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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Texas Tribune: 18 children and 2 adults dead in Uvalde elementary school shooting by Sneha Dey
The Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed to The Texas Tribune that 18 children and three adults are dead after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County on Tuesday. Others were also injured.
“My heart is broken today,” Superintendent Hal Harrell said while holding back tears during a press conference Tuesday evening. “We’re a small community and we need your prayers to get through this.”
Gov. Greg Abbott said the shooter is dead and is believed to have been killed by responding officers. The shooter acted alone, said Pete Arredondo, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District chief of police.
“What happened in Uvalde is a horrific tragedy that cannot be tolerated in the state of Texas,” Abbott said.
Two hospitals in the area are treating those injured in the shooting. Uvalde Memorial Hospital told The Texas Tribune it had received 13 children and one adult from ambulances and buses. Two patients arrived at the hospital dead. Two children have since been transferred to San Antonio for treatment, while a third is pending transfer.
I really don’t have much to say— everything has been said many times before— but I will say this.
1) If you want to know why this shooter is now dead, go check out his name.
2) Republican politicians, besides suggesting that elementary schools should be armed fortresses, are saying that we need to do something about mental health.
As far as I can see and from what we know about their previous actions, they don’t want to do anything about mental health, either. And if they were to do something, it would be an utter disservice to those that do have mental health issues, at the very least.
Chicago Sun-Times: More than 176,000 Chicago residents applied for chance to receive $500 for 12 months by Elvia Malagon
More than 176,000 Chicago residents applied for a pilot program that will provide individuals with a base monthly income of $500 for a year.
Only 5,000 individuals will be selected through a lottery process, meaning that a person has about a 2% chance of being selected. Applicants of the Resilient Communities Pilot are expected to get an update about their status in the program next week after the Memorial Day holiday weekend, city officials said Tuesday.
GiveDirectly, the agency picked to administer the city program, will narrow the pool of candidates to
13,000 through a lottery. Those applications will be reviewed to see whether they fit the eligibility criteria before a final lottery will pick the 5,000 participants, officials said.
Recipients will get the first $500 benefit through a prepaid debit card or their bank accounts by the end of June, though some might not receive it until July if they need more help enrolling, according to the city. City officials previously said the payments could have gone out by late May.
New York Times: Southern Baptists to Release List of Ministers Accused of Sexual Abuse by Ruth Graham
Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention announced Tuesday that they were preparing to release a secretly maintained list of hundreds of ministers and church workers they say are credibly accused of sexual abuse.
The existence of the list was revealed Sunday in a bombshell report on the denomination’s handling of sexual abuse over the past two decades. The report, produced by a third-party investigator and totaling almost 300 pages, alleges that the denomination’s top leaders had suppressed reports of sexual abuse, opposed proposals for reform, and denigrated and discouraged abuse victims who approached them for help.
One of the report’s most shocking revelations was the existence of an internal list of 703 people suspected of abuse, compiled by an employee of the denomination’s executive committee, its national leadership body.
According to the report, an executive committee staff member compiled and maintained the list over the course of a decade and shared it with D. August Boto, the committee’s former vice president and general counsel. Mr. Boto and the staff member both retired in 2019. Mr. Boto could not be reached immediately for comment.
Texas Tribune: George P. Bush’s defeat could be the end of the line for a four-generation political dynasty by James Barragan
When George P. Bush burst onto the scene at the Republican National Convention in 2000, the handsome, 24-year-old nephew of presidential nominee George W. Bush had all of the makings of a future leader of the GOP.
He was already political royalty — heir to a dynasty that included his father, then-Florida governor Jeb Bush, and his grandfather, former President George H.W. Bush. The son of a Mexican mother, and a fluent Spanish speaker, he seemed poised to broaden the appeal of the Republican Party to a younger and increasingly diverse electorate in the 21st century.
“Que viva Bush!” he told the convention to roaring applause. “Y que vivan los Estados Unidos!”
On Tuesday, the 46-year-old badly lost his runoff primary challenge to two-term Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch conservative who was seen as the most vulnerable Republican incumbent on the ballot due to his mounting scandals, including a felony indictment and an FBI investigation into his office for allegations of malfeasance.
BBC News: The faces from China’s Uyghur detention camps by John Sudworth
Thousands of photographs from the heart of China’s highly secretive system of mass incarceration in Xinjiang, as well as a shoot-to-kill policy for those who try to escape, are among a huge cache of data hacked from police computer servers in the region.
The Xinjiang Police Files, as they’re being called, were passed to the BBC earlier this year. After a months-long effort to investigate and authenticate them, they can be shown to offer significant new insights into the internment of the region’s Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.
Their publication coincides with the recent arrival in China of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, for a controversial visit to Xinjiang, with critics concerned that her itinerary will be under the tight control of the government.
The cache reveals, in unprecedented detail, China’s use of “re-education” camps and formal prisons as two separate but related systems of mass detention for Uyghurs - and seriously calls into question its well-honed public narrative about both.
AlJazeera: North Korea fires three missiles as Biden ends Asia visit by Zaheena Rasheed and Kate Mayberry
Seoul, South Korea – North Korea has test fired three missiles off its east coast, including a suspected Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), according to the governments of South Korea and Japan.
The tests on Wednesday came hours after Joe Biden, the president of the United States, left the region after a five-day tour during which he pledged to work with his allies to address Pyongyang’s growing nuclear and missile arsenal.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the first missile was launched at 6am local time (21:00 GMT) on Wednesday, with a second launch 37 minutes later and the third five minutes after that.
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-Yeol, who immediately convened a meeting of the National Security Council, condemned Pyongyang’s weapons tests as a “serious provocation threatening international peace”.
I’m out.
Peace.