Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community featureon 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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The Guardian
While it’s been a strong night for HBO and Netflix, both winning 23 awards each, it’s been a bad one for the networks.
The only network shows to win during tonight’s ceremony? Saturday Night Live and, ahem, the Oscars telecast.
Winners at the link.
US NEWS
Agence France Presse
US President Donald Trump on Monday hailed his aggressive use of tariffs as a success for American business, amid reports he plans to drastically ratchet up the battle with Beijing imminently.
China's foreign ministry vowed Monday to strike back if Trump presses ahead with plans to impose duties on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, which would leave about half of everything the United States buys from China subject to tariffs.
Last week, Beijing said it welcomed overtures from US officials offering to re-start trade talks, but press reports indicate China would call off any meetings if the new punitive duties take effect.
Word of Trump's latest tariff plans has weighed on Wall Street since last week, with markets in a wait-and-see mode.
The Guardian
Supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is willing to testify before the Senate judiciary committee about an accusation he sexually assaulted a woman when they were teenagers in high school.
An attorney for Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, said she was also willing to testify.
Ford’s allegation, made in the Washington Post on Sunday, plunged Kavanaugh’s nomination into uncertainty days before the committee was due to vote. Republicans are under intensifying pressure to delay the vote; White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Monday Ford “will be heard”.
Ford, 51, is a research psychologist at Palo Alto University in northern California. Speaking to the Post, she described an incident she said happened when she and Kavanaugh were in high school in the early 1980s.
The Guardian
The shocking moment when a white police officer shot Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, 16 times was played to a Chicago jury on Monday at the start of a murder trial.
Jurors saw the police dashcam video that captured the final seconds of McDonald’s life as Jason Van Dyke, a Chicago police officer, began shooting within six seconds of stepping out of his squad car.
Special prosecutor Joseph McMahon opened the prosecution’s case by telling the jury that “under very special circumstances” a police officer can legally shoot a person.
“A police officer has the legal right to use force and even deadly force but only when it is necessary. What was necessary that night [of] October 20 2014 was the arrest of Laquan McDonald; but it was not necessary to kill Laquan to do so.”
He told the jury they were in court today and Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder because “not a single shot was necessary or justified”.
Reuters
Ed. note: Entitlement programs are those programs paid for by workers insuring against poverty upon retirement.
A top economic adviser to President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects U.S. budget deficits of about 4 percent to 5 percent of the country’s economic output for the next one to two years, adding that there would likely be an effort in 2019 to cut spending on entitlement programs.
“We have to be tougher on spending,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in remarks to the Economic Club of New York, adding that government spending was the reason for the wider budget deficits, not the Republican-led tax cuts activated this year.
Reuters
Residents of three Massachusetts communities were allowed to return to their homes on Sunday for the first time since a series of gas explosions killed one man and set dozens of buildings on fire.
Natural gas leaks, believed to have been caused by over-pressurized lines, on Thursday triggered a series of explosions and fires in Andover, North Andover and Lawrence, communities northwest of Boston. Local officials ordered residents of some 8,000 homes and businesses to evacuate and shut off electricity to prevent further fires.
NPR
A U.S. Border Patrol supervisor is being held in Texas on a $2.5 million bond following his arrest over the weekend on charges of killing four women, after a fifth would-be victim escaped and alerted authorities.
The Associated Press was the first to report the arrest of Juan David Ortiz, 35, who is detained in Laredo, Texas, after he was found hiding in his truck in a hotel parking lot early Saturday morning.
The alleged victims of Ortiz, including the woman who escaped, are believed to be prostitutes. One of them a transgender woman, Webb County-Zapata County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz was quoted by the AP as saying.
On Friday, Ortiz told police he picked up a fifth woman, Erika Pena.
WORLD NEWS
Agence France Presse
Russia on Monday released fresh information to back its claim the missile that downed a Malaysia Airlines flight over war-torn Ukraine in 2014 was fired by Kiev's forces.
At a briefing, the Russian defence ministry said it was releasing the BUK missile's serial number for the first time and said that it was produced and sent to Ukraine in the Soviet era and had not been returned to Russia.
The Dutch-led investigation of the crash said it would study the information.
Russia has denied any responsibility for the shooting-down of the plane and has presented a number of theories pointing the finger at Kiev.
The Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed outside the rebel stronghold of Donetsk on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 on board, most of them Dutch nationals.
Agence France Presse
Philippine rescuers on Monday searched desperately for dozens feared buried under a landslide unleashed by Typhoon Mangkhut, which also left a trail of destruction in Hong Kong and saw millions evacuated in southern China.
The confirmed death toll across the northern Philippines, where the main island of Luzon was mauled by fierce winds and rain, reached 65 and was expected to rise further given the number of missing.
Four more were killed in China's southern province of Guangdong.
Searchers used shovels and bare hands to dig through mounds of rocky soil in the northern Philippine mountain town of Itogon, where 11 bodies have been pulled from the rubble and dozens more may still be trapped after a landslide buried an emergency shelter.
Deutsche Welle
Despite gloomy headlines about the asylum-policy debate, a majority view life with their immigrant and non-immigrant neighbors positively. The study still noted an East-West split, as well as a divide on head scarves.
People living in Germany continue to view the country's multi-cultural society positively, according to a new study published by the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR).
The "Integration Barometer 2018" is the first representative study on the matter to come out since the start of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015, which saw hundreds of thousands of people escaping war and poverty in their home countries enter Europe.
Despite refugees and immigration policy dominating the news and politician's speaking points in Germany, the study found that most people still think that life with their immigrant or non-immigrant neighbors is going well.
The main takeaways:
Deutsche Welle
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has accused Moscow of spreading disinformation in Macedonia ahead of the referendum on changing the country's name. The change could lead to Macedonia joining NATO and the EU.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday that there is "no doubt" that Moscow is funding pro-Russian groups to influence a referendum on changing the country's name later this month, which could lead to NATO and EU membership.
"They have transferred money and they're also conducting broader influence campaigns," Mattis said to reporters traveling with him to the Macedonian capital Skopje.
Macedonians are voting on September 30 on whether to change the country's name to the Republic of North Macedonia. The referendum follows aJune deal with neighboring Greece, which has long called for the name change, as Macedonia is also the name of a Greek region.
Al Jazeera
It was what everyone dreaded - two dead children.
After sifting through a home turned to rubble, rescue workers finally found the bodies of three-year-old Nabil and new-born baby girl Sumood.
Just moments earlier on Saturday, a Saudi-UAE military alliance, which has been carrying out air attacks on Yemen since March 2015, bombed their home in Saada province's Marran district, an impoverished area less than 40km from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, footage sent to Al Jazeera by Houthi rebels appeared to show.
"These were civilians, they were little kids," said one of the rescuers, as their bodies lay strewn next to him on a rock.
Al Jazeera
At least 27 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in multiple Taliban attacks on checkpoints as well as police and military bases in different parts of the country, according to officials.
The attacks on Sunday and Monday in three separate provinces - Farah, Badghis and Baghlan - and the high casualty toll underscore the difficulties government forces face in trying to secure the country.
In western Farah province, attacks began on Sunday night and killed at least 17 members of the security forces.
Fared Bakhtawer, head of the provincial council, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency on Monday that the Taliban had attacked police checkpoints across the province and Farah city, the provincial capital.
The Guardian
The immediate risk of a humanitarian disaster in the last major Syrian rebel enclave of Idlib appears to have been averted by a joint Russian-Turkish plan to set up a demilitarised zone as a buffer between the Syrian army and the rebels.
The plan was agreed on Monday by Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at a bilateral summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The nine- to 12-mile (15-20km) zone running along the borders of the Idlib region will be safe from Syrian and Russian air force attack, and will be in place by 15 October, the two leaders agreed.
Heavy weapons including tanks, mortars and artillery will be withdrawn from the zone by 10 October.
The plan is designed to prevent a large-scale Russian-Syrian attack on the whole of the Idlib region, a large province bordering Turkey in which more than 3 million civilians reside.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Deutsche Welle
The EU is doing away with the twice-yearly clock changes and has given member states until April to decide if they will remain on summer or winter time. But there are fears Europe is heading for time-zone chaos.
European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc on Friday announced that the EU will stop the twice-yearly changing of clocks across the continent in October 2019.
The practice, which was used as a means to conserve energy during the World Wars as well as the oil crises of the 1970s, became law across the bloc in 1996.
All EU countries are required to move forward by an hour on the last Sunday of March and back by an hour on the final Sunday in October.
Bulc said EU member states would have until April 2019 to decide whether they would permanently remain on summer or winter time.
The Guardian
Officials are planning to airlift food and water to Wilmington after the city of nearly 120,000 people became cut off from the rest of North Carolina by rising flood water from storm Florence.
At least 18 people have died in North and South Carolina since Friday, including a three month-old baby, as Tropical Depression Florence moved slowly across the region, dumping rain, swelling rivers and flooding cities.
More than 1,000 search-and-rescue personnel with 36 helicopters and over 200 boats were working in North Carolina, and the defense department assigned 13,500 military personnel to help relief efforts. As of early Monday, the state’s governor said 1,600 people and 300 animals had been moved to safety.
The Guardian
Severe flooding caused by storm Florence could last for days and even weeks, officials warned on Monday, as it continued its path north on the US east coast.
At least 23 people have died in North and South Carolina since Friday, including a three month-old baby, as tropical depression Florence moved slowly across the region, dumping rain, swelling rivers and flooding cities.
More than 1,000 search-and-rescue personnel with 36 helicopters and over 200 boats were working in North Carolina, and the defense department assigned 13,500 military personnel to help relief efforts. As of early Monday, the state’s governor said 1,600 people and 300 animals had been moved to safety.
Reuters
A second trial between Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) before the U.S. International Trade Commission began Monday in Washington, D.C., with the iPhone maker squaring off against the world’s biggest mobile chipmaker over whether Apple should be banned from importing several recent iPhone models to the United States.
Apple and Qualcomm are locked in a wide-ranging legal dispute in which Apple has accused Qualcomm of unfair patent licensing practices. Qualcomm, the world’s largest mobile phone chipmaker, has in turn accused Apple of patent infringement.
NPR
Watching an infant propel herself across the floor on wheels in a saucer-shaped baby walker may be as entertaining as a comedy episode. But because hospital emergency rooms treat more than 2,000 babies a year for injuries sustained while using these walkers, American pediatricians are repeating their decades-old call for a ban.
"I view infant walkers as inherently dangerous objects that have no benefit whatsoever and should not be sold in the U.S.," says Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, a pediatrician who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention.
More than 230,000 children under 15 months old were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments for skull fractures, concussions, broken bones and other injuries related to infant walkers from 1990 through 2014, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics published Monday.
NPR
When researchers first discovered a link in the late 1990s between childhood adversity and chronic health problems later in life, the real revelation was how common those experiences were across all socioeconomic groups.
But the first major study to focus on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was limited to a single healthcare system in San Diego. Now a new study — the largest nationally representative study to date on ACEs — confirms that these experiences are universal, yet highlights some disparities among socioeconomic groups. People with low-income and educational attainment, people of color and people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual had significantly higher chance of having experienced adversity in childhood.
The study finds three out of five adults across the U.S. had at least one adverse experience in their childhood, such as divorce, a parent's death, physical or emotional abuse, or a family member's incarceration or substance abuse problem. A quarter of adults have at least three such experiences in childhood, which – according to other research — increases their risk for most common chronic diseases, from heart disease and cancer to depression and substance abuse.
Vox
University of WashingtonSchool of MedicineIt’s not just a sci-fi scenario in The Handmaid’s Tale: Actual scientists are worrying about a coming reproductive apocalypse.
You heard me right.
Over the past 30 years, as concerns that environmental changes are harming our reproductive capacity have grown, scientific journal articles have trickled out that look at whether sperm counts are declining. But those studies were often riddled with flaws and limitations, and scientists couldn’t agree on how to interpret them.
Then came what’s now considered the most definitive study on the question, published in the journal Human Reproduction Update in 2017. The finding that got a lot of attention: The concentration of sperm in semen, also known as sperm count, has halved in the West since the 1970s. The finding that got less attention: Even the new low is still well within a normal range for sperm.
In the press release for the study, the authors declared a sperm-centric public health emergency. “This study is an urgent wake-up call for researchers and health authorities around the world to investigate the causes of the sharp ongoing drop in sperm count,” said Dr. Hagai Levine, the study’s lead author, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Medicine, “with the goal of prevention.”
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Guardian
The rigors of training camp bring enlightenment for many football players. That’s the most grueling portion of the NFL schedule for veterans who must put their body, year after year, through the grind prior to kickoff.
It’s a time when many aging veterans realize they no longer want to sacrifice their bodies after millions earned and plenty of accolades racked up. Some players realize they no longer have the desire to train non-stop and diet after the season concludes.
Others make the decision in the summer as camp grows near and they contemplate the gauntlet they’ll have to endure. Vontae Davis walked a very different path to his own epiphany Sunday.
Now 30 years old, and armed with a one-year, $5m contract signed with the Buffalo Bills in March, the cornerback suddenly lost his desire to play football and wasted no time.
The former first-round pick retired abruptly Sunday. Not before the game. Not after the game. When the clock hit zero to end the second quarter, with his Bills trailing the Los Angeles Chargers 28-6, Davis entered the home locker room at Ralph Wilson Stadium and walked over to his locker.
NPR
It might sound hard to believe, but being a Beatle doesn't necessarily assure chart-topping success — but never underestimate the pull of Paul McCartney.
The iconic pop star's 18th solo album, Egypt Station, has debuted in the top spot on the Billboard 200, marking the singer's first No. 1 album in the U.S. in 36 years and his first No. 1 debut — McCartney's last appearance in the No. 1 spot in the U.S. was in 1982, for his fourth studio album Tug of War, according to Billboard. McCartney's 1984 album, Give My Regards to Broad Street, which served as the soundtrack to the film of the same name (in which McCartney also starred), and his 1989 album, Flowers in the Dirt, both went to No. 1 in the U.K., but only reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200.