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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Chicago Sun-Times: From mask must to mask ask: Chicago adopts CDC guidelines, but still advises covering your face by Mitchell Armentrout
Chicago’s top doctor would love for fully vaccinated residents to keep wearing their masks, but she’s not telling them they must.
Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady on Tuesday announced the city will follow the state by falling in line with controversial new guidelines set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that allow immunized people to roam restaurants, stores and most other settings without a mask — even though there’s no surefire way to verify a person’s vaccination status.
“Enforcement is a challenge,” Arwady said at a City Hall news conference. ”Part of the decision here around moving from a mask mandate to a mask advisory is recognizing that much of the country at this point has really moved away from mandates. … At some level here, we are really needing folks to be doing the right thing.”
That means the honor system will be in place for most venues except buildings owned by the city of Chicago, plus health care settings, schools, public transit and other “congregate settings” where masks are still required for all.
Boston Globe: Medical examiner rules that Mikayla Miller died by suicide by Zoe Greenberg and John Hillard
The state medical examiner ruled that Mikayla Miller, the 16-year-old whose body was found last month in Hopkinton, died by suicide, according to a death certificate obtained by the Globe.
A jogger discovered the teenager early on the morning of April 18 in the woods about a mile from Miller’s home, according to an affidavit filed by a Hopkinton police detective. She was hanging by a thin black belt attached to a tree. The death certificate says Miller died by hanging herself.
But it’s not clear that the new ruling will provide much closure. Miller’s death has laid bare profound distrust among some community members in authorities’ ability to adequately investigate the death of a young Black girl in a nearly all-white town. The hashtag #JusticeforMikaylaMiller has spread far beyond Massachusetts.
Police initially told Miller’s family she died by suicide, but her family questioned that assumption, saying that police and District Attorney Marian Ryan were silent and unhelpful even as the family begged for answers. In particular, Calvina Strothers, Miller’s mother, wanted police to investigate a physical altercation that Miller had been involved in the day before she died.
Memphis Commercial Appeal: Two governors visit Memphis as monthslong I-40 bridge repair begins by Katherine Burgess
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson visited Memphis on Tuesday to assess progress on the Hernando de Soto bridge repair and to address the need for federal action on infrastructure.
The two governors praised the work of local leadership and stressed that safety comes first as repairs are made on the Interstate 40 bridge.
A week ago, both river and interstate traffic were halted on and under the I-40 bridge after inspectors called 911 and reported a critical fracture in one of the bridge's support beams located near the center of the 'M' design.
By Friday, the Coast Guard gave the go-ahead for river traffic to resume, but it could be weeks, or even months, before vehicular traffic is allowed to resume on the bridge.
SFGate: Mountain lion spotted roaming San Francisco's Bernal Heights by Katie Dowd
A wayward mountain lion has been seen roaming San Francisco's busy Bernal Heights neighborhood, far from the quiet green spaces that it calls home.
The sightings, one from an eyewitness and another via home security video, were between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Tuesday. San Francisco Animal Care and Control spokesperson Deb Campbell said cougar sightings are not uncommon in the city but, upon investigation, many turn out to be ordinary pet cats. These sightings, on Gaven Street and near Bernal Heights Park, were the real deal, however.
"If we hadn’t seen him on that video, we might have thought it was a big, healthy house cat that the eyewitness saw," Campbell said.
Campbell said the mountain lion appeared to be a large size and was possibly an adult. A year ago, a mountain lion made it all the way to Mission Bay, but that individual was a gangly teen.
MLive: Judge dismisses final Michigan election fraud suit, says that doesn’t mean there weren’t problems by Gus Burns
The last of many election fraud lawsuits filed in Michigan following the November 2020 presidential election was dismissed by an Antrim County Circuit Court judge Tuesday.
Antrim County Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer, a former Republican state lawmaker, said the plaintiff, William Bailey of Central Lake Township, had either been granted what he sought or is not entitled to further relief in the case.
The last of many election fraud lawsuits filed in Michigan following the November 2020 presidential election was dismissed by an Antrim County Circuit Court judge Tuesday.
Antrim County Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer, a former Republican state lawmaker, said the plaintiff, William Bailey of Central Lake Township, had either been granted what he sought or is not entitled to further relief in the case.
Washington Post: Arizona Senate president says 2020 recount will proceed, despite angry objections from Maricopa County officials by Rosalind S. Helderman
The Republican president of the Arizona Senate said Tuesday that an audit of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County being conducted by private contractors will go forward, despite furious pushback from local GOP officials, who this week called the process a “sham” that is harming democracy.
At a meeting to discuss the recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots, Senate President Karen Fann said the process is necessary to answer constituent questions and bemoaned the county’s unwillingness to work with the contractors hired by the state Senate.
“Let’s get this thing done and get our questions answered and get it out to the public and let everybody know that our next election will be 100 percent safe and secure,” Fann said.
The audit is being led by a Florida company called Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has
previously promoted claims that the election was fraudulent. The process has been widely criticized as haphazard and insecure by election experts.
Mother Jones: At Least 81 Pro-Trump Rioters Are Charged With Assaulting Police on January 6 by A J Vicens
Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday threw cold water on plans for a bipartisan commission to investigate the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, announcing he would vote no. But even as McCarthy continued to lead a GOP effort to downplay and whitewash the insurrection, he held an event just last week in Washington, D.C., to “Back the Blue,” including honoring fallen Capitol Police officers who died in the aftermath of January 6. In his remarks at the police event, McCarthy made no specific mention of what happened at the Capitol four months ago, including the extensive violence against police at the hands of the pro-Trump mob.
According to a database of January 6 cases assembled and analyzed by Mother Jones, of the more than 450 defendants charged to date, at least 81 people are accused of assaulting police at the Capitol that day. The defendants allegedly used an array of weapons, from flag poles and fire extinguishers to their own fists. Many of the attacks were captured in video footage that circulated widely on social media. CBS News reported that more than 35 of the defendants are accused of using a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Roll Call: Citizenship rules eased for kids born abroad to same-sex couples by Suzanne Monyak
The State Department on Tuesday made it easier for American citizens who used reproductive technology, including many in same-sex marriages, to confer U.S. citizenship on children they had while abroad, scrapping a previous genetic requirement imposed under prior administrations.
Under the department’s new interpretation, children born abroad to married parents may be entitled to birthright citizenship as long as one parent is a U.S. citizen and the child is related either genetically, or gestationally, to one parent.
Critically, the department will no longer require the child to be biologically related to the American parent in order for that child to be recognized as a U.S. citizen at birth, an issue that had a disproportionate impact on gay couples.
This means children born abroad via surrogacy or through other forms of reproductive technology, using the sperm or egg of their non-American parent, for example, would still be entitled to birthright citizenship as long as their parents are married.
New York Times: Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter China by Catie Edmondson
WASHINGTON — An expansive bill that would pour $120 billon into jump-starting scientific innovation by strengthening research into cutting-edge technologies is barreling through the Senate, amid a rising sense of urgency in Congress to bolster the United States’ ability to compete with China.
At the heart of the sprawling legislation, known as the Endless Frontier Act, is an investment in the nation’s research and development into emerging sciences and manufacturing on a scale that its proponents say has not been seen since the Cold War. The Senate voted 86 to 11 on Monday to advance the bill past a procedural hurdle, with Democrats and Republicans united in support, and a vote to approve, along with a tranche of related China bills, is expected this month.
The nearly 600-page bill has moved swiftly through the Senate, powered by intensifying concerns in both parties about Beijing’s chokehold on critical supply chains. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the risks of China’s dominance, as health care workers have confronted medical supply shortages and a global semiconductor shortage has shut American automobile factories and slowed shipments of consumer electronics.
AFP/rFi: Hurricane Sandy: $8 bn in damage due to climate change
More than eight billion dollars of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy along the US northeast coast in 2012 can be blamed exclusively on manmade climate change, according a study released Tuesday.
Sea level rise caused by global warming was also responsible for an additional 36,000 homes being flooded, researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications.
The findings are the first to tease out the dollar value of devastation from the superstorm attributable just to climate change, the authors said, adding that the methods developed can be applied more widely to other cyclones and storm surges.
"If we were to calculate the costs of climate change across all flooding events, that figure would be enormous," said co-author Philip Orton, an associate professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.
All told, Sandy caused nearly $63 billion (51.5 billion euros) in damages in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It raged for more than a week, killing scores of people in the Caribbean and nearly 150 people in the United States.
Christian Science Monitor: Can US be honest broker in Israeli-Palestinian conflict? by Howard LaFranchi
As the deadly exchanges of rocket fire and airstrikes between Israel and Hamas in Gaza entered their second week Monday, the White House issued a statement in which for the first time President Joe Biden expressed his support for a “cease-fire” in the hostilities.
But as if to rule out any doubts about where Mr. Biden stands, the readout of the president’s second call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in three days also “reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate attacks.”
The use of the term “cease-fire” indicated a slight evolution in the president’s outlook on the conflict. But the absence of any pressure to actually end hostilities also suggested that Mr. Biden remains firmly planted in his unblinking and careerlong support for Israel.
Diplomats and regional experts call Mr. Biden’s approach “giving Israel space” to bludgeon Hamas – which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization – and to degrade its offensive capabilities and forces before applying any pressure to end the fighting.
BBC News: Ceuta: Spain sends troops as 8,000 migrants enter enclave
Spain has deployed troops after record numbers of migrants entered its north African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco.
Some 8,000 people have reached Ceuta in two days, Spanish officials say.
They say the migrants - who include about 1,500 minors - either swam around the border fences that jut out into the sea or walked across at low tide.
Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez has vowed to restore order. Spain says around half of the migrants have been sent back to Morocco.
By Tuesday evening, footage of the beach showed that nearly all migrants had been cleared.
Mr Sánchez travelled to Ceuta and Melilla to deal with the crisis, which exacerbated diplomatic tensions with Morocco.
Morocco withdrew its ambassador for consultations after Spain's foreign minister told the envoy of her "disgust" at what had happened.
Indian Express: A glimmer: Covid-19 positivity declines, new cases down in 200 districts by Kaunain Sheriff M
Around 200 districts have been reporting a decline in cases for the last two weeks and, after consistently increasing for the past 13 weeks, the country’s overall case positivity has registered a decline over the past seven days, the government said on Tuesday.
The “pandemic curve is stabilising”, and the reproduction number (R) has now fallen below 1, Dr V K Paul, head of India’s Covid-19 Task Force, said. “This means the pandemic is shrinking overall,” he said.
According to Health Ministry data, 18.45 lakh tests were done every day on average between May 11 and May 17, which returned a weekly positivity of 16.9 per cent.
This was the first seven-day period since February 16-22 that the country reported a decline in case positivity over the preceding seven-day period, the Ministry said.
“…In many states, the pandemic curve is stabilising due to comprehensive effort, containment, restrictions, and testing,” Paul said. “However”, he added, “we still have states where there continues to be concern in terms of trajectory especially Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Odisha.”
Los Angeles Times: Column: What the anger over Flamin’ Hot Cheetos origin story is really about by Gustavo Arellano
For over 15 years, Richard Montañez told a tale of bootstrap hustle so incredible that few ever doubted it.
The way he told it, he was a lowly janitor at a Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga in the 1980s when the high school dropout thought of a brilliant idea: What would happen if we put spicy powder on Cheetos? Montañez pitched the idea to skeptical bosses, then turned into a Big Cheese once Flamin’ Hot Cheetos became a commercial smash and a cultural touchstone for Latino and Black consumers.
It was a saga he repeated in classrooms, at conferences and to the media, a story so powerful that Eva Longoria wants to direct a film about his life. Journalists, food historians and the public gobbled up Montañez’s word without question — because who dared to doubt it?
In a country where white people constantly get the better of Mexicans, here was a Mexican who showed the gringos what’s up.
Don’t forget that Hunter is hosting a News Roundup tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!