a mask mandate that had already expired gathered enough signatures to trigger a recall vote against the mayor who enacted it.
Now the question about Mayor Brian Steele is on the ballot Tuesday in the small city of Nixa. Meanwhile in Kansas, voters will decide whether to recall a school board member who backed a mask mandate. And in Anchorage, Alaska, a member of the city’s governing body has been targeted for removal because, according to critics, she was the 15th person at a public meeting where 14 was the limit under COVID-19 protocols.
Across the country, dozens of recall campaigns are underway, many led by people who oppose any COVID-19-related rules. The recalls illustrate the contentiousness that has upended usually sleepy school board and city council meetings. The tension is almost sure to last into 2022, when more recall efforts are expected in the spring.
I hope all these recalls fail!
Florida sues Biden over contractor vaccine mandate
The state of Florida on Thursday sued President Joe Biden’s administration over its coronavirus vaccine mandate for federal contractors, opening yet another battleground between Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the White House.
The lawsuit, announced by DeSantis at a news conference, alleges the president doesn’t have the authority to issue the rule and that it violates procurement law.
DeSantis has vowed legal action over federal vaccination requirements and fought masking and vaccine rules implemented by local governments in Florida. He recently announced he would call state lawmakers to the Capitol next month to pass legislation to combat vaccine mandates enacted by private businesses. DeSantis is eyeing a possible 2024 presidential run and has been consistent in his criticism of Biden’s handling of the pandemic and other issues.
US to pay $88M to families, victims of SC church massacre
Families of nine victims killed in a racist attack at a Black South Carolina church have reached a settlement with the Justice Department over a faulty background check that allowed Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the 2015 massacre.
The Justice Department will pay $88 million, which includes $63 million for the families of the nine people killed and $25 million for five survivors who were inside the church at the time of the shooting, it was announced Thursday.
Bakari Sellers, an attorney who helped broker the agreement, told The Associated Press the “88” figure was purposeful. It’s a number typically associated with white supremacy and the number of bullets Roof said he had taken with him to the attack.
US economy slowed to a 2% rate last quarter in face of COVID
Hampered by rising COVID-19 cases and persistent supply shortages, the U.S. economy slowed sharply to a 2% annual growth rate in the July-September period, the weakest quarterly expansion since the recovery from the pandemic recession began last year.
Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department estimated that the nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — declined from robust growth rates of 6.7% in the second quarter and 6.3% in the first quarter, gains that had been fueled by vast infusions of federal rescue aid.
The 2% annual growth last quarter fell below expectations and would have been even weaker if not for an increase in restocking by businesses, which added whatever supplies they could obtain. Such inventory rebuilding added 2.1 percentage points to the quarter’s modest expansion.
Al Jazeera News
Violence targeting Indigenous people surges 61 percent in Brazil
Violence against Indigenous people in Brazil surged by more than 60 percent last year, a rights group has said, as land invasions of Indigenous territories increased and the government failed to provide protection.
In its annual report, released on Thursday, on violence against the descendants of Brazil’s original inhabitants, the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) said there were 182 murders of Indigenous people in 2020, compared with 113 murders in 2019, a 61 percent increase.
There were 263 reported land invasions of Indigenous territories, CIMI said, an “alarming” increase of 137 percent over the previous year.
The report blamed the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro for failing to protect Indigenous communities, while pushing legislation that would open their reservations to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration and the building of hydroelectric dams.
The price of truth: Al Jazeera marks 25 dangerous years
As Al Jazeera is set to mark its 25th anniversary on November 1, the history of the media network is beset with the inherent risks, obstacles and outright attacks it had to weather in the world’s most strife-stricken places.
The dangers faced by Al Jazeera included multiple threats to shut down its bureaus and the killing or detention of its front-line journalists. They ranged from phone hacking and network-wide cyber-attacks, to state-sanctioned satellite scrambling and outright aerial bombardments on bureau locations.
First independent news channel in the Arab world
Al Jazeera launched its first TV broadcast as an Arabic-language satellite news channel in 1996 from Doha, Qatar — dedicated to providing comprehensive news and live debate as the first independent news channel in the Arab world.
EU top military official voices support for Bosnia’s joint forces
The European Union’s top military official has voiced support for the unified Bosnian armed forces on Thursday, after Serb leader Milorad Dodik had threatened to pull the Serb component out of the forces and form an exclusively Serb army within Bosnia.
The formation of the country’s joint armed forces (OSBiH), incorporating Serb, Croat and Bosniak components that fought each other in a 1990s war, has been praised as the greatest achievement since the conflict, in which about 100,000 died.
The 1995 Dayton peace accords split Bosnia along ethnic lines into two highly autonomous regions, the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Federation shared by Croats and Bosniaks, linked via a weak central government that has been strengthened during the years in order for the state to be functional.
Russia ‘weaponising’ gas supply in Moldova dispute, EU says
The European Union’s top diplomat has accused Russia of using natural gas to bully neighbouring Moldova in remarks that are likely to worsen simmering tensions between Moscow and the bloc.
Thursday’s comments by Josep Borrell came after several days of heated dispute between Chisinau and Moscow over the energy supply issue, which initially flared up at the end of September when Moldova’s contract with Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom expired.
Russia had supplied all of Moldova’s natural gas until then, but efforts to clinch a renewed deal fell through when Gazprom proposed a price rise and Moldova baulked at paying the increased rate.
France seizes British trawler as post-Brexit fishing row spirals
France has seized one British trawler for operating in its territorial waters without a licence and fined another as a bitter dispute with the United Kingdom over post-Brexit access to fishing grounds escalates.
The French maritime ministry said the ships were cautioned during checks by maritime police on fishing vessels off the northern port of Le Havre overnight on Wednesday, hours after Paris warned it needed to “speak the language of strength” with London amid the smouldering row and warned of impending sanctions.
The seized trawler, now under the control of French judicial authorities, did not have proof it was allowed to fish in French waters, the maritime ministry said.
The Guardian
DNA from Sitting Bull’s hair confirms US man is his great-grandson
A sample of Sitting Bull’s hair has helped scientists confirm that a South Dakota man is the famed 19th-century Native American leader’s great-grandson using a new method to analyse family lineages with DNA fragments from long-dead people.
Researchers said on Wednesday that DNA extracted from the hair, which had been stored at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, confirmed the familial relationship between Sitting Bull, who died in 1890, and Ernie LaPointe, 73, of Lead, South Dakota.
“I feel this DNA research is another way of identifying my lineal relationship to my great-grandfather,” said LaPointe, who has three sisters. “People have been questioning our relationship to our ancestor as long as I can remember. These people are just a pain in the place you sit - and will probably doubt these findings, also.”
BBC News
Ali al-Nimr: Saudi child protester who faced death penalty released
Ali al-Nimr was 17 when he was detained in 2012 during anti-government protests by the kingdom's Shia Muslim minority.
In 2014, a court condemned him to death by "crucifixion" - beheading followed by the public display of his body.
The sentence was commuted in February after the king ended the death penalty for some crimes committed by children.
Saudi Arabia is among the world's major executioners. It put to death at least 40 people between January and July - more than during the whole of last year, when it held the presidency of the G20.
Channel News Asia
‘Bangkok is ready’: Thai capital gears up to welcome international tourists without quarantine in November
The well-trodden streets of Bangkok have been empty of foreign tourists.
Their absence paints a stark contrast for the residents to what their city used to be like before the pandemic. The difference is especially noticeable for those whose livelihoods rely on tourism.
“Last year, I barely had any customers,” said Peerasith Seemoolsathien in an old shophouse dating back a century.
Located in Bangkok’s old quarter, the building has withstood the test of time, providing a unique space of relaxation and comfort to global travellers who were drawn by its history and vintage charm
ABC News
California school safety officer charged with murder after fatally shooting 18-year-old woman
A California school safety officer has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed woman.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced the charge against former Long Beach Unified School safety officer Eddie Gonzalez, whose arraignment is scheduled for Friday at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Long Beach Branch. The case remains under investigation by Long Beach police.
"We must hold accountable the people we have placed in positions of trust to protect us," Gascón said in a statement. "That is especially true for the armed personnel we traditionally have relied upon to guard our children on their way to and from and at school."
NBC News
American flight diverted after passenger assaults attendant, airline says
An American Airlines flight was diverted Wednesday evening after a passenger reportedly assaulted a flight attendant.
Flight 976 had departed New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and was headed to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, but was diverted to Denver because of the incident, the airline said.
Law enforcement apprehended the passenger at the gate, according to American Airlines.
The airline did not provide additional details or the flight attendant's condition.
Patch.com News
PA Boy Who Survived Crocodile Attack Going As One For Halloween
A 12-year-old Philadelphia boy is recovering after being attacked by a crocodile in Mexico.
Charlie Buhl was on vacation with his mother Jennifer Buhl and brother Johnny when a crocodile attacked his leg on June 18, according to Buhl, who shared the harrowing tale on her company's blog last month.
Buhl wrote the family was at Club Med in Cancun, Mexico when the attack happened.
She was eating at a restaurant in the club when someone told her Charlie had been attacked and rushed to a lagoon area of the resort.
Good New Network
Photographer Captures the Incredible Peak of a Meteor Shower as Sparks Are Seen Shooting Across the Night Sky
A photographer captured the incredible peak of a meteor shower—as sparks are seen shooting across the night sky.
31-year-old Uroš Fink photographed the annual Perseid meteor shower, which takes place every summer, from a mountain in Slovenia.
His image shows the colorful Milky Way dotted with nebulas as the Perseid meteors shoot across the night sky.
The Perseids “are considered the best meteor shower of the year,” according to NASA. You can be anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere to enjoy this show of speed and light.