Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke 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 12:00AM Eastern Time
BBC
Palmyra's Baalshamin temple 'blown up by IS'
Islamic State militants have destroyed Palmyra's ancient temple of Baalshamin, Syrian officials and activists say.
Syria's head of antiquities was quoted as saying the temple was blown up on Sunday. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that it happened one month ago.
IS took control of Palmyra in May, sparking fears the group might demolish the Unesco World Heritage site.
The group has destroyed several ancient sites in Iraq.
IS "placed a large quantity of explosives in the temple of Baalshamin today and then blew it up causing much damage to the temple," Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP news agency.
"The cella (inner area of the temple) was destroyed and the columns around collapsed," he said.
Residents who had fled from Palmyra also said IS had planted explosives at the temple, although they had done it about one month ago, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Last month, IS published photos of militants destroying what it said were artefacts looted at Palmyra.
Last week, it emerged that the 81-year-old archaeologist who had looked after Palmyra's ruins for four decades had been beheaded by the the militant group.
Al Jazeera
Berlin says 100 Germans killed fighting alongside ISIL
About 100 Germans have died fighting within the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) since 2012, according to the country's interior minister.
In comments published Sunday, Thomas de Maziere said that about 700 had travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside ISIL in the last three years.
About a third of those who travelled to the region to fight have since returned, de Maziere told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
De Maziere said Germany has blocked travel to the region in an effort to control the problem.
There are currently almost 600 investigations into 800 individuals on allegations of illegally travelling to the region to fight, he told the newspaper.
The minister also pointed to recent changes in German law that give authorities the right to confiscate identity papers from anyone seeking to travel to a Middle Eastern war zones.
BBC
China share slide: Pension fund to invest in stock market
China plans to let its main state pension fund invest in the stock market for the first time, the country's official news agency, Xinhua, has reported.
Under the new rules, the fund will be allowed to invest up to 30% of its net assets in domestically-listed shares.
China's main pension fund holds 3.5tn yuan ($548bn; £349bn), Xinhua said.
The move is the latest attempt by the Chinese government to arrest the slide in the country's stock market.
The fund will be allowed to invest not just in shares but in a range of market instruments, including derivatives. By increasing demand for them, the government hopes prices will rise.
The Shanghai Composite Index closed down more than 4% on Friday after figures showed monthly factory activity contracting at its fastest pace in six years.
It capped a tough few days for Chinese investors, with the index down 12% on the week. Chinese shares are now down more than 30% since the middle of June.
Al Jazeera
Paris train attack suspect
'dumbfounded' by allegations
A man overpowered by passengers on a crowded train is "dumbfounded" by allegations of terrorism and denies any shot was fired, a lawyer who had been representing has said.
In comments broadcast on Sunday, Sophie David, a lawyer assigned to represent Ayob el-Khazzani at the beginning of his detention in Arras, but who is no longer defending him, said he denies firing a single shot.
The alleged attacker, a 25-year-old Moroccan national, is alleged to have boarded a high-speed Thalys train in Brussels on Friday evening bound for Paris armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Luger automatic pistol, nine cartridge clips and a box-cutter, the AFP news agency reported.
Witnesses say he opened fire, injuring a man before being wrestled to the floor by two US servicemen and tied up with the help of two other men, a British national and another American until the train stopped in the northern French city of Arras where he was taken into police custody.
"He is dumbfounded that his act is being linked to terrorism," David told BFM-TV, adding the suspect who is believed to have lived in Belgium describes himself as a homeless man.
"He says that by chance he found a suitcase with a weapon, with a telephone, hidden away.
Al Jazeera
Streams of refugees flow into Macedonia from Greece
Hundreds of refugees have passed through the Macedonian border from Greece unhindered a day after police used stun grenades in a failed bid to prevent them from crossing.
Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons, reporting from Gevgelija on the Macedonian side of the border, said the refugees were boarding trains to take them from Macedonia to Serbia.
The refugees hope that by taking trains through Serbia, they will make it to Hungary and other EU member states.
"We are humans. We are not animals. We ran away from death and came here to die from the border police?"
Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull, reporting from Idomeni on the Greek side of the border, said the railway between the two nations was working again on Sunday.
"It is calm here. There is a free flow of movement as the Macedonian police allow small groups through," he said.
Raw Story
As tensions over migrants rise, 3,000 rescued off Italy in single day
Italy’s coastguard on Saturday successfully coordinated the rescue of around 3000 migrants in the Mediterranean after receiving distress calls from more than 20 overcrowded vessels drifting in waters off Libya.
One of the biggest single-day rescue operations to date appeared to have been concluded without any reports of casualties.
Two navy ships, the Cigala Fulgosi and the Vega, picked up, respectively, 507 and 432 migrants from two wooden boats in danger of sinking just off Libya, the navy said.
The coastguard said its patrol boats had boarded a total of just under 1,000 people from various unseaworthy fishing boats and inflatables that had left Libya overnight Friday-Saturday.
At least another 1,000 rescued migrants and refugees were reported to be headed for Italian ports on other boats as the wave of new arrivals triggered increasingly virulent attacks on centre-left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s handling of the migration crisis.
The Guardian
Shoreham airshow crash: 11 feared dead, and more victims could emerge
Police have warned that more victims may emerge from the Shoreham airshow crash, as it was revealed that at least 11 people are feared to have died in the worst British airshow disaster in living memory.
Police are continuing the task of sifting through the wreckage left after a Hawker Hunter fighter jet crashed into a busy dual carriageway in West Sussex on Saturday, after an attempted loop went wrong. A crane is expected to lift the wreckage of the aircraft on Monday, when police fear more bodies may be discovered.
Two young footballers and a personal trainer have been named among the victims, but anxious family members and friends continue to wait for news of others who have been killed.
Plane's age will not be to blame for Shoreham airshow crash, expert claims
Sussex police assistant chief constable Steve Barry said there were 11 people they were treating as “highly likely” to have died, but they could not yet formally identify any of the dead. Barry also warned that the death toll could rise further.
Raw Story
EPA knew blowing up Colorado gold mine could result in multi-state toxic spill
The Environmental Protection Agency was aware that remains of a gold mine in Silverton, Colorado, could produce a toxic “blowout" this month, according to official documents obtained by the Associated Press.
An attempted cleanup of the Gold King Mine in July inadvertently released 3 million gallons of contaminated water into the Animas river, loading it with traces of heavy metals and sediment. On Friday, the EPA handed over documents that "shed a little more light on what officials knew leading up to the botched cleanup," the AP reported.
The accident is currently under multiple department investigations:
A 71-page safety plan for the site included only a few lines describing what to do if there was a spill: Locate the source and stop the flow, begin containment and recovery of the spilled materials and alert downstream drinking water systems as needed.
N Y Times
A Sprawl of Abandoned Homes in Tokyo Suburbs
YOKOSUKA, Japan — Ever since her elderly neighbor moved a decade ago, Yoriko Haneda has done what she can to keep the empty house she left behind from becoming an eyesore. Ms. Haneda regularly trims its shrubs and clips its narrow strip of grass, maintaining its perfect view of the sea.
The volunteer yard work has not extended to the house two doors down, however. That one is vacant, too, and overgrown with bamboo. In fact, dozens of houses in this hillside neighborhood about an hour’s drive from Tokyo are abandoned.
“There are empty houses everywhere, places where nobody’s lived for 20 years, and more are cropping up all the time,” said Ms. Haneda, 77, complaining that thieves had broken into her neighbor’s house twice and that a typhoon had damaged the roof of the one next to it.
Despite a deeply rooted national aversion to waste, discarded homes are spreading across Japan like a blight in a garden. Long-term vacancy rates have climbed significantly higher than in the United States or Europe, and some eight million dwellings are now unoccupied, according to a government count. Nearly half of them have been forsaken completely — neither for sale nor for rent, they simply sit there, in varying states of disrepair.
N Y Times
Seeking Equality, Not Tips, Topless Marchers Draw a Crowd in Manhattan
It was not all that surprising that a march of a few dozen topless women (and fewer men) through Midtown Manhattan on a sunny Sunday afternoon would attract perhaps thousands of gawkers, bemused tourists, leering loafers, journalists and passers-by — every single one, it seemed, carrying a camera.
“I have you on Periscope right now,” one young man gleefully informed a trio of topless women marching down Broadway, referring to the live video streaming smartphone app that he was using to broadcast the march. “There are 60 people watching you. People are liking you.”
“Great,” said one of the women, Angie, 24, her voice steely. She wore sunglasses, shorts printed with sunflowers and nothing in between.
These women were not desnudas, the topless panhandlers who last week found themselves in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s cross hairs. Sunday’s marchers were after something more high-minded: the right of all women to go bare-chested if they chose.
L A Times
Israel abuzz over reports that attacks on Iran were planned, abandoned
Accounts published in Israel over the weekend suggest that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to strike Iran more than once in recent years but met with internal opposition.
On Friday, Israel's Channel 2 news broadcast excerpts from a taped interview that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave to the authors of his upcoming biography. Barak, who served as defense minister in Netanyahu's second government during 2009 and 2013, described three occasions from 2010 to 2012 when plans to strike Iran fell through for different reasons.
Israel's top leaders at the time -- Netanyahu, Barak and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman -- reportedly believed that Iran would soon enter a "zone of immunity," beyond which a strike would be more complicated and less effective. In advance of what would have been the next stage of government decision-making, the three held a meeting with Israel's top security chiefs, including the chief of staff and the heads of the country's intelligence agencies: Mossad, Shin Bet and military intelligence.
C/Net
Need to take down a drone? A munitions company offers firepower
Having grown up in a culture where very few people feel the need for guns (that Europe place), it's hard to explain to my fellow Americans that it's, well, possible.
Instead, America has always enjoyed a deep fascination for and commitment to weaponry.
This therefore fuels the imaginations of those manufacturing the weaponry to ever greater heights.
Admire then, please, the wares of Snake River Shooting Products. This company has just released gun shells that it says are perfect for shooting down drones.
In a press release, the company describes its wares like this: "The rounds are a 12 gauge 3" shot shell solution aimed at defending against drone-based privacy concerns and terror!"
Terror!
There is terror! all around us. Bright minds such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos want to inject a buzz into our lives by flying drones just about everywhere. He says they'll soon be as common as mail trucks.
And then there's all the amusement people have in flying drones right next to landing planes.
Raw Story
Devastating wildfires expected to continue raging across Washington
Firefighters said Sunday that reduced winds helped them gain the upper hand against fires raging across the northwest United States but expressed fears that north-central Washington could soon see explosive fire growth. The wildfires, which have spread immensely in recent weeks, now cover about 920 square miles of Washington state and have already claimed the lives of three firefighters.
Washington, normally a wet state, has seen fires following an unprecedented drought in recent months. Fire spokeswoman Suzanne Flory said there were fears the fire could spread Sunday if, as forecasted, a cap of smoke lifts from Okanogan County. When smoke lifts, humidity drops and heat rises, allowing more fires to flare up, the Associated Press reported.
The fears come just one day after the federal government accepted state Gov. Jay Inslee’s request for a federal emergency declaration to help firefighters fight blazing flames in the state’s east.