Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and now moi, JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) 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 12:00 AM Eastern Time. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
We will start with some Africa news, then move to Asia then Europe, and end with the Americas in roughly geographical order.
This first item comes from Deutsche Welle:
Silja Thoms14 hours ago
China was the elephant in the room as the Biden administration sought to regain trust among African leaders gathered in Washington this week. Analysts say the US made some progress to that end.
"The United States is all in on Africa's future," US President Joe Biden told African heads of state at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington this week. The three-day summit was just the second of its kind. The first was some eight years ago, when the Obama administration invited nearly all African heads of state to the US.
The issues discussed were as diverse as the African countries themselves. Topics ranged from health, food security, climate change to democracy, peace, digitalization, and space exploration. Trade and economic relations were also top of the agenda.
From Al Jazeera:
President Nana Akufo-Addo alleged during the US-Africa Leaders Summit that Burkina Faso has hired Russian mercenaries.
From the Daily Beast (via Yahoo! News):
An official linked to Vladimir Putin’s private army opened a letter bomb thinking it could contain “his son’s head,” according to notorious
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, via YouTube:
From the Washington Post:
Iga Paul was doing what most 2-year-olds do on Sunday afternoons — he was playing outside his home.
But just over 800 yards away from the toddler’s Uganda home was Lake Edward, one of the smallest bodies of water in the Great Rift Valley, where big hungry creatures reside.
On Dec. 4, a hippopotamus left the lake at about 3 p.m. local time and partially swallowed Iga in a highly unusual land attack for this area, according to Ugandan police.
One from Oceania, from Vanuatu, via The Guardian:
Michael McCormack paid a high price for downing, not sipping, the sakau during a Pacific tour, later stating: ‘I was trying to be respectful’
Former Australian deputy prime minister Michael McCormack has learned the hard way that being polite can be hazardous to your health.
The Nationals MP suffered the consequences of drinking an entire shell of sakau – a traditional Micronesian kava with sedative qualities made from the root of the pepper plant – in one hit, thinking it was similar to South Pacific kava.
Now to Asia, beginning with CNN:
Japan on Friday unveiled a new national security plan that signals the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, doubling defense spending and veering from its pacifist constitution in the face of growing threats from regional rivals.
In an early evening televised address in Tokyo, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government had approved three security documents – the National Security Strategy (NSS), the National Defense Strategy, and the Defense Force Development Plan – to bolster Japan’s defense capabilities amid an increasingly unstable security environment.
Also from CNN:
Taiwan has noticed a hole in its defense plans that is steadily getting bigger. And it’s not one easily plugged by boosting the budget or buying more weapons.
The island democracy of 23.5 million is facing an increasing challenge in recruiting enough young men to meet its military targets and its Interior Ministry has suggested the problem is – at least in part – due to its stubbornly low birth rate.
From NBC News:
China Likely To See Explosion Of Covid Cases In Coming Weeks
From the BBC:
By Frances Mao & Laura Gozzi
Malaysian search and rescue teams are scouring a holiday campsite in the Selangor state for survivors after a landslide killed at least 21 people.
Families were sleeping in their tents when the landslide happened around 03:00 Friday (19:00 GMT Thursday) at a farm stay in Batang Kali township.
Some 400 rescue workers spent Friday digging through mud to find 12 missing people, local media reported.
From WION:
The Indian Prime Minister spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a phone call. The call was to review several aspects of the bilateral relationship between the two nations.
From Al Monitor:
Turkey's interior minister has blamed the outlawed Kurdish militants over the roadside bomb attack in the Kurdish-majority southeast.
A roadside car bomb attack Dec. 16 on a Turkish police van slightly injured nine people in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, Turkish authorities said.
The explosives-laden car blew up as the police shuttle was passing by at around 5 a.m. local time in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority province of Diyarbakir. Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said all nine injured, including eight police officers and one civilian personnel, were discharged from hospital.
From Slate.com:
The former statesman-historian is straining to view present crises through the prism of a more orderly past.
Henry Kissinger now joins the list of prominent figures whose efforts at drafting a peace plan for Ukraine reveal only their delusion about the nature of the conflict. In his plan, the glow of fantasy is fueled by nostalgia for Golden Age nostrums that have no cure-all value for the war that’s actually happening.
In an article for this weekend’s Spectator, the former statesman-historian proposes a cease-fire and a return to the pre-invasion borders of this past February. In other words, he is suggesting that Russia withdraw all its troops from the areas of Ukraine that it has conquered this year—but not from Crimea or the thin slice of eastern Ukraine that it annexed or occupied back in 2014. The disposition of those territories, he argues, should be negotiated or settled through an internationally supervised referendum.
From CNN:
A war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Friday sentenced a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army to 26 years in prison for the war crimes of arbitrary detention, torture and murder.
The Salih Mustafa case was one overseen in part by now-special counsel Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor appointed last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee investigations in the US involving former President Donald Trump.
From Deutsche Welle:
After more than 200 years at the Vatican Museum, fragments of Athens' Parthenon temple may soon return home to Greece.
The Roman Catholic Church is returning three pieces of the Parthenon that have been held for centuries in
the Vatican Museums to Greece.
Pope Francis was giving them to Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, "as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth,'' the Vatican said.
From the Financial Times:
Unprecedented corruption investigation shakes Brussels’ establishment to the core
Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli in Milan, Valentina Pop, Eleni Varvitsioti and Javier Espinoza in Brussels
A globetrotting Italian union boss-turned-politician has emerged as the kingpin in a sprawling international investigation into allegations that Qatar and Morocco sought to bribe EU legislators to influence policy and used a network of non-governmental organisations to hide the corrupt dealings.
Pier Antonio Panzeri, a Socialist member of the European parliament between 2004 and 2019, is one of four people charged with corruption, money laundering and being part of a criminal group after police seized €600,000 in cash at his residence in Brussels.
From Euronews:
The European Union is one step closer to achieving what it calls "tax fairness."
After more than a year of political wrangling and veto threats, the 27 member states agreed to endorse a long-stalled deal to establish a minimum level of corporate tax, which will be set at 15% for all large companies.
The reform, opposed at different points in time by the likes of Ireland, Hungary, Estonia and Poland, has been hailed as a major step to put the brakes on a long-running race to the bottom that has seen countries around the world gradually reduce their corporate taxes in order to lure multinationals.
From the BBC:
By Joseph Lee
Three people are critically injured after a crush at a gig in Brixton, south London. How did it happen?
While many details are still unclear, the BBC has pieced together this account from verified social media videos and eyewitness accounts.
And now to the Americas, from north to south, beginning with the New York Times:
Negotiators from around the world are meeting in Canada in an effort to halt, and reverse, staggering declines in wildlife.
By Catrin Einhorn
MONTREAL, Quebec — Remember the big climate talks in Egypt last month? There’s another hugely important environmental summit happening right now in Canada. It’s also about a global crisis that threatens life on earth, but one that’s gotten far less attention: Rampant, human-induced biodiversity loss. That means not only species extinctions, but also staggering declines in the variety of life on the planet.
Don’t stop reading out of dread! The biodiversity talks in Montreal could produce the most significant global agreement to protect and restore nature in history.
Imagine that.
From The Guardian:
Ciro Gómez Leyva was unharmed when an attacker fired at his car, but 42 journalists have been killed during Amlo’s term
From the Associated Press:
By GEROLD ROZENBLAD and DÁNICA COTO
PARAMARIBO, Suriname (AP) — Dutch colonizers kidnapped men, women and children and enslaved them on plantations growing sugar, coffee and other goods that built wealth at the price of misery.
On Monday, the Netherlands is expected to become one of the few nations to apologize for its role in slavery. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte plans to speak in the Netherlands as members of his Cabinet give speeches in seven former Caribbean colonies, including Suriname.
Symbolism around crimes against humanity is controversial everywhere, and debates over Monday’s ceremonies are roiling Suriname and other Caribbean countries.
From CNN:
As Peru explodes in protest with supporters of its former president taking to streets, lawmakers on Friday rejected a constitutional reform that is needed to hold early general elections in 2023.
Calls for early presidential and parliamentary elections have mounted since former President Pedro Castillo was ousted from power last week after he attempted to dissolve Congress and install an emergency government.
From Axios:
Driving the news: Americans, Europeans, South Americans and Peruvians are among those unable to leave the ancient city as train service, which is the primary way in and out of the area, has been suspended indefinitely, Machu Picchu mayor Darwin Baca told CNN.