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. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Believe it or not, we are starting this evening with a Christmas advertisement from Marks and Spencer (UK). Watch it, then read the article below.
From The Guardian:
Katharine Birbalsingh tells retailer its Christmas ad featuring celebrities’ seasonal peeves will stifle children’s happiness
A prominent headteacher has said she feels “deep disappointment and outrage” over Marks & Spencer’s Christmas advert showing celebrities destroying their least favourite parts of the festive season.
Katharine Birbalsingh, an education reform campaigner who has been labelled Britain’s strictest headteacher, called for the advert to be taken down as she claims it “puts two fingers up” to traditional Christmas values.
As always, the lighter stuff above the fold, heavier below (the other way would cause the whole diary to capsize and sink without a trace). And we have another story from The Guardian:
Fiuto restaurant offers poké-style bowls to attract Italy’s growing number of dog owners
In the kitchen of a restaurant in the north of Rome, chef Luca Grammatico delicately blends nuggets of chicken and courgette with pureed potato.
He then reaches for a fancy bowl, positions the mix inside and uses a shaper to fashion a food tower before garnishing it with courgette sauce. Grammatico’s next task is to create a biscuit, shaped like a bear, for a guest celebrating her birthday.
Another story I have followed over the years, from CNN:
The herd, which the Colombian government said currently stands at 169 animals, has rapidly reproduced from the original population of one male and three females the drug kingpin owned as part of his private collection of exotic creatures.
From Deutsche Welle (the link is to a video):
Denim can never go out of fashion but it’s waste is a global phenomenon. However, Uche Aladinma is on a mission to put an end to it. His brand focuses on creating fashionable and durable streetwear from recycled denim.
From The Guardian:
Entertainer has reportedly bought up 12 properties in rural Ngātīmoti and objected to a cycle trail proposal
He has wowed millions of TV viewers in the UK,
taken on a big bank and loves
working out in the dark. Now
Noel Edmonds has brought his positive energy to a tiny town in New Zealand, where he has reportedly bought up NZ$30m (£14.5m) worth of property and is making his mark on the community.
Edmonds, 74, who found fame presenting shows such as Noel’s House Party, Top of the Pops and Deal Or No Deal, moved to New Zealand in 2019 – first to Matakana, north of Auckland, and then to the South Island in 2022.
From CNN:
Australia’s troubled ties with China in recent years have had far-reaching costs – sweeping trade curbs from Beijing devastated the Australian wine industry, hit the livelihoods of farmers and fishers across the country, and impacted billions of dollars in trade.
Now, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is headed to Beijing for a landmark trip – the first for an Australian leader in seven years – widely seen as a step forward in both sides’ efforts to stabilize the relationship after years of economic tension.
From The Guardian:
Erin Patterson and her beef wellington have captured worldwide attention. On Friday, she appeared in a rural Victorian court room accused of a triple murder
Hushed whispers fell silent as Erin Patterson – the woman at the centre of a fatal mushroom lunch that left three people dead – entered a rural Australian courtroom.
Images of Patterson have appeared under headlines around the world and led Australian TV bulletins, with the case captivating audiences keen for answers about what happened at her home on 29 July and the mushrooms used in the beef wellington served up to her guests.
From Newsweek:
By Yaqiu Wang
Late last month, the Chinese government issued a terse statement to announce that former premier Li Keqiang had died from a heart attack in Shanghai shortly after midnight. He was 68 years old. Li's sudden death shocked the country, prompting an outpouring of grief, both online and on the street. The mourning marked the largest spontaneous expression of public sentiment in China since the White Paper protests nearly one year earlier, in which people turned out to demand an end to the regime's draconian "zero COVID" policy as well as broader freedoms and democratic rule.
Unsurprisingly, the government quickly swooped in, using censorship and police intimidation to contain the overwhelming emotion set off by Li's passing. And once again, a game of cat and mouse ensued as citizens sought to evade official constraints, repeating a familiar pattern in the continuous struggle between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese people's collective yearning for freedom.
From the Associated Press:
BANGKOK (AP) — The leader of Myanmar ’s army-installed government said the military will carry out counterattacks against a powerful alliance of ethnic armed groups that has seized towns near the Chinese border in the country’s northeastern and northern regions, state-run media reported Friday.
The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper quoted Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing as saying he told his Cabinet members that combined forces of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army attacked military outposts and government offices in the northern part of Shan state.
From Deutsche Welle:
Adam Bemma | Nyein Su | Zeya Thu all in Chiang Mai11 hours ago
Since the coup in 2021, the military have been carrying out a campaign of airstrikes in the small eastern state, causing displacement and death.
From France24:
Levi's and H&M are among top global clothing brands to suffer production halts in Bangladesh, a garment union leader said Friday, after days of violent protests by workers demanding a near-tripling of their wages.
Bangladesh's 3,500 garment factories account for around 85 percent of the South Asian country's $55 billion annual exports, supplying many of the world's top names in fashion.
But conditions are dire for many of the sector's four million workers, the vast majority of whom are women whose monthly wages start at 8,300 taka ($75).
From Reuters:
KATHMANDU, Nov 4 (Reuters) - At least 128 people were killed and dozens injured in Nepal when a strong earthquake struck the western area of Jajarkot, officials said on Saturday, as houses in the area collapsed and buildings as far as New Delhi in neighbouring India shook.
The quake occurred at 11:47 p.m. (1802 GMT) on Friday with a magnitude 6.4, Nepal's National Seismological Centre said. The German Research Centre for Geosciences measured the quake at 5.7, downgrading it from 6.2, while the U.S. Geological Survey pegged it at 5.6.
From the New York Times:
Schools shut down and residents were told to stay indoors as the government seems unable to avert an airborne calamity with multiple culprits that descends at the onset of winter.
Schools closed in New Delhi on Friday, while some diesel-burning vehicles were ordered off the roads and much of the city’s incessant construction was halted, as the authorities tried to mitigate the effects of a thick haze of pollution that has descended on India’s capital, a calamity that has come to be an annual blight.
Despite the mandates, and an appeal to people to stay indoors, the measures provided little relief for the city’s many millions of residents.
“Breathing becomes heavy and long,” said Ram Kumar, a 30-year-old from the city of Gorakhpur, in the more rural north of India, who supports his family back home by driving an auto-rickshaw in New Delhi. “At the end of the day, it feels like I have just smoked 20 or 25 cigarettes,” he noted, adding that he feels the “poisonous smoke going inside my chest.”
From CNN:
Torkham and Chaman, PakistanCNN —
Earlier this week Nasim was leaving the only home he’s ever known, trudging toward Pakistan’s border alongside tens of thousands of fellow Afghan refugees who like him have been given a deadline to depart the country.
“I was born in Pakistan, I’ve lived here for 42 years, I went to school in Pakistan,” said Nasim, who had traveled to the Torkham border crossing from the northern city Peshawar. “I’ve never been to Afghanistan.”
From Newsweek:
A photograph of King Charles III and Queen Camilla walking a red carpet in the middle of a national park during their state visit to Kenya has sparked backlash online, with a prominent royal author labeling the optics "pretty ridiculous and out of touch."
Charles and Camilla arrived in Kenya on October 31 and departed on November 3, making the visit the first of their reign to a Commonwealth nation.
From France24:
As fierce fighting in Darfur once again pushes thousands of Sudanese to flee their homes, more must be done to alleviate the suffering of the millions already displaced, a UN official tells AFP.
"Six months and six million people forced to move, that's an average of one million per month, it's horrible suffering," said Mamadou Dian Balde, the top regional official for the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR).
The war between troops loyal to Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo has left more than 9,000 dead since April, according to a UN report.
Also from France24:
Ten years ago, French radio journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon were murdered by a commando from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the north-eastern Malian town of Kidal. Since then, the security situation in Africa’s Sahel region has continually worsened. Today, the vast area stretching from Mauritania to Sudan has become a no man's land for journalists, a black hole for news.
For the past decade, several countries in the Sahel region – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – have been facing a major Islamist insurgency. Western journalists are no longer welcome in the region, particularly those from the French press.
From Al Jazeera:
Meloni discussed issues such as the Ukraine war and migration with a Russian comedian posing as an African official.
From The Guardian:
Storm Ciarán: five dead as floods wreak havoc in Tuscany
From Fresh Plaza:
England is feeling the brunt of storm Ciaran this week as high winds and heavy rain has caused flooding and has left thousands without power.
Nigel Clare from Peloton Produce said that in Spalding where they are based there has been heavy rain that is seriously affecting harvesting. He also states that their new season cauliflower crop in Cornwall has seen the worst of the weather with Cornwall having to abandon harvesting due to safety reasons for two days.
From The Guardian:
One of Europe’s oldest languages will only thrive if its place on radio and TV is retained and its online presence greatly expanded
Welsh has largely been a success story over the past 40 years, greatly helped by the launch in 1982 of S4C – a free-to-air television channel aimed at Welsh speakers. S4C was crucial in revitalising the language and making it relevant to a rapidly changing Wales. But how much longer will that be the case? A report from the House of Commons Welsh affairs committee last month warned that the rise of streaming services threatens the position of S4C, which has also suffered a substantial drop in real-terms funding and, like the BBC, is faced with a government that has fallen out of love with public service broadcasting funded by a universal licence fee.