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.
BBC
Man sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in Washington DC
A man has set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, US emergency services say.
The incident happened at about 13:00 local time (18:00 GMT) on Sunday.
Officers from the US Secret Service extinguished the flames before the man was taken to hospital with critical, life-threatening injuries, the city's fire department reported.
A US Air Force spokeswoman was later quoted by US media as saying the man was an active-duty airman.
The Washington police department is now investigating alongside the Secret Service and other relevant authorities.
In a statement, police in the US capital said the incident happened at "the 3500 block of International Drive, NW, at approximately 1:00 pm", and that officers were despatched to "assist the United States Secret Service after an individual set themselves on fire in front of an embassy in the block"
The Guardian
Gaza death toll set to pass 30,000, as Israel prepares assault on Rafah
The death toll in Gaza is likely to pass the grim milestone of 30,000 this week, as negotiators try to pin down a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, and the Israeli government presses ahead with plans for an attack on Rafah.
The prime minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, convened the war cabinet late on Saturday for a briefing with negotiators who had been at talks in Paris.
This week, it will meet again to discuss preparations for an assault on Rafah, the southern border town where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. A deal might delay that operation, but would not prevent it, Netanyahu said in an interview with CBS.
Negotiators from Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the US have agreed the “basic contours” of an arrangement during weekend talks in Paris, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN, but the final details still have to be hammered out.
Israeli media reported that the prospective deal would allow for the release of 30 or 40 hostages – women, elderly people and the wounded – in exchange for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, and a ceasefire lasting up to six weeks.
The Guardian
Is the 100-year old TB vaccine a new weapon against Alzheimer’s?
Scientific discoveries can emerge from the strangest places. In early 1900s France, the doctor Albert Calmette and the veterinarian Camille Guérin aimed to discover how bovine tuberculosis was transmitted. To do so, they first had to find a way of cultivating the bacteria. Sliced potatoes – cooked with ox bile and glycerine – proved to be the perfect medium.
As the bacteria grew, however, Calmette and Guérin were surprised to find that each generation lost some of its virulence.
It worked, and the result was the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine that has saved millions of lives.
Yet that is exactly what is happening, with a string of intriguing studies suggesting that BCG can protect people from developing Alzheimer’s disease.
If these preliminary results bear out in clinical trials, it could be one of the cheapest and most effective weapons in our fight against dementia.
The Guardian
“We have had the wettest October, November and December since we started keeping records 27 years ago,” says Andrew Ward, a Lincolnshire-based arable farmer.
He flicks through videos on his phone of nearby fields that have been devastated by the heavy rain this winter, including one that shows him in front of what looks like a lake.
“That is my godson’s farm,” he says, pointing out the two-metre-deep water that has completely engulfed the land. “He’s been flooded since October [...] The farm was drilled and fertilised [before the rain], so he may have lost £70,000 in one go.”
‘Our yields are going to be appalling’: one of wettest winters in decades hits England’s farms
In the 12 months to January, only four of England’s 139 hydrological areas (regions around rivers, lakes and other water sources) were classed as having normal rainfall levels. Of the remaining areas, 47 were rated as having notably high levels, and 76 – more than half – were deemed exceptionally high.
The Kent area, known as “the garden of England” and home to many arable farmers, experienced its wettest 12-month period since records began.
NPR
Jake Sullivan says U.S., Israel have agreed to 'basic contours' of a cease-fire deal
Representatives from the U.S., Israel and several other Middle East countries have come to an "understanding" on the terms of a potential cease-fire dealin Gaza, though it's unclear whether Hamas would also sign on to the agreement.
That's according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who made the comments Sunday morning on CNN's State of the Union.
"It is true that the representatives of Israel, the United States, Egypt and Qatar met in Paris and came to an understanding among the four of them about what the basic contours of a hostage deal for temporary cease-fire would look like," Sullivan said.
"There will have to be indirect discussions by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas, because ultimately they will have to agree to release the hostages," he added.
AP News
Consumers are increasingly pushing back against price increases — and winning
WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation has changed the way many Americans shop. Now, those changes in consumer habits are helping bring down inflation.
Fed up with prices that remain about 19%, on average, above where they were before the pandemic, consumers are fighting back. In grocery stores, they’re shifting away from name brands to store-brand items, switching to discount stores or simply buying fewer items like snacks or gourmet foods.
More Americans are buying used cars, too, rather than new, forcing some dealers to provide discounts on new cars again. But the growing consumer pushback to what critics condemn as price-gouging has been most evident with food as well as with consumer goods like paper towels and napkins.
In recent months, consumer resistance has led large food companies to respond by sharply slowing their price increases from the peaks of the past three years. This doesn’t mean grocery prices will fall back to their levels of a few years ago, though with some items, including eggs, apples and milk, prices are below their peaks. But the milder increases in food prices should help further cool overall inflation, which is down sharply from a peak of 9.1% in 2022 to 3.1%.
Al Jazeera
How Israel’s war on Gaza is bleeding Egypt’s economy
Already facing a deep crisis, Egypt’s economy appears poised to take a hit from Israel’s war on Gaza and the spiralling tensions in the Red Sea, analysts have said.
Currently on “life support”, Egypt’s deteriorating economy suffers from growing public debt now at more than 90 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), capital flight and the currency’s fall against the US dollar.Now, those challenges are being compounded by the war, as it edges closer and closer to Egypt’s border, with a large chunk of Gaza’s population pushed into Rafah, after four months of displacement as a result of Israel’s relentless attacks. Tourism and the Suez Canal are two of Egypt’s major sources of foreign exchange.
Egypt’s pyramids, museums, resorts and monuments attract visitors from all over the world and have long made tourism a major source of national income. In 2022, roughly three million Egyptians worked in the tourism industry.
In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the Suez Canal brought in $9.4bn of revenue for Egypt. In the first 11 days of this year, revenue from the Suez Canal plummeted by 40 percent compared with the same period in the previous year.
Reuters
US says Yemen's Houthis ballistic missile misses US tanker Torm Thor
CAIRO, Feb 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said early on Monday that Yemen's Houthis launched one anti-ship ballistic missile likely targeting the MV Torm Thor, but missed the U.S.-flagged, owned and operated oil tanker, in the Gulf of Aden on Feb. 24.
The missile impacted the water causing no damage nor injuries, CENTCOM added in a post on X.
The Iran-aligned group said on Sunday that they
targeted the tanker, as the militants continue to attack shipping lanes in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The U.S. military also shot down in "self-defence" two one-way unmanned aerial attack vehicles over the southern Red Sea on Sunday, said CENTCOM.
The Houthis, who control the most populous parts of Yemen, have launched exploding drones and missiles at commercial vessels since Nov. 19 as a protest against Israel's military operations in Gaza.
Washington Post
Man forfeits $1.7M he made after overhearing wife’s remote work for BP
While he and his wife worked in close quarters at their Houston home, Tyler Loudon often overheard her conversations — even the confidential ones, according to court filings. In some of those discussions, it was mentioned that BP, the multinational oil company Loudon’s wife worked for, planned to acquire a large truck-stop operator, authorities said.
Knowing this information, Loudon bought tens of thousands of shares in stock in TravelCenters of America, officials alleged. When the deal was announced in February 2023, Loudon liquidated his shares to make $1.76 million, authorities said.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors announced that Loudon, 41, had pleaded guilty to securities fraud. Loudon, who faces up to five years in prison, will forfeit the $1.76 million he made from the confidential information, authorities said.
New York Times
Supreme Court to Decide How the First Amendment Applies to Social Media
The most important First Amendment cases of the internet era, to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, may turn on a single question: Do platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X most closely resemble newspapers or shopping centers or phone companies?
But the outsize question the cases present transcends ideology. It is whether tech platforms have free speech rights to make editorial judgments. Picking the apt analogy from the court’s precedents could decide the matter, but none of the available ones is a perfect fit.
If the platforms are like newspapers, they may publish what they want without government interference. If they are like private shopping centers open to the public, they may be required to let visitors say what they like. And if they are like phone companies, they must transmit everyone’s speech.