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 JeremyBloom. 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: ‘The 4 years fallacy’: CPS students struggle to graduate from college in less than 6 years, UChicago study says by Catherine Odom
Nidalis Burgos said she used to commute an hour and 20 minutes each way on public transportation to get from her home in Humboldt Park to Loyola University Chicago.
She graduated from Lincoln Park High School in 2016. She commuted to school to save money on her education, but withdrew from Loyola after two years.
Burgos, who was a first-generation, low-income student, completed an associate’s degree at Harold Washington College.
Struggling to graduate on time or at all from a four-year university is not an uncommon experience for Chicago Public Schools graduates.
A new study from the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project showed just 30% of CPS graduates at bachelor’s degree-granting universities received their degrees in four years. The six-year graduation rate was more than 20 percentage points higher at 51%.
New York Times: Johnson Plans Vote on Impeachment Inquiry, Predicting Unanimous G.O.P. Support by Luke Broadwater
Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday promised a floor vote to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry against President Biden, hoping to provide legal heft to an investigation that has been underway for months but has so far failed to prove Republicans’ claims that Mr. Biden accepted bribes.
Republicans have for months avoided scheduling such a vote, lacking support from some mainstream members who were reluctant to endorse a formal impeachment inquiry without any concrete evidence the president committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
But Mr. Johnson said on Tuesday that all Republicans could now feel comfortable voting to formalize the ongoing inquiry because doing so merely continues an investigation and does not assert any wrongdoing by the president worthy of impeachment.
“This vote is not a vote to impeach President Biden,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference. “This is a vote to continue the inquiry of impeachment, and that’s a necessary constitutional step. I believe we’ll get every vote that we have.”
Washington Post: Tommy Tuberville announces end to blanket military holds by Liz Goodwin and Dan Lamothe
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) announced Tuesday that he would lift his blanket hold on military promotions, ending a nearly 10-month standoff over a Biden administration abortion policy that made the former football coach the target of bipartisan ire.
“It’s been a long fight, we fought hard,” Tuberville said after announcing his decision to his colleagues at a closed-door lunch. “We just released them.”
The hold, which Tuberville began in February, applied to all senior military promotions, and hundreds of officers were caught up in its net. As officers increasingly complained of the toll on military readiness and morale, and as a war raged in the Middle East, Tuberville faced increasing pressure from his fellow Republicans to drop the hold.
He has now narrowed his hold to the 10 or so promotions at the four-star rank. Tuberville said he relinquished the hold because he wanted to keep Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) from bringing up a vote to get around his maneuver. He did not receive any concessions he previously demanded, such as a change to the military funding bill to address the abortion policy.
NBC News: Hundreds of lawsuits allege decades of sexual abuse at Rikers Island by Char Adams
Of the more than 2,500 lawsuits filed under a special New York law, nearly 20% allege sexual violence against current or former prisoners at the infamous Rikers Island facilities.
New York’s Adult Survivors Act allowed survivors of sexual assault one year to sue no matter how long ago the alleged abuse happened. This has led to 479 lawsuits against New York City over alleged abuse at Rikers, a surge of litigation that may finally give many victims a chance at justice, legal experts and advocates say.
“There have been high rates of staff-on-inmate sexual victimization in New York state prisons,” attorney Anna Kull said. Kull said she has filed hundreds of civil cases related to reports of assault behind bars under the Adult Survivors Act.
“How do I have over 200 women who were sexually abused at Rikers? This is a systemic failure,” she said. “It requires comprehensive reform and you’re never going to see comprehensive reform without accountability.”
BBC News: Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October, BBC hears by Lucy Williamson
The BBC has seen and heard evidence of rape, sexual violence and mutilation of women during the 7 October Hamas attacks.
WARNING: CONTAINS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE
Several people involved in collecting and identifying the bodies of those killed in the attack told us they had seen multiple signs of sexual assault, including broken pelvises, bruises, cuts and tears, and that the victims ranged from children and teenagers to pensioners.
Video testimony of an eyewitness at the Nova music festival, shown to journalists by Israeli police, detailed the gang rape, mutilation and execution of one victim.
Videos of naked and bloodied women filmed by Hamas on the day of the attack, and photographs of bodies taken at the sites afterwards, suggest that women were sexually targeted by their attackers.
Few victims are thought to have survived to tell their own stories.
Their last moments are being pieced together from survivors, body-collectors, morgue staff and footage from the attack sites.
DW: Freed Thai hostages: 'Israelis had it worse' by Julian Küng
For seven weeks, Anucha Angkaew was a hostage of Hamas, which the EU as well as Germany, the US, UK and several other states designate as a terrorist organization. Cut off from the world, with no sunlight. Now, he's back home in Ban Don Phila, his village in Thailand.
Marquees and music boxes have been set up, Neighbors are cooking vats of laab neua, a northern Thai specialty and favorite dish of the guest of honor. Tired and worn thin, he sits away from the bustle, on a wooden bench in front of his parents' home, as if he were still getting used to living a life in freedom again.
"I lost 16 kilograms" (35.3 pounds), the slender man told DW.
He explained that hostages had to make due with one piece of flatbread and a bottle of water a day. The dusty tunnels were dimly lit with car batteries. "I prayed a lot and thought about my family. That gave me strength in those dark days,” the 28-year-old said.
El País in English: Peru: A country stuck in crisis by Renzo Gómez Vega
Pedro Castillo’s political suicide occurred on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, a few minutes before noon. The school teacher and union leader had been in the presidential palace for a year-and-a-half, plagued by corruption investigations and low approval ratings.
That afternoon, he had to appear in Congress to face his third impeachment vote. But in an unexpected act — which his lawyers and supporters refuse to call a self-coup — he gave a televised message to the nation. With an agitated voice and trembling hands, he dissolved Congress, decreed an emergency government and established a nationwide curfew.
This Thursday will mark one year since that moment. Peru, however, still remains mired in crisis.
The widespread fear that resulted from Castillo’s announcement lasted only for a brief moment. Lacking the support of the Armed Forces, Castillo fled the palace soon after his address. He was detained by his own bodyguards while heading to the Embassy of Mexico in search of asylum. The Congress quickly impeached him for the charge of “moral incapacity.” Within three hours, his vice-president — Dina Boluarte, a lawyer and former civil servant — was sworn in, becoming the first woman to govern Peru. “My first invocation is to call for the broadest kind of unity and dialogue,” she said, upon assuming the position.
The College Football Playoffs are set.
1st National Semifinal: Rose Bowl: #1 Michigan v. #4 Alabama
2nd National Semifinal: Sugar Bowl: #2 Washington v. # 3 Texas
ESPN: Inside the College Football Playoff committee's decision to leave out Florida State by Heather Dinich
GRAPEVINE, Texas -- It was between 1:30 and 2 a.m. CT on Sunday after the conference championship games when the 13 members of the College Football Playoff selection committee finally left their meeting room. They had been sequestered for hours as they determined the top four teams in the country.
They knew what they could potentially wind up with -- and it didn't feel good.
As difficult as it was for them to remove their emotions from the process, the sinking feeling about excluding an undefeated Power 5 conference champion was tempered by the belief that they did what they were tasked to do -- vote for the four best teams.
"All of us had the emotional tie, like, 'Holy s---, this is really going to suck to do this,'" one committee member told ESPN. "We talked about that over and over, and we just kept coming back [to] are they good enough with what they have to win a national championship, and it just kept coming back [to] we didn't think they could."
There wasn't any discussion about the SEC being left out because the committee maintains that it talks about teams, not conferences. There wasn't any serious consideration to include Alabama without Texas because there was so much respect in the room for the Longhorns' Week 2 win in Tuscaloosa. There also wasn't enough support in the room to deem Georgia "unequivocally" one of the four best teams in the country -- the standard for teams that don't win their conference title.
Everyone have the best possible evening!