OND Editors OND is a 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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
OND Editors Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, Doctor RJ and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
Alps crash: Lubitz 'had treatment for suicidal tendencies'
The co-pilot of the crashed Germanwings plane, Andreas Lubitz, had received treatment for suicidal tendencies before getting his pilot licence, investigators say, but not recently.
Lubitz, 27, is suspected of deliberately crashing the plane in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
Officials in Duesseldorf said the investigation to this point had revealed no clue to any motive.
So far, DNA strands of 80 of the victims have been found.
Duesseldorf public prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said that "several years" before Lubitz became a pilot he "had at that time been in treatment of a psychotherapist because of what is documented as being suicidal".
But he added: "In the following period, and until recently, further doctor's visits took place, resulting in sick notes without any suicidal tendencies or aggression against others being recorded."
N Y Times
Germanwings Crash Leaves Home City of Andreas Lubitz, Pilot, Bewildered and Bristling
MONTABAUR, Germany — When employees at a Burger King in this city between Frankfurt and Cologne heard that one of their former co-workers had been aboard the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps last week, they prepared a condolence card for the family.
Then the workers heard that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of the plane, who had once worked as a part-time cook at the restaurant, was believed to have deliberately steered the other 149 people on board the Airbus A320 to their deaths.
Detlef Adolf, the restaurant manager, decided it was best not to send the card.
The dilemma facing the Burger King workers was a small indication of the conflicting emotions that have overwhelmed this city of about 15,000 people since they learned that a hometown man they knew as reserved and polite — if they knew him at all — might have been a mass murderer.
N Y Times
Saudi-Led Assault on Yemen Intensifies, With Airstrikes on Capital and Naval Blockade
AL MUKALLA, Yemen — Dozens of civilians were killed when, according to aid workers and officials, what appeared to be an airstrike hit a camp for displaced families in northern Yemen on Monday, in what was thought to be the deadliest single episode involving civilians since Saudi Arabia began a military campaign to drive back the Houthi movement five days earlier.
The deaths, in the Al-Mazraq camp, came as the Saudi-led Arab military coalition intensified attacks across Yemen, bombing multiple targets including a missile depot in the capital, Sana, that erupted in a nighttime conflagration and sent civilians in a nearby village fleeing the explosions, according to witnesses.
. At least 45 civilians have died in airstrikes in the city, officials said.
Saudi officials have framed their military offensive as an effort to roll back the gains of the Houthis, whose fighters have seized control of much of Yemen over the last seven months, and to restore to power the exiled government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Saudi offensive has been primarily driven by a fear of Iranian influence in the region: the Houthis, who practice a strain of Shiite Islam and are supported by Iran, have been accused by Saudi officials as acting as an Iranian proxy force.
N Y Times
Chinese Outlets Say Security Official in Graft Case Had 6 Mistresses
BEIJING — Chinese corruption investigators looking into a top security and intelligence official have found that he had six mistresses and two sons by them, according to a report published by a respected newsmagazine that was carried Monday on the websites of state-run news organizations.
The official, Ma Jian, a former vice minister of state security, could also have up to six villas in Beijing, according to the report, which was first printed in Caixin, a newsmagazine that has been regularly publishing details of anticorruption investigations into senior officials.
Details of the Caixin report were published Monday by China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, and the China Daily article was posted on several official news websites.
When official state news agencies announced in January that Mr. Ma was being investigated on suspicion of corruption, many people in China were taken by surprise, since the institution where Mr. Ma served as a leader, the Ministry of State Security, is widely feared and considered to be among the most powerful agencies in the nation. Mr. Ma is the most senior official at the ministry to be placed under investigation during the broad anticorruption drive started by Xi Jinping, the Communist Party chief and president of China.
The Guardian
Obama's going to Kenya – and some Republicans detect a hidden agenda
Republican senator Mitch McConnell warned Barack Obama a few months ago that acting on immigration reform would be “like waving a red flag in front of a bull”. Everybody believed him, because Republicans were fresh off a debt-reduction strategy nicknamed: “Hand it over – or the economy gets it”.
Now, a prominent Republican is second-guessing what may be Obama’s boldest provocation yet: visiting Kenya.
The White House announced on Monday that Obama would attend the 2015 global entrepreneurship summit that will take place in July in Kenya. It will be his first trip to Kenya as president. An official announcement with the anodyne title “Reinforcing the US-Africa partnership” trotted out various government-related excuses for why Obama, whose father was Kenyan, would make the trip.
But a former Republican governor saw an alternate explanation: Obama is “just inciting some chatter” on the question of where he was born.
“I think his trip back to Kenya is going to create a lot of chatter and commentary among some of the hard right who still don’t see him as having been born in the US,” John Sununu, who has a record of knocking Obama as un-American, told Fox News on Monday.
Al Jazeera America
Activists call China’s jailing of Muslim over beard ‘absurd’
A six-year prison sentence reportedly given to a man in China's traditionally Muslim Xinjiang region for growing a beard was "absurd," an overseas advocacy group said.
The sentence comes as Beijing continues its crackdown on visible signs of Muslim religious observance among the country's Uighur ethnic minority. Chinese authorities have warned of a violent separatist movement among Uighurs, but international rights activists have broadly criticized China's treatment of the group. Hours after Chinese state media reported the man's sentencing on Sunday, the incident was reported in the international media as another example of China's repression of Uighur religious freedom. Accounts of the sentencing online on Chinese state media have since disappeared.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress advocacy organization, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday that the Chinese media reports of the punishment were "typical of the political persecution" faced by Uighurs.
"This is a case that would not happen in any other country in the world," Raxit said in a statement. "It is unacceptable and absurd. It exposes China's hostile attitude and crisis of governance."
"If a Chinese person grows a beard, it is a personal fashion he is allowed to choose freely. If a Uighur grows a beard, he is a religious extremist,” he added.
Al Jazeera America
Challenger, Buhari, takes early lead in Nigeria vote
Nigerian presidential challenger Muhammadu Buhari recorded thumping majorities in key northern states on Monday, as the United States and Britain expressed concerns about meddling with the vote count.
Buhari, a 72-year-old former military ruler, has campaigned as a born-again democrat intent on cleaning up corruption in Africa's most populous nation. Buhari won seven states while the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan, has won five, including the Federal Capital Territory.
Results from another 25 states have yet to be tallied, and 22 states had not yet delivered their results to the counting center in Abuja, indicating that a winner cannot be announced before Tuesday.
In the northern states of Kano and Kaduna, where Jonathan faces vehement criticism for his government's failure to stop attacks by the armed group Boko Haram, Buhari won overwhelming majorities. In Kano, the state with the second-largest number of voters and also the state hit hardest by fighters from Boko Haram, Buhari won 1.9 million votes to Jonathan's 216,000. In Kaduna, Buhari won 1.1 million votes to Jonathan's 484,000.
Raw Story
Pentagon denies report that US air strike killed Iranian troops in Iraq
Two Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen were killed by a US drone in the Iraqi city of Tikrit, Iranian state media said Monday, in a report that was denied by the Pentagon.
The official IRNA news agency said the two had been posted to Iraq as advisers in the war against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists and that they died in the drone strike on March 23.
Pictures of the two men, named as Ali Yazdani and Hadi Jafari, were posted on Iranian news websites after their funerals on home soil.
The Fars news agency called Jafari, 29, the third “martyr in defence of the shrines” from the northern Iranian city of Amol. Yazdani was buried in Tehran, it reported.
Iran, the predominant Shiite Muslim power in the Middle East, has said it is supporting ally Iraq and will protect its Shiite holy places against IS.
However, the US Department of Defense said in a statement that it had not conducted air strikes in the Tikrit area on the date the men were said to have been killed.
Note: The next two stories caught my interest especially because I just saw the documentary about the founding of Greenpeace. Whale hunting and the baby seal slaughter were the second and third targets of Greenpeace action.
Raw Story
Canada under fire for increasing seal hunt quota
The Canadian government is facing fierce criticism for increasing the country’s seal hunting quota from 400,000 in 2014 to nearly 470,000 this hunting season, according to media reports. As part of Canada’s annual commercial seal hunt, which takes place during March and April, thousands of young seals are killed for their fur, despite a near global ban on their sale.
“The quotas are going up every year, despite opposition and the market for seal pelts disappearing,” Andy Ottaway of the Seal Protection Action Group, reportedly said. “The government is keeping the quotas they have already set, but the actual hunters themselves cannot be bothered to go out because they cannot sell the pelts. The incentive is gone.”
Moreover, he added, the decision to raise the quota was even more “outrageous” given the fact that these animals are facing severe threats from climate change, which has drastically deteriorated their habitable areas. Seals are found along most coasts and cold waters, but a majority of them live in the Arctic and Antarctic waters -- two regions most affected by global warming in recent years.
“It’s outrageous that the Canadian government is putting quotas up on an endangered species … which is already under threat,” Ottaway reportedly said.
However, Canada’s fisheries department reportedly defended the high quota, claiming that the government’s decision is “informed by science.”
“The overall Atlantic seal population, including harp seals, grey seals and hooded seals is healthy and abundant. Harp seals are currently estimated at approximately 7.4 million animals which is more than three times what it was in the 1970s,” a government representative reportedly said. “It is truly unfortunate that decades of misinformation campaigns by animal rights groups have had such a negative effect on the economic well-being of rural and Aboriginal Canadians.”
Although the seals are mainly killed for their pelts, hunters also sell their blubber, which is then used to make seal oil -- sold as a health supplement -- and their penises, which are popular aphrodisiacs in some Asian markets. In order to avoid damaging the seals’ pelts, the animals are usually killed with a sharp blow to the skull using “hakapiks,” or metal hook-tipped clubs -- a method that several animal rights groups have decried as cruel and inhumane.
Raw Story
Japanese whaling ships return home from Antarctic with no catch
Japanese whaling ships returned home from the Antarctic on Saturday for the first time in nearly 30 years with no catch onboard, after a UN court ordered an end to their annual hunt, local media reported.
The two ships — the 724-ton Yushinmaru and the 747-ton Daini (No 2) Yushinmaru — arrived at a port in western Shimonoseki city, a major whaling base.
It was the first return by Japanese whalers without catching any whales since 1987 when the country began the annual “research” hunt in the Antarctic, the Asahi Shimbun said.
The two ships did not face any attacks by anti-whaling activists during their three-months voyage, the daily added.
Tokyo had said this season’s excursion would not involve any lethal hunting. Harpoons normally used in the capture of the giant mammals were removed from the vessels.
Crew members on the two boats carried out “sighting surveys” and took skin samples from the huge marine mammals, news reports said.
C/Net
Elon Musk teases 'major' Tesla news -- but it's 'not a car'
Elon Musk likes to cut to the chase. Electric car maker Tesla Motors, he says, has a product coming next month. And it's not an automobile.
Musk, who is chief executive of both Tesla and space transport company SpaceX, is known for dropping news on his personal Twitter account with a comic casualness -- think rocket explosions and such. He did so again Monday, teasing the upcoming Tesla product announcement in less than 140 characters. The news is slated for April 30 at the company's Hawthorne, Calif., design studio.
L A Times
In store for visitors to Yosemite: a dryer, browner park.
Yosemite National Park is bracing for its driest year on record, with visitor bureaus downplaying the allure of the park's most famous waterfall and instead touting the park as a destination for hiking, bicycling and photography.
Yosemite Falls will probably go dry in June — two months earlier than usual, parks officials say. The Merced River, which powers the spectacular Nevada and Vernal falls before meandering across the Yosemite Valley floor, will probably slow to a shallow stream about the same time.
And with the drought enabling western pine bark beetles to kill large swaths of forest, the park is preparing for a bad fire season.
"Visitors bureaus are saying they're not going to promote Yosemite Falls as much this year," said Scott Gediman, assistant superintendent for public and legislative affairs at the park. "My response: No problem. We have to be realistic."
The Guardian
World's largest aircraft looking for investors to give it liftoff
It could be the future of aviation, British eccentric genius on a grand scale, or possibly a bit of both. Secreted in a hangar a few miles south of Bedford sits the world’s largest aircraft: a hybrid of plane, balloon and hovercraft, an airship that the company modestly says will change the world. The Airlander 10 can fly for weeks, land virtually anywhere that’s flat, and burns just a fifth of the fuel of a conventional aircraft.
With speeds reaching 100mph, it’s slower than a plane but greener, quieter, and potentially far more direct. Its unusual shape emulates a wing, giving it lift as it is propelled forward by its four engines, as well as from the 38,000m3 of helium that fills its hull.
Hybrid Air Vehicles, the manufacturer, is looking to smaller investors to follow in the footsteps of the US military and Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson by sinking their cash into the dream. Buoyed by the numbers of enquiries from enthusiasts, the firm is set to launch a crowdfunding exercise to match a £3.4m government grant to get the craft off the ground - and eventually build hundreds more to fill the skies.