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 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.
BBC
Polish election: Right-wing ruling party to lose majority - exit poll
The right-wing populist Law and Justice party is on course to win most seats in Poland's general election, an exit poll suggests, but is unlikely to secure a third term in office.
Known as PiS, it is set to win 36.8% of the vote, with the centrist opposition on 31.6%, says the Ipsos poll.
If that is correct, Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition has a better chance of forming a coalition.
He is aiming to end eight years of PiS rule under leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The PiS leader admitted he did not know if the party's "success will be able to be turned into another term in power".
"Poland won, democracy has won," Mr Tusk, 66, told a large crowd of jubilant supporters in what felt like a victory rally in Warsaw. "This is the end of the bad times, this is the end of the PiS government."
BBC
Dariush Mehrjui: Iranian director and wife found dead
One of Iran's most prominent film directors, Dariush Mehrjui, has been found dead alongside his wife.
The 83-year-old and Vahideh Mohammadifar were found with stab injuries in their home near the capital, Tehran, on Saturday evening, Iranian authorities say.
Mehrjui was considered one of the founders of Iranian new wave cinema.
Four people have been identified in connection to the deaths, according to local media reports.
According to chief justice Hossein Fazeli, Mehrjui had invited his daughter to come over to his home in the city of Karaj for dinner on Saturday night.
When she arrived, she is said to have found the bodies of her parents.
Mohammadifar, a screenwriter and costume designer, had reportedly complained recently that she had been threatened and that the house had been burgled.
NPR
Blinken says the crossing to Egypt will open to aid as Israel prepares to strike Gaza
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza will reopen to humanitarian aid for Palestinians currently under siege by Israeli forces.
Palestinians continue to flee from northern Gaza ahead of an expected Israeli strike against Hamas targets in the area, one week after Hamas launched a multi-pronged attack inside Israel, killing more than 1,300 people.
"Rafah will be open," Blinken told reporters during a stop in Egypt on Sunday.
"We're putting in place — with the United Nations, with Egypt, with Israel, with others — the mechanism by which to get the assistance in and to get it to the people who need it." The IDF on Sunday again urged Gaza residents to move from the northern part of Gaza to the south and said that it would not carry out any operations along the evacuation route during a three-hour period midday.
NPR
Powerful earthquake hits west Afghanistan, a week after strong quakes in same region
ISLAMABAD — A powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck western Afghanistan on Sunday, just over a week after strong quakes and aftershocks killed thousands of people and flattened entire villages in the same province.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the latest quake's epicenter was about 21 miles outside Herat, the provincial capital, and five miles below the surface.
Save the Children said four people have died and that Herat Regional Hospital has received 153 injured. Everything in the Baloch area of Rabat Sangi district has collapsed. Several villages have been destroyed, according to the aid group. Authorities have given lower casualty numbers.
The Guardian
Russia’s Avdiivka offensive is failing, says top Ukrainian officer
A top Ukrainian commander has claimed that Russia’s biggest offensive in months – involving tanks, thousands of soldiers and armoured vehicles in an attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka – is failing, as he admitted Kyiv’s own attempts to advance in the south were proving “difficult”.
Russian forces have pummelled the town over the past week, a key bulge surrounded by Russian-held territory on the eastern Donbas front.
It is one of the largest assaults by Moscow since last year’s full-scale invasion and comes at a time when Ukraine’s counteroffensive is moving slowly, and the world is focused on the imminent Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.The Russians have suffered serious losses. At least 36 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed in the first 24 hours. According to the Kyiv Post, that figure has risen to 102 tanks and 183 armoured vehicles lost, with 2,840 troops killed.
Reuters
Putin to visit China to deepen 'no limits' partnership with Xi
MOSCOW/BEIJING, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Xi Jinping in China this week in a bid to deepen a partnership forged between the United States' two biggest strategic competitors.
Putin will attend the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on Oct. 17-18, his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the Hague-based International Criminal Court issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.
China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.
The United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat while U.S. President Joe Biden argues that this century will be defined by an existential contest with between democracies and autocracies.
Reuters
Israel says not interested in war with Hezbollah
JERUSALEM, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Israel's defence minister said on Sunday that Israel has no interest in waging war on its northern front and that if the Lebanese group Hezbollah restrains itself then Israel will keep the situation along the border as it is.
Sporadic fire across the Israel-Lebanon border over the past week has raised concerns that fighting with Hamas militants in Gaza could escalate into a broader conflict.
On Sunday afternoon sirens sounded across northern Israel, sending residents running for shelter, and the military said it intercepted five of nine rockets fired from Lebanon. It then responded with artillery fire at the area from where the rockets were launched.
"We have no interest in a war in the north. We don't want to escalate the situation," Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters.
"If Hezbollah chooses the path of war, it will pay a very heavy price. Very heavy. But if it restrains itself, we will respect that and keep the situation as it is," Gallant said, noting that there had been exchanges of fire across the border.
Deutsche Welle
How cryptocurrency fueled Hamas' terror attack on Israel
How did Hamas gather the resources for such a sophisticated attack against one of the world's most well-prepared militaries? According to analysts, cryptocurrencies played a significant role.
As a designated terrorist entity, Hamas faces sanctions and exclusion from the international banking system. Global counterterrorism financing measures go after any fundraising attempts by the group. Even so, reports show Hamas received a significant amount of funding in the form of cryptocurrency in the years leading up to the terrorist organization's latest brutal attack on Israel.
Hamas received $41 million (€39 million) between August 2021 and June 2023, according to crypto analytics and software firm BitOK, which is based in Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose militants joined Hamas in carrying out the attack, received another $93 million in cryptocurrencies, according to London-based crypto researcher Elliptic.
New York Times How a Fertilizer Shortage Is Spreading Desperate Hunger
Suleiman Chubado is not entirely clear what caused the price of fertilizer to more than double over the past year, but he is bitterly aware of the consequences. At his farm in northeastern Nigeria, he can no longer afford enough fertilizer, so his corn is stunted and pale, the scraggly plants bending toward the powdery earth. As he and his neighbors commiserate over the calamity unfolding across much of Africa, they exchange theories on one source of trouble: Russia’s war on Ukraine, which disrupted shipments of key ingredients for fertilizer. That question is reverberating in many lower-income countries. Farmers are grappling with shocks that made fertilizer scarce and unaffordable, diminishing harvests, raising food prices and spreading hunger.
S F Chronicle
One of California’s tallest redwood trees is now protected forever
Decades of intermittent fighting about the fate of a historic redwood and its forested surroundings along a leg of the Russian River in rural Sonoma County ended this month with a land purchase by conservationists who intend to impose long-term protections at the site.
The 394-acre property spans a mile of wooded river frontage near Guerneville. Perhaps most significantly, it is home to the 278-foot-high Clar Tree, a 2,000-year-old monarch redwood thought to be the tallest tree in Sonoma County. It is said to be one of the last standing behemoths from an era of rampant logging when the largest redwoods in Sonoma were cut down en masse. (The tree was estimated to stand at 340 feet before last winter’s heavy storms lopped off its crown.)
“We are setting the stage for nearly 400 acres of redwood forest to heal and become old again, so future generations can experience what was lost so long ago,” said Jeff Stump, senior manager of land protection for Save the Redwoods League, in a press release.