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Overnight News Digest: Zelensky's European Tour paid off in aid [1]
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Date: 2023-05-15
x Black taxpayers have been far more likely to be audited than others, the IRS said on Monday. To address discrimination in how the tax code is enforced, the agency said it is considering changes to its case selection process.
https://t.co/CN20WG0P5S — NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) May 16, 2023
Stoltenberg: Ukraine's victory is the starting point to moving forward with NATO membership
The Kyiv Independent
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg emphasized in an interview on May 15 that Ukraine's victory against Russia will be the starting point to move forward with NATO membership, the Guardian reported. The "most urgent task" for NATO currently is "to ensure that Ukraine prevails," according to Stoltenberg. "It is only if Ukraine prevails as a sovereign independent nation in Europe that there is any meaning in discussing when and how Ukraine can become a member of the (NATO military) alliance," Stoltenberg added, as quoted by the Guardian. The upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius this July will likely include a multi-year program concerning how the military alliance can help Ukraine "transition from Soviet-era standards, doctrines, and equipment," which will also help in its accession process, according to Stoltenberg. Zelensky is expected to attend the summit in person.
C/NET
Boring. That's how I'd describe riding the world's first autonomous bus service, being launched for public use in Scotland this month. And that's precisely the point. This bus, driven by computers, not people, is just like any other bus you'd get on to go to work or the shops. Yet its plethora of sensors and computers actually make this seemingly dull journey a huge technological milestone for public transport. I rode the bus on a media test day, but five of these autonomous buses will go into full, public, timetabled service on May 15, operating on a 14-mile route across the iconic Forth Road Bridge, just outside Scotland's capital city of Edinburgh. It'll be the first autonomous bus service on public roads anywhere in the world, and the buses will have to navigate the perils of public roads, including other traffic, traffic signals, cyclists and pedestrians.
C/NET
The US Federal Communications Commission has been ramping up its efforts to clamp down on illegal robocalls that have been harassing Americans. After sending several cease-and-desist letters to one offender in particular, the agency has ordered its calls be fully blocked by US phone operators. In what the FCC claims is its first-ever "roboblocking order," the agency has cut off calls coming into the country by One Eye, a so-called gateway provider that funnels international traffic to US operators. An investigation revealed One Eye to be a successor to a company called PZ/Illum Telecommunication, which had shut down after the FCC's Enforcement Bureau sent it a cease-and-desist order in October 2021 to stop illegal robocalls. One Eye was a "successor entity" that was served its own cease-and-desist order from the agency in February and has now been blocked from sending calls to people in the US.
BBC
Turkey's powerful president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will go head to head with his opposition rival in a run-off vote, the supreme election council has confirmed. Mr Erdogan led the first round with 49.51% of the vote, its chairman said. Although he had a clear lead over his main challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who polled 44.88%, he needed more than half the vote to win the race outright. A second round will go ahead on 28 May, with Mr Erdogan the clear favourite. Shortly before the announcement by election council leader Ahmet Yener, the president's rival appealed to supporters not to "fall into despair" and to stand and take on the election together. But it was not immediately obvious how the opposition Nation Alliance could narrow a margin of almost five points in just two weeks. Although the third candidate, ultranationalist Sinan Ogan, polled 5.17% it seemed unlikely that all his voters would switch to the centre-left-led opposition.
BBC
The worst of Cyclone Mocha narrowly avoided the world's largest refugee camp at Cox's Bazar, in south-west Bangladesh Rohingya refugees at the camp still dealt with devastation after winds destroyed large numbers of shelters. Whilst the storm did not make landfall as was previously feared, it still seriously impacted the community there, who were not allowed to leave. The BBC's South Asia correspondent, Rajini Vaidyanathan went to the camp to see the devastation first-hand.
The Guardian, UK
Piers Morgan knew his journalists were using private voicemails as the basis of their stories, the royal biographer Omid Scobie has told Prince Harry’s phone-hacking trial. Scobie, who co-wrote a sympathetic book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, told the high court he was doing work experience at the Daily Mirrorin 2002 when he overheard Morgan discussing the source of a story about Kylie Minogue with a reporter. He said in a witness statement: “Mr Morgan was asking how confident they were in the reporting and was told that the information had come from voicemails. I recall being surprised to hear this at the time, which is why it stuck in my mind.”
The Guardian, UK
Adverts that claim products are carbon neutral using offsets are to be banned by the UK’s advertising watchdog unless companies can prove they really work, the Guardian can reveal, as Gucci becomes the latest company to struggle with a high-profile environmental commitment based on offsetting. Amid growing concern that firms are misleading consumers about the environmental impact of their products, the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) is to begin stricter enforcement around the use of terms such as “carbon neutral”, “net zero” and “nature positive” as part of a greenwashing crackdown later this year after a six-month review.
The Guardian, US
A former investment manager for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says that the organization stockpiled more than $100bn in funding intended for charity work but never spent it on such projects. “It was really a clandestine hedge fund,” David A Nielsen said during an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes. “Once the money went in, it didn’t go out.” Nielsen, who submitted a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service in 2019, previously managed the church’s investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, for nine years. A report on the complaint to the top US tax authority was published by the Washington Post in 2019 after Nielsen’s brother provided a copy.
The Guardian, US
This is a very serious investigation,” James Comer, chairman of the US House of Representatives’ oversight committee, told the rightwing channel Newsmax recently. “The allegations and the things that we’re investigating make Watergate look like jaywalking.” The Watergate scandal needed a whistleblower, John Dean , to bring down Richard Nixon half a century ago. Republican Comer claims that he, too, has a “highly credible” whistleblower who will provide evidence that Joe Biden has been compromised by a foreign power. Such a monumental allegation from such a senior politician would once have been front page news. Even if Republicans were assumed to have partisan motivations, many observers would have begun with the premise that there is no smoke without fire.
Al Jazeera
Elon Musk cannot back out of a settlement with securities regulators that was reached after his 2018 tweets claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private caused the electric vehicle maker’s share price to jump and led to a temporary halt in trading, an appeals court has ruled. That settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) required Musk to obtain prior approval from a Tesla lawyer for some of his tweets.
Al Jazeera
Los Angeles, United States – Leila Giries was eight years old when she fled with her family from Ayn Karim, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, during the creation of the Israeli state and violent expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. More than seven decades later, her memories remain vivid: families rushing to pack their most vital belongings, prayers as a truck full of refugees drove along a cliffside road, the searing pain of her mother using a flaming piece of cloth to cauterise an open wound when she stepped on a nail. “We fled on foot. We had only the clothes on our back,” Giries, who now lives in a suburb of Los Angeles in the US state of California, recalled in a recent phone call with Al Jazeera. “The sky was lit up with the fire of the guns. It felt like the end of the world.”
Deutsche Welle
Austrian rail operator ÖBB said on Monday that it had filed complaints against two people for allegedly using train loudspeakers to play Hitler speeches and Nazi slogans. The two suspects were reported to Austrian police late on Sunday. Law enforcement had identified the pair by analyzing footage from surveillance cameras. The ÖBB confirmed that the two suspects were "not ÖBB employees." The incident included what appeared to be excerpts from the Adolf Hitler's speeches as well as the Nazi salutes "Sieg Heil" and "Heil Hitler." Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and today, it has some of the world's strictest laws against Holocaust denial and pro-Nazi activities.
Deutsche Welle
Battles raged in the streets of Khartoum as the tussle for power between the warring generals of the country entered its second month on Monday. A fresh barrage of airstrikes in Khartoum was reported Monday, with residents saying the situation was only getting worse. Fierce clashes were reported in the cities of Omdurman and Bahri as well. Residents caught in the crossfire have been the hardest hit, with basic needs like food, water, and electricity in short supply. The strikes come after the Sudan's head of army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is widely known as Hemedti, agreed to a humanitarian truce last week.
NPR
Two staff members at Rep. Gerry Connolly's district office in Fairfax, Va., were attacked Monday by a person armed with a baseball bat, according to a statement released by the Democratic lawmaker. "This morning, an individual entered my District Office armed with a baseball bat and asked for me before committing an act of violence against two members of my staff. The individual is in police custody and both members of my team were transferred to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries," Connolly said. The Fairfax City Police Department and the United States Capitol Police have opened investigations. The suspect has been identified as Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax, Va.; so far, investigators do not have any information that the suspect was known to the Captiol Police, a USCP statement says. According to the statement, no motive is known.
NPR
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law Monday banning the state's public colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. "If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination," DeSantis said during a news conference at New College of Florida in Sarasota. "And that has no place in our public institutions." Many institutions across the U.S. have DEI offices aimed at diversifying staff and to promote inclusivity for faculty and students.
USA Today
At least three people are dead and several others, including two police officers, were injured Monday in a northwestern New Mexico community before authorities shot and killed the 18-year-old suspect, police said. The shootings occurred around 11 a.m. in Farmington, New Mexico, a city of more than 45,000 people that serves as a modern-day trading post to the adjacent Navajo Nation reservation and is a supply line and bedroom community to the region’s oil and natural gas industry. Officers responding to several calls about a shooting found "a chaotic scene" where a man was firing at people on a residential street, Farmington Police Deputy Chief Baric Crum said during a news conference.
USA Today
WASHINGTON - A former associate of Rudy Giuliani sued him Monday for alleged abuse of power and harassment, claiming he hired her off-the-books for sexual favors. Noelle Dunphy, who said she began working for Giuliani in 2019, said in a lawsuit filed in New York state court that she has tapes of the former Donald Trump attorney making sexist, racist and anti-Semitic remarks. Ted Goodman, an adviser to Giuliani, said the 78-year-old former New York City mayor and Trump adviser “unequivocally denies the allegations raised by Ms. Dunphy and every news outlet covering this story must include the fact that an ex-partner accused her of being, ‘an escort that fleeces wealthy men.’”“Mayor Giuliani's lifetime of public service speaks for itself and he will pursue all available remedies and counterclaims,” Goodman said.
x LOL: not only are there NO CHARGES filed in the Durham Report for the opening of the Russia Probe, there aren’t even any recommendations for what the FBI could do differently. Just this one paragraph on the last page that isn’t even new. pic.twitter.com/uAX0NPQgik — Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) May 15, 2023
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, 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.
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