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.
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Chicago Tribune: Study links short stays at Cook County Jail early in the pandemic to the spread of COVID-19 in Black and Latino neighborhoods after inmates’ release by Nara Schoenberg
Relatively brief stays at the Cook County Jail — many lasting only hours or days — were strongly associated with the early spread of COVID-19 in Chicago, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study found that for each inmate released in March 2020, about five additional cases of COVID appeared in the inmate’s ZIP code of residence.
And because the majority of inmates at Cook County Jail are Black and Hispanic, much of the added disease burden fell on the city’s minority residents.
The study is the first to empirically show that incarceration appears to be a major factor driving racial disparities in COVID-19 infection in the broader community, according to co-author Eric Reinhart, a lead health and justice systems researcher at the World Bank.
Washington Post: Fuel shortages crop up in Southeast, gas prices climb after pipeline hack by Taylor Telford, Will Englund, and Roy Laverty
Lines of panicked drivers overwhelmed gas stations in the Southeast on Tuesday, as rising prices fed fears of shortages in the aftermath of a ransomware attack that forced the nation’s largest fuel pipeline offline.
In Atlanta, 1 of every 5 gas stations was reported to be out of fuel Tuesday evening.
“Look how crazy we’re all getting, over every little thing,” said Allan Hardy, a plumber who had driven from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to Wilmington, N.C., and saw long lines at every service station on the road, save for those that had already run out of gas. “And the only reason this shortage isn’t worse is that a lot of people aren’t working right now. Today it’s our oil pipeline, but what will it be tomorrow? If this kind of thing comes at another time, you just can’t gauge how bad it might get.”
In Washington, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the Southeast can expect a “crunch” that will take several days to alleviate.
CNN: Colorado Springs shooter was upset that he wasn't invited to the family gathering where he killed six people, police chief says by Steve Almasy, Raja Razek, and Ashley Killough
(CNN) The man who fatally shot six people at a birthday party in Colorado Springs was upset at not being invited to the event, authorities said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
The police chief said Teodoro Macias, 28, had been dating Sandra Ibarra, one of the six victims for about a year.
Ibarra and five other members of her extended family were shot in quick succession after the suspect arrived at the home early Sunday with a Smith & Wesson M&P pistol, according to Lt. Joe Frabbiele of the Homicide Assault Unit.
Frabbiele said evidence showed the man was upset over the lack of an invitation.
"When he wasn't invited to a family gathering the suspect responded by opening fire and killing six victims before taking his own life," Chief Vince Niski said.
Three children, ages 2, 5, 11, were unharmed but police said there is evidence they witnessed what happened.
A seventh adult also was unharmed.
New York Times: Cheney Embraces Her Downfall, Warning G.O.P. of Trump in a Fiery Speech by Catie Edmondson
WASHINGTON — In the hours before facing a vote that will almost certainly purge her from House Republican leadership, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming remained unrepentant on Tuesday, framing her expulsion as a turning point for her party and declaring in an extraordinary speech that she would not sit quietly by as Republicans abandoned the rule of law.
Delivering the broadside from the House floor on Tuesday night, Ms. Cheney took a fiery last stand, warning that former President Donald J. Trump had created a threat that the nation had never seen before: a president who had “provoked a violent attack” on his own Capitol “in an effort to steal the election,” and then continued to spread his election lies.
“Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” Ms. Cheney said. “I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”
Her defiant exit — and unmistakable jab at the House Republican leaders working to oust her — illustrates Ms. Cheney’s determination to continue her blunt condemnation of Mr. Trump and her party’s role in spreading the false election claims that inspired the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. On the precipice of the vote to remove her on Wednesday, she has embraced her downfall rather than fight it, offering herself as a cautionary tale in what she is portraying as a battle for the soul of the Republican Party.
BBC News: Rockets target Tel Aviv after Gaza tower destroyed
Palestinian militants say they fired 130 missiles at the Israeli city of Tel Aviv after an Israeli air strike felled a tower block in the Gaza Strip.
The 13-storey building was attacked an hour and a half after residents and local people were warned to evacuate, Reuters news agency reports.
Israel's military says it is targeting militants in Gaza in response to earlier rocket attacks.
At least 31 people have died in some of the worst violence in years.
The international community has urged both sides to end the escalation, which follows days of unrest in Jerusalem.
Militants had already fired hundreds of rockets towards Jerusalem and other areas.
Three people have been killed in Israeli areas while at least 28 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli air strikes.
Guardian: What is the deadly ‘black fungus’ seen in Covid patients in India? by Melissa Davey
A rare “black fungus” that invades the brain is being increasingly seen in vulnerable patients in India, including those with Covid-19, as the health system continues to struggle in the midst of the pandemic.
The health ministry on Sunday released an advisory on how to treat the infection. In the state of Gujarat, about 300 cases had been reported in four cities, including Ahmedabad, according to data from state-run hospitals.
The infection, called mucormycosis, “is very serious, has a high mortality, and you need surgery and lots of drugs to get on top of it once it takes hold”, said Prof Peter Collignon, who sits on the World Health Organization’s expert committee on antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases.
AlJazeera: WHO reviewing Seychelles data after fully vaccinated get COVID
The World Health Organization (WHO) has it was reviewing coronavirus data from Seychelles after the country’s health ministry said more than a third of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week had been fully vaccinated.
The ministry and the WHO stressed on Tuesday that the majority of those who tested positive had not been vaccinated or had only received one dose, that no one who had died had been fully vaccinated and that nearly all of those needing treatment for severe or critical cases were unvaccinated.
But the WHO said it was closely following the situation in the Indian Ocean nation, which has a population of less than 100,000 and has been reporting daily cases numbers in the low hundreds.
“Our teams continue to review the data, assess progress and understand the trends,” a spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency by email.
The seven-day rolling average of positive cases increased from 120 on April 30 to 314 on May 8, the ministry said in a statement late on Monday, with almost two-thirds of the positive cases being close contacts of another person testing positive.
Some 37 percent of those testing positive had received both doses of a vaccine, it said.
Story by Noriyuki Takata
Through the 1980s, Japan possessed world-class vaccination technology for chickenpox, encephalitis and whooping cough that it licensed to the U.S. and other countries.
But vaccine development ground to a virtual halt with a 1992 court decision that ordered the government to pay compensation related to side effects of inoculations.
The public viewed the ruling as a landmark decision that opened the way for wider compensation of victims, and the government dropped its appeal. Inoculations ceased to be mandatory after Japan amended a law in 1994, and the country's vaccination rate declined as parents became more concerned about side effects.
The AIDS crisis had an impact as well. In 1996, a health ministry official was convicted of negligent homicide in a scandal involving HIV-contaminated blood products in Japan. Despite the effort at accountability, the incident left an impression among bureaucrats that if anything goes wrong, they would take the blame while politicians would be off the hook.
Japan now faces a "vaccine gap," as product approvals take several years in the U.S. and Europe but require more than 10 for Tokyo. The Pfizer vaccine being administered to the elderly in Japan received special approval from the health ministry, but this procedure applies only to overseas vaccines.
Everyone have a great evening!