(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest January 31, 2023 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-31 Chicago Sun-Times: Emergency’s over, but danger’s not: Pritzker ends pandemic disaster status, but warns, ‘COVID-19 has not disappeared’ by Tina Sfondeles Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday announced the end of the state’s COVID-19 disaster proclamation — almost three years after first declaring a public health emergency in Illinois during the early surge of the pandemic. Pritzker’s decision piggybacks on the White House’s announcement on Monday that it will end the COVID-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11. Illinois’ public health emergency declaration will also end that day. But the Democratic governor, who endured his fair share of criticism over stay-at-home orders, mask and vaccine requirements, also warned that the pandemic isn’t quite over. As of Tuesday, 36,091 Illinois residents had died of COVID-19, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. “Let me be clear: COVID-19 has not disappeared,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is still a real and present danger to people with compromised immune systems — and I urge all Illinoisans to get vaccinated or get their booster shots if they have not done so already.” Memphis Commercial Appeal: 4 officers indicted in Tyre Nichols death had previous reprimands, suspensions by MPD by Lucas Finton Four of the five former Memphis Police officers indicted for their role in the death of Tyre Nichols were suspended or received a written reprimand during their tenure with the department, with only one charged officer avoiding internal disciplined during his tenure. In personnel files obtained through a public records request by The Commercial Appeal, four officers were either reprimanded or suspended for their failure to report when they used physicality, failing to report alleged domestic violence, or for damages sustained to their squad cruisers. The four former officers indicted who had either a reprimand or a suspension were Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Justin Smith, and Emmitt Martin III. Tadarrius Bean, who was also fired and indicted, did not have any reprimands or suspensions in the records viewed by The Commercial Appeal. Washington Post: GOP report shows plan to ramp up focus on disproven election fraud claims by Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf A new internal report prepared by the Republican National Committee proposes creating a permanent infrastructure in every state to ramp up “election integrity” activities in response to perceptions within GOP ranks of widespread fraud and abuse in the way the country selects its leaders. The report, prepared by the RNC’s “National Election Integrity Team” and obtained by The Washington Post, reveals the degree to which Republicans continue to trade on former president Donald Trump’s false claims that Democrats and their allies rigged his defeat in 2020. The report suggests building a massive new party organization involving state-level “election integrity officers” and intensive new training models for poll workers and observers — all based on unsubstantiated claims that Democrats have implemented election procedures that allow for rigged votes. Yet the report also acknowledges that the GOP’s obsession with election fraud has cost the party, most notably in 2021, when mistrust in elections contributed to a drop in Republican turnout in two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, costing the party its Senate majority. New York Times: At the Supreme Court, Ethics Questions Over a Spouse’s Business Ties by Steve Eder After Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the Supreme Court, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, gave up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter in an effort to alleviate potential conflicts of interest. Mrs. Roberts later recalled in an interview that her husband’s job made it “awkward to be practicing law in the firm.” Now, a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times. In his letter last month, Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, argued that the justices should be required to disclose more information about their spouses’ work. He did not cite specific Supreme Court decisions, but said he was worried that a financial relationship with law firms arguing before the court could affect justices’ impartiality or at least give the appearance of doing so. “I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,” Mr. Price wrote. Stanford Daily: Stanford police under scrutiny after drawing gun on Black man by Itzel Luna Jessica Stovall, a fifth-year Ph.D. student, was listening to an audiobook while taking a walk on campus late Saturday night when she said she heard the words “put your hands up” shouted loud enough to “pierce” through her headphones. She said she followed the sound to a roundabout near the Escondido Village Graduate Residences, where she saw a white Stanford police officer draw his gun on a Black man sitting inside his car. “I refuse to watch public lynchings. I didn’t watch George Floyd. I will not watch Mr. Nichols. I already carry so much pain that I don’t need to witness and spectate a lynching,” Stovall said, citing a long history of police officers killing unarmed Black men. “What was so painful about this incident was feeling like it was an obligation and my duty to be a witness, should this Black man be turned into the next hashtag.” Stovall, a student in the Graduate School of Education’s Race, Inequality and Language in Education program, documented her experience on Sunday in a Twitter thread. The post amassed over two million views as of Monday night and the police incident drew widespread condemnation from Stanford affiliates and the broader online community. x Last night, around 11 pm, I was taking a mind clearing walk around Stanford’s campus and witnessed a white police officer draw a gun on a young Black man. 1/11 — Jessica Stovall (@_jessicastovall) January 29, 2023 Dawn: Death toll from suicide attack on mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines rises to 100 by Nadir Guramani The death toll from the suicide attack on a mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines area a day earlier rose to 100 on Tuesday after more bodies were recovered from the attack site. Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) spokesperson Mohammad Asim said that 100 dead bodies had been brought to the medical facility. In a statement, he said 53 injured citizens were currently being treated seven of whom had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). He said that most of the injured were out of danger, adding that all the injured were being provided medical facilities free-of-cost. On Monday, 59 people, mostly police officials, were martyred and over 150 were injured after an explosion ripped through a mosque in Peshawar’s Red Zone area. The powerful blast blew away the wall of the prayer hall and an inner roof. BBC News: Alfredo Cospito: Hunger-striking Italian anarchist moved amid protests A convicted Italian anarchist who has been on hunger strike for weeks has been moved to a jail in Milan amid growing fears his health is worsening. Supporters of Alfredo Cospito, 55, have torched cars and threatened officials in protest at his jail conditions. Cospito has been refusing food for more than 100 days. The new restrictions, usually reserved for mafia bosses, include one monitored visit from family members and one telephone call a month. The measures, known as 41bis after an article of the Italian criminal code, were introduced in their current form in 1992, after the mafia killings of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and were originally meant to cut off Mafia bosses from the outside world and other inmates, and to prevent them from ordering criminal acts from behind bars. Now, however, the 41bis prison regime can be imparted on people who have been found guilty of crimes ranging from terrorism to tobacco smuggling and kidnapping. Guardian: Antony Blinken ends Middle East tour with no breakthrough by Oliver Holmes The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has finished his Middle East tour with no breakthrough in reducing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, saying that it was “fundamentally up to them” to end the violence after days of bloodshed. Blinken said he had heard “deep concern about the current trajectory” during meetings in Israel and the occupied West Bank but, beyond calling for a “de-escalation”, he offered no new US initiative. Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem, Blinken said he had heard “some concrete ideas” from Israelis and Palestinians but added: “It is fundamentally up to them. They have to work together to find a path forward that both defuses the current cycle of violence and, I hope, also leads to positive steps to build back some confidence.” The visit, which included a stop in Egypt, had been long planned but arrived at a critical time, with Israel and Palestine reeling from a round of devastating attacks that threaten an explosion of violence. El País in English: Treatment of ethnic communities pits Ukraine against neighbors Romania and Hungary by Raúl Sánchez Costa The end of World War II left many eastern European peoples stranded in nations with very different languages. The Communist dictatorships that arose from 1945 onward succeeded in silencing this cultural melting pot for decades, but the new governments that emerged after the lifting of the iron curtain have for years been expressing their concern over the treatment their compatriots receive in neighboring countries. Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, a country that considers the Russian language as one of the Kremlin’s tools of geopolitical expansion, this concern has intensified. Both Romania and Hungary, which have large ethnic communities in Ukrainian territory, have reacted angrily to a new law governing minorities adopted by the Kyiv parliament on December 13, which largely ratifies legislation from 2017 that limits the amount of education schoolchildren will receive in their mother tongues. Until then, ethnic minorities in Ukraine had the right to study in their own languages at kindergarten, junior and high school level, with Ukrainian left on the margins. The law, which can yet be modified, also provides no guarantees that citizens will be attended to by public services in their own languages. In pre-war Ukraine, almost 600,000 people belonged to expatriate Moldovan, Romanian or Hungarian communities, according to the 2001 census. The approval of the law, which was passed with 324 votes in favor and two abstentions, led Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to call his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in early January to ask that Kyiv “quickly identify solutions to address and remedy” Bucharest’s concerns over the legislation. Variety: Oprah Winfrey and Nikole Hannah-Jones Discuss Honoring Their Ancestors With ‘The 1619 Project’ at L.A. Premiere by Angelique Jackson “The 1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones needed just one word to describe what it was like to pose on the red-white-and-blue carpet with Oprah Winfrey. “Insane!” Hannah-Jones told Variety as she made her way down the line of reporters outside the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles on Thursday night. “This was a lot, but it feels amazing.” The journalist — a “print reporter” she likes to note, meaning she’s not quite used to the “lights, camera, action” style that TV news requires — cut a striking figure on the carpet, wearing an emerald green velvet gown which set off her signature red hair, plus her signature diamond necklace with “Nikole” written in cursive and custom gold “1619” hoop earrings. Photographers called for her to look this way, that way, and “over the shoulder” as she posed with her collaborators, executive producer and director Roger Ross Williams and showrunner Shoshana Guy. But when Winfrey — who is also an executive producer on the series — hit the carpet, it was like someone turned up the volume as they flew into a frenzy. “What a night,” Hannah-Jones tweeted early Friday morning, reposting a video from the red carpet with Winfrey. “Just a girl from Waterloo trying to make her ancestors proud.” Have a good night, everyone! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/31/2150429/-Overnight-News-Digest-January-31-2023 Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/