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 JeremyBloom. 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.
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Chicago Sun-Times: Lawyers: City should stop fighting wrongful conviction cases tainted by CPD misconduct by Andy Grimm
Attorneys at the law firm behind dozens of multimillion-dollar payouts in Chicago police misconduct cases have a message for the city’s next mayor: Put us out of business.
At a press conference outside City Hall on Tuesday, lawyers from the Loevy & Loevy law firm announced eight new lawsuits filed this week against the city by men who allege they were framed by former CPD Det. Reynaldo Guevara, whose alleged misconduct during the 1990s working out of CPD’s Area 5 station has led to the exoneration of 39 defendants.
The city also has paid out $76 million in settlements, judgments and legal fees in cases linked to Guevara, which includes $23 million for outside lawyers. The city almost always fights the litigation for years before settling— and two Guevara cases that went to trial ended with the wrongfully convicted plaintiffs each winning more than $20 million, said attorney Russell Ainsworth.
With an April 4 run-off election between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson certain to bring a new administration to City Hall, the city could try a new approach, Ainsworth said.
Washington Post: Rise of deadly fungus spotlights hospital infection-control challenges by Fenit NIrappil and Dan Keating
A deadly fungus spreading at an alarming rate in U.S. health facilities has exposed the broader problem of how patient safety is jeopardized by underfunded and understaffed infection-prevention efforts, experts say.
Candida auris, the fungus spreading primarily in long-term acute-care hospitals and skilled-nursing facilities,
is considered a serious global public health threat because it can be difficult to detect and resists some antifungal drugs and disinfectants.
It’s just one of the infections acquired in health-care settings that are ripe for transmission because patients are on invasive devices and are susceptible to infections healthy people do not contract. There’s a wide range of other pathogens — from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to E. coli bacteria that cause urinary tract infections — that are more rampant.
NBC News: Irvo Otieno's death: Video shows Virginia deputies and medical workers appearing to pile on top of him by Chantal Da Silva
Video capturing some of the final moments in the life of Irvo Otieno — whose death led to murder charges against seven Virginia sheriff's deputies and three hospital workers — shows officers and medical staff appearing to pile on top of Otieno, 28, a Black man, before he eventually stops moving.
The surveillance video of the March 6 incident at Virginia's Central State Hospital shows officers dragging Otieno, who appears to be handcuffed and shackled at the ankles, into an admissions room, initially moving him toward a table before they lay him down and restrain him on the ground.
At one point, as many as 10 sheriff's deputies and medical staff members at the hospital crowd around Otieno on the floor as several others stand nearby. The scene is so crowded that Otieno can hardly be seen at that point, and it is unclear what exactly is happening or how deputies and medical workers are engaging with him.
The Washington Post earlier Tuesday published nine minutes of the video, which was edited from the first 27 minutes of security video. NBC News later obtained the video, which has no sound.
New York Times: Los Angeles Schools Shut Down After Workers Launch Three-Day Strike by Corina Knoll, Kurtis Lee, and Ana Facio-Krajcer
As rain pummeled the sidewalks and wind bent back umbrellas on Tuesday morning, Bartui Merchain, a pool clerk, arrived at her job at a recreation center, her children in tow.
She had left her 14-year-old son at home, but her workplace east of downtown Los Angeles suddenly had become an impromptu child supervision site for Mindy, 9 and Israel, 8.
Ms. Merchain, 36, had learned only the day before that school employees and teachers were going on a three-day strike, facing off against administrators in the nation’s second-largest school district. It would mean no classes for the district’s more than 420,000 students — news that many children seemed to greet with glee, though a number of parents felt blindsided.
“My son told me, ‘There’s no school Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday,’” Ms. Merchain said. “This really caught us off guard. Definitely. It’s not something that they prepared us for, like, for two weeks. They just straight up dropped it like a bomb.”
CNN: Feds proceed with caution as potential Trump indictment fuels sporadic calls for violence online by Sean Lyngaas, Zachary Cohen, Donie O’Sullivan, and Brynn Gingras
Federal officials, including those at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are monitoring what they say has been an uptick in violent rhetoric online including calls for “civil war” since former President Donald Trump asked supporters to “protest” what he said was his impending arrest.
But the online chatter has been just that – and has lacked the actionable information, coordination and volume that preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, US officials and security experts tell CNN.
An intelligence memo from US Capitol Police on Sunday downplayed the current threat, saying there was “no indication of large-scale organized protests and/or violence” like what was observed in the lead-up to January 6. The memo also cautioned that while Trump’s influence with moderate conservatives has “waned since he left office, some of his most ardent supporters continue to condone political violence and continue to be willing to fight on behalf of the former president.”
That dynamic has led to a cautious response from the Biden administration, which has refrained from making too much of the chatter and been careful about what it shares regarding potentially violent rhetoric with state and local law enforcement, a senior US official familiar with the online chatter told CNN.
“There has been nothing specific or credible — both in terms of large-scale activity or violence,” the senior official said.
AlJazeera: Powerful earthquake shakes Afghanistan, Pakistan, India
At least two people have been killed and hundreds injured in northern Pakistan after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit areas across Afghanistan and Pakistan, with tremors felt as far as the Indian capital New Delhi.
The earthquake’s epicentre was 40km (25 miles) south-southeast of the Afghan town of Jurm, near the borders with Pakistan and Tajikistan, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said on Tuesday.
Separately, Pakistan’s Meteorological Department put the magnitude slightly higher at 6.8, and later reported a 3.7 aftershock in the Hindu Kush region along the country’s border with Afghanistan.
At least two people, including a child, were killed in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as a result of the earthquake, rescue officials have told Al Jazeera.
“A 10-year-old girl in Swat, and a 24-year old man in Lower Dir died when the walls of their [respective] houses collapsed,” Bilal Faizi, spokesperson for the Rescue 1122 service in the northwestern province, told Al Jazeera.
According to Faizi, landslides have caused damage in Swat district, 180km (112 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad.
Le Monde in English: French pension reform: What happens next? Macron speaks and more strikes
French President Emmanuel Macron's contested pension reform was adopted by Parliament on Monday, March 20, after the government survived two motions of no-confidence, with one failing by just nine votes in the 577-seat Assemblée Nationale.
It is however unlikely that this official adoption will defuse the biggest domestic crisis since Macron's re-election last year, with daily protests in cities around the country that have on occasion turned violent. So what can we expect to happen next?
The bill now needs to be approved by France's Constitutional council, who rules on the constitutionality of laws. Both the left and the far-right plan to appeal to the institution. Prime minister Elisabeth Borne said she had also asked the Constitutional Council to check the law.
The Constitutional Council will also examine a request for a referendum submitted on Monday by the left on the issue.
Once the text clears these hurdles, it will be signed into law by the President.
Meduza: Caught off guard How the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin threw a wrench in the Kremlin’s plans for 2023
Meduza has learned that the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an order for the Russian president’s arrest came as a major surprise to the Kremlin. According to two sources close to the Putin administration, the Russian authorities were unprepared for the situation.
In the leadup to Russia’s 2024 presidential election, the Kremlin planned to present Putin to voters as a “warrior against the West” and a “defender of Latin American and African countries against colonial oppression,” Meduza’s sources said. However, that plan would necessarily involve overseas trips that Putin will now likely be unable to take; because of the warrant against him, the Russian president could theoretically be detained in any of 123 countries. According to sources close to his administration, the Kremlin is unsure how it would be possible to “ensure the security” of the president given the new circumstances.
Meduza’s sources noted that even since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has regularly traveled abroad and participated in various forums and summits. In the summer of 2022, for example, he visited Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran, and in the fall, he visited Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Armenia (though it’s true that he hasn’t visited any Western countries since the start of the full-scale war).
DW: Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs jointly tackle climate change by Jennifer Holleis
The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. It’s already being hit disproportionately by rising temperatures, water scarcity and desertification. And the outlook for the future is grim.
These are all compelling reasons for experts in the region to collaborate more, say the organizers of a conference on agriculture, water and food security. The conference, which was attended by experts from Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and several Arabic and Muslim countries, aimed to develop practical programs to address regional challenges.
"So much can be done in this region by cooperating across borders," said William Wechsler, senior director of the N7 Initiative which organized the conference held last week in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi. The initiative promotes collaboration between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations that have signed the Abraham Accords, a deal brokered in 2020 to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
"For example, water can be made more available, food prices can be lowered, and people's lives can be made more secure," said Wechsler, listing the advantages of potential cooperations.
Have a great evening, everyone!