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, 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 editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
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BBC:Pakistan resumes executions after Peshawar school attack
Pakistan resumes executions after Peshawar school attack
Pakistan has carried out two executions, the first since a death penalty moratorium was lifted after a deadly attack on a Peshawar school.
One of those executed was convicted over an attack on Pakistan's Army HQ in 2009, the other over an assassination attempt on ex-leader Pervez Musharraf.
The UN had earlier urged Pakistan not to resume its executions.
Some 141 people, all but nine of them children, died in the Taliban attack on the Army Public school in Peshawar.
BBC:Sony 'will not drop' North Korea film The Interview
Sony 'will not drop' North Korea film The Interview
Sony Pictures says it is looking at different ways to release the film satire the Interview, after scrapping its opening following a cyber-attack blamed on North Korea.
It said it had only cancelled the film's Christmas Day release after cinemas pulled out.
The company said it was "surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform".
US President Barack Obama said it "made a mistake" cancelling the release.
BBC:Colombia Farc rebels 'kill five soldiers' before truce
Colombia Farc rebels 'kill five soldiers' before truce
Colombia's Farc rebels have killed five soldiers in an ambush, the army says, hours before they are meant to start an indefinite, unilateral ceasefire.
The leftist rebels attacked a patrol before dawn in Santander de Quilichao, a rural area of western Colombia.
The truce, scheduled from Saturday, has been hailed as a major boost for talks aimed at ending a 50-year conflict that has claimed 220,000 lives.
However, Colombia's government said it would not join the rebels in the truce.
BBC:Israel launches Gaza air strike on 'Hamas target'
Israel launches Gaza air strike on 'Hamas target'
Israeli aircraft have bombed a site in Gaza, in the first such action since the declaration of a truce in August.
The air strike was carried out on a Hamas facility in response to a rocket fired earlier from Gaza, a statement from the Israeli military said.
Residents of the Khan Yunis area in Gaza reported hearing two explosions, the Associated Press news agency said.
The August truce ended seven weeks of fighting that killed more than 2,200 people - most of them Palestinians.
BBC:Ebola crisis: Liberia holds senate postponed election
Ebola crisis: Liberia holds senate postponed election
Voters in Liberia are set to go to the polls in an election that was postponed in October because of the Ebola outbreak.
Liberians will elect representatives to the country's Senate on Saturday.
Among the 139 candidates vying for 15 seats are former football star George Weah and Robert Sirleaf, the son of Liberia's president.
Ebola has infected about 19,000 people in West Africa, killing more than 7,300 - with about 3,340 deaths in Liberia.
BBC:Hong Kong tycoon Thomas Kwok found guilty of corruption
Hong Kong tycoon Thomas Kwok found guilty of corruption
Hong Kong property tycoon Thomas Kwok and former government official Rafael Hui have been found guilty in the city's biggest-ever corruption case.
His younger brother Raymond Kwok was acquitted and cleared of all charges.
The billionaire brothers are the co-chairmen of the city's largest property developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties.
They and three others were accused of giving bribes in exchange for information on land sales between 2005 and 2007.
Reuters:BlackBerry works with Boeing on phone that self-destructs
BlackBerry works with Boeing on phone that self-destructs
(Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd (BB.TO) is working with Boeing Co (BA.N) on Boeing's high-security Android-based smartphone, the Canadian mobile technology company's chief executive said on Friday.
The Boeing Black phone being developed by the Chicago-based aerospace and defense contractor, which is best known for jetliners and fighter planes, can self-destruct if it is tampered with.
The Boeing Black device encrypts calls and is aimed at government agencies and others that need to keep communications and data secure.
"We're pleased to announce that Boeing is collaborating with BlackBerry to provide a secure mobile solution for Android devices utilizing our BES 12 platform," BlackBerry CEO John Chen said on a conference call held to discuss its quarterly results.
Reuters:Obama vows U.S. response to North Korea over Sony cyber attack
Obama vows U.S. response to North Korea over Sony cyber attack
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama vowed on Friday to respond to a devastating cyber attack on Sony Pictures that he blamed on North Korea, and scolded the Hollywood studio for caving in to what he described as a foreign dictator imposing censorship in America.
Obama said the cyber attack caused a lot of damage to Sony but that the company should not have let itself be intimidated into halting the public release of "The Interview," a lampoon portraying the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"We will respond," Obama told an end-of-year news conference. "We'll respond proportionally, and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose."
Earlier, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it had determined that North Korea was behind the hacking of Sony, saying Pyongyang's actions fell "outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior."
Reuters:U.S. reaches out to China, others, for help on Sony hack
U.S. reaches out to China, others, for help on Sony hack
(Reuters) - The United States has sought help from China, Japan, South Korea and Russia in combating cyber attacks such as the one Washington on Friday accused North Korea of carrying out against Sony Pictures, U.S. officials said.
The outreach, which included meetings among U.S. and Chinese officials in both nations' capitals, is a tacit acknowledgement that if anyone has influence over Pyongyang it is China, given its long border, historical ties and quiet trade with the North.
U.S. officials and outside analysts said Washington has little choice but to try to enlist China's help because of its economic ties to the North, which is largely isolated from the United States.
"The sanctions on North Korea are very different from the ones on Iran and Russia because the North Korean economy is so isolated and so dependent on China and on illegal arms sales," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Reuters:Oil shock to tilt Mexico energy opening in private sector's favor
Oil shock to tilt Mexico energy opening in private sector's favor
(Reuters) - The allure of investing in Mexico's historic oil sector opening has been dimmed by the plummeting price of crude, putting pressure on the government to offer bigger incentives to private investors in the first major round of contracts up for grabs.
Since Congress in August approved the laws governing the dissolution of Mexico's 75-year-old state oil monopoly, crude prices have plunged more than 40 percent, reducing the appeal of investing in Mexican deposits.
Mexico, the world's 10th biggest crude producer, last week announced bidding terms for the first set of production-sharing contracts, unveiling 14 shallow-water exploration blocks that will pay winning firms a share of each project's output.
The overhaul aims to reverse a decline in crude output of 30 percent since 2004, but the slumping prices have cut potential returns, putting the onus on Mexico to make it more attractive for firms to invest - at the government's expense.
Reuters:China arrests U.S. missionary near North Korea border
China arrests U.S. missionary near North Korea border
(Reuters) - China on Friday arrested Korean American missionary who was being held near the country's border with North Korea, signaling a toughening crackdown on Christian activists in the sensitive region.
Peter Hahn, 74, is being charged with embezzlement and counterfeiting receipts, his lawyer, Zhang Peihong, told Reuters.
Zhang said he believed authorities were targeting Hahn because of his Christian faith and because he ran a non-governmental organization.
"The charges leveled against him are just excuses," Zhang said.
Reuters:Cuban relatives of U.S. spy in dark after news of release
Cuban relatives of U.S. spy in dark after news of release
(Reuters) - His release from a Cuban prison has been as cloak-and-dagger as his spying career ever was.
Not even the family of Rolando Sarraff Trujillo appears to know what has happened to the Cuban man believed by some to be the U.S. informant secretly freed in a prisoner swap between Cuba and the United States that was announced on Wednesday.
"All I can say is that ... my brother has disappeared," his sister, Vilma Sarraff Trujillo, said by telephone from Spain on Friday, noting that Sarraff's family in Cuba has not heard from him in days and has not been able to pry any information from Cuban officials. "We don't know anything."
Unlike the televised homecoming of Alan Gross, the former U.S. aid worker who became a household name in diplomatic circles, the United States and Cuba have declined to publicly disclose the identity of the freed spy.
The Register:Kepler's still got it! Space telescope spots SUPER-EARTH 180 light years away
Kepler's still got it! Space telescope spots SUPER-EARTH 180 light years away
The Kepler space telescope might be damaged goods, but the clever hacks created by NASA's engineers have kept it running and it has spotted a new – if distant – planet that could harbor water, just like Earth.
"Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kepler has been reborn and is continuing to make discoveries. Even better, the planet it found is ripe for follow-up studies," said lead author Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
In May of 2013, NASA reported that two of the four spinning reaction wheels used to orient the telescope had conked out, leaving Earth-bound controllers unable to point the instrument accurately.
But NASA engineers later managed to stabilize the telescope by using the power of the Sun to augment the reaction wheels. The team used the pressure of particles streaming out from the Sun as a "third wheel" to augment the remaining hardware and were able to orient the telescope accurately and keep it looking for distant planets.