- Covid: Lockdown easing in England to be delayed by four weeks
- Syria Bombs Hospitals. Now It Will Help Lead The World Health Organization
- A Judge Has Thrown Out A Lawsuit Brought By Hospital Workers Over A Vaccine Mandate
- Congress to probe 'rogue' actions of Trump's Justice Dept
- NATO welcomes Biden in 'pivotal' post-Trump summit
- Brazil reports 1,129 new COVID-19 deaths, nearly 40,000 cases
- Deadly missile attack targets hospital in Syria’s Afrin
- Ted Cruz brings lawsuit demanding Trump be able to pay himself back millions he gave to his campaign
- Three F.D.A. Advisers Resign Over Agency’s Approval of Alzheimer’s Drug
- Ned Beatty, versatile and prolific actor of stage and screen, dies at 83
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck and Rise above the swamp. . 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.
Since 2007 the OND has been 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 and consider this an open thread.
BBC
Covid: Lockdown easing in England to be delayed by four weeks
Senior ministers have signed off a decision to delay the lifting of all coronavirus restrictions in England beyond 21 June.
Government sources have told the BBC most current rules will remain for another four weeks after this date.
It means nightclubs will stay closed and people will be encouraged to still work from home where possible.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to confirm the delay later at a press conference.
Stage four of the government's roadmap out of lockdown would see all legal limits on social contact removed.
But many scientists have called for the reopening to be delayed to enable more people to be vaccinated and receive second doses amid rising cases of the Delta variant.
Reuters
Brazil reports 1,129 new COVID-19 deaths, nearly 40,000 cases
Brazil reported 1,129 COVID-19 deaths and 37,948 new coronavirus cases, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
Nearly 490,000 people in the country have died from the virus during the pandemic, with 17.4 million people infected, the data show.
NPR
A Judge Has Thrown Out A Lawsuit Brought By Hospital Workers Over A Vaccine Mandate
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by 117 employees at Houston Methodist Hospital who were suing the hospital system over its COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
In a five-page ruling issued Saturday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes upheld the hospital's vaccination policy, saying the requirement broke no federal law.
"This is not coercion," said Hughes. "Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus. It is a choice made to keep staff, patients, and their families safer."
The decision marked the latest development in a standoff that began in April when Houston Methodist announced that all staff would be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by June 7. The hospital says that nearly all of its roughly 26,000 employees agreed to the policy, but suspended nearly 200 staff members without pay for refusing to comply.
NPR
Syria Bombs Hospitals. Now It Will Help Lead The World Health Organization
Abdalhamied Sharaf Aldein, a doctor in rebel-held northern Syria, has survived airstrikes and barrel bombs by the Syrian government, or its ally Russia, while caring for patients in at least eight different hospitals and medical clinics.
Now working at a hospital in Bab al Hawa, close to the Turkish border controlled by the opposition, Aldein says the attacks have become so terrifyingly routine that it's hard to keep an exact count. Sometimes the hospital or clinic where he was working would be destroyed, other times just damaged.
"If we were in the operation room [when the strike hit] we couldn't leave the patient, even if our lives were in danger," he says.
Health facilities are officially protected from attack under international law and the Syrian regime denies intentionally targeting civilians, including a 2016 statement from President Bashar al Assad saying "We don't attack any hospital." In a decision that appalled and angered Syrian opposition groups and international medical organizations, on May 28 Syria was appointed to the World Health Organization's Executive Board, made up of 34 member states.
Al Jazeera
Deadly missile attack targets hospital in Syria’s Afrin
At least 13 people, including two medical staff, have been killed and several wounded in two separate artillery attacks in the northern Syrian town of Afrin controlled by Turkey-backed fighters, activists and an aid group said on Sunday.
The first attack struck a residential area, while the second hit a hospital shortly afterwards, civil defence sources told Reuters news agency. Video footage on social media showed casualties amid the ruins of the al-Shifa hospital, which went out of service after the attack.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which reportedly came from areas where Syrian government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed.
The governor of Turkey’s Hatay province, across the border from Afrin, and Turkey’s defence ministry also said the attack killed 13 civilians and injured 27, adding that it involved rocket and artillery shelling of the hospital.
Reuters
Congress to probe 'rogue' actions of Trump's Justice Dept
The top two Democrats in the U.S. Congress on Sunday vowed to probe the "rogue" actions of the Justice Department during former President Donald Trump's term, including its move to seize the communications records of Democratic lawmakers.
Those reviews will run parallel with an investigation by the department's own internal watchdog into its moves to subpoena phone records of Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, as part of a probe into leaks of classified information.
The Justice Department under former attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions was regularly accused of putting Trump's personal and political interests ahead of the law.
"The Justice Department has been rogue under President Trump, understand that, in so many respects. This is just another manifestation of their rogue activity," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN's "State of the Union."
Reuters
NATO welcomes Biden in 'pivotal' post-Trump summit
NATO leaders hope to open a new chapter in transatlantic relations at a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday, agreeing to focus on tackling climate change for the first time as well as facing up China's military rise.
Described as a "pivotal moment" by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, the summit aims to turn the page on four tense years with Biden's predecessor Donald Trump, who shook confidence in the Western alliance by calling it "obsolete".
For the 30 allies meeting in Brussels, diplomats say nothing could be further from the truth, looking to the nuclear-armed alliance founded in 1949 to help deal with threats from extreme weather that can worsen conflicts to Russian attempts to undermine Western democracies through covert attacks.
Raw Story
Ted Cruz brings lawsuit demanding Trump be able to pay himself back millions he gave to his campaign
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is further attempting to prove he's pals with Donald Trump after launching a lawsuit appealed to the Supreme Court that Trump and other candidates should be able to pay themselves back the millions of dollars they use to self-fund their campaigns.
Trump loaned his campaign $10.8 million in 2015, and by March 2016, he'd given his campaign $38 million. Trump even went so far as to claim that he was willing to spend as much as $100 million of his own money to win in 2016. He didn't ultimately give that much officially, but it was certainly a lot, particularly given the hush-money payments uncovered.
Cruz claims that the McCain-Feingold Law violates the First Amendment by limiting to $250,000 fundraising to repay loans a candidate makes to his or her own federal campaign.
New York Times
Three F.D.A. Advisers Resign Over Agency’s Approval of Alzheimer’s Drug
In a powerful statement of disagreement with the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug, three scientists have resigned from the independent committee that advised the agency on the treatment.
“This might be the worst approval decision that the F.D.A. has made that I can remember,” said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who submitted his resignation Thursday after six years on the committee.
He said the agency’s approval of the drug, aducanumab, which is being marketed as Aduhelm, a monthly intravenous infusion that Biogen has priced at $56,000 per year, was wrong “because of so many different factors, starting from the fact that there’s no good evidence that the drug works.”Two other members of the committee resigned earlier this week, expressing dismay at the approval of the drug despite the committee’s overwhelming rejection of it after reviewing clinical trial data in November.
Washington Post
Ned Beatty, versatile and prolific actor of stage and screen, dies at 83
Ned Beatty, a supporting actor whose hundreds of screen and stage roles captured the full spectrum of humanity — from sincerity to villainy, buffoonery to tragedy — and made him one of the most versatile performers of his generation, died June 13 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83.
His death was confirmed by a son, Jon Beatty, who did not cite a specific cause.
In a career spanning six decades, Mr. Beatty marshaled his booming voice, roly-poly physique, beady eyes and Cheshire-cat grin into an impressive range of characters: amiable, self-deluding, menacing, terrified, or a nuanced combination of the four.
After years working in theater — including eight seasons with Arena Stage in Washington — Mr. Beatty emerged in his mid-30s as a much-in-demand supporting actor on-screen. His movie debut was in “Deliverance” (1972), about a quartet of Atlanta businessmen (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight and Ronny Cox were the others) whose canoeing adventure in Appalachia turns into a gruesome tale of sodomy and murder.