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.
Chicago Sun-Times: 2 more Cook County sheriff's correctional officers accused of PPP fraud by Frank Main
Two Cook County sheriff’s correctional officers have been indicted on charges of defrauding the federal Paycheck Protection Program, bringing the total number of the county’s jail guards accused of ripping off the program to three.
Officer John Williams received two PPP loans for $20,833 each from the fraud-plagued program created to help struggling businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. On his application, he said he owned a barbershop.
Kiara Brown also got two loans, for $20,000 and $19,790, for a nail salon and a beauty salon.
An internal sheriff’s investigation found no records that Williams or Brown owned a business or disclosed secondary jobs to the sheriff’s office, according to a spokesperson for the office. The sheriff’s office forwarded its findings to the Illinois attorney general’s office, which got an indictment on May 16 against Williams in Will County criminal court and against Brown on May 15 in Cook County criminal court.
They’re charged with theft by deception, loan fraud, wire fraud, forgery and income tax fraud.
The Washington Post: Fani Willis and presiding judge in Trump Georgia case win elections by Holly Bailey
ATLANTA — Two of the most prominent figures in the Georgia criminal case against former president Donald Trump easily won their respective elections Tuesday in their first appearance on the ballot since the inception of the high-profile election interference case.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis defeated challenger Christian Wise Smith in Georgia’s Democratic primary as she seeks another four-year term as the Atlanta-area’s top prosecutor, according to an Associated Press projection.
Meanwhile, Fulton County Superior Court
Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the election case, was elected to his first full term since being appointed to the court last year, defeating challenger Robert Patillo, according to the Associated Press.
McAfee, a former state and federal prosecutor who was appointed to the bench by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), was elected to a four-year term in the nonpartisan judicial race. That is Atlanta-area voters’ final word on that election.
USA Today: Severe weather fires up again today: 25M at risk for tornadoes in central US by Anthony Robledo, Christopher Cann, and Doyle Rice
Strong storms began to pummel the Plains and Midwest on Tuesday as a severe weather pattern threatened to keep a large chunk of the nation in its grip through much of this week.
At least two tornadoes were reported to have touched down in Iowa Tuesday afternoon, including a "large and dangerous" one near Fontanelle that was racing northeast at 60 mph, the National Weather Service said. The weather service is urging people in tornado-warned areas to take cover. "You are in a life-threatening situation," the weather service said.
Overall, more than 25 million people from Nebraska to Michigan live in the path of a powerful storm system and face a "probable" threat of tornadoes as well as heavy rain, hail and damaging winds, according to the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center.
NBC News: Voting machine firm Smartmatic alleges Newsmax has deleted evidence in lawsuit over false vote-rigging claims by Sarah Fitzpatrick
Smartmatic alleges that Newsmax has destroyed evidence in the voting machine company's lawsuit against the right-wing news channel over false claims that Smartmatic helped “rig" the 2020 election, according to court documents made public this week.
Lawyers for Florida-based Smartmatic allege that Newsmax engaged in a “cover-up” by destroying texts and emails of key executives that would demonstrate the network’s knowledge that voting fraud claims being pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies were untrue. Smartmatic says the deletions occurred after Newsmax had received notice to preserve evidence for the pending suit.
The lawsuit is just one of many major defamation cases filed by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems against news organizations over false claims about fraud in 2020 election. Most are still pending, and several may go to trial this fall — ensuring that Trump’s claims about a “rigged election” in 2020 will continue to be a focus even as the next presidential election nears.
Guardian: Israeli soldiers and police tipping off groups that attack Gaza aid trucks by Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierzenbaum
Individual members of Israel’s security forces are tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, enabling the groups to block and vandalise the convoys, according to multiple sources.
Settlers intercepting the vital humanitarian supplies to the strip are receiving information about the location of the aid trucks from members of the Israeli police and military, a spokesperson from the main Israeli activist group behind the blockades told the Guardian.
The claim of collusion by members of the security forces is supported by messages from internal internet chat groups reviewed by the Guardian as well as accounts from a number of witnesses and human rights activists.
Those blocking the vehicles say the aid they carry is being diverted by Hamas instead of being delivered to civilians in need, a claim relief agencies reject. US officials have also said that Israel has offered no evidence to support allegations that Hamas is diverting aid.
BBC News: Greek court throws out shipwreck trial against nine men by Nick Beake and Kostas Kallergis
A court in Greece has abandoned the trial of nine Egyptian men accused of causing the biggest migrant shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea for a decade.
The judges in the southern port city of Kalamata ruled they did not have jurisdiction to hear the case on the grounds the vessel sank in international waters.
It is feared more than 600 people drowned last June when an overcrowded fishing boat, the Adriana, sank on its way to Europe from Libya.
The accused had faced life in prison if convicted of people-smuggling and causing the sinking of the boat. There were cheers among protesters outside the court as the judges' decision to drop the case became clear.
The indictment seen by the BBC showed that the defendants were being prosecuted on evidence that had already been contradicted by at least six survivors, who said the coastguard had caused their boat to capsize and then pressured them to frame the Egyptians.
Iranian social networks—from the diaspora, but also from accounts within the country—were filled with memes on Sunday after the announcement of the disappearance of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter. Even before his death was confirmed, many Iranian users of X (formerly Twitter) were expressing joy at his passing, sharing fragments of movies or videos of people dancing and toasting, with hashtags like #Iranishappy.
But some of those tweets were neither ironic nor funny: they reproduced images of Yina Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman whose death in police custody, after being arrested for wearing the veil incorrectly, sparked protests against the regime in 2022; there were also posts remembering other Iranians who died during the repression of these demonstrations, in which crimes against humanity were committed, according to a United Nations fact-finding mission. At least 550 people died at the hands of Iranian security forces and paramilitaries and another 60,000 were detained. So far, nine men have been hanged in connection with those protests.
With this evident rejection of the late president by a population that is also impoverished — the last official inflation figure was 56% — and in the midst of a confrontation with Israel, exacerbated by the Gaza war and culminating on April 13, when Iran launched an unprecedented attack against Israeli territory, Raisi’s death is pushing the regime towards new elections to elect a new president, at a time when abstention records have been broken in recent votes. In the legislative elections of March 1, only 41% of the 61 million potential voters cast their vote.