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 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.
Chicago Tribune: Lake Michigan water levels on pace to reach record high in June, skirt records into fall by Javonte Anderson and Alejandro Serrano
After late snowstorms and record-setting rainfall this spring, Lake Michigan’s water levels are projected to rise to a record level this month.
The rising water, which could swell more than 2.5 feet above its long-term monthly average, is expected to tie the previous June peak set in 1986.
Lakes Michigan and Huron, measured together because they are connected at the Straits of Mackinac, rose 6 inches in a month and are up more than a foot since last year.
May’s record-setting torrential rainfall was a catalyst for Lake Michigan’s surge in water levels, said Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ district office in Detroit.
MLive: You can only keep one of these Faygo flavors stirs up wild Twitter debate by Edward Pevos
This Faygo Twitter debate has become so heated, at one point, Rock & Rye was trending on the social media site.
Twitter user Isaac posed this question with a seemingly impossible answer: "You can only keep one Faygo flavor," with pictures of Red Pop, Orange, Grape and Rock & Rye.
Even Michigan's governor and Faygo itself have weighed in. Here's what both had to say and what flavor others say they can't live without.
Philadelphia Inquirer: Hundreds of sexual harassment and misconduct claims filed by Pa. state employees, costing $1.9M by Sara Simon
HARRISBURG — More than 550 sexual harassment and workplace misconduct claims were reported by Pennsylvania state employees over the last five years, costing taxpayers upward of $1.9 million but resulting in very few referrals to law enforcement, according to a new report.
The study, conducted by the nonpartisan Joint State Government Commission and released Tuesday, revealed a patchwork of policies and definitions related to inappropriate behavior that make it difficult to compare agencies or draw many conclusions from the totals.
The Department of Corrections, which has about 15,000 employees, reported the most complaints, 130 during fiscal years 2013 to 2018. The Liquor Control Board, which employs about 3,100 employees, reported 64 complaints during that time, tied for second highest across state government.
Only three complaints were referred to law enforcement, none in the executive branch, the report said.
Houston Chronicle: Federal elder fraud strike force in Houston targets international telemarketers who prey on seniors by Gabrielle Banks
Federal prosecutors in the Houston region will join a national effort to thwart elder fraud by foreign-based scammers targeting seniors, Justice Department officials said this month.
The Transnational Elder Fraud Strike Force will combine the efforts of federal prosecutors and data analysts from the agency’s consumer protection unit to pursue foreign-based fraud schemes involving telemarketing, mass mailings and tech support, according to a news release from the DOJ. The project is being spearheaded by the 43-county southern Texas region, which is headquartered in Houston, and five other U.S. attorneys’ offices in California, Florida, Georgia and New York.
“Elder fraud comes in many variations — through the mail, online and even in person,” U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick said in a written statement. “By focusing on these cases, we hope to send a message from the low-level hucksters to the sophisticated international organizations that when we find you, we will prosecute you.”
Other agencies contributing to the effort include multiple law enforcement units, FBI agents, postal inspectors and the Federal Trade Commission.
Since 2018, the Justice Department has brought criminal and civil actions against more than 500 defendants on allegations they took more than $1.5 billion from at least 3 million victims based on fraudulent premises.
San Jose Mercury News: Federal civil trial underway in 2016 San Jose police shooting by Robert Salonga
SAN JOSE — When two San Jose police officers shot and killed 18-year-old Anthony Nunez in front of his home on the Fourth of July three years ago, authorities said he had shot himself twice in the head before aiming a revolver at the officers, who were taking cover across the street.
But Nunez’s family saw things differently: He was in a mental-health crisis, they said, and was not pointing a gun at the police when officers Michael Santos and Anthony Vizzusi shot him.
The family filed suit in federal court, and this week a civil trial began, with a jury charged with deciding which version of the events to accept.
There was enough uncertainty for U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh to allow excessive-force and wrongful-death claims against the city of San Jose and the officers to proceed to a jury trial. In her pretrial order, Judge Koh wrote that inconsistencies in officers’ accounts about whether and how Nunez threatened the officers, along with inconclusive home-surveillance videos and the accounts of neighbors, raised “a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Nunez posed an immediate threat.”
Washington Post: As Trump’s defense pick withdraws, he addresses violent domestic incidents by Aaron C. Davis and Shawn Boburg
In the months that he has served as President Trump’s acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan has worked to keep domestic violence incidents within his family private. His wife was arrested after punching him in the face, and his son was arrested after a separate incident in which he hit his mother with a baseball bat. Public disclosure of the nearly decade-old episodes would re-traumatize his young adult children, Shanahan said.
On Tuesday, Trump announced in a tweet that Shanahan would not be going through with the nomination process — which had been delayed by an unusually lengthy FBI background check — “so that he can devote more time to his family.”
Shanahan spoke publicly about the incidents in interviews with The Washington Post on Monday and Tuesday.
“Bad things can happen to good families . . . and this is a tragedy, really,” Shanahan said. Dredging up the episode publicly, he said, “will ruin my son’s life.”
In November 2011, Shanahan rushed to defend his then-17-year-old son, William Shanahan, in the days after the teenager brutally beat his mother. The attack had left Patrick Shanahan’s ex-wife unconscious in a pool of blood, her skull fractured and with internal injuries that required surgery, according to court and police records.
South Bend Tribune: Shooting tests Pete Buttigieg's balance in running South Bend and running for president by Jeff Parrott
SOUTH BEND — Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign has been harvesting big money from donors, and this week was supposed to be especially bountiful.
He was scheduled to headline the Democratic National Committee’s annual LGBT Gala in New York city Monday. On Tuesday and today, he had a series of high-dollar fundraisers planned with some of Hollywood’s most prolific donors. Thursday he is booked for a dinner in Boston, and Friday is supposed to take him to Miami.
But on Sunday, after his plane landed in New York, following a trip to South Carolina, Buttigieg’s mayoral duties called. Earlier that morning, South Bend police Sgt. Ryan O’Neill, who is white, fatally shot 53-year-old Eric Logan, who is black. O’Neill was responding to a call about vehicle break-ins in the area and has claimed that, after encountering Logan in a parking lot, shot him as the suspect approached with a knife.
Buttigieg, whose campaign is trying to appeal to more black voters and who has had to answer questions about tensions between police and black residents in South Bend, flew home for a 10 p.m. news conference and canceled his Los Angeles trip. Later, he announced he was suspending his campaign for three days in the shooting’s aftermath.
Undark.org: In Courtrooms, Climate Change Is No Longer Up for Debate by Isabella Kaminski
IN SEPTEMBER 2017, San Francisco experienced its hottest day on record, with temperatures reaching a searing 106 degrees. Weeks later, the city joined Oakland to announce it would sue five major fossil fuel firms — BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — for the costs of building sea walls and other infrastructure to protect residents from global warming.
When the case reached court the following year, federal district judge William Alsup ordered a tutorial on climate change in which he asked both sides a series of pointed questions, including what caused the planet’s ice ages and what the main sources of CO2 in the atmosphere were. In the news media, the trial was cast as a possible “Scopes” moment for climate change, a reference to the seminal 1925 Tennessee trial in which evolutionary theory was pitted against Biblical teaching.
The cities called on a number of expert witnesses, including Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford. By walking the judge through the century-long history of climate science, punctuated with rapidly ascending line graphs, the witnesses brought global warming to the court’s attention in a way that left no doubt about how credible a threat it was. The fossil-fuel companies, meanwhile, took a different tack. Chevron’s evidence during the tutorial was presented through a lawyer, who acknowledged the role of human activity in climate change but denied the company could have known the future implications of its actions and said a court wasn’t the right place to deal with the issue. Statements submitted by the other defendants were largely in line with Chevron’s presentation.
Reuters: Corbyn to back second Brexit referendum - The Times
(Reuters) - British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn will back a move on Wednesday for the Labour Party to change its Brexit policy and support a second referendum in all circumstances, The Times reported, citing a senior Labour source.
A paper by Corbyn’s head of policy, Andrew Fisher, recommends that Labour support a second referendum on any deal negotiated with Brussels, the newspaper reported, adding that most shadow cabinet members are yet to see the paper.
The shadow cabinet will on Wednesday discuss the plan to make Labour’s stance decisively pro-remain, the Times reported.
Labour, which along with the Conservatives saw its support slump at the European elections as voters expressed their frustration over Brexit deadlock, is divided over whether to unequivocally support holding a second referendum.
Christian Science Monitor: Guatemala election: What campaign chaos has to do with migration north by Whitney Eulich
A little boy ran out of a voting booth Sunday in the Guatemalan department of San Marcos, a rural area south of the Mexican border. Grasping his mother’s hand, he victoriously screamed, “I voted!” holding up his inked index finger.
“He’s the only one here that’s excited,” joked Lesli Pérez, his mother, who says all the candidates in the first-round presidential vote have serious shortcomings – most prominently, allegations of corruption.
If Guatemala’s 2015 presidential election was defined by a sense of hope and possibility, after a sitting president and vice president were arrested on fraud charges, this year’s vote underscores the persistence of Guatemala’s struggles with corruption and organized crime.
Guatemala is increasingly in the global spotlight, with tens of thousands of Central Americans leaving or traveling through the country to flee poverty, violence, and lack of opportunity stopped at the U.S. border this year. And after years of battling corruption with the help of an independent body backed by the U.N., the government plans to shutter it in September (a process set in motion after it launched investigations into the current president). Yesterday’s election and its many twists and turns underscore the vast challenges the country’s next president will face – and the lack of confidence many here have in government leadership, spurring many people’s decisions to head north.
BBC News: Berlin backs five-year rent freeze amid housing pressure
Berlin's left-wing government has approved a plan to freeze rents in the German capital for the next five years.
Rents have risen sharply in the city and there have been rallies urging the authorities to keep housing affordable.
The plan is expected to become law in January. It could apply to 1.4 million properties, but not to social housing - regulated separately - or new builds.
The average monthly rent for a furnished Berlin flat is about €1,100 (£983; $1,232).
An international comparison website, housinganywhere.com, reports that several major European cities are more expensive than Berlin for apartment rents, including Barcelona, Rotterdam and Milan.
Berlin rents however rose by 7% in the first quarter of this year, and in the past decade rents have doubled as the booming city has become a magnet for jobseekers.
AlJazeera: UN calls for 'prompt and thorough' probe into Morsi's death
The UN has called for a "thorough and transparent investigation" into the death of Mohamed Morsi in court, as thousands of people across the Middle East paid their respects to Egypt's former president.
The UN human rights office on Tuesday said the investigation should encompass all aspects of his treatment during nearly six years of his incarceration.
Egypt's first democratically president was buried in a small family ceremony early on Tuesday a day after he suffered a fatal heart attack in a Cairo court, his sons said.
"Concerns have been raised regarding the conditions of Mr Morsi's detention, including access to adequate medical care, as well as sufficient access to his lawyers and family ...," UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in a statement.
Spiegel Online International: A Moroccan Oasis Struggles with Climate Change by Raphael Thelen (6.12.19)
A sandstorm moves over the oasis town of M'Hamid El Ghizlane, coating buildings and streets with a fine yellowish coating that makes breathing more difficult and burns the eyes. Halim Sbai, 48, looks out at the remnants of the clay walls of his birth home on the edge of the oasis. "Whenever I'm here, the old and the new image of this place are superimposed on each other," he says. "It's then that I see the differences."
Before the rain stopped falling and the sandstorms grew stronger, palm trees used to grow in this oasis in southern Morocco. Date palms reached to the sky while pomegranate trees, wheat and watermelons grew in their shade -- so dense that Sbai had to fight his way through jungle-like vegetation when he wanted to swim in the Draa River near his home after it rained.
Today, he stands on a riverbed that the sun has burned to hardpan. Fronds still hang from a few palms, but the the trees no longer produce any dates, and some have withered to nothing more than a bare trunk. The oasis is dying along with them.
New York magazine/The Cut: Women’s Sex-Toy Company Sues NYC Subway System for Rejecting Its Ads by Amanda Arnold
A Brooklyn-based start-up that sells women’s sex toys is suing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for rejecting advertisements that picture its products — a decision the company has deemed “sexist.”
On Tuesday, Dame Products filed a 40-page lawsuit against the MTA, claiming the agency is perpetuating a “ridiculous double standard” by rejecting its ads, which feature tasteful photographs of vibrators and other sex toys. According to the suit, Dame contacted the MTA in July 2018 about running the ads, and the company claims it was given preliminary approval in November; one month later, however, the ads were rejected, allegedly for promoting a “sexually oriented business.” Given that subway cars regularly display ads related to men’s sexual health, such as those for erectile-dysfunction medications, Dame found this decision egregiously unfair. So today, the company is suing.
In the preliminary statement of its lawsuit, Dame asks the reader to “imagine [they’re] a woman on the subway,” where sex-related ads are ubiquitous. “Look left, and you see phallic cactuses — both flaccid and erect — which promote erectile-dysfunction medication beneath the slogan ‘Hard made easy,’” the lawsuit reads. “Look right, and your eye catches an advertisement for ‘Kyng’-sized condoms, their foil packets shiny.”
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!