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Some of tonight’s stories:
- Gunman shoots dead six people at Colorado Springs birthday party
- Biden declares state of emergency over fuel cyber-attack
- Afghans bury their dead after dozens of girls killed in school blasts
- India Sees Deadliest Day Of Pandemic With COVID-19 Deaths Topping 4,000
- More than 1,400 migrants arrive on Italy's Lampedusa
- Germany: SPD officially names Olaf Scholz as chancellor candidate
- US Navy seizes huge weapons cache in Arabian Sea
- Melinda Gates sought divorce advice in 2019 after Bill's ties to Jeffrey Epstein became public: WSJ
- California man fraudulently obtained $5M in COVID relief loans to purchase Ferrari, Bentley and Lamborghini, authorities say
- The sun may offer key to predicting El Niño, groundbreaking study finds
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck and Rise above the swamp. . 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.
Since 2007 the OND has been 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 and consider this an open thread.
BBC
Gunman shoots dead six people at Colorado Springs birthday party
A gunman shot dead six people and then himself at a birthday party in Colorado Springs on Sunday, US police said.
The shootings took place at a mobile home park where families had gathered in one trailer to celebrate.
"The suspect, a boyfriend of one of the female victims, drove to the residence, walked inside and began shooting people at the party before taking his own life," the Colorado Springs Police Department said.
The motive for the attack is not known.
The victims were all adults, but a number of children were present in the trailer at the time.
The identities of the victims and the attacker have not yet been released.
"This horrific act has resulted in the death of six adult victims. The children at the trailer were uninjured by the suspect and are now with relatives," local police said.
BBC
Biden declares state of emergency over fuel cyber-attack
The US government declared a state of emergency on Sunday after the largest fuel pipeline in the US was hit by a ransomware cyber-attack.
The Colonial Pipeline carries 2.5 million barrels a day - 45% of the East Coast's supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.
It was completely knocked offline by a cyber-criminal gang on Friday and is still working to restore service.
The emergency status enables fuel to be transported by road.
Experts say fuel prices are likely to rise 2-3% on Monday, but the impact will be far worse if it goes on for much longer.
Multiple sources have confirmed that the ransomware attack was caused by a cyber-criminal gang called DarkSide, who infiltrated Colonial's network on Thursday and took almost 100GB of data hostage.
After seizing the data, the hackers locked the data on some computers and servers, demanding a ransom on Friday. If it is not paid, they are threatening to leak it onto the internet.
The Guardian
Afghans bury their dead after dozens of girls killed in school blasts
Dozens of girls were buried on Sunday at a desolate hilltop cemetery in Kabul, a day after a secondary school was targeted in the bloodiest attack in Afghanistan in over a year.
A series of blasts outside the school during a peak holiday shopping period killed more than 50 people, mostly female students, and wounded more than 100 in Dasht-e-Barchi, a suburb of west Kabul populated mostly by Hazara Shias.
The government blamed the Taliban for the carnage, but the insurgents denied responsibility and issued a statement saying the nation needed to “safeguard and look after educational centres and institutions”.
Saturday’s blasts came as the US military continued the withdrawal of its last 2,500 troops from the violence-wracked country despite faltering peace efforts between the Taliban and Afghan government to end a decades-long war.
NPR
India Sees Deadliest Day Of Pandemic With COVID-19 Deaths Topping 4,000
India reported its highest daily death toll — 4,187 people — on Saturday, weeks into the world's worst wave of coronavirus cases that's leaving people without lifesaving hospital beds, oxygen and drugs.
In all, nearly 240,000 people in India are confirmed to have died from COVID-19, with reported infections topping 21 million.
It's a bitter turn for India, which had managed to see cases decline over the winter. But by late March, a second wave swelled and now is ripping relentlessly through the country, with around 400,000 new cases and more than 3,500 deaths reported every day.
But as bad as the government's official numbers are, they are almost certainly a vast undercount.
"There's a shortage of tests," Santosh Pandey, who resides near the holy city of Varanasi in northern India, told NPR in April. "Nobody's getting tested, so the government's numbers for our district are totally wrong."
Crematoriums across India have said only a fraction of the bodies they receive each day are getting counted by the government.
Reuters
More than 1,400 migrants arrive on Italy's Lampedusa
Fifteen boats packed with hundreds of migrants landed on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday, and officials said they were expecting numbers to increase as the weather improved.
More than 1,400 people got off the vessels at the Mediterranean island, one of the main landing points for people trying to get into Europe, ANSA news agency said.
"Migrants arrivals are resuming alongside good weather," Lampedusa's mayor Toto Martello told state broadcaster RAI. "We need to restart discussions about the immigration issue."
Around 11,000 migrants disembarked on Italy's coasts from the start of 2021 to May 7, up from 4,105 in the same period last year, interior ministry data shows.
About 400 migrants of various nationalities got off one of the boats, a drifting fishing vessel, ANSA reported.
Another boat carrying 325 people was intercepted eight miles off Lampedusa, the agency added. Other migrants reached Lampedusa coast aboard smaller vessels.
Deutsche Welle
Germany: SPD officially names Olaf Scholz as chancellor candidate
Germany's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) voted on Sunday for the current Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to be their choice for chancellor should they win the September general election.
The former mayor of Hamburg won 96.2% of the votes from the almost 600 SPD delegates who were taking part in this weekend's online party conference.
Sunday's result was far from a surprise, as the party leadership had already nominated him for the candidacy — more than a year before the election.
The now officially confirmed chancellor candidate gave his thanks to the party in a tweet, saying "I want to thank everyone for this great result. It is the foundation for the change that we will work towards. Now, let's get to work!" Recent opinion polls have put the SPD behind the CDU/CSU, at around 16%, with the Greens increasingly taking the top spot with an estimated 26% of the votes.
Al Jazeera
US Navy seizes huge weapons cache in Arabian Sea
The US Navy says it seized a huge cache of illicit Russian and Chinese weapons from a stateless vessel sailing in international waters of the northern Arabian Sea.
The US Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, said on Sunday the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey intercepted the boat and discovered the cargo during a routine boarding in a two-day operation on May 6-7.
“The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers,” it said in a statement.
The arms are in US custody and their source and intended destination is under investigation, it said.
The Fifth Fleet said the Monterey was in operation for 36 hours, providing security for boarding teams.
“After all illicit cargo was removed, the dhow was assessed for seaworthiness and after questioning its crew was provided food and water before being released.”
Raw Story
Melinda Gates sought divorce advice in 2019 after Bill's ties to Jeffrey Epstein became public: WSJ
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Melinda Gates -- wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates -- began seeking legal advice for a possible divorce two years ago.
The report states that the wife of the billionaire technology pioneer became concerned after her husband's ties to accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had become public.
"Ms. Gates consulted with divorce lawyers roughly two years before she filed for divorce from Mr. Gates, saying their marriage was 'irretrievably broken,' according to people familiar with the matter and documents," reviewed by the Journal. New York Times reported that Mr. Gates had met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions. Mr. Gates once stayed late into the night at Mr. Epstein's Manhattan townhouse."
USA Today
California man fraudulently obtained $5M in COVID relief loans to purchase Ferrari, Bentley and Lamborghini, authorities say
A Southern California man was arrested on federal charges Friday after federal authorities say he fraudulently obtained millions of dollars through coronavirus relief funds to buy luxurious cars, take lavish vacations and cover personal expenses.
Mustafa Qadiri, a 38-year-old resident of Irvine, California, located nearly 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles, obtained approximately $5 million in Payment Protection Program funds after claiming to own four businesses in nearby Newport Beach, none of which are currently in business, according to a federal indictment.
Qadiri submitted claims for All American Lending, Inc., All American Capital Holdings, Inc., RadMediaLab, Inc., and Ad Blot, Inc. in May and June 2020 with altered bank accounts, fake federal tax return forms and someone else's identity, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office of California. He then, the indictment adds, used the money he received to spend on vacations, personal expenses, and Ferrari, Bentley and Lamborghini sports cars.
All cars and $2 million from Qadiri's bank account were seized by federal agents when he surrendered himself to authorities on Friday morning. He is charged with six counts of money laundering, four counts of bank fraud and wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Washington Post
The sun may offer key to predicting El Niño, groundbreaking study finds
When it comes to long-term hurricane forecasts, tornado predictions in the Plains or prospects for winter rain in California, you’ll often hear meteorologists refer to El Niño or La Niña. They’re phases in a cycle that starts in the tropics, spreading an influence across the globe and shaping weather both close to home and on different continents.
Now there’s emerging research to suggest that cosmic rays, or positively charged, high-energy particles from space, might be the mechanism that flips the switch between phases. Cosmic rays come from outside our solar system, but the number and intensity that reach Earth hinge on the magnetic field of the sun. A swing between El Niño and La Niña can have dramatic implications on global weather, bringing widespread shifts in precipitation and changes in temperature that can be problematic for vulnerable populations and have massive economic effects. In California, for instance, flood events during El Niño periods have proven 10 times more costly than those during La Niña events. In some parts of the world that depend heavily on agriculture and marine commerce, a flip from El Niño to La Niña can alter daily life.