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, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke, JML9999, Chitown Kev 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.
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BBC
UN Security Council vows new sanctions after N Korea's rocket launch
The UN Security Council has strongly condemned North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket.
After an urgent meeting in New York, the council said it would soon adopt a new sanctions resolution in response.
Pyongyang said it fired the rocket to place a satellite in orbit but critics believe the real purpose was to test ballistic missile technology.
Sunday's launch came weeks after North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test. Both acts violate existing sanctions.
Amid the tension, a North Korean patrol boat briefly crossed into South Korean territory near the island of Socheong early on Monday morning, according to South Korea's Defense Ministry.
BBC
Islamic State: Charles de Gaulle carrier triples French firepower
France's one and only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, was at sea on training manoeuvres when the Paris attacks happened on 13 November.
The captain of the ship, Eric Malbrunot, said he immediately knew it would impact their next mission. He called together his 1,900-strong crew and now talks of a "special feeling".
There is no mention of the word revenge. Instead he calls it a mood of "determination".
The Charles de Gaulle left its home port of Toulon cheered on by huge crowds waving the French tricolour.
Now in the Gulf conducting air strikes, a crew member tells me it is the first time he has felt the whole nation is behind him.
[snip]
And the involvement of the carrier has tripled France's fire power. With the Charles de Gaulle France has twice as many jets as Britain taking part in air strikes.
Vice-Admiral Rene-Jean Crignola tells me he is confident they are having an effect. He cites the recent recapture of the Iraqi city of Ramadi as evidence that the tide is turning.
Al Jazeera
Syria refugees flee to Turkey border amid Aleppo attack
Turkey is ready "if necessary" to let in Syrian refugees trapped on its border after fleeing heavy fighting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Tens of thousands of Syrians, mostly women and children, remain stuck at the Turkish border after escaping a Russia-backed government offensive in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
"The regime has now blocked a part of Aleppo ... Turkey is under threat," Erdogan told reporters on his plane returning from Senegal on Saturday.
"If they reached our door and have no other choice, if necessary, we have to and will let our brothers in," Erdogan added.
The governor of Turkey's Kilis border province, Suleyman Tapsiz, said on Saturday that Turkey was taking care of the 30,000 - 35,000 refugees who had gathered around the nearby Syrian city of Azaz over the space of 48 hours.
Another 70,000 may head for the frontier if Russian air strikes and Syrian regime military advances continued in Aleppo, he added.
Al Jazeera
UAE says it is ready to send ground troops to Syria
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is ready to send ground troops to Syria as part of an international coalition to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, a top official has said.
The announcement comes just days after Saudi Arabia expressed the same position, saying that it was prepared to deploy troops to fight ISIL in Syria if the US-led coalition were to agree.
"Our position throughout has been that a real campaign against [ISIL] has to include a ground force," the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said at a news conference in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
Gargash added that "US leadership on this" would also be a prerequisite for the UAE.
He did not elaborate about how many troops the UAE could send - but added: "We are not talking about thousands of troops”
Al Jazeera
S Africa farmers devastated by El Nino drought
Senekal, South Africa - It is being described as the worst drought to have hit South Africa in 20 years.
Five out of the country's nine provinces have been declared disaster zones as dry conditions triggered by the El Nino weather pattern continue to devastate the country.
Borrie Erasmus, a farmer whose family has worked and lived on the same land in the Free State province for the past five decades, told Al Jazeera he had not seen anything like it.
"On our farm, there has never been a time that there has not been any maize in December. We could not even try planting seeds. It has been drier than ever," Erasmus said.
The drought is costing South African farmers more than an estimated $600m in lost crops. While the government says it will be spending $19m on assisting farmers, it also suggested that farmers should start adapting to changing weather patterns.
"We can't continue relying only on dry agriculture," Senzeni Zokwana, South Africa's minister of agriculture, told Al Jazeera.
Raw Story
Rubio tries to spring back from bizarre mechanical glitch during the Republican debate
Marco Rubio, the young Republican senator fast building momentum in the race for the White House, came back swinging Sunday after a mauling in the latest presidential debate for his lack of experience.
The charismatic Florida senator floundered at the start of the Saturday night showdown, just days before the crucial New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. He was mocked for repeating the same rehearsed line over and over.
On Sunday he fought back, telling ABC News that his campaign had raised more money last night in the first hour of the debate — precisely when he appeared to come undone — than in any other debate.
“Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Rubio said on a loop in clips seized upon by Democrats and doing the rounds on social media.
“As far as that message, I hope they keep running it and I’m going to keep saying because it’s true,” Rubio told ABC.
Raw Story
Fox News guest: ‘By every metric men have it worse — we’re more likely to get raped’
Anti-feminist author Gavin McInnes argued recently on Fox News that men had it worse than women “by every metric” — including sexual assaults.
On a Saturday broadcast of The Greg Gutfeld Show, McInnes griped about the idea of including women in the draft for military service.
“They want equality for everything fun,” he said. “How about you’re equal in sanitation, how about you have to go down into the sewers and remove rats from blocked pipes? How about you go to war and die?”
“If we’re going to do that, we’ll have to talk to President Hitler,” McInnes opined. “Because if women were soldiers for the last hundred years, we would have lost World War II.”
Gutfeld remarked that “women want total equality and this is total equality.”
“By every metric, men have it worse off,” McInnes replied. “We’re more likely to get raped if you include prison, we’re more likely to be assaulted, we’re more likely to die, we’re more likely to commit suicide.”
“And you’re not as smart,” former White House National Security Council staffer Gillian Turner interrupted.
CNN
U.S. running out of space to store oil
The U.S. now has nearly 503 million barrels of commercial crude oil stockpiled, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. It's the highest level of supply for this time of the year in at least 80 years.
The sky-high inventories are the latest sign that the U.S. oil boom isstill alive and kicking. U.S. oil production is near all-time highs despite the epic crash in oil prices from $107 a barrel in June 2014 to just $30 a barrel now.
Sure, domestic oil production has slowed -- but just barely.
Oil stockpiles are so high that certain key storage locations are now "bumping up against storage and logistical constraints," according to Goldman Sachs analysts. In other words, these facilities are nearly overflowing.
Cushing, Oklahoma is the delivery point for most of the oil produced in the U.S. This key trading hub is currently swelling with 64 million barrels of oil. That represents a near-record 87% of the facility's total storage capacity as of November, according to the EIA.
S F Gate
NASA's Scott Kelly tweets pic of Super Bowl 50 from space
A year-long mission in space already cost NASA astronaut Scott Kelly Christmas and Thanksgiving. It wasn't about to take his Super Bowl too.
Kelly, who will complete his yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station in the spring, frequently shares photos on social media of the Earth's scenic landscapes as viewed from space.
Kelly's twin brother, fellow astronaut Mark Kelly, has remained here on Earth for the year to provide a comparison of how the weightless year has impacted Scott's health.
C/Net
Ravens: Smart enough to be paranoid
If ever there were birds destined to take over the world at some point, it's definitely going to be corvids. More specifically, ravens and crows seem to be the most intelligent birds ever.
The latest research into raven smarts demonstrates that the birds have something previously thought to be exclusively human, called the Theory of Mind. This means that they are able to imagine what might be happening in someone else's thoughts, and adjust their behaviour accordingly.