Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke 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.
OK, so the Chicago Cubs lost Game 1 of the World Series to the Cleveland Indians 6-0 tonight. But there’s still this to keep a smile on my face!
Chicago Tribune: Jubilant Cubs fans in Cleveland for World Series opener: 'a dream come true' by Patrick O’Connell
They rearranged work schedules and drove six hours through the night. They spent more than $1,000 for a single ticket. They packed up Ryne Sandberg jerseys and W rally towels and winter hats, coming with best friends and parents and siblings.
They were not going to miss this.
Jubilant fans of all ages descended Tuesday on downtown Cleveland to witness with their own eyes something that hasn't happened since 1945: the Cubs in the World Series.
"This is a dream come true," said Fabian Herrera, 38, of Itasca, as he high-fived fellow Cubs fans and sang "Go Cubs Go" in the middle of Sixth Street on his way into Progressive Field for Game 1 against the Indians.
"He cried when we bought the tickets and decided we were coming," said friend Tony Arce.
The pair decided Monday afternoon that watching the Cubs in the World Series was worth taking off work and shelling out $1,300 per ticket. After years and years of heartbreak, they said, they didn't want to be anywhere else.
"Yesterday we went back and forth and said, 'Should we do this, yes or no?'" Herrera said. "A couple of hours we said, 'Bam! This is what we're going to do. We're going.'"
Herrera called his boss to say he was going to miss work Tuesday, and she gave her blessing. A co-worker who is a White Sox fan is covering for him.
Chicago Sun-Times: Chicago ‘hits back,’ strips Trump of honorary street designation by Fran Spielman
Chicago aldermen on Tuesday hit Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump where it hurts — in his formidable ego — for using a spike in homicides and shootings to paint a “distorted caricature” of the city.
The City Council’s Transportation Committee unanimously agreed to strip Trump of a recognition he covets: “Trump Plaza,” the honorary designation for the east side of Wabash Avenue between Illinois Street and the Chicago River, outside the 96-story Trump International Hotel & Tower.
“We can actually use his own words against him: ‘When you hit us, we hit back,’ ” said Transportation Committee Chairman Anthony Beale (9th).
“You’ve hit Chicago numerous times. . . . When you hit Chicago, Chicago hits back.”
Prior to the final vote, Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) asked whether there was any way to punish Trump more severely — by taking down the massive “TRUMP” sign that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) considered so garish and tasteless they moved to rein in future signs along the river.
Reilly, who spearheaded the lesser punishment, told Burnett he would like nothing more than to resurrect that high-profile sign battle. But it would unfortunately be a futile effort.
Proving once again that when that when it comes to the politics of personal pettiness, the City of Chicago is not to be outdone.
Washington Post: Kellyanne Conway’s and Donald Trump’s relationship is becoming bizarre by Aaron Blake
It’s almost as if Donald Trump’s campaign manager isn’t even talking to her candidate these days. Almost.
On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway took to NBC’s “Meet the Press” and gamely and forthrightly acknowledged reality. “We are behind,” she said, adding that Trump was down one to four points in key states. (Which is actually a little rosy.)
On Monday morning, Trump appeared to agree with her, telling a local news reporter that he was “somewhat behind in the polls.” Conway was apparently happy with this comment. She tweeted the following at about 3:30 p.m.
The problem? Her own candidate completely disagrees with her assessment that he’s actually behind, and he had already said so multiple times on Monday.
New York Times: What Drives Donald Trump? Fear of Losing Status, Tapes Show by Michael Barbaro
By any measure, Arsenio Hall was a Hollywood success: He had starred in popular films, packed houses as a stand-up comic and hosted a hit late-night television show bearing his name.
Donald J. Trump saw it differently by the mid-2000s. In his eyes, Mr. Hall was nothing.
“Dead as a doornail,” was his assessment of Mr. Hall in a previously unreleased interview from two years ago. “Dead as dog meat.”
Why such a harsh judgment? Because in Mr. Trump’s eyes, Mr. Hall had suffered the most grievous form of public humiliation: His celebrity had waned. His star had dimmed.
It was, in short, Mr. Trump’s worst nightmare.
“Couldn’t get on television,” Mr. Trump said with disgust. “They wouldn’t even take his phone call.”
The intense ambitions and undisciplined behaviors of Mr. Trump have confounded even those close to him, especially as his presidential campaign comes to a tumultuous end, and he confronts the possibility of the most stinging defeat of his life. But in the more than five hours of conversations — the last extensive biographical interviews Mr. Trump granted before running for president — a powerful driving force emerges: his deep-seated fear of public embarrassment.
Like Donald Trump, I, too, have a “deep-seated fear of public embarrassment.”
AlJazeera: Donald Trump: a billionaire shunned by the very rich by Tom Ackerman
"Money is the mother's milk of politics."
It's an old saying that's never been truer than in this election.
But like so many aspects of this campaign, the conventional wisdom about money has been upended by reality.
A reality in which Democrat Hillary Clinton, standard-bearer of the supposed working-class party, has generated donations of more than $600m compared with $430m raised by and for her Republican opponent, plutocrat Donald Trump.
A reality in which Clinton has relied heavily on the deep pockets of billionaire hedge fund managers and banking CEOs; whereas not a single chief executive of a Fortune 100 company has donated to Trump, the candidate who's promised to unleash phenomenal economic growth thanks to his own financial brilliance.
A reality in which polls show Clinton holding a narrow edge among likely voters with household incomes of $100k or more - the top 10 percent.
Another survey found Clinton topping Trump 53 percent to 25 percent among those earning $250,000 or more.
It's a stark shift from 2012, when the financial elite cast 10 percent more votes for Republican Mitt Romney than for Barack Obama.
And a departure from half a century of more high-earner support for the Republican presidential contender than the Democrat.
Dallas Morning News: Voters in Texas say machines changed Trump votes to Clinton, but elections officials insist it's just user error by Caleb Downs
Early voters in Texas have made claims on social media that voting machines in Dallas, Tarrant and other counties have changed their presidential votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton.
The allegations follow a similar pattern: Voters say they voted straight-ticket Republican, but when they reviewed their ballots, they reflected they had voted for Hillary Clinton for president, not Donald Trump.
Their votes for Republicans in down-ballot races were not affected, according to the complaints.
But elections officials say the allegations are more than likely false or instances of user error.
Garland City Councilman Stephen Stanley said he went to an early voting station at Nicholson Memorial South Branch Library on Tuesday morning while campaigning for candidates on the ballot.
At this very moment, I have a similar complaint posted on my Facebook page (that I hardly ever use) by a friend of mine, saying that the voting machine changed his or her vote from Clinton to Trump.
And I’ve heard of scattered reports of machine vote switching in previous elections.
Now, I always take a photograph of screen which indicates my vote and the paper receipt that is produced when I have finished voting.
FiveThirtyEight: Election Update: Where Are The Undecided Voters? by Nate Silver
Every new poll seems to provide support for one of two impressions of the race: one in which Hillary Clinton is pulling away toward a historic landslide, and another in which Clinton holds a lead but Donald Trump remains on the fringes of contention.
On the whole, the data released over the past several days suggests that the race may have tightened just the slightest bit. But this seems to be the result of Trump having seen his image rebound some among Republican voters, rather than having taken any votes away from Clinton. In fact, Clinton’s standing in our national polling average — 46 percent — is the highest it’s been all year, including when she was in the midst of her convention bounce. But Trump’s at 40 percent, about 1 percentage point better than a week ago, and — believe it or not — also not far from his high on the year (Trump peaked at 41 percent in late September).
Both candidates, in other words, are slowly gaining votes from undecided voters and from third-party candidates. Emphasis on “slowly,” because there are still a lot of these voters up for grabs. About 15 percent of the electorate isn’t yet committed to Clinton or Trump, as compared to just 5 percent who weren’t committed to President Obama or Mitt Romney at this point in 2012. That’s one of the reasons why our models still give Trump an outside chance at victory. In theory, with Clinton at “only” 46 percent of the vote, he could beat her by winning almost all of the undecided and third-party
I get what Silver is saying, but I simply don’t believe there are that many undecided voters remaining...can’t blame him fr hedging his forecasts a bit, though.
Guardian: Most Americans do not feel represented by Democrats or Republicans – survey by David Smith
As they go to the polls in a historic presidential election, more than six in 10 Americans say neither major political party represents their views any longer, a survey has found.
Dissatisfaction with both Democrats and Republicans has risen sharply since 1990, when less than half held that neither reflected their opinions, according to research by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
The seventh annual 2016 American Values Survey was carried out throughout September among a random sample of 2,010 adults in all 50 states.
Both party establishments have been rattled by the outsider challengesof Donald Trump, who was successful in winning his party’s nomination, and Bernie Sanders, who was not. In a year that seems ripe for third-party candidates, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green party are seeking to capitalise but have fallen back in the polls in recent weeks.
Sixty-one per cent of survey respondents say neither political party reflects their opinions today, while 38% disagree. Nearly eight in 10 (77%) independents and a majority (54%) of Republicans took this position, while less than half (46%) of Democrats agree. There was virtually no variation across class or race.
Related: Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)- Executive Summary
Detroit Free Press: Feds asked: Check if Flint can sue Michigan in Flint lead water crisis by Todd Spangler
WASHINGTON — Michigan's Democratic members of Congress on Tuesday asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a state-appointed oversight board taking steps to bar the City of Flint from suing the state over its contaminated water, even as that same oversight board prepares to scale back its role in deciding the city's legal options.
As Michigan's five Democratic U.S. House members raised the specter of a federal investigation in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the Receivership Transition Advisory Board (RTAB) in Flint planned to decide on a change to its recommendation giving it broader authority over whether the city could sue the state.
Under an amendment to be taken up at a meeting Wednesday, the RTAB would review potential litigation and labor disputes with the city's chief legal officer, financial officer, mayor and city council and recommend — rather than decide — whether the city should go to court or otherwise resolve any dispute. In doing so, the board would report on the potential financial impact on the cash-strapped city.
“The RTAB already has language for consideration at tomorrow’s meeting that will help clarify things as to the RTAB’s original intent in this matter," Ari Adler, Gov. Rick Snyder's spokesman, said in a comment that indicated that the board's initial decision was intended to limit the city's financial exposure, not necessarily cut off litigation.
The Harvard Crimson: 2012 Harvard Men’s Soccer Team Produced Sexually Explicit ‘Scouting Report’ on Female Recruits by C. Ramsey Fahs
In what appears to have been a yearly team tradition, a member of Harvard’s 2012 men’s soccer team produced a document that, in sexually explicit terms, individually assessed and evaluated freshmen recruits from the 2012 women’s soccer team based on their perceived physical attractiveness and sexual appeal.
The author and his teammates referred to the nine-page document as a “scouting report,” and the author circulated the document over the group’s email list on July 31, 2012.
In lewd terms, the author of the report individually evaluated each female recruit, assigning them numerical scores and writing paragraph-long assessments of the women. The document also included photographs of each woman, most of which, the author wrote, were culled from Facebook or the Internet.
The author of the “report” often included sexually explicit descriptions of the women. He wrote of one woman that “she looks like the kind of girl who both likes to dominate, and likes to be dominated.”
Each woman was assigned a hypothetical sexual “position” in addition to her position on the soccer field.
“She seems relatively simple and probably inexperienced sexually, so I decided missionary would be her preferred position,” the author wrote about one woman. “Doggy style,” “The Triple Lindy,” and “cowgirl” were listed as possible positions for other women.
I’ve had lewder conversations than these, to be sure, but why would anyone document something like this and post it online?
I know why, but it’s still a stupid and uncouth thing to do in this day and age.
Reuters: Exclusive: Nevada gambling regulator probes Las Vegas Sands over front gamblers by Joel Schectman and Koh Gui Qing
Nevada's state gambling regulator is investigating allegations that Las Vegas Sands Corp casinos allowed high-stakes Chinese players to bet millions of dollars in other people's names, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board "has made inquiries related to this matter and we've responded in a timely and transparent matter, as we always do," said Ron Reese, a Sands spokesman.
As Las Vegas has sought to draw wealthy Chinese baccarat players, some casinos have allowed high-stakes players to gamble through frontmen who would sign the credit paperwork, a Reuters investigation published last month found.
The allegations against the Sands initially surfaced after Clark County prosecutors brought charges last year against two women accused of failing to repay millions of dollars in gambling debts at the Las Vegas Sands' Venetian and Palazzo casinos.
Attorneys for the women, Jeffrey Setness and Kevin Rosenberg, said the two were actually shills -- local housekeepers recruited with the cooperation of Sands personnel to take out millions of dollars in credit in their own names. The women would then sit near the actual players, allowing them to use the chips and gamble millions of dollars without a paper trail, the attorneys said.
Previously, a Sands spokesman said the company had no clear evidence anyone from the company asked the women to take out credit in other people’s names.
After the defense attorneys raised the counter-allegations, prosecutors dropped the charges this past spring during preliminary hearings in Las Vegas Justice Court.
Guardian: Exclusive: leaked recording shows what Theresa May really thinks about Brexit by Nick Hopkins and Rowena Mason
Theresa May privately warned that companies would leave the UK if the country voted for Brexit during a secret audience with investment bankers a month before the EU referendum.
A recording of her remarks to Goldman Sachs, leaked to the Guardian, reveals she had numerous concerns about Britain leaving the EU. It contrasts with her nuanced public speeches, which dismayed remain campaigners before the vote in June.
Speaking at the bank in London on 26 May, the then home secretary appeared to go further than her public remarks to explain more clearly the economic benefits of staying in the EU. She told staff it was time the UK took a lead in Europe, and that she hoped voters would look to the future rather than the past.
In an hour-long session before the City bankers, she also worried about the effect of Brexit on the British economy.
“I think the economic arguments are clear,” she said. “I think being part of a 500-million trading bloc is significant for us. I think, as I was saying to you a little earlier, that one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because it is the UK in Europe.
Reuters: Economic gender parity nearly two centuries off, WEF finds by Breanna Hughes Neghaiwi
Progress in closing the global workplace gender gap is slowing dramatically, according to a World Economic Forum study, with a notable exception in Rwanda, a country still emerging from the aftermath of genocide that has become the world's leader on equal pay.
The Geneva-based body pushed back its projection for economic parity between women and men by 53 years after finding chronic imbalances in salaries and workforce representation had reversed the pace of progress since a peak in 2013. It now projects economic equality to be reached in 2186, another 170 years off.
"Progress towards parity in the key economic pillar has slowed dramatically with the gap now larger than at any point since 2008," WEF said when releasing its 2016 Global Gender Report on Wednesday.
Last year, women around the world earned just over half as much as their male counterparts despite working more hours, and participated in the labor market at two-thirds the rate of men, its authors found.
While high-income countries showed the narrowest gender gaps, low-income countries on average performed just as well as their upper-middle-income peers. Differences were more pronounced on a regional basis, with even high-income nations from the Middle East and North Africa scoring low
AlJazeera: Pakistan: LeJ behind police academy attack in Quetta
Funerals have been held for those who died in the overnight assault of a police training college in Quetta that left at least 61 people dead and 170 others wounded.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in the provincial capital of Balochistan on Tuesday to pay tribute to the victims of the attack, which was claimed by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) armed group.
Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Quetta, said survivors recalled of hiding under their beds and jumping off windows to escape the attack.
We heard harrowing tales of how the trainees escaped when multiple attackers scaled the wall, came into the academy, and lobbed grenades into the various barracks where these trainees were sleeping, and then two of them set off their suicide jackets," our correspondent said.
He said an offshoot of LeJ called the Al Alami group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and has specifically targeted the training college because "it was a soft target".
"This is a group that has been involved in sectarian attacks in the city of Quetta. It's considered to be very strong here," he added.
General Sher Afgun, a senior military commander in Balochistan, confirmed the report saying calls were intercepted between the attackers and their handlers, suggesting they were from the Al Alami wing of LeJ, a sectarian Sunni armed group.
Smithsonian: Venture Inside Cuba's Secret Societies by Victoria Pope (This is only an excerpt of the full article and photo-essay, I believe, but I do want to read more...)
Why is a man dancing barefoot in the street, a cone-shaped hood covering his head? And what to make of strange yellow chalk markings or the blood sacrifice of roosters and doves? These are rituals of a mystical subculture in Cuba, formed during its years as a Spanish colony and plantation economy, when West African slaves melded their pantheistic worship of spirits with features of Catholicism. This blending of cultures and beliefs gave birth to the country’s unique religious practices: Santería, as well as other mysterious associations and smaller groupings.
The island’s appetite for secret societies can seem boundless. Among the early settlers were Freemasons, who established a robust membership among the island’s white elite. After the 1959 revolution, the Masons faced pressure to become part of larger state-controlled associations; indeed, there were calls by some of their communist members to dissolve. But their lodges were never closed down, as they were in many communist countries. Today there are an estimated 30,000 members in 316 lodges.
AFP: Autism study shows lasting benefits of early interaction
A year-long training programme to help parents communicate with their very young autistic children reduced symptoms of the disorder up to six years later, according to a follow-up analysis released Wednesday.
Children were less impaired in their ability to communicate, and less likely to show repetitive behaviour, one of the telltale signs of the disorder.
They did not, however, show improvements in language skills or reduced anxiety, researchers reported in The Lancet, a leading medical journal.
Autism is a complex disorder of brain development characterised, to varying degrees, by troubled social interactions, difficulty in communicating and repetitive actions or speech. It affects about one in 100 people.
The findings -- praised by outside experts as a "remarkably positive" and a "major contribution" to autism research -- came as something of a surprise because the 2010 clinical trials they were based upon showed limited benefits at the time.
Fusion: Black-owned indie bookstores look forward to the next chapter by Kelsey McKinney
There aren’t very many indie bookstores owned by people of color left in the United States. According to a calculation by the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC), 197 black-owned independent bookstores have closed since 2002. As of 2014, only 54 remained. That’s just more than 21%.
“There was a larger conversation about books 10 years ago than there is today,” Troy Johnson, the founder and president of AALBC, told me. “Ten years ago, this decline [in the number of black-owned bookstores] would have been big news.”
It’s a huge drop, but not one that can be written off as mismanagement. Independent bookstores have seen a huge drop-off across the board since the early 2000s. A large chunk of the booksellers who have had to close their doors due to the rise of e-books and Amazon have been independent bookstores. Between 2002 and 2011, the number of independent bookstores in the United States dropped from 2,400 to just 1,900.
Part of the problem is that indie bookstores simply can’t compete on price with a major corporation like Amazon, which can afford to sell new bestsellers at a loss. “A physical bookstore cannot do that. In the black community and in many communities, people are price sensitive,” Troy told me.
But a bookstore is about more than money. A bookstore is about community and conversation, for better or worse. As George Orwell wrote in a 1936 essay, a bookstore “is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.”
Mother Jones: Good Thing Cats Are Adorable, Because They Get Away With a Lot of Crap by Erica Langston
Few creatures are as cute, cunning, or controversial as the common household cat. Despite their taste for blood, enigmatic demands, and unpredictable mood swings, cats have managed to claw their way into homes, hearts, and Youtube channels like no other domestic animal. While these stealthy creatures are much better at stalking than being stalked, it's believed there could be anywhere from 600 million to 1 billion house cats worldwide. On the most recent episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, Indre Viskontas sits down with cat enthusiast and science writer Abigail Tucker to discuss her new book, The Lion in the Living Room, and to explore the complicated role cats have in ecological systems across the globe.
Here are 10 of the best cat facts from our interview with Tucker. We've mixed in some adorable cat videos, because—let's not kid ourselves—that's the whole reason you clicked on this post. You're welcome.
1. Cats are stalkers.
And they're really good at it. Unlike their ferocious lioness cousins that hunt in packs to take down prey, domestic cats use a solo stalk-and-ambush style of hunting that requires more brains than brawn for calculated, well-timed pounces. It's this stealth that makes them so efficient at snagging even the most deft of critters.
AP: College Football Top 10 (first place votes in parenthesis)
1) Alabama (60)
2) Michigan (1)
3) Clemson
4) Washington
5) Louisville
6) THOSE people
7) Nebraska
8) Baylor
9) Texas A&M
10) West Virginia
If I had decided to include a Top 12 instead of a Top 10, then there would be some marquee games between ranked teams this weekend: #3 Clemson @ #12 Florida State and #7 Nebraska @ #11 Wisconsin...there’s also #4 Washington @ #17 Utah.
Don’t forget that Mr. Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!