Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, 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.
I list the OND anniversary on my calendar every year, but due to the strangeness of the quarantine….I didn’t turn the page of the calendar. So I missed the fact that last week Sunday was the 13th Anniversary of OND! Thanks be to Magnifico.
BBC
Coronavirus: Italy's PM outlines lockdown easing measures
Italy has outlined plans to ease the strict restrictions imposed seven weeks ago to curb the spread of the coronavirus as it recorded its lowest daily death toll since mid-March.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said curbs would be relaxed from 4 May, with people being allowed to visit their relatives in small numbers, in masks.
Parks will reopen, but schools will not restart classes until September.
Italy has reported 26,644 virus-related deaths, Europe's highest official toll.
The country recorded 260 new deaths on Sunday, the lowest daily figure since 14 March. It has confirmed 197,675 cases of the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the disease globally.
NPR
As States Reopen, Health Experts Seek To Understand Coronavirus's Early Silent Spread
As health officials across the country try to slow the coronavirus pandemic, a growing body of evidence and research suggests the virus may have been silently spreading in different parts of the country far earlier than initially believed and officially reported.
Preliminary results from antibody testing in New York and Florida show that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, may have already contracted the virus. Similar, and more controversial, surveys in California suggest wider spread than previously acknowledged.
And in the state's Bay Area, health officials have now identified two coronavirus-related deaths that occurred in early February, meaning the first known death from the coronavirus in the U.S. occurred weeks earlier than previously believed.
The earlier deaths "are like iceberg tips," said Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County's health director, during the announcement. They are indicators, she said, "that we had community transmission, probably to a significant degree, far earlier than we had known."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were only 11 reported cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. on Feb. 6, the day that a 57-year-old San Jose woman died after a brief illness with flu-like symptoms.
BBC
Coronavirus: Why the world will look to India for a vaccine
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last fortnight that India and the US were working together to develop vaccines against the coronavirus.
Mr Pompeo's remark didn't entirely come as a surprise.
The two countries have run an internationally recognised joint vaccine development programme for more than three decades.
They have worked on stopping dengue, enteric diseases, influenza and TB in their tracks. Trials of a dengue vaccine are planned in the near future.
India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases.
Now half a dozen Indian firms are developing vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19.
The Guardian
'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich have turned pandemic into profit
Never let a good crisis go to waste: as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, America’s 1% have taken profitable advantage of the old saying.
Some of the richest people in the US have been at the front of the queue as the government has handed out trillions of dollars to prop up an economy it shuttered amid the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the billionaire class has added $308bn to its wealth in four weeks - even as a record 26 million people lost their jobs.
According to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive thinktank, between 18 March and 22 April the wealth of America’s plutocrats grew 10.5%. After the last recession, it took over two years for total billionaire wealth to get back to the levels they enjoyed in 2007.
Eight of those billionaires have seen their net worth surge by over $1bn each, including the Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, and his ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos; Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom; the former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer; and Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX technocrat.
The Guardian
Bolsonaro in fresh crisis over son's alleged links to fake news racket
The political storm engulfing Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has intensified with reports that federal police investigators have identified his son as one of the alleged key members of a “criminal fake news racket” engaged in threatening and defaming Brazilian authorities.
One of Brazil’s top newspapers, the Folha de São Paulo, claimed an investigation by Brazil’s equivalent to the FBI had homed in on Carlos Bolsonaro, the president’s social-media-savvy son.
Carlos Bolsonaro, 37, rejected the claims as “garbage” and “a joke” on Twitter, where he has 1.7 million followers.
But the allegations will deepen the crisis consuming Bolsonaro’s 16-month-old government and further distract from the country’s efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 4,000 Brazilians.
Al Jazeera
Who might replace Kim Jong Un?
North Korea has never announced who would follow leader Kim Jong Un in the event he is incapacitated.
With no details known about his young children, analysts say his sister and loyalists could form a regency until a successor is old enough to take over.
His absence from a key state anniversary event on April 15 triggered speculation about his health.
South Korean and Chinese officials have publicly cast doubt on reports that followed suggesting Kim Jong Un was gravely ill following a cardiovascular procedure.
But media reports sparked questions about who is in place to take over if Kim Jong Un, thought to be 36, fell seriously ill or died.
You thought you were safe; think again.
Reuters
Israeli firm raises $5 million for tech to recognize mask-covered faces
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel’s Corsight AI, which has developed technology to recognize faces concealed by masks, goggles and plastic shields, raised $5 million from Awz Ventures, a Canadian fund focused on intelligence and security technologies.
Corsight said on Sunday it will use the funds to market the platform and to continue development.
In March, China’s Hanwang Technology Ltd said it has come up with technology that can recognize people when they are wearing masks, as many are today because of the coronavirus.
Corsight said it offers a facial recognition system able to process information captured on video cameras and can address difficulties resulting from the outbreak, where a large portion of the population is moving about with faces partially covered.
Deutsche Welle
SIPRI: Germany significantly increases military spending
(Lemme think. What happened last time, again?)
Global military expenditure reached $1.9 trillion (€1.7 trillion) in 2019, the highest annual sum in real terms since 1988. That sum marked an increase of 3.6% over 2018, the largest annual increase since 2010, according to the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
In Germany, spending rose by 10% to $49.3 billion — the largest defense budget increase among the world's top 15 states when it comes to military expenditures.
Read more: SIPRI: Weapons boom shows no signs of slowing
"There's been pressure on Germany to increase its military expenditure since before the Trump administration," said Max Mutschler from the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), a peace and conflict research institute. "The impact of this pressure is now becoming clear. However, one has to say that expenditure is still well below the 2% mark."
At a NATO summit in Wales in 2014, members agreed to meet a goal of spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense within the next decade. Last year, Germany's military expenditure amounted to 1.38% of its GDP.
Washington Post
Democrats see Senate suddenly within reach, boosted by Biden’s ascent
Joe Biden’s unexpectedly rapid consolidation of the Democratic presidential nomination has upended calculations in both parties about the U.S. Senate landscape, with Democrats hopeful that Biden can actively help with close races and Republicans increasingly nervous about losing their 53-47 majority.
Biden’s ascent has dented GOP plans to paint Democratic candidates as left-wing extremists, something they were eager to do had Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) emerged as the nominee. Instead, the Democrats now have a more moderate standard-bearer who is intimately familiar with the Senate, in close touch with top candidates and keenly aware of how Senate control could affect his potential presidency.
The former vice president’s emergence is part of a larger shift in prospects that has become clear in states such as Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and even Montana and Georgia, as a surge in Democratic fundraising, along with President Trump’s struggles to manage the coronavirus pandemic, have led independent analysts to upgrade Democrats’ chances.
The Guardian
Pompeii ruins show that the Romans invented recycling
They were expert engineers, way ahead of the curve on underfloor heating, aqueducts and the use of concrete as a building material. Now it turns out that the Romans were also masters at recycling their rubbish.
Researchers at Pompeii, the city buried under a thick carpet of volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, have found that huge mounds of refuse apparently dumped outside the city walls were in fact “staging grounds for cycles of use and reuse”.
Professor Allison Emmerson, an American academic who is part of a large team working at Pompeii, said rubbish was piled up along almost the entire external wall on the city’s northern side, among other sites. Some of the mounds were several metres high and included bits of ceramic and plaster, which could be repurposed as construction materials.
These mounds were previously thought to have been formed when an earthquake struck the city about 17 years before the volcano erupted, Emmerson said. Most were cleared in the mid-20th century, but some are still being discovered.