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.
Happier and weirder items above the fold. First up are photos from The Guardian, of the week, and of the week in wildlife.
From Reuters:
By Lucien Libert, Michaela Cabrera and Tassilo Hummel
PARIS, April 12 (Reuters) - Five years after a devastating fire, the restoration of Notre-Dame cathedral is nearing completion as the world's eyes turn to Paris for the Olympic Games.
On the evening of April 15, 2019, the cathedral's roof burst into flames. Soon, it had engulfed the spire and almost toppled the main bell towers. Around the world, TV viewers watched with horror as the medieval building burned.
From The Guardian:
Millions of years ago, animals adapted to become warm-blooded amid huge climactic changes. Now scientists hope these clues from the past could help us understand what lies ahead
In Chicago’s Field Museum, behind a series of access-controlled doors, are about 1,500 dinosaur fossil specimens. The palaeobiologist Jasmina Wiemann walks straight past the bleached leg bones – some as big as her – neither does she glance at the fully intact spinal cord, stained red by iron oxides filling the spaces where there was once organic material. She only has eyes for the deep chocolate-brown fossils: these are the ones containing preserved organic matter – bones that offer unprecedented insights into creatures that went extinct millions of years ago.
Wiemann is part of the burgeoning field of conservation palaeobiology, where researchers are looking to the deep past to predict future extinction vulnerability. At a time when humans could be about to witness a sixth mass extinction, studying fossil records is particularly useful for understanding how the natural world responded to problems before we arrived: how life on Earth reacted to environmental change over time, how species adapted to planet-scale temperature changes, or what to expect when ocean geochemical cycles change.
And also from The Guardian:
The Pill Pounder, one of the key titles in the CV of the iconic flapper, has enjoyed a belated revival at the San Francisco Silent film festival
A century after she first began to turn heads, Clara Bow is “It” once more. The iconic flapper of the silent film era inspired Margot Robbie’s character Nellie in Damien Chazelle’s Hollywood epic Babylon, is namechecked on Taylor Swift’s forthcoming album The Tortured Poets Department, and yesterday at the San Francisco Silent film festival, one of her earliest films was shown for the first time since the days of bathtub gin.
The story of the film’s discovery has already caused excitement online. Film-maker Gary Huggins inadvertently snapped up a slice of lost silent film history at an auction in a car park in Omaha, Nebraska, that was selling old stock from a distribution company called Modern Sound Pictures. Hoping to bid on a copy of the 1926 comedy Eve’s Leaves that he had spotted on top of a pile, Huggins was informed that he could only buy the whole pallet of movies, not individual cans. The upside? The lot was his for only $20.
News from the Americas, beginning with Reuters:
A new ruling by Argentina's highest criminal court has blamed Iran for a fatal 1994 attack against the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, declaring it a "crime against humanity" in a decision that paves the way for victims to seek justice, according to court documents released late on Thursday.
The judges ruled that the
bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) - the deadliest of its kind in the country's history, with 85 people killed and hundreds wounded - was carried out by Hezbollah militants responding to "a political and strategic design" by Iran.
Another from The Guardian:
Rising temperatures, dense urban populations and increasing poverty have contributed to more than a quarter of a million cases, and campaigners don’t think the government is doing enough about it
by Sylvia Colombo in Buenos Aires
On a particularly warm autumn afternoon in Buenos Aires, Michelly Natalí Barreto Sánchez, 22, began to feel unwell. As she served customers at La Boca, the bar she had opened in Villa 31, one of the capital’s largest slums, she suddenly started to experience severe headaches and dizziness.
She told her customers, who are among the 70,000 people who live in this densely populated area close to the city centre, that she would have to close the bar, and she headed home.
From Al Jazeera:
But the three-member panel also upheld his ongoing imprisonment, arguing it could not ‘modify’ his sentence.
The defence team for former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas has hailed a decision declaring his arrest inside Mexico’s embassy in Quito illegal.
Still, on Friday, lawyer Sonia Vera Garcia pledged to appeal the ruling, which upheld her client’s continued detention.
From The Hill:
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Luis Soler is caring for water as if it were the most expensive ingredient at his restaurant in Colombia’s capital.
For the first time in 40 years, a severe drought pushed the city to start rationing tap water. At Soler’s restaurant in Bogota, nothing flowed through the pipes Friday. The city’s warnings allowed him to prepare for the change, buying bottled water for cooking purposes and storing tap water for dish washing, and since his entire neighborhood was facing the same inconvenience as the restaurant, he said he expected sales to go up, not down.
From the BBC:
Flor and Jazmin were among many children separated from their parents during El Salvador's civil war, and put up for adoption in the US and Europe. Now, nearly 40 years later, they and many others are searching for their birth families. But has anyone been searching for them?
Flor Wolman has a small scar the size of a quarter dollar coin on the left side of her stomach. Some of the girls at her school in the US used to tease her that it looked like a second belly button.
From NBC News (Associated Press):
The formation of the council is expected to trigger the formal resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry and help re-establish Haiti's government after months of lawlessness.
By The Associated Press and Michelle Garcia
A transitional council tasked with choosing Haiti’s next prime minister and Cabinet has been formally established, as gangs continue to tighten their grip on the troubled Caribbean country.
The existence of the council, announced in a decree published Friday in a Haitian government outlet, was expected to trigger the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who promised to step down once the council was created.
From The Guardian:
Delivering a baby was already risky, but an unprecedented surge in gang violence has forced clinics and hospitals to close
The worst fears of midwives at Heartline Haiti were realised last week. As they prepared the maternity clinic for patients that evening, armed men laid siege to their neighbourhood in eastern Port-au-Prince, spraying bullets at police and rival gangs, setting cars on fire and ransacking houses.
“All of our staff were huddled in an interior hallway hearing the noises outside the gates and walls, afraid they may be next,” says Tara Livesay, the NGO’s executive director. “A gang member was shot dead outside, just two doors over.”
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - The Philippines is determined to assert its sovereign rights in the South China Sea, its foreign secretary said on Friday at a meeting with U.S. allies to show support for Manila over an increasingly fraught standoff with China in the strategic waterway.
Speaking at the U.S. State Department, Enrique Manalo accused China of "escalation of its harassment" of the Philippines, while U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington stood with Manila against what he described as "coercion."
From CNN:
The death sentence handed to a real estate tycoon in a $12.5 billion financial fraud case is the latest punishment meted out by Vietnam in the Southeast Asian country’s sweeping “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign.
Thursday’s ruling against Truong My Lan, the former chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, follows the resignation of two presidents in just over a year, in departures linked to separate allegations of wrongdoing.
From Kyodo News:
Japan's population fell by 595,000 from a year earlier to total 124,352,000 as of Oct. 1, marking the 13th consecutive year of decline, with household size also continuing to shrink, national data showed Friday.
The population of Japanese nationals fell by 837,000 to 121,193,000, marking the largest drop since comparable data became available in 1950, according to a demographic survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, despite government efforts to grapple with the country's declining birthrate and rapidly aging society.
From The Guardian:
The resort island is facing days without running water, even as the country celebrates new year with water fights
Across Thailand, people are getting ready to take to the streets for a giant water fight to mark the new year. Roads will be lined with vendors selling water pistols, businesses will put out buckets of icy water for refills and no passersby is safe.
What began as a tradition of the Songkran festival to sprinkle water on the hands of elders, in a symbol of cleansing and reverence to mark the new year, has evolved into huge water fights that draw tourists from across the world.
From Al Jazeera:
Anti-coup fighters say they’ve taken control of the eastern border town, sending the last soldiers scurrying to withdraw.
By Tony Cheng
The town of Myawaddy has always assumed much greater importance than its small size would suggest.
Located on the eastern border of Myanmar and facing the Thai town of Mae Sot across the Moei River, it has been a focal point for many of the ethnic and pro-democracy groups who have struggled for decades against successive military administrations.
From CNN:
A mass evacuation is underway in the Russian city of Orenburg, as severe flooding tears through parts of the country and northern Kazakhstan.
“A mass evacuation is underway,” the city’s mayor Sergei Salmin said on Telegram, instructing residents in multiple areas of the city to “take your documents, medicines, and basic necessities with you and leave home immediately.” The mayor described the flooding situation as “extremely dangerous” and urged locals not to “waste time.”
From All Israel News:
As Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly mulls plans for a retaliatory attack on Israel, a Washington Post report claims the regime is possibly days away from having sufficient material for a nuclear weapon.
A report from The Washington Post, drawing on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) latest inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities in February, points to "indications of alarming change."
From Al Jazeera:
Warnings come as Tehran promises reprisals against Israel for the deadly April 1 attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria.
Countries including France, India, Russia, Poland and the United Kingdom have warned their citizens against travelling to Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and, in some cases, the wider region amid threats of an Iranian attack in response to a strike this month on its consulate in Damascus.
Canada as well.
From Reuters:
GENEVA/ZURICH, April 12 (Reuters) - Switzerland for all its snow-capped mountains and crisp Alpine air has failed to protect its people from the ravages of climate change, as a top European court
ruled this week.
Behind the picture postcard exterior, critics say, is a country that has done too little for the planet and acted as a business hub for some of the most powerful international corporations in fossil fuels and mining.
From The Guardian:
Belgian PM says Russia is trying to influence forthcoming elections to weaken European support for Ukraine
Prosecutors in Belgium have opened an investigation into alleged payments by Russia to members of the European parliament following an intelligence operation in Brussels, the Belgian prime minister has revealed.
Alexander De Croo said Moscow’s objective was to weaken support for Ukraine in Europe.
“Belgian intelligence services have confirmed the existence of pro-Russian interference networks with activities in several European countries and also here in Belgium. According to our intelligence service, the objectives of Moscow are very clear,” he said. “The objective is to help elect more pro-Russian candidates in the European parliament and to reinforce a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution. It’s very clear.”
And finally, two from Africa, beginning with The Atlantic:
It’s been 10 years since 276 girls were dragged into the forest by Boko Haram.
When I first interviewed Yama Bullum and his wife, Falmata, in 2015, they were desperate for the safe return of their daughter Jinkai, who was one of the 276 girls abducted from their school in Chibok, in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, by the terrorist group Boko Haram.
In the years following the 2014 kidnapping, I spoke with many of the teenagers’ parents. The raid was part of an extended campaign of violence by Boko Haram—whose name roughly translates to “Western education is sin”—to create an Islamic state in Nigeria. The kidnapped girls, most of whom were Christian, were taken to Boko Haram’s stronghold in the Sambisa forest, where they endured harsh conditions and were subjected to Islamic instruction sessions lasting up to 11 hours a day.
And, of course, my weekly story about the war we seem to have forgotten, from the BBC:
The woman with sad eyes and a quiet voice is just one of the millions of people living in camps for those forced to flee their homes in Sudan, where a civil war broke out a year ago between the army and an armed paramilitary group. The country now faces what the UN says is the "world worst hunger crisis".
Qisma Abdirahman Ali Abubaker goes through the motions of waiting in line to pick up her food ration, but her heart is not in it.
The small bag does not have to stretch as far as it used to for her family.