(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest: Coffee cups made from dirt [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: 2023-04-17 BBC Protests erupted in Kansas City, Missouri, over the weekend after a homeowner shot a black teenager twice who rang their doorbell by mistake. Ralph Yarl, 16, was sent by his parents to pick up his brothers from a friend's house on 13 April, but went to the wrong address. The suspect shot Mr Yarl through his door. The teen took one shot in the head, say his family and their lawyers. Police have released the shooter from custody but not identified them. Mr Yarl was released from hospital on Sunday and is recovering at home with his family, his father Paul Yarl told the Kansas City Star. "He continues to improve," his father told the paper. "He is responsive and is making good progress." CNN A White 84-year-old homeowner who allegedly shot and wounded Ralph Yarl, a Black teen, after the 16-year-old went to the wrong home to pick up his siblings will face two felony charges, Clay County attorney Zachary Thompson announced early Monday evening. Andrew Lester will face charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest and he’s not currently in custody, Thompson said. “I can tell you there was a racial component to this case,” Thompson said at a news conference without elaborating. When asked whether hate crime charges could be added, the prosecutor said that in Missouri, a hate crime is a lower level of felony and adding such charges could constitute double jeopardy. BBC Kenya's Evans Chebet successfully defended his Boston Marathon title - with two-time Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge back in sixth. Chebet won in two hours five minutes and 54 seconds, with compatriot Kipchoge finishing 3:29 behind him. It is only Kipchoge's third defeat in his previous 18 marathons. Kenya's Hellen Obiri, competing in just her second race over the marathon distance, won the women's race in 2:21.38. Chebet is just the sixth man in history to retain the Boston title and the first since 2008. Switzerland's Marcel Hugh won his sixth Boston title in the men's wheelchair race while home hope Susannah Scaroni won the women's event. Tributes were paid in the city on Sunday to mark 10 years since the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three people and injured 280. Reuters WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from a Texas inmate convicted of robbery who argues that the 27 years he was forced by prison officials to spend in solitary confinement violated the constitutional bar against "cruel and unusual" punishment. The justices turned away Dennis Hope's appeal of a lower court's ruling that he had failed to show that his prolonged solitary confinement violated the U.S. Constitution Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive punishment. Reuters WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - The spending-cut proposals unveiled by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday could fall hardest on people in Republican-leaning states, a Reuters analysis of federal spending data found. McCarthy's plan, which he presented as a condition for raising the United States's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, calls for cutting some agency budgets by 7% this year and capping their growth by 1% annually after that. It also would impose stiffer work requirements on some benefit programs, which could reduce the number of people who receive them. McCarthy only laid out broad contours on Monday, rather than unveiling finished legislation, which makes it difficult to determine the proposed cuts' precise toll. The Guardian, US The FBI has arrested two men accused of running a covert station for China’s police force in New York, and using it as a base to track Chinese dissidents living in the US. The station, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was allegedly set up in February 2022 and operated by Beijing’s ministry of public security (MPS) as part of a campaign of transnational repression against Chinese pro-democracy activists and other political opponents around the world. The justice department also announced charges on Monday against 40 MPS officers and four others for allegedly running an internet troll operation against dissidents in the US, creating fake social media accounts to harass them and recruiting an employee at an unnamed US telecoms company to have a pro-democracy activist removed from the platform. The officers, thought to be in China, are alleged to be members of an MPS unit, the “912 special project working group”, dedicated to the pursuit of dissidents abroad. The Guardian, US A top Republican donor said he had paused plans to fund Ron DeSantis’s expected presidential run because of the Florida governor’s “stance on abortion and book banning”. Thomas Peterffy , founder of Interactive Brokers, a digital trading platform, told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.” Peterffy also noted that DeSantis “seems to have lost some momentum”. DeSantis has not declared a run but is widely expected to do so. He is the closest challenger to Donald Trump in polling of the Republican primary field but despite winning re-election in a landslide and signing into law a succession of hard-right policies, he has not closed on the former president. The Guardian, UK Rishi Sunak faces further questions over his family’s financial interests after a standards investigation was launched into a potential breach of transparency rules relating to his links to a childcare firm in which his wife is an investor. Opposition parties said the investigation by Daniel Greenberg, parliament’s commissioner for standards, was a sign sleaze had returned to No 10 – and it will be a third propriety investigation into Sunak, who has been fined by police for breaching Covid rules and for not wearing a seatbelt. While Downing Street has promised to cooperate with the investigation, Sunak plans to rely on a defence that he acted openly over his wife’s stake in Koru Kids by declaring it to a register of ministers’ interests that has not been updated for nearly a year. The Guardian, UK An investigation has been launched after a man fell to his death from a balcony when he was Tasered by police following an hour-long standoff. Officers from the Metropolitan police were called to a block of flats in Peckham, south London last week in an attempt to save the man’s life. Police received a call showing concern for the man’s welfare, amid reports he was threatening to jump. The incident is under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). No discipline notices have been issued by the police watchdog, with officers currently being treated as witnesses. Investigators have been unable to confirm the man’s next of kin and identity, and inquiries continue. A spokesperson for the Met said the man was thought to be black. The Guardian, Australia Spanning more than 12,000km along the equator and between 100 and 200 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, there is a massive blob of warm water. If enough of that water makes its way to the surface, it could set off an El Niño event that can push up temperatures around the globe and raise the risk of Australia suffering heatwaves, droughts and bushfires. “You can compare it to a loaded gun,” says Prof Axel Timmermann, the director of the IBS Center for Climate Physics at Pusan National University in South Korea. “The magazine is full, but the atmosphere hasn’t pulled the trigger yet.” Al Jazeera Almost every night, between midnight and 5am, the Israeli army breaks into Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Armed to the teeth and often masked, the soldiers arrive in groups of 10 to 100-plus and force their way into homes, sometimes blowing the door open. All family members - children to elderly people - are awoken and held at gunpoint as soldiers destroy their home and search, interrogate, beat and photograph them, among other things. Al Jazeera A grand jury in the US state of Ohio has cleared eight police officers of wrongdoing in the shooting death of a Black man after a vehicle and foot chase last year, as authorities prepare for a new round of demonstrations against alleged police misconduct. The decision on Monday renewed calls for accountability for Jayland Walker, whose killing in June 2022 in the city of Akron led to protests for racial justice. In the United States, judges or grand juries – a randomly selected group of citizens – need to approve criminal charges to bring suspects to trial. On June 27, 2022, Akron police officers attempted to pull over Walker, 25, after a traffic violation. Walker fled in his car and officers gave chase for more than seven minutes, during which time they saw a firearm discharge from his vehicle, police said. CNN Scientists have found thriving communities of coastal creatures, including tiny crabs and anemones, living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a 620,000 square mile swirl of trash in the ocean between California and Hawaii. In a new study published in the Nature Ecology & Evolution journal on Monday, a team of researchers revealed that dozens of species of coastal invertebrate organisms have been able to survive and reproduce on plastic garbage that’s been floating in the ocean for years. The scientists said that the findings suggest plastic pollution in the ocean might be enabling the creation of new floating ecosystems of species that are not normally able to survive in the open ocean. NPR Both Justins' — Jones and Pearson — have returned to the Tennessee statehouse. They once again represent the people in Memphis and Nashville who elected them. However temporary, the expulsion of two Black state legislators was both unprecedented and history repeating itself. For some, it conjured Julian Bond, the civil rights leader elected to the Georgia house of Representatives in 1965, initially denied his seat by white legislators because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. For others it echoed an earlier moment in Georgia, when in 1868 white legislators expelled all 33 Black lawmakers from the governing body. Three legislators in Tennessee were on the chopping block. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, was spared expulsion by just one vote. Same behavior. Two different outcomes. NPR Authorities have named the four people who were killed in a shooting at a birthday party on Saturday in Dadeville, Ala., though many details of the incident at a dance studio remain opaque. On Monday, Tallapoosa County Coroner Mike Knox said the victims are: 23-year-old Corbin Dahmontrey Holston of Dadeville 18-year-old Philstavious Dowdell of Camp Hill 19-year-old Marsiah Emmanuel Collins of Opelika 17-year-old Shaunkivia Nicole Smith of Dadeville Another 28 people were injured. New York Times (you should be able to read the article without a subscription) UVALDE, Texas — The better part of a year had elapsed since a gunman entered the classroom where Noah Orona and Mayah Zamora were fourth-grade students in Uvalde, Texas. One of the 142 rounds he fired inside the school that day had shredded through the slender back of 10-year-old Noah, exiting near his shoulder blade. Mayah was shot seven times, in her chest, arm and both hands. Their two teachers died that day, as did half their classmates. Noah survived by pretending to be dead, bleeding on the floor for more than an hour as police officers waited to storm the classroom. In the aftermath, during the months of Noah’s physical therapy, Jessica Diaz-Orona had scrupulously kept her son away from any visible reminder of the horror. But now, she judged, it was time. After taking Noah to lunch at the restaurant he liked downtown, she walked him past the large murals honoring the 19 students and two teachers who had lost their lives. She pointed out three of the victims he knew best, Tess Mata, Layla Salazar and Alithia Ramirez, all smiling, the way she hoped he would remember them. 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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