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 JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but are 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.
Let’s begin with Southeast Asia, with this from Dezeen:
Indonesia has announced plans to begin the construction of 184 apartment blocks that will mark the first stage of development of its new capital Nusantara.
The housing will be the first element to be built in the new city, which is being created on the east coast of the island of Borneo to replace the current Indonesian capital Jakarta.
From La Prensa Latina:
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Jan 27 (EFE).- The life of the Vietnamese spy Pham Xuan An, who throughout the Vietnam War used his position as a trusted local journalist in the United States to provide decisive information, will be made into a film by adapting a book about his life that will begin shooting this year.
“It will be distributed all over the world and it will be shot above all in Vietnam, although I hope it will also be in California. They are writing the script and it will be released in three years,” Larry Berman, author of the 2008 book Perfect Spy, told EFE.
From NorthJersey.com:
After four days of intense fighting in one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War, Peter Mathews, an Army sergeant with the 1st Cavalry Division, swept through an area of South Vietnam's Central Highlands near Dak To with his unit as they prepared to leave.
As he rifled through a group of backpacks left by North Vietnamese soldiers at the bottom of a hill, he came upon a small booklet covered in plastic to protect it from the elements.
From the BBC:
Interpol has issued an alert for a woman behind an elaborate exam-cheating scam in Singapore which involved phones and headphones taped to students.
Poh Yuan Nie, 57, fronted the racket together with three accomplices, who have all been jailed.
From Nikkei Asia:
Hidden dangers from another era hinder economic development
KOSUKE INOUE
KASI, Laos -- Five decades have elapsed since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on Jan. 27, 1973 that led to the end of the Vietnam War. The long conflict devastated all of Indochina, and its aftermath continues to stymie the region's economic development.
Early this month, specialists of the Laotian military detected unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the northern town of Kasi. The team of about 10 found one cluster bomb the size of a tennis ball and used a loudspeaker to warn residents while cordoning off nearby roads before disposing of the device.
Operations of this type continue.
From The Diplomat:
The Canberra resident Murray Upton said his father obtained the statues while working as a railways engineer in the south of Thailand in 1911.
By Sebastian Strangio
An Australian citizen has returned nine wooden Buddha statues to Thailand after more than a century in his family’s possession.
The return of the diminutive carved statues, each of which stands around 10-15 centimeters tall, was coordinated by Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which handed them over to the Ministry of Culture’s Fine Arts Department in a ceremony yesterday.
From Reuters:
KYIV, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Ukraine's ruling party has kicked out a lawmaker from its parliamentary faction after reports he had travelled to Thailand during Ukraine's grinding war with Russia sparked a public outcry.
From The Guardian:
Father Joe arrived in Bangkok in the 1970’s. Fifty years, 15 schools and 30,000 students later, he credits the community with saving him
“This other priest is always drunk, so you go take his place.”
With that simple instruction, Joseph H Maeir, a Catholic priest from the United States, found himself in Thailand, ending up in the slums of Bangkok in the 1970s.
Fifty years later, he has nursed HIV patients, saved children from the streets and provided an education to the very poorest, and is now a slum celebrity with a slew of accolades in Thailand.
From CNN:
See moment that shocked CNN reporter during interview deep in rural China
From the Financial Times:
Chrysanthemum prices jump as China grapples with wave of coronavirus deaths
Kai Waluszewski in Hong Kong
Chrysanthemum flowers, a symbol of mourning in China, are selling out in cities across the central province of Hubei, with prices rising sharply as demand surges following a wave of Covid-19 deaths.
Li, who works at Green Plant Shop in Wuhan, the provincial capital where the virus first emerged in late 2019, said he now charged Rmb45 ($6.63) per basket, a 50 per cent year-on-year increase.
From Reuters:
Surveillance video obtained by Reuters shows the moment of a deadly armed attack inside Azerbaijan's embassy in the Iranian capital Tehran. Police said the gunman killed the embassy security chief and wounded two others.
Moving on to a few stories you might have missed about the war in Ukraine. This comes from the New York Times:
With the 2024 Summer Olympics still a year and a half away, an international dispute over allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete escalated on Friday, as Ukraine threatened a boycott and President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged the head of the International Olympic Committee to visit the war’s front lines.
The I.O.C. said on Wednesday that it would continue to explore ways for athletes from Russia and Belarus, which has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to compete in the 2024 Games in Paris, potentially as individual participants who would not bear their countries’ names, flags or colors, as long as they had not actively supported the war.
From the Ukrainean Pravda (via Yahoo! News):
The Russian soldiers are taking away weapons from the combat zone; dozens of servicemen have already been put on trial for mishandling guns.
Source: Vyorstka, Russian Telegram channel
Details: Since the beginning of the full-scale war in February 2022, at least 42 servicemen in Russia have appeared in court for the appropriation, storage, transportation and carrying of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices (Articles 222 and 222.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Vyorstka has discovered this by studying the bases of all Russian garrison military courts.
From The Guardian:
Permit for demonstration at which anti-Islam provocateur burned Muslim holy book was paid for by far-right journalist linked to Moscow-backed media
In the same vein, from The Guardian:
Politicians accused of stigmatising Muslims and migrants after man with machete entered two churches in Algeciras
Conservative and far-right Spanish political leaders have been accused of seeking to smear and stigmatise Muslims and migrants after a suspected Islamist terrorist attack on two churches in the southern city of Algeciras in which one man was killed and four other people were injured.
On Wednesday evening, a man with a machete entered the Andalucían city’s San Isidro church and seriously wounded a priest there before going to the nearby Nuestra Señora de La Palma church and killing its sacristan, Diego Valencia. Three other people were injured in the violence.
From the Associated Press:
By VANESSA GERA
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors and other mourners commemorated the 78th anniversary Friday of the Nazi German death camp’s liberation, some expressing horror that war has again shattered peace in Europe and the lesson of Never Again is being forgotten.
The former concentration and extermination camp is located in the town of Oświęcim in southern Poland, which was under the occupation of German forces during World War II and became a place of systematic murder of Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and others targeted for elimination by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen.
From CNN:
The German parliament for the first time on Friday focused its annual Holocaust memorial commemorations on people persecuted and killed over their sexual or gender identity during World War II.
Campaigners in Germany have worked for decades to establish an official ceremony to commemorate the LGBTQ victims persecuted under the Nazi regime.
From the Times of Israel:
Harish was meant to show ‘Dear Fredy,’ the story of an openly gay Jewish man who saved kids in Auschwitz, for Holocaust Remembrance Day, but called it off due to Haredi objections
The northern city of Harish canceled the screening of a Holocaust documentary that was meant to be held in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday night because the film’s subject, Alfred Hirsch, a German Jew who saved children in Auschwitz, was openly gay.
After it became known that it was canceled due to objections by ultra-Orthodox community leaders in the city, other residents then banded together to stage their own showing of the acclaimed documentary.
From the Associated Press:
ADVENTDALEN, Norway (AP) — Kneeling by his crew as they drilled steel bolts into the low roof of a tunnel miles-deep into an Arctic mountain, Geir Strand reflected on the impact of their coal mine’s impending closure.
“It’s true coal is polluting, but … they should have a solution before they close us down,” Strand said inside Gruve 7, the last mine Norway is operating in the remote Svalbard archipelago.
From CNN:
Rome (CNN) — The Ponte Vecchio, a beautiful centuries-old bridge spanning the Arno River in the Italian city of Florence, is best viewed on foot, with crowds of tourists regularly thronging the pedestrianized structure to view its ancient stonework.
Especially when, as one California tourist discovered this week, attempting to drive across it could cost you more than $540.
The unnamed 34-year-old man was hit with a 500-euro fine after crossing the bridge in a white rented Fiat Panda car, and for driving without an international driver's license, on Thursday morning, according to a statement from the City of Florence press office.
Also from Italy, From the National Catholic Reporter:
Is the ground underneath the Vatican shifting? The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the nastiness coming from highly placed critics of Pope Francis like Benedict's secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein and the late Cardinal George Pell, the announcement that the Synod of Bishops in October would start with an ecumenical prayer service, followed by a three-day retreat led by Dominican Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, the coming 10th anniversary of Francis' election, all invite speculation that this papacy is moving into a new phase.
In an interview with the Associated Press, the first since Benedict died, Francis revealed that he would travel to the monastery where his predecessor lived and ask his advice. "For me, he was a security. In the face of a doubt, I would ask for the car and go to the monastery and ask," Francis said. "I lost a good companion."
From ABC News:
Police in London say a pop-up urinal has crushed a man to death in the city's theater district
LONDON -- A pop-up urinal crushed a man to death in London’s theater district Friday, police said.
Firefighters used a winch to free the man after he became trapped under a hydraulic urinal at Cambridge Circus, a busy intersection in the city’s West End.
From CNN:
Written by Amarachi OrieMia Alberti
Archeologists have uncovered what may be the oldest
mummy ever found in
Egypt.
The 4,300-year-old mummy was a rich, important 35-year-old man called Djed Sepsh, archaeologist Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former antiquities minister, told CNN Friday.
"It is the oldest mummy, complete and covered in gold, ever found in Egypt," he said, adding that it was "the most amazing discovery."
From the New York Post, by a Fox News reporter:
“A dead Egyptian body, or a live British matriarch,” read the clue that Alex Trebek gave Jeopardy! contestants on a February 2015 episode.
“What is a mummy?” one of the contestants replied.
Though Trebek accepted the response, a museum administrator in the U.K. today might tut-tut this exact wording.
The National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh and the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle have decided to avoid using the term “mummy,” preferring “mummified remains” or “mummified person” instead.