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.
From Business Insider:
For the first time, Americans are applying for "golden passports" more than any other nationality.
That's according to Henley & Partners, who saw a
447% increase in US enquiries from 2019.
Malta is the only EU nation left that offers citizenship in exchange for pre-determined investments.
From CNN:
In 1660, a ship carrying a treasure trove of luxury goods sank off the coast of Texel, the largest island in the North Sea.
Nearly four centuries later, little remained of the wooden unidentified Dutch merchant ship. But as the silt and sand covering the wreck washed away, broken chests began to appear in 2010. Four years later, divers retrieved the chests and brought them to the surface.
From Dakota News Now (originally CNN) :
(CNN) – It took more than a century, but a letter addressed to a south London flat finally reached its destination.
The current occupant, Finlay Glen, saw the year “16″ on the envelope and assumed it meant 2016 until he noticed the stamp featured King George the Fifth instead of Queen Elizabeth the Second.
More .below the fold
From The Guardian:
PM is embarking on frantic weekend of diplomacy in attempt to break post-Brexit deadlock
Rishi Sunak faces the threat of a fresh Conservative rebellion as he sets off on a weekend of frantic diplomacy in an attempt to break the post-Brexit deadlock in Northern Ireland.
With some in his party fearing an intervention by Boris Johnson, the prime minister has been warned his proposed deal on the Northern Ireland protocol does not go far enough after talks with unionists in a Belfast hotel on Friday.
Another story from the UK, this an opinion piece from The Guardian:
Every British police force must learn from Lancashire’s mistake: disclosing personal details is no way to respond to conspiracists
From the BBC:
With Thomas Mackintosh reporting from the Old Bailey in London
- A former security guard at the UK embassy in Berlin is sentenced to 13 years and two months in prison for spying for Russia
- David Ballantyne Smith, 58, has admitted passing secret information to the Russian authorities
- He was caught in an undercover sting operation in which fake Russian agents offered him the chance to obtain "highly sensitive information"
From the Washington Post:
Women in Spain now have the right to three days of menstrual leave a month — with the option of extending it to five days — if they experience painful periods. On Thursday, Spain became the first European country to entitle workers to paid menstrual leave as it passed numerous sexual and reproductive rights laws, including ones expanding abortion and transgender rights.
From ABC News (original from the AP):
Europe’s youngest country, Kosovo, on Friday launched festivities for the 15th anniversary of its independence from neighboring Serbia with a military parade, wreath-laying ceremonies and a special Parliament session
By FLORENT BAJRAMI and LLAZAR SEMINI
PRISTINA, Kosovo -- Europe's youngest country, Kosovo, on Friday launched festivities for the 15th anniversary of its independence from neighboring Serbia with a military parade, wreath-laying ceremonies and a special Parliament session.
But the celebrations are overcast by revived tension with Serbia, despite years long Western efforts to reconcile the former foes. Both want into the European Union, and have been told they must first overcome their differences.
From Al Jazeera:
Kosovo declared itself a sovereign state 15 years ago. Which countries recognise it, and how are its relations today with Serbia?
February 17 marks 15 years since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.
Serbia does not recognise Kosovo’s statehood. Neither does Russia, China and five European Union countries – Spain, Slovakia, Cyprus, Romania and Greece, which have halted its path to EU membership.
From CNN:
Lufthansa cancels over 1,300 flights as airport workers strike
By Chris Stern, Inke Kappeler and Olesya Dmitracova
Lufthansa has canceled more than 1,300 flights scheduled for Friday after the Verdi labor union called for full-day strikes involving airport workers at seven German airports, including Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg.
Lufthansa, one of Europe’s biggest airlines, was ceasing all flight operations at Frankfurt and Munich for Friday, it said in a statement on its website on Thursday.
From the BBC:
Blocks of flats were evacuated in Denmark, the Oresund bridge to Sweden closed and Norwegian ferries cancelled as Storm Otto swept across Scandinavia.
Winds reached 145km/h (90mph) on Norway's south-west coast and forecasters in Denmark issued orange weather alerts for northern Jutland.
A Copenhagen housing company moved 280 residents out of three blocks, warning the gales could bring them down.
From Middle East Eye:
Turkey has a strong seismic code and highly-qualified engineers, but a lack of independent inspection has made it easy for 'make or break' errors to be missed, say experts
Smooth pebbles in concrete. Steel hoops out of place. These are the small, but telling clues that Kit Miyamoto spotted in earthquake debris in Turkey this week that reveal what went wrong.
"They have 90 percent right, 10 percent wrong," said Miyamoto, a structural engineer who has toured the aftermath of some of the world's worst earthquakes over the past 20 years.
From The Daily Beast:
Dan Ladden-Hall
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had an awkward exchange with Vladimir Putin on Friday the day after inviting Joe Biden to Minsk. Discussing Biden’s upcoming trip to Poland, Lukashenko on Thursday told reporters that the U.S. President should instead visit Belarus where Lukashenko said he is “ready for him” to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. “And even Putin will fly up to Minsk, and the three of us will meet here: two ‘aggressors’ and a ‘peace-loving’ president,” Lukashenko added. On Friday, Lukashenko traveled to Putin’s residence near Moscow for a meeting. “Thank you for agreeing to come,” Putin said in televised remarks. “How could I not agree?” Lukashenko replied. Putin went on to say he’d watched Lukashenko’s press conference a day earlier. “Of course you did,” Lukashenko replied. “It probably upset you?” Putin assured him that it hadn’t, adding: “I share your position and approaches, you know.”
From The Conversation:
I had failed to take into account that Putin is, in the words of French statesman and revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre, an “armed missionary.” Writing in 1792, Robespierre explained, “The most extravagant idea that can take root in the head of a politician is to believe that it is enough for one people to invade a foreign people to make it adopt its laws and constitution. No one likes armed missionaries; and the first advice given by nature and prudence is to repel them as enemies.”
From Reuters:
Feb 17 (Reuters) - Protests rocked Iran again overnight Thursday after seeming to have dwindled in recent weeks, with marchers calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, online video posts purportedly showed on Friday.
The marches in numerous cities including Tehran that began on Thursday evening and went on into the night marked 40 days since the execution of two protesters last month.
From CNN:
At least four people were killed and 14 were injured after militants stormed the police headquarters in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, according to officials.
Militants attacked the police station with hand grenades and shots were fired, an eyewitness told CNN. Pakistan’s Taliban, known as Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack, according to spokesman Mohammad Khorasani.
From NDTV:
There were 72 people, including four crew members, on the flight. Rescuers have managed to find only 71 bodies, with the missing passenger presumed dead.
Investigations into the Yeti Airlines crash in Nepal that killed 71 people last month indicate the strong possibility of a startling error by one of the pilots. Five Indians were also killed in the crash.
The Yeti Airlines flight 691, which took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport on January 15, crashed on the Seti River gorge between the old airport and the new airport in the resort city of Pokhara.
We’ll end with a few stories from the southern hemisphere. First up this from the Associated Press:
By MAURICIO SAVARESE and DAVID BILLER
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s Carnival is back.
Glittery and outrageous costumes were prepared again. Samba songs were ringing out ’til dawn at Rio de Janeiro’s sold-out parade grounds. Hundreds of raucous, roaming parties were flooding the streets. And working-class communities were buoyed, emotionally and economically, by the renewed revelry.
The COVID-19 pandemic last year prompted Rio to delay Carnival by two months, and watered down some of the fun, which was attended mostly by locals. Brazil’s federal government expects 46 million people to join the festivities that officially began Friday and run through Feb. 22. That includes visitors to cities that make Carnival a world-famous bash, especially Rio but also Salvador, Recife and metropolitan Sao Paulo, which has recently emerged as a hotspot.
From the BBC:
South Africa is holding a joint military exercise with Russia and China that opposition figures say amounts to an endorsement of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The US has also criticised the 10-day naval drills, which will continue over the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
But South Africa's government says it remains neutral regarding the conflict, and that it routinely hosts similar drills with other countries, including France and the US.
From Africa News:
A 39-year-old pastor from Mozambique died on Wednesday after attempting to replicate Jesus Christ's biblical accomplishment of fasting for 40 consecutive days straight without food and water.
Francisco Barajah, the founder of the Santa Trindade Evangelical Church and a French teacher in the town of Messica bordering Zimbabwe had fasted for 25 days before he was rushed to hospital by his relatives and followers owing to his deteriorating health.
From Yahoo! News:
He was upset because she would not agree to his demands of physical intimacy
(Warning: Story depicts violence) Rock band Journey may be right when they said too much love will kill you after a man in Indonesia has been arrested for the murder of his fiancée, following her accusation that he had sex with a cow.
Authorities have detained a suspect, identified as Mikhael Oi, for the death of a 35-year-old woman, identified as Augustina Rere, according to a report by Detik.com.
The suspect has been constantly abusing and assaulting his soon-to-be bride because he was disappointed that she would not agree to his demands of physical intimacy, according to the police.
And finally, from The Guardian:
Residents of Eskdale, in New Zealand, recount fears on night of flooding as they return to salvage belongings and rescuers continue search for bodies
Crouched in the dark, gripping the slick corrugated iron, Michael and Kelly McKendry hauled themselves and their daughter on to their rooftop. A few feet below, the flood moved in a seething brown mass, roiling under the gutters. “I couldn’t feel anything, I was just doing,” says Kelly. “As we went out our kitchen window, we heard a woman go past in the water screaming.”
Almost a week after Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand, the couple have returned to find the green valley where they made their home a moonscape. Orchard vines are stripped from the wires, cornfields are flattened, and everything is coated in a metres-thick layer of iron-grey sludge. Motorhomes and caravans lie tossed across the landscape, windscreens smashed, metalwork caved in, some upside down and stacked on top of one another, others submerged to their roofs in the mud. The railway line running through the valley has buckled in on itself, twisted into looping ribbons. One house has been carried almost a kilometre from its foundations, logs impaled through walls shredded like damp cardboard.