Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, 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: After Illinois’ richest resident Ken Griffin slams governor over Chicago violence, Pritzker claps back by Dan Petrella
Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker clapped back Tuesday at fellow billionaire and key political nemesis Ken Griffin, accusing the Citadel CEO of making Chicago and the state less safe through his support of former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Speaking to the Economic Club of Chicago a day earlier, Griffin said it’s “a disgrace that our governor will not insert himself into the challenge of addressing crime in our city” and inaccurately accused Pritzker of not deploying the National Guard during unrest last year over concerns about political optics.
“Let’s remember that Ken Griffin brought you Bruce Rauner,” Pritzker said Tuesday after an unrelated event in Chicago. “Ken Griffin was his biggest supporter.”
The New York Times: Facebook Whistle-Blower Urges Lawmakers to Regulate the Company by Cecilia Kang
WASHINGTON — A former Facebook product manager who turned into a whistle-blower gave lawmakers an unvarnished look into the inner workings of the world’s largest social network on Tuesday and detailed how the company was deliberate in its efforts to keep people — including children — hooked to its service.
In more than three hours of testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Frances Haugen, who worked on Facebook’s civic misinformation team for nearly two years until May, spoke candidly and with a level of insight that the company’s executives have rarely provided. She said Facebook had purposely hidden disturbing research about how teenagers felt worse about themselves after using its products and how it was willing to use hateful content on its site to keep users coming back.
Ms. Haugen also gave lawmakers information on what other data they should ask Facebook for, which could then lead to proposals to regulate the Silicon Valley giant as it increasingly faces questions about its global reach and power.
The Washington Post: Hospitals in less-vaccinated areas are struggling financially as infections mount and stimulus runs out by Christopher Rowland
The ferocity of the delta variant surge has delivered a serious financial blow to hospital systems in parts of the country with low vaccination rates that are struggling to care for coronavirus patients, even as they combat plummeting income, reduced bailout funds and higher labor costs.
Many hospitals in Southern states and rural areas of the country — even in states with otherwise high vaccination rates — have been forced once again to temporarily curtail elective procedures such as hip replacements that bring in the most money.
Meanwhile, rates of burnout and nurse attrition have soared at institutions with overburdened ICUs and covid-19 wards, contributing to severe labor shortages that are driving up costs for replacement workers, hospital officials said.
Hospital officials had been hoping a semblance of normalcy would return as vaccines helped beat back the spread of the coronavirus. Instead, with huge swaths of the nation resistant to shots, and delta variant driving a large wave of infection, they got what one administrator called a “triple whammy.” Hiring temporary replacement workers drove extraordinary cost increases. Vital revenue from elective surgeries evaporated. And public taxpayer supports to help providers through the crisis last year are drying up.
Vox: Why the Huntington Beach oil spill is so harmful to wildlife by Benji Jones
On October 2, an oil pipeline off the coast of Southern California ruptured, spewing an estimated 126,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean. The leak created a toxic, 13-square-mile oil slick off the shore of Huntington Beach, which has since spread into coastal wetlands rich in biodiversity.
While the spill is far from the scale of infamous past disasters — the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 released 100 times as many gallons into the ocean — experts say it will have sweeping impacts on Southern California’s coastal wildlife, potentially for years to come.
The spill is especially bad news for birds: Every fall, millions of them migrate through the state on their way south. “It’s devastating,” said John Villa, the executive director of Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, which owns and manages 127 acres of wetlands along the coast. Villa says the spill severely impacted marshes that are home to several avian species threatened with extinction, including the least tern. “A big concern is what’s going to happen to them,” he said. The conservancy is still surveying the damage.
BBC News: French Church abuse: 216,000 children were victims of clergy - inquiry
Some 216,000 children - mostly boys - have been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950, a damning new inquiry has found.
The head of the inquiry said there were at least 2,900-3,200 abusers, and accused the Church of showing a "cruel indifference towards the victims".
Pope Francis "felt pain" on hearing about the inquiry's finding, a Vatican statement said.
One of those abused said it was time the Church reassessed its actions.
François Devaux, who is also the founder of the victims' association La Parole Libérée (Freed speech), said there had been a "betrayal of trust, betrayal of morale, betrayal of children".
The inquiry found the number of children abused in France could rise to 330,000, when taking into account abuses committed by lay members of the Church, such as teachers at Catholic schools.
Guardian: Germany’s Greens and CDU report ‘constructive’ coalition talks by Kate Connolly
Germany’s Green party and conservatives have described initial rounds of exploratory coalition talks as “constructive”.
The comment came after the first formal meeting since last month’s election between the likely chief kingmaker in a future government and the second-placed Christian Democrats (CDU).
Despite pressure on the CDU’s Armin Laschet to relinquish his claim to a place in government after the party returned its historically worst ever result, he is forging ahead in his attempts to woo both the Greens and the pro-business FDP to form a CDU-led Jamaica coalition, so-called due to yellow, black and green colours of the three parties matching those of Jamaica’s flag.
Annalena Baerbock, main candidate for the Greens, which secured just under 15% of votes, said the two-hour long discussion on Tuesday had been “constructive and objective” but that no decision would be reached in the coming days.
AlJazeera: Libyan legislative elections delayed until January: Parliament
Libya’s legislative elections have been postponed until January, the country’s eastern-based parliament has said, instead of being held on December 24 as planned.
“The election for members of the House of Representatives will take place 30 days after the presidential vote,” still scheduled for December 24, parliamentary spokesman Abdullah Bliheg told a news conference on Tuesday.
Elections are supposed to help unify the country after years of conflict and division, but disputes about their legal and constitutional basis have laid bare the extent of the split between the country’s east and west.
The House of Representatives, based in the eastern city of Tobruk, has been in disagreement about electoral laws with a rival body, the equivalent of Libya’s senate, in the western city of Tripoli.
Guardian: Trio of scientists win Nobel prize for physics for climate work by Linda Geddes
Three scientists have won the 2021 Nobel prize in physics for their groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems – including how humanity influences the Earth’s climate.
The winners, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, will share the award, announced on Tuesday, presented by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and worth 10m Swedish kronor (£870,000).
One half of the prize was jointly awarded to Manabe and Hasselmann for their physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global heating. The other half went to Parisi for his discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.
Characterised by randomness and disorder, complex systems are difficult to understand, but this year’s prize recognised new methods for describing them and predicting their long-term behaviour.
Paul Hardaker, the chief executive of the Institute of Physics, said: “Whilst complex systems are difficult to deal with mathematically they are all around us and affect our lives in many different ways, not least through the way they affect the nature of our weather and climate.
Everyone have a great evening!
It’s great to now be home and somewhat well.