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
Afghanistan earthquake: Race to rescue victims in Herat Province
Emergency teams in Afghanistan are racing to rescue people from the rubble left by a powerful earthquake that struck the west of the country.
More than 1,000 people are feared dead after the 6.3-magnitude quake hit villages in Herat Province on Saturday.
With communications down and many roads blocked, rescue workers are struggling to reach remote areas.
Hundreds have also been injured. The UN and other organisations have begun to rush in emergency supplies.
The earthquake struck about 40km (25 miles) north-west of the city of Herat at around 11:00 local time (06:30 GMT) on Saturday.
The worst-affected communities consist of mud structures. "In the very first shake all the houses collapsed," Herat resident Bashir Ahmad, whose family lives in one of the villages, told AFP news agency.
NPR
Dude, where’s my train? Why freight makes Amtrak late
Audrey Lundin of Portland stands on a train platform in Edmonds, Washington, waiting for the southbound Amtrak Cascades. It’s about 45 minutes late.
It is Lundin’s fourth trip on the line that runs between Vancouver, Canada, and Eugene, Oregon, and her first major delay.
It could be worse: Amtrak’s Empire Builder, inbound from Chicago, is about five hours behind schedule.
“I prefer it to driving,” Lundin said. “I do not have to be on the road, navigating traffic and the Seattle roads. And I can read or watch something.”
According to the Washington state Department of Transportation, 47% of Amtrak Cascades trains arrived on time in 2022, with on-time performance rising to 56% in the first nine months of 2023.
Rail advocates say enticing more passengers to take a train instead of driving or flying — and making a dent in the heavy climate impact of American transportation — will require measures to reduce those delays and boost train travel’s speed and reliability.
USA Today
Battling salt water on the Mississippi, New Orleans region faces its next challenge
For months, Louisiana oyster farmer Mitch Jurisich, Jr. watched the Mississippi as an invisible surge of Gulf of Mexico salt water crept up the tail end of the river, twisting along levees through bayous and marshes toward New Orleans.
Since June, the wedge-shaped layer of dense salt water has been pushing upstream at the bottom of a river so weakened by drought that it cannot keep the ocean water at sea.
And that has caused three months of woes in Jurisich’s home of Plaquemines Parish.
Compromised water plants that draw from the river. Constant trips for bottled water. Shrimp boat docks forced to truck in ice. Salty showers. Health concerns. And worries that it will only further fuel coastal erosion.
“It’s been a nightmare,” said Jurisich, 60, who also serves as a parish councilman and operates the Ponderosa Oyster Bar & Grill in the tiny town of Empire, Louisiana.
Now, the threat of the saltwater incursion to municipal drinking water in New Orleans has slowed, giving more time to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ and Louisiana officials’ efforts to combat it. Those efforts include installing reverse-osmosis filters and running new pipes that can bring fresher water into New Orleans.
The Guardian
Can Paris clean up the Seine in time for next year’s Olympics?
Big promises accompanied the French bid for next year’s Games. Now politicians and hydrologists are pulling out all the stops to make the capital’s river fit for purpose. And cities around the world are watching…
Riders of Paris’s No 7 Métro line have long enjoyed a scenic view as the track passes near Austerlitz station, set between the beautifully manicured Jardin des Plantes to one side, and the River Seine on the other. Recently, however, that view has been punctured by a circular behemoth: the Austerlitz storage basin – the size of 20 Olympic pools – built to save next summer’s Games.
With a series of Paris 2024 competitions – and the opening ceremony – slated to take place in a river that has not allowed public swimming for a century, and heavy rains this summer scuppering multiple trial events due to excess bacteria in the water, the Seine remaining unsafe come the start of the Olympics in July is an ever-growing threat.
Reuters
Inside Asia's arms race: China near 'breakthroughs' with nuclear-armed submarines, report says
HONG KONG, Oct 9 (Reuters) - A submarine arms race is intensifying as China embarks on production of a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines that for the first time are expected to pose a challenge to growing U.S. and allied efforts to track them.
Analysts and regional defence attaches say evidence is mounting that China is on track to have its Type 096 ballistic missile submarine operational before the end of the decade, with breakthroughs in its quietness aided in part by Russian technology.
Research discussed at a conference in May at the U.S. Naval War College and published in August by the college's China Maritime Studies Institute predicts the new vessels will be far harder to keep tabs on. That conclusion is credible, according to seven analysts and three Asia-based military attaches.
"The Type 096s are going to be a nightmare," said retired submariner and naval technical intelligence analyst Christopher Carlson, one of the researchers. "They are going to be very, very hard to detect."
Reuters
Japan extends tsunami advisory for coastal areas along Pacific Ocean
TOKYO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Japan extended a tsunami advisory for more coastal regions along Pacific Ocean on Monday after issuing it to the two island areas south of Tokyo.
The advisory is in effect as far southwest as the Amami Islands, about 1,542 kilometres from the nation's capital, and eastern parts of Chiba prefecture next to Tokyo as of 0130 GMT on Monday.
Residents in some prefectures where the advisory is in effect have been urged to evacuate, according to media reports. No significant damage has been reported so far.
The tsunami already arrived in some island areas, which reported waves as high as 60 centimetres (24 inches), national broadcaster NHK said.
The advisory came after an earthquake near Torishima Island at 5:25 a.m. (JST), according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The United States Geological Survey measured a quake in the area with a magnitude of 4.9.
Raw Story
Hurricane center ups odds for next tropical system in Atlantic
ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center has increased odds a tropical wave in the Atlantic could become the busy season’s next tropical depression or storm.
The system that emerged off the lower latitudes of the west of coast of Africa has been producing a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms.
“Environmental conditions appear conducive for gradual development, and a tropical depression is likely to form by the early to middle part of next week while it moves westward to west-northwestward across the eastern tropical Atlantic,” forecasters said.
The NHC gives it a 20% chance to develop in the next two days and 70% in the next seven.
If it spins up into named-storm strength, it could become Tropical Storm Sean.
Friday saw the end of Tropical Storm Philippe that turned extratropical as it sped toward the Bahamas, and the system is still expected to bring high winds and rain to New England and Atlantic Canada this weekend.
It hung on as a tropical storm for 13 days, outliving Tropical Storm Rina that petered out last weekend.
Washington Post
‘Freak of nature’ tree is the find of a lifetime for forest explorer
TJ Watt has spent half his life as a forest explorer, a self-described “tree hunter” in British Columbia. He wades deep into endangered forests to find pristine towering trees that are hundreds of years old and massively wide but have never been photographed or documented.
He draws attention to the enormous old-growth trees to show the importance of saving the natural wonders from logging.
The day he approached a gargantuan western red cedar he’d been trekking with a friend for several hours in a remote area on Flores Islandin Clayoquot Sound in Ahousaht territory off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
As he drew closer to the tree, Watt said he was overcome with disbelief: He was dwarfed by a tree standing 151 feet tall and 17 and a half feet in diameter.
The tree, believed to be more than 1,000 years old, was the find of a lifetime. It’s one of the largest old-growth cedars ever documented in British Columbia, Watt said.