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.
It is hard to find good news these days, so we will post the good stuff above the fold and the bad news below. You have been warned.
We have the 2022 National Geographic pictures of the year from the NY Post and the Washington Post shares the People’s Choice candidates for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
From Vanguard (Nigeria):
By Fortune Eromosele
The First Lady, Aisha Buhari has withdrawn case against a final year student of the Federal University, Dutse, Aminu Adamu.
Adamu, 24, was arrested by the police in Dutse for allegedly publishing a defamatory statement on his Twitter handle against Mrs Buhari.
From NPR’s Goats and Soda:
In 2004, when physician Dr. Wilfried Mutombo began treating patients diagnosed with sleeping sickness, the available treatments were themselves horrific and sometimes deadly.
"The widely available treatment then was an arsenic-based drug, and it was toxic. It could kill up to 5% of patients," he says. "I lost two of my patients. They were young, and that was a very bad experience.
I told you the world was short on good news (I didn’t dig into specific sources, but took the top stories you might have missed, and this is what I found).
From NPR (maybe not the worst news in the world):
LONDON — Local officials in London overwhelmingly rejected plans for a massive, new Chinese Embassy on Thursday.
The decision over the long-planned project is a bitter setback for the Chinese government, which currently operates its embassy out of a townhouse in central London. It also comes as a once-promising "golden era" in relations between the two countries has deteriorated in recent years.
From CNN:
More than a dozen letters containing explosives or animal parts have been sent to
Ukrainian diplomats around the world, according to Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.
“This campaign is aimed at sowing fear,” Kuleba told CNN’s Matthew Chance in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Friday.
From the Daily Beast:
The outrage felt by many white people at Prince William’s godmother’s racist comments elicited little more than a shrug from those of us who are Black and British.
The shock and horror professed by so many white people at the latest royal racism controversy is not shared by many Black people. For us, there is only a sense of weariness because we have heard it all before. Its significance is just to show how utterly impossible it is for the royal family to ever move beyond racism.
In an incident that has overshadowed Prince William and Kate Middleton’s trip to America, his godmother, Lady Susan Hussey, who was the Queen’s lady-in-waiting for decades, resigned from her role in the palace after being accused of subjecting Black British charity boss Ngozi Fulani to an ‘interrogation’ about ‘where she was really from?’.
From CBS News:
A 72-year-old woman was arrested after she allegedly switched off a hospital roommate's ventilator — twice — because she was annoyed by the sound it made, authorities in Germany said Thursday.
The woman was jailed on suspicion of attempted manslaughter following the incident at a hospital in the southwestern city of Mannheim on Tuesday evening.
From the BBC:
By Adam Easton
Polish authorities have condemned as scandalous a decision by a German auction house to sell a painting by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky.
They allege the 1928 untitled abstract watercolour was stolen from Warsaw's National Museum in 1984.
From the Washington Post
TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu has finalized a deal with his far-right coalition partners granting the ultranationalist parties sweeping authority that could, critics say, herald new levels of bitter conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
On Thursday night, Netanyahu announced an agreement granting Bezalel Smotrich’s extremist Religious Zionism bloc oversight over the civil administration and COGAT, the Israeli agency for Palestinian civil affairs, which until now were under the Ministry of Defense.
From Al Jazeera:
Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the killing as an execution meant to escalate spiralling violence in West Bank.
From the BBC:
Israeli troops had entered the village warning of plans to demolish a Palestinian home.
Footage shows a group of men and teenagers throwing rocks - then pulling back - as two shots ring out.
Raed al-Naasan runs around a corner and collapses, blood seeping into his top, fatally wounded.
From Middle East Eye:
Meanwhile, Egypt's Gaza gas talks, Tunisian journalist sentenced to prison and violations rife in Egyptian prisons
Israel's interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, has approved a final decision to remove the residence permit of French-Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri and withdraw his Jerusalem identity card, in preparation to forcibly deport him to France, according to Arabi21.
Last Wednesday, Hamouri, who has been administratively detained for nine months, received notice of his deportation from the Hadarim prison administration.
From VOA:
The United States was able to quickly confirm the death of the Islamic State's leader in southern Syria this past October because it had his DNA and other biometric data on file from an encounter with him from long before he took the helm of the terror group.
U.S. officials are still refusing to share the true identity of the man known to most of the world only by his nom-de-guerre, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
From Al Jazeera:
Attacker failed to harm the Pakistani diplomat, but shot and wounded his security guard outside its mission in Kabul.
From CNN:
The family home of Iranian rock climber Elnaz Rekabi has been demolished, according to the pro-reform news outlet IranWire, after she rose to international prominence this fall for competing with her head uncovered.
Rekabi competed without her hijab in South Korea in October, just as anti-regime protests swept Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.
From Reuters:
India began its year-long
presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) this week, taking over from Indonesia at a time of geopolitical tumult and uncertainty over post-pandemic economic recovery.
From CNN:
Chinese President Xi Jinping has acknowledged the frustration within China amid his government’s unrelenting zero-Covid strategy, a European Union official told CNN, in his first known remarks on the protests that have erupted across the country in recent days.
Xi told visiting European Council President Charles Michel in Beijing on Thursday that the protesters were “mainly students” who were frustrated after three years of Covid, and hinted at the potential relaxation of China’s prevention measures, an EU official told CNN Friday.
From the NY Times:
After a weekend of protests, the authorities in China are using the country’s all-seeing surveillance apparatus to find those bold enough to defy them.
On Sunday, when Mr. Zhang went to protest China’s strict Covid policies in Beijing, he thought he came prepared to go undetected.
He wore a balaclava and goggles to cover his face. When it seemed that plainclothes police officers were following him, he ducked into the bushes and changed into a new jacket. He lost his tail. That night, when Mr. Zhang, who is in his 20s, returned home without being arrested, he thought he was in the clear.
From Indonesia:
Indonesia's parliament is expected to pass a new criminal law this month that will punish sex outside marriage with imprisonment of up to a year.
Bambang Wuryanto, a politician involved in the draft, said the code could be passed as early as next week.
The law, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike.
A few from Africa, with this from Deutsche Welle:
From WION:
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing a possible impeachment threat over the "Farmgate" scandal. In the latest update, Ramaphosa delayed a scheduled appearance in parliament to answer questions from lawmakers.
And finishing even further south. From ABC News:
The Viking Polaris ship was sailing toward Ushuaia, Argentina, at the time.
An American passenger on an Antarctic cruise died and four other guests were injured after their Viking ship was struck by a "rogue wave," officials said.
The incident happened on Tuesday around 10:40 p.m. local time while the Viking Polaris ship was sailing toward Ushuaia, Argentina, Viking said.