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.
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Chicago Sun-Times: President Trump in Kenosha, vowing ‘to get it fixed up’ — but Jacob Blake’s uncle says, stay ‘away from our family’ by Rachel Hinton, Manny Ramos, and Mitchell Armentrout
KENOSHA, Wis. — President Donald Trump promised $5 million to Kenosha law enforcement and small businesses that were “ravaged by anti-police and anti-American riots” following days of unrest sparked by the shooting of a Black man by police.
“We’re all in this together, and this was an example of what can happen when you do it right,” Trump said.
Trump said his administration will provide $1 million to Kenosha’s law enforcement, nearly $4 million to some of the small businesses he spoke to Tuesday and over $42 million to support public safety statewide, “including direct support for law enforcement and funding for additional prosecutors to punish criminals,” Trump said.
“Kenosha has been ravaged by anti police and anti-American riots, they have been hit so hard and we were able to get involved,” Trump said, during a community safety roundtable after touring some of the damage in the city.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian were absent from that discussion — both expressed concerns about Trump’s visit.
Baltimore Sun: Baltimore Police moving to encrypt scanner transmissions, keeping public from hearing calls by Justin Fenton
As part of a planned upgrade of its radio systems, the Baltimore Police Department is switching to encrypted transmissions, eliminating the ability for most of the public to listen in.
The preparations were confirmed by City Councilman Yitzy Schleifer, head of the public safety committee. He said the upgrade has been planned since last year and was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
But officials have not discussed publicly that the new technology would feature encrypted communications.
Police issued a statement Tuesday night saying: “In following national best practices, the Baltimore Police Department is working to encrypt it’s emergency communications channels to protect potential victims and witnesses, while also enhancing officer safety. We will be providing equipment to established media outlets, as we work to be transparent while balancing public safety and privacy.”
Orlando Sentinel: Florida cuts ties with Quest over data dump of nearly 75,000 ‘stale’ coronavirus results by Richard Tribou and Steven Lemongello
Gov. Ron DeSantis severed all state ties to Quest Diagnostics after learning of a massive data dump of nearly 75,000 unreported coronavirus cases dating back to April.
The state Department of Health delayed its daily reporting of coronavirus numbers Tuesday because of what DeSantis said was “unusable and stale data” from the company.
DeSantis called the test reporting error “the most egregious example we’ve seen.”
The state reported that without the Quest results, the positivity rate for new cases totaling 3,773 for Aug. 31 is 5.9%. With the Quest results, that total rises to 7,643 cases with a positivity rate of 6.8%. The state said the majority of the Quest results were for tests more than two weeks old, and some as old as five months.
DeSantis stressed that “the individuals who tested positive at that time were notified by the lab, which is obviously very important. The lab just did not submit those results to the state. ... That’s not acceptable.”
He said the biggest impact of the mistake was that testing numbers play a huge role in determining public strategy.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Health care worker COVID-19 infections underscore mask needs by Jeremy Olson and Christopher Snowbeck
Dr. Deepi Goyal had personally treated numerous COVID-19 patients, and yet the infectious disease surprised him last month when he lost taste, felt exhausted and endured soreness as part of his case.
“I consider myself quite healthy and it really took me down,” the Mayo Clinic doctor said. “Not only did it take me down, but it took me a while to recover.”
Minnesota hasn’t suffered the doomsday scenario of COVID-19 knocking out large swaths of doctors and nurses — leaving infected patients with nobody to care for them — but new data is showing the toll of the pandemic on health care workers and the need for continued use of masks and personal protective equipment to act as safeguards.
Six percent of front-line hospital caregivers at HCMC and 12 other large U.S. hospitals had blood antibody levels earlier this spring suggesting prior infections with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study also showed a higher rate of antibodies in 9% of hospital workers who didn’t wear masks and personal protective equipment continuously during their jobs.
SFGate: Heat wave coming to Bay Area, with temps to exceed 105 in some spots by Amy Graff
It's about to get hot, sizzling hot.
Saturday will mark the start of a robust warming trend with inland temperatures climbing into the 100s over the three-day Labor Day weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
"We could potentially be looking at record-breaking temperatures this weekend and into next week," said Drew Peterson, a forecaster with the NWS's Bay Area office.
The heat wave is likely to trigger excessive heat warnings and is concerning for firefighters battling multiple wildfires in the greater Bay Area.
What's more, the weather shift is the result of a ridge of high pressure that can act as a lid, trapping smoke produced by the wildfires in the atmosphere.
"Another week, another major California heatwave," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, shared on Twitter. "This will undoubtedly complicate ongoing wildfire situation, & may have elevated health impacts given ongoing 'smokestorm' conditions that make it difficult to spend time outdoors/open windows."
Washington Post: What we know about Trump’s trip to a hospital in November by Philip Bump
Shortly before 3 p.m. on Nov. 16, President Trump arrived at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The White House pool reporter on duty described the president as leaving the White House a half-hour earlier, “wearing a long dark overcoat and carrying what looked like a tan rectangle-shaped folder or envelope under his arm.” Until the presidential motorcade arrived at the hospital, though, news of Trump’s departure wasn’t reportable.
And with that, a mystery was born.
Trump was there for about two hours, arriving at 2:47 p.m. and leaving at 5:03 p.m.
When the president arrived, his press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told reporters that Trump was “taking advantage of a free weekend” to “begin portions of his routine annual physical exam.” After Trump left the facility, Grisham offered more details.
Reuters: U.S. to send millions of rapid COVID-19 tests to states to support school reopening, other tasks by Carl O’Donnell and Vishwadha Chander
(Reuters) - The U.S. government will send an “overwhelming majority” of the rapid COVID-19 tests it purchased from Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N) last week to governors of states and territories to support school reopenings and other critical tasks, an administration official said at a press briefing.
Other top priorities for the newly purchased tests include day care centers, first responders, and “critical infrastructure,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The tests will be distributed in collaboration with Abbott beginning in mid-September, Giroir said. Abbott said last week it will ramp up production to around 50 million tests per month by mid-October.
The U.S. government agreed to purchase 150 million rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 from Abbott in a roughly $750 million deal.
The portable tests can deliver results within 15 minutes and will sell for $5. They require no additional equipment, and can use a less invasive nasal swab than traditional lab tests.
NBC News: Russian internet trolls hired U.S. journalists to push their news website, Facebook says by Kevin Collier and Ken Dilanian
Some of Russia’s most notorious internet trolls have launched a news website that hired real-life journalism freelancers — including Americans — to contribute, Facebook said Tuesday.
The site, called Peace Data, launched this year with coverage focused largely on the environment and corporate and political corruption. Facebook learned through a tip from the FBI that people formerly associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency, which created a number of influential Twitter and Facebook personas to inflame political tensions in the 2016 election, ran Peace Data and has taken down its known affiliated accounts. It had yet to gain a serious following, said Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy.
New York Times: 1 Million Primary Ballots Were Mailed Late, Postal Service Watchdog Says by Luke Broadwater
WASHINGTON — More than one million mail-in ballots were sent late to voters during the 2020 primary elections, an internal Postal Service audit found, underscoring deep concerns about whether the agency has the ability to process what is expected to be a major increase in mail-in votes for the presidential election in November.
In a survey of mail-in ballots sent during primaries from June 2 to Aug. 13, the agency’s inspector general found that election boards across the country had sent more than one million ballots during the final week of the election, putting those votes at “high risk” of not making it back to officials in time to be counted. Hundreds of ballots were mailed after elections were over — meaning they could not be counted — and only a small percentage used the proper tracking procedures, the audit found.
With at least three-quarters of American voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail in 2020 — the most in history — and about 80 million mail ballots expected to flood election offices this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, the findings raised questions about whether the Postal Service would be able to handle the crush of votes.
AlJazeera: US says it will not join global effort to find COVID-19 vaccine
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has said it will not work with an international cooperative effort to develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, because it does not want to be constrained by multilateral groups like the World Health Organization (WHO).
The decision to go it alone, first reported by The Washington Post, follows the White House's decision in early July to pull the US out of the WHO. Trump claims the WHO is in need of reform and is heavily influenced by China.
Some nations have worked directly to secure vaccine supplies, but others are pooling efforts to ensure success against a disease that has no geographical boundaries. More than 150 countries are setting up the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX.
BBC News: Charlie Hebdo: Fourteen suspects to face trial over Paris massacre
Fourteen people are to go on trial in France over the deadly attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo more than five years ago.
Most of the alleged accomplices will stand trial in Paris on Wednesday, but three will be tried in absentia.
They are accused of helping the militant Islamist attackers who shot dead 12 people in and around Charlie Hebdo's offices in January 2015.
A third gunman shot dead a policewoman and attacked a Jewish supermarket.
In total, 17 people were killed in a period of just three days. The killings marked the beginning of a wave of jihadist attacks across France that left more than 250 people dead.
DW: Taiwan 'determined' to play international role, despite Chinese pressure by William Yang
Two high-level diplomatic visits between Taiwan and allied democracies come as China is ratcheting up military pressure on the self-ruled island. Now Taipei is looking to its informal network of international allies for support.
Two weeks ago, the United States sent its highest-level delegation to Taiwan since Washington broke off formal diplomatic ties with the island in 1979. On Tuesday, a delegation from the Czech Republic visited Taiwan, which is seen in Taipei as a positive signal of stronger ties with the European Union.
"The exchanges between Taiwan and European countries have been getting deeper, and we cover a wider spectrum of issues, including human rights and even security issues," Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told DW, adding that the Czech delegation's visit would "set a very good example to other countries in Europe that they can do the same."
"Whatever they will do to improve relations with Taiwan, be it cultural, economic or political exchanges, they will all be welcomed by Taiwan," said Wu.
Euronews: France and Lebanon: the history of a turbulent relationship by Lauren Chadwick
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Beirut this week in a diplomatic move to promote reform in the crisis-stricken country.
It’s Macron's second visit to the Middle Eastern country since the August 4 explosion that destroyed large parts of the capital city, killing 190 and injuring thousands.
Many have questioned whether Macron could help encourage leaders to reform the mismanagement and corruption that the Lebanese blame for the economic crisis and devastating explosion.
Some have commended Macron's leadership after he convened an international donor conference following his first visit, and alongside other countries has joined the effort to help Beirut emerge after the blast.
But others have criticised Macron’s visits to Lebanon, saying it recalls France's colonial past. Lebanon is a former French protectorate and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Macron's visit a "spectacle" that seemed like colonialism.
But what is France's history in Lebanon and how does Macron's role in this crisis recall the two countries' historical ties?
Everyone have a good evening!
