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Overnight News Digest May 20, 2025 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-20
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: Chicago Sun-Times response to May 18 special section by Melissa Bell
On Sunday, May 18, the print and e-paper editions of the Chicago Sun-Times included a special section titled the Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer, featuring a summer reading list, that our circulation department licensed from King Features, a unit of Hearst, one of our national content partners. The special section was syndicated to the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers. To our great disappointment, that list was created through the use of an AI tool and recommended books that do not exist. We are actively investigating the accuracy of other content in the special section. We will provide more information on that investigation when we have more details. The Chicago Sun-Times has committed its strong journalism resources to local coverage in the Chicago region. Our journalists are deeply focused on telling the stories of this city and helping connect Chicagoans with one another. We also recognize that many of our print readers turn to us for national and broader coverage beyond our primary focus on the Chicago region. We’ve historically relied on content partners, such as King Features, for syndicated materials to help supplement our work, including national articles as well as comics and puzzle books. King Features worked with a freelancer who used an AI agent to help build out this special section. It was inserted into our paper without review from our editorial team, and we presented the section without any acknowledgement that it was from a third-party organization.
AI is notorious for having incorrect information.
I don’t think that I mind AI generating a generic list of this type but you mean to tell me that neither King Features nor the Chicago Sun-Times did no editing or fact-checking of this list?
The New York Times: Keisha Lance Bottoms, Former Atlanta Mayor, Enters Georgia Governor’s Race by Rick Rojas
Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta, entered the race for governor of Georgia on Tuesday, becoming the highest-profile Democrat in an election that will test the durability of Georgia’s relatively new status as a swing state. Ms. Bottoms has immediately set her sights on President Trump, who won Georgia in 2024 but has had a strained history with the state, including with Gov. Brian Kemp and some of the state’s other top Republicans. Ms. Bottoms said she was positioning herself as an antidote to the “chaos in Washington,” citing her time leading Atlanta during Mr. Trump’s first term as useful experience. “This is a very uncertain and anxious time for people in Georgia,” she said in an interview on Monday, ahead of her announcement, “and people are looking for a leader who is willing to fight for them.” Mr. Kemp will not run again because of term limits.
Mother Jones: FDA to Cut Covid Booster Access, Excluding In-Home Carers by Julia Metraux
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Covid booster shots will be limited to people over 65 and those with pre-existing health conditions that would put them at higher risk of acute complications. The FDA’s move is not surprising, given that Trump-appointed Covid contrarians Vinay Prasad, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Marty Makary, the recently confirmed FDA commissioner, have openly advocated for such restrictions since before the initial vaccine was even approved. “The FDA will approve vaccines for high-risk persons and, at the same time, demand robust, gold-standard data on persons at low risk,” the two wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine article that was published on Tuesday. Many groups of people face new or added risks as a consequence of the FDA’s decision; notably, the agency has not signaled any intention to establish carveouts for caregivers of people who still qualify for Covid vaccines under its new rules. People who qualify for the vaccine, including disabled children, those with cancer, and aging adults, may rely on the support of caregivers to keep them healthy and help them function in day-to-day life. Even with masking and other protective measures, added immunity for people caring for those with Covid, or at risk of contracting it, is important in reducing the odds of infection and of subsequently contracting Long Covid, which 20 million people in the US have been diagnosed with.
NBC News: Judge orders Trump admin to ‘maintain custody’ of migrants deported to war-torn South Sudan by Laura Strickler and Didi Martinez
For the second time in less than two weeks, immigration lawyers have gone to federal court to try and stop the Trump administration from deporting a small group of immigrants from the United States to a war-torn country not their own. Immigration attorneys told the court that at least two of their clients, from Myanmar and Vietnam, were deported Tuesday morning to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and they demanded their return. “The Court should further restrain all flights carrying class members to South Sudan or any other third country,” the attorneys said. At an emergency hearing Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy told the Trump administration to “maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country.” This, the judge wrote in a court order, is to “ensure the practical feasibility of return” if the removals are found to have been unlawful.
Guardian: ‘Plenty of time’ to solve climate crisis, interior secretary tells representatives by Dharna Noor
The US has “plenty of time” to solve the climate crisis,” the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told a House committee on Tuesday. The comment came on his first of two days of testimony to House and Senate appropriators in which he defended Donald Trump’s proposed budget, dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill”, that would extend tax reductions enacted during Trump’s first term, while cutting $5bn of funding for the Department of the Interior. In addition to slashing spending on national parks , historic preservation, and other key interior department programming, the budget proposal would cancels billions of dollars in infrastructure investments, environmental programs and research grants. It would also gut funding for renewable energy, including by rolling back clean tax credits from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Maine representative Chellie Marie Pingree, the ranking member of the House appropriations committee, said this would amount to “effectively gutting this critical this critical sector”.
DW: Japan minister bows out over rice gaffe by Louis Oelofse
Japan's Agriculture Minister Taku Eto announced his resignation on Wednesday following backlash over an inappropriate comment about rice. Eto came under fire earlier this week after stating that he had "never had to buy rice" because supporters gave it to him, a remark that sparked public outrage amid a national rice shortage and soaring prices. Rice is a staple food in Japan, and Eto's comment struck a nerve in a country where retail rice prices have doubled since last year. "I made an extremely inappropriate remark at a time when citizens are suffering from soaring rice prices," Eto told reporters after submitting his resignation at the prime minister's office.
A minister resigning over comments regarding rice...how delightfully quaint is that nowadays?
BBC News: An island called Hope is standing up to Beijing in the South China Sea by Jonathan Head
At just 37 hectares, the Philippines-controlled island of Pagasa – or "hope" - is smaller than Buckingham Palace. There is almost nothing there. The 300 or so inhabitants live in a cluster of small, wooden houses. They fish in the clear, turquoise waters, and grow what vegetables they can in the sandy ground. But they are not alone in these disputed waters: just off shore, to the west, lies an armada of ships. These are all Chinese, from the navy, the coastguard or the so-called maritime militia – large fishing vessels repurposed to maintain Chinese dominance of this sea. As our plane approached the island we counted at least 20. For the past 10 years, China has been expanding its presence in the South China Sea, taking over submerged coral reefs, building three large air bases on them, and deploying hundreds of ships, to reinforce its claim to almost all of the strategic sea lanes running south from the great exporting cities on the Chinese coast.
Everyone have the best possible evening!
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