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 with guest editors annetteboardman and Chitown Kev. 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.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner.
DW News
DW: From what we know so far, the Paris attacks by the 'Islamic State' appear to have been planned, coordinated and orchestrated in advance for some time. Can you shed some light on how the perpetrators may have managed to communicate without being detected by the seemingly broad surveillance measures applied by the French and other governments?
Jamie Bartlett: Of course it's difficult to know at this point, but I am sure in the coming days we will learn a lot more. Very generally speaking what you can say about the 'Islamic State' and pretty much about most terrorist groups is that they keep a very close eye on the latest developments in terms of encrypted messaging services, in terms of using various anonymous web browsers simply to try to communicate with each other in such a way that makes it far more difficult for the intelligence agencies to monitor exactly what they are saying.
Al Jazeera America
French President Francois Hollande will present a bill to extend the state of emergency in France, as well as propose severe amendments to the constitution in light of a recent wave of attacks in Paris that killed at least 129 people.
The French leader said on Monday, in an exceptional joint gathering of parliament, that he would make the proposals on Wednesday and parliamentarians would vote on them before the end of the week.
Friday's "acts of war... were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium [and] perpetrated on our soil with French complicity," he said, speaking in Versailles, south of Paris.
"I have asked the prime minister to prepare constitutional amendments," he added.
Spiegel Online
It hasn't taken long for the French authorities to begin learning details as to who was behind Friday night's terrorist attacks in Paris. Several of perpetrators, officials learned over the weekend, are from France, with two having most recently lived in Brussels and two more residing just outside of the French capital. Investigators believe that a 27-year-old Belgian man named Abdelhamid A. was the coordinator of the attacks, which cost the lives of at least 132 people at multiple sites in Paris on Friday evening.
It hasn't taken long for the French authorities to begin learning details as to who was behind Friday night's terrorist attacks in Paris. Several of perpetrators, officials learned over the weekend, are from France, with two having most recently lived in Brussels and two more residing just outside of the French capital. Investigators believe that a 27-year-old Belgian man named Abdelhamid A. was the coordinator of the attacks, which cost the lives of at least 132 people at multiple sites in Paris on Friday evening.
The Guardian
French intelligence officials have named the alleged mastermind of a deadly string of suicide bombings and shootings in Paris as the Belgian extremist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, after French police made more than 20 arrests and seized arms and ammunition in a series of anti-terror raids across the country.
As details emerged of an elaborate international terror operation run from Syria and carried out by a sleeper cell based in Belgium, officials told French media that Abaaoud, seen as one of Islamic State’s most active operatives, was “investigators’ best bet” as the main organiser of the attacks, which killed 129 people on Friday.
Reuters
President Barack Obama ruled out a shift in strategy in the fight against Islamic State on Monday despite the deadly attacks in Paris, saying putting more U.S. troops on the ground as sought by his political critics "would be a mistake."
Speaking after a G20 summit in Turkey, Obama described the attacks in France that killed 129 people as "a terrible and sickening setback" and vowed to redouble efforts to destroy Islamic State, even as the group threatened to strike Washington.
Mindful of the difficulties that the United States had in controlling Iraq after its invasion in 2003, Obama is very reluctant to commit American ground forces to Middle East conflict zones.
US News
Al Jazeera America
A Minnesota criminal-justice agency is investigating a Minneapolis police officer’s shooting of a black man suspected in an assault, an incident that sparked protests and prompted a weekend community forum with the mayor and police chief.
Some witnesses’ accounts that the man, identified as Jamar Clark, was handcuffed when he was shot early Sunday morning led to outrage. Police said their preliminary investigation shows the man was not handcuffed, but the investigation is ongoing.
Clark’s family members report that he is on life support in a hospital.
Jason Sole, chair of the Minneapolis NAACP's criminal justice committee, said many black residents of north Minneapolis are upset.
"We have been saying for a significant amount of time that Minneapolis is one bullet away from Ferguson," he said, referring to the police shooting last year in the St. Louis suburb that prompted nationwide protests. "That bullet was fired last night. We want justice immediately," Sole told Minnesota Public Radio News.
The Guardian
The number of people killed by law enforcement in the US this year has reached 1,000 after officers in Oakland, California, shot dead a man who allegedly pointed a replica gun at them.
Authorities said several officers opened fire on the man on Sunday evening when he walked toward them as they towed away cars that had been used to perform so-called “sideshow” stunts in east Oakland. Officers discovered later that the gun was a replica, police said.
“Officers working sideshow approached by subject who pointed firearm in their direction,” the Oakland police department said on Twitter. “Officers fatally shot subject.” A spokeswoman said the department would investigate the shooting itself. The man’s name was not released.
Hundreds of cars had been involved in hours of chaotic sideshow stunts that shut down several intersections in Oakland from late on Saturday into the early hours of Sunday, according to police. One man was arrested and several shots were fired.
Reuters
More than a dozen state governors refused on Monday to accept Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks, part of a mounting Republican backlash against the Obama administration's plan to accept thousands more immigrants from the war-torn country.
Leading Republican presidential candidates called on President Barack Obama to suspend the plan to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year and some Republican lawmakers began moves in Congress to try to defund the policy.
Twitter ...
NPR
Anton Gunn was a former college football player working as a community organizer in South Carolina when he first met that other community organizer — now known as President Obama.
Gunn was instantly impressed, so much so that when he heard that the former U.S. senator from Illinois was thinking of running for president, he cold-called Obama and told him he would work to get him elected.
…
This time around "it's all about 'gotcha,' " Gunn said. "Or, it's the angry people running for president. I mean, I hear the clips of Donald Trump, and I hear the clips of Bernie Sanders, they just sound angry to me."
Gunn says he misses Obama's real talk and called this campaign "scripted and contrived."
BBC
The US State Department has approved the sale of $1.29 billion (£848.6m) worth of bombs to Saudi Arabia, as its military carries out air strikes in neighbouring Yemen.
President Obama pledged to bolster military support for Saudi Arabia after tensions were strained following a US-brokered nuclear deal with Iran.
The US Congress now has 30 days to stop the deal if it wishes to do so.
Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest buyers of US weapons.
The Saudi-led campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has drawn criticism, with several reports of civilian casualties on the ground.
NPR
The Mormon church — or The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) — has been under fire for declaring earlier this month that members who enter into same-sex marriages will be deemed apostates and their children barred from baptism. The church tweaked that position late last week, explaining that only children living full time in a same-sex household would be barred from church rites and that those who had already been baptized could still be practicing Mormons. That wasn't, however, enough to stave off hundreds of defections.
This Saturday, according to The New York Times, approximately 1,000 Mormons queued up in Salt Lake City to formally withdraw. Online, participants offered support to each other as they navigated a potential backlash from their friends and families.
WORLD NEWS
NHK News
The leaders of Japan and Germany have agreed to cooperate in ensuring the rule of law at sea.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met on Monday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey.
Japan, China, and South Korea held a summit earlier this month. Abe told Merkel that he believes Japan's relations with South Korea have started improving. But he added that the 2 nations still have some issues to resolve.
Al Jazeera America
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Three years ago, squabbling politicians in this ethnically divided country achieved what three wars and the collapse of two states never did: They forced the 127-year-old National Museum to close its doors.
But visitors are flocking back now that staffers and activists have won a dogged fight to reopen the museum. The institution’s revival is a triumph for Bosnian civil society and the latest chapter in survival story that echoes the history of the museum’s most famous treasure — a unique 14th century Jewish manuscript that was made in Spain, crossed Europe as its owners fled persecution and was protected from the Nazis in Sarajevo.
Al Jazeera America
Lebanese security forces have arrested nine people, most of them Syrian nationals, over their alleged involvement in last week's twin bombings in Beirut that killed at least 44 people, the interior minister said.
"Until now the detained include seven Syrians and two Lebanese - one of them a [would-be] suicide bomber and the other a trafficker who smuggled them across the border from Syria," Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq said at a televised press conference on Sunday.
Spiegel Online
At times it feels like Alexis Tsipras is battling against himself. Tsipras the pragmatist seems to be wrestling with Tsipras the ideologist. And Tsipras the nice son-in-law struggles against Tspiras the demagogue. It's not only his opponents who consider him to be unpredictable -- his closest advisors also describe him as a chameleon. Perhaps Tsipras himself doesn't even know which role he is playing.
The question of who and what Alexis Tsipras really wants to be is one consuming all of Europe right now. Tsipras, who just turned 40 and has been in office as the Greek prime minister for just under six months, remains an enigma. He leaves people wondering what or how he will say things and whether he will actually do what he says in the end.
BBC
Australia's immigration minister has rejected a call by an MP to close its borders to refugees from the Middle East, in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Andrew Fraser, a conservative MP, made the call on Facebook.
"Message to Malcolm Turnbull: Australia does not need Middle Eastern refugees or Islamic boat people," he wrote.
But Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said Australia would not back away from a decision to accept 12,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq.
New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Ali Awad, 14, was chopping vegetables when the first bomb struck. Adel Tormous, who would die tackling the second bomber, was sitting at a nearby coffee stand. Khodr Alaa Deen, a registered nurse, was on his way to work his night shift at the teaching hospital of the American University at Beirut, in Lebanon.
All three lost their lives in a double suicide attack in Beirut on Thursday, along with 40 others, and much like the scores who died a day later in Paris, they were killed at random, in a bustling urban area, while going about their normal evening business.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
DW News
There is widespread misunderstanding about the correct use of antibiotics worldwide, a report by the World Health Organization says. It calls antibiotic resistance one of the "greatest challenges for public health."
Nearly two thirds of people questioned in the 12-country survey said they had heard about antibiotic resistance as an issue that could affect them.
But the survey also shows people are confused about how and when to use antibiotic drugs.
Around 64 percent believe, for example, that antibiotics could be used to treat colds and flu despite the drugs having no effect on viruses.
Around a third of people surveyed also wrongly believed they should stop taking antibiotics when they feel better, rather than completing the prescribed treatment course.
"The findings ... point to the urgent need to improve understanding around antibiotic resistance," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's special representative for antimicrobial resistance. The WHO has stepped up its fight against antibiotic resistance with a new global campaign called "Antibiotics: Handle with Care.”
Climate Central
The G20 countries spend almost four times as much to prop up fossil fuel production as they do to subsidize renewable energy, calling into question their commitment to halting climate change, a think tank said.
The G20 spent an average $78 billion on national subsidies delivered through direct spending and tax breaks in 2013 and 2014, according to a report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
NPR
Dr. William Benitz walks past the rows of clear plastic isolettes in the neonatal intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University.
There's little room to navigate — the space is jam-packed with beeping machines and ventilators. The health team in the unit can care for as many as 70 fragile infants. One tiny, pink baby girl here today was born weighing 13 ounces.
"A can of Coke is 12 ounces. So imagine a baby who could almost curl up in a fetal position and fit inside a Coke can," says Benitz, the hospital's chief of neonatology.
The Guardian
The point person behind Barack Obama’s environmental agenda has declared Americans are fed up with climate change denial and other efforts to wreck a Paris summit to stop global warming.
Despite Friday’s horrific attacks, Obama and other world leaders still plan to travel to Paris on 30 November for the start of two weeks of talks aimed at securing a global agreement to reduce climate pollution.
Republicans in Congress could vote as early as Tuesday or even Monday night to repeal the main pillar of Obama’s climate plan – which would send the message to Paris that the president faces strong opposition to his agenda.
NPR
San Antonio is one of the country's emerging tech hubs. It's also home to a rich culinary scene. Now city officials are trying to bring both communities together through a program called Break Fast and Launch.
The program pairs emerging food entrepreneurs with technology mentors who teach them business. The tech mentors don't have culinary backgrounds, but they know how to get a startup off the ground. The idea behind Break Fast and Launch is to take some of that vibrant startup energy and inject it into San Antonio's food scene. It's one of several "culinary incubator" models springing up across the country.
Climate Central
The region in question, called the Nino 3.4 region, is now running an unheard of 5.4°F (3°C) above normal. That tops the previous weekly record of 5°F (2.8°C) set by the 1997-98 event. It remains to be seen if this is the peak and if so, how long it lasts.
Regardless, the impacts of El Niño are being felt in some part of the globe. Indonesia’s fires, heavy precipitation in the southern tier of the U.S., and record warmth around the globe are all telltale signs of how El Niño usually influences weather.
In the U.S., the winter outlook also further shows El Niño is likely to continue exerting its influence with the increased likelihood of cool, unsettled weather from the Southwest to the Southeast and warm conditions in the northern portion of the country.
The Guardian
Scientists seeking a cure for HIV/Aids have said a drug designed to combat alcoholism might be able to draw out the dormant virus from hiding in the body and allow it to be killed.
The drug, branded as Antabuse but also sold as a generic called disulfiram, was given to 30 HIV positive patients in the US and Australia who were already taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs.
At the highest given dose there was evidence that “dormant HIV was activated”, the researchers said in a study published in The Lancet HIV journal on Monday, adding they did not find any harmful side-effects.
Julian Elliott of the department of infectious diseases at the Alfred hospital in Melbourne, who worked with Lewin, said waking up the virus was only the first step to eliminating it.