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 Sun-Times: ‘Like going to the shopping mall’: Two arrested in suburbs for alleged role in US Capitol breach by Jon Seidel
Federal prosecutors unveiled charges Tuesday against two additional Illinoisans accused of taking part in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, including a man who purportedly wrote on Facebook that, “by the time we got there it was like going to the shopping mall.”
David Wiersma, 66, and Dawn Frankowski, 53, were arrested Tuesday and are charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to the Justice Department.
Wiersma was arrested in Posen, and Frankowski was arrested in Naperville, records show. They were later ordered released on $10,000 recognizance bonds. They are also now at least the 15th and 16th Illinoisans arrested in connection with the breach, which prosecutors say has resulted in what will likely be the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.
Washington Post: U.S. default this fall would cost 6 million jobs, wipe out $15 trillion in wealth, study says by Jeff Stein
The United States could plunge into an immediate recession if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling and the country defaults on its payment obligations this fall, according to one analysis released Tuesday.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, found that a prolonged impasse over the debt ceiling would cost the U.S. economy up to 6 million jobs, wipe out as much as $15 trillion in household wealth, and send the unemployment rate surging to roughly 9 percent from around 5 percent.
Vox: How America’s hottest city is trying to cool down by Joss Fong
It’s time to stop looking at trees as a form of “beautification.” They are, instead, a living form of infrastructure, providing services that include stormwater management, air filtering, carbon sequestration, and, most importantly for a city like Phoenix, Arizona, they cool the environment around them.
Trees can lower neighborhood temperatures in three ways:
- Their shade prevents solar radiation from hitting paved surfaces like concrete and asphalt, which absorb energy and rerelease it into the air as heat.
- Their leaves cool the immediate area by using heat to evaporate the water trees pull from the soil during their growth processes.
- If you’re standing under one, a tree protects your body directly from the sun’s rays. If you’ve ever been in a dry, hot city like Phoenix in the summer, you’ll know how important shade is for making any outdoor experiences tolerable.
As Phoenix deals with a rising frequency of extreme heat waves — which can be deadly, but also cause worrisome spikes in energy demand — the city is looking to trees as part of its heat mitigation strategy. Phoenix isn’t devoid of trees, but they’re distributed unevenly across the city. A quick glance at a satellite image of the metro area reveals substantial green splotches in the north and east, and brown ones in the south and west, where many lower-income neighborhoods are located.
New York Times: No More Apologies: Inside Facebook’s Push to Defend Its Image by Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, signed off last month on a new initiative code-named Project Amplify.
The effort, which was hatched at an internal meeting in January, had a specific purpose: to use Facebook’s News Feed, the site’s most important digital real estate, to show people positive stories about the social network.
The idea was that pushing pro-Facebook news items — some of them written by the company — would improve its image in the eyes of its users, three people with knowledge of the effort said. But the move was sensitive because Facebook had not previously positioned the News Feed as a place where it burnished its own reputation. Several executives at the meeting were shocked by the proposal, one attendee said.
Project Amplify punctuated a series of decisions that Facebook has made this year to aggressively reshape its image. Since that January meeting, the company has begun a multipronged effort to change its narrative by distancing Mr. Zuckerberg from scandals, reducing outsiders’ access to internal data, burying a potentially negative report about its content and increasing its own advertising to showcase its brand.
Guardian: Major earthquake in Victoria rocks south-east Australia by Calla Wahlquist
An earthquake has rocked south-east Australia, with reports of tremors being felt from Melbourne to Sydney.
Geoscience Australia said the earthquake was centred in the Mansfield region, about an hour north-east of Melbourne.
Emergency services reported tremors as far north as Dubbo and Sydney, both about 700km from the epicentre. Dr Januka Attanayake, the research lead with the University of Melbourne’s earthquake seismology earth sciences unit, said preliminary estimates had the earthquake as a magnitude 5.8 to 6.0.
It is the strongest earthquake recorded in Victoria since a magnitude 5.7 event was recorded at Mount Hotham in May 1966, and the first recorded since a magnitude 5.4 earthquake in the Gippsland town of Moe in 2012.
DW: German election: Angela Merkel hits campaign trail with Armin Laschet by William Noah Glucroft
A cold, drenching rain didn't deter about 200 people from showing up at the old market square in Stralsund, a small, Hanseatic city on Germany's Baltic coast. Hiding under umbrellas and inside ponchos, they came for one of the final events of an election campaign that has been anything but predictable.
The headliner was Armin Laschet, the embattled chancellor candidate hoping to keep his conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in power. But the real star on Tuesday evening was the woman from whom he hopes to take the baton: Angela Merkel, the four-term chancellor who is stepping aside despite her unshakeable popularity.
The pair arrived about 20 minutes late. Security swept them through the crowd, entourage in tow, while the Black Eyed Peas' hit, "I Gotta Feeling" echoed off the square's restored medieval facades. The early-aughts dance-pop tune — from Merkel's first term — had to compete with unending boos and whistles coming from pandemic protesters just outside the roped-off event.
Reuters: Argentina raises monthly minimum wage to $317 as inflation rises
BUENOS AIRES, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Argentina on Tuesday raised the country's minimum wage to 31,104 Argentine pesos ($316.51) a month starting in September, as persistent inflation eats away at purchasing power.
In October, the minimum monthly wage will rise to 31,938 Argentine pesos, and then to 32,616 Argentine pesos in February 2022, the government said.
Overall in 2021, the minimum wage will have risen 55.3%, Economy Minister Martin Guzman said on Twitter.
"Today, the salary is a little bit more fair," President Alberto Fernandez said.
A new fissure spewing out lava around 900 meters from the main eruption point and seven new earthquakes measuring between 2.3 and 3.8 on the Richter scale. Those were the latest events seen today on La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands, as the new volcano there continued to erupt, raising the tensions among the local population. The lava has already consumed at least 183 homes, according to government spokesperson Isabel Rodríguez, who was speaking today after the weekly Cabinet meeting. Including infrastructure such as swimming pools and sports installations, the total rises to 200.
The president of the island council, Mariano Hernández Zapata, said today during an interview on state broadcaster TVE that “double or triple” this number of houses could end up being lost to the advancing lava. On Monday night, a further 40 homes in the municipality of El Paso were also evacuated.
By the early hours of Tuesday morning, the lava had spread out to cover 103 hectares. That’s according to an analysis of the situation at 6am Tuesday by Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth Observation Program. The new fissure prompted the precautionary evacuation of 150 to 200 residents in the Tacande neighborhood in El Paso. What’s more, the lava is slowly moving toward Todoque, which is home to 1,300 inhabitants, in Los Llanos de Aridane. That’s according to the mayor of the municipality, Noelia García, who warned of an “imminent risk.” The residents there have already been evacuated. Todoque is located roughly halfway between the area where the first eruption took place on Sunday, Cumbre Vieja, and the sea.
Don’t forget Hunter’s News Roundup tonight.
Everyone have a great evening!