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, doomandgloom and FarWestGirl.
Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, JeremyBloom, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos since 2007, 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.
Smorgasbord night, folks, there’s a long ton going on.
Space.com: Colossal solar flare erupts from Earth-facing sunspot, sparking strong radio blackouts over Pacific Ocean (video)
It's at it again!
Sunspot region 4114 has fired off its strongest blast yet — an X1.2-class solar flare that erupted on June 17, triggering radio blackouts across the Pacific Ocean region, including Hawaii.
The flare peaked at 5:54 p.m. EDT (2154 GMT), marking the first X-class flare from this active sunspot region, which has already been responsible for multiple M-class eruptions over the past few days.
Unlike previous eruptions from 4114, this powerful flare was not accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a cloud of solar plasma and magnetic field that can travel through space and strike Earth's magnetic field, sparking auroras. Instead, this was a rapid, intense flash of electromagnetic energy, strong enough to ionize Earth's upper atmosphere and disrupt radio signals on the sunlit side of the planet.
Space.com: Watch Honda launch (and land) its 1st reusable rocket in this wild video
Japanese automaker Honda successfully launched and landed a prototype reusable rocket on Tuesday (June 17), marking a big step toward future spaceflight capabilities.
The 56-second vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) test took place Tuesday at Honda's facility in Taiki, Hokkaido, often dubbed Japan's "space town." The rocket, developed by Honda R&D, reached an altitude of 271.4 meters (890 feet) and touched down just 37 centimeters (14.6 inches) from its target, according to a company statement.
The experimental reusable rocket measures approximately 20.7 feet in length (6.3 meters) and 33.5 inches (85 centimeters) in diameter. It has a dry weight of 1,984 pounds (900 kilograms) and a wet weight of 2,893 pounds (1,312 kg), according to Honda's statement.
CNN: Resilience spacecraft likely crashed into the moon, Ispace confirms
• Resilience, a lander built by Japan-based company Ispace, attempted to touch down on the moon around 3:17 p.m. ET. But the mission failed to land safely, Ispace officials confirmed hours later.
• The exact reasons for the mission’s failure are currently unclear. However, Ispace leaders said the lander has likely crashed into the lunar surface.
• This was the second attempt at a soft landing by Ispace, which is headquartered in Tokyo.
• Resilience was one of several robotic landers developed by companies and governments across the world as part of a renewed race to explore the lunar surface.
Space.com: China's next-gen astronaut capsule for moon missions aces crucial pad-abort test (video)
China is advancing the development of the technology it needs to try to beat NASA back to the moon.
The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) completed a pad abort test of its Mengzhou spacecraft today (June 17), marking another step forward in its efforts to send Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, to the lunar surface for the first time. The zero-altitude escape sequence was initiated at 12:30 p.m. Beijing time (12:30 a.m. EDT; 0430 GMT), from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
With just the Mengzhou spacecraft on the pad (no rocket), the solid rocket escape engines on the capsule's abort tower fired for approximately 20 seconds, according to CMSEO. At altitude, Mengzhou's escape tower was jettisoned, and a trio of parachutes guided the spacecraft safely back to the desert surface, touching down with an airbag cushion at 12:32 p.m. BJT (12:32 a.m. EDT; 0432 GMT). CMSEO called the test "a complete success."
The Guardian: Jane Goodall chimpanzee conservation project in Tanzania hit by USAID cuts
The US government funding cuts will hit a chimpanzee conservation project nurtured by the primatologist
Jane Goodall. USAID has been subjected to swinging cuts under Donald Trump, with global effects that are still unfolding. Now it has emerged that the agency will withdraw from the Hope Through Action project managed by the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). USAID had pledged $29.5m (£22m) over five years to the project, which was designed to protect endangered chimpanzees and their habitats in western
Tanzania.
Launched in November 2023, the project is intended to protect endangered chimpanzees through reforestation and “community-led methodology” in order to conserve biodiversity conservation and improve local livelihoods.
Its work is built upon Jane Goodall’s research.She “redefined species conservation” by highlighting the importance of cooperation between local people and the natural environment to protect chimpanzees from extinction.
According to JGI figures, chimpanzees have become extinct in three African countries, and overall population numbers have fallen from millions to below 340,000.
Just in case you thought they were getting better.
The Guardian: A Saudi journalist tweeted against the government – and was executed for ‘high treason’
The tweet posted by Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser in 2014 was chillingly prescient: “The Arab writer can be easily killed by their government under the pretext of ‘national security’,” he wrote.
On Saturday, the Saudi interior ministry announced that al-Jasser had been executed in Riyadh, for crimes including “high treason by communicating with and conspiring against the security of the Kingdom with individuals outside it”.
Al-Jasser is believed to have been in his 40s and the execution – which in most cases in Saudi is carried out by beheading with a sword – followed seven years of detention. Dissidents who spoke to the Guardian alleged he was subjected to torture during his imprisonment.
It was the first high-profile killing of a journalist by the Saudi state since the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist and prominent critic of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who was lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and murdered by Saudi agents. A UN report concluded that the murder was an extrajudicial killing by the state, and an intelligence assessment released by then president Joe Biden in 2021 concluded that Prince Mohammed approved the murder.
The Guardian: Pete Hegseth suggests he would disobey court ruling against deploying military in LA
The US defense secretary,
Pete Hegseth, suggested on Wednesday that he would not obey a federal court ruling against the deployments of national guard troops and US marines to
Los Angeles, the latest example of the
Trump administration’s willingness to ignore judges it disagrees with.
The comments before the Senate armed services committee come as Donald Trump faces dozen of lawsuits over his policies, which his administration has responded to by avoiding compliance with orders it dislikes. In response, Democrats have claimed that Trump is sending the country into a constitutional crisis.
California has sued over Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles, and, last week, a federal judge ruled that control of soldiers should return to California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. An appeals court stayed that ruling and, in arguments on Tuesday, sounded ready to keep the soldiers under Donald Trump’s authority.
“I don’t believe district courts should be determining national security policy. When it goes to the supreme court, we’ll see,” Hegseth told the Democratic senator Mazie Hirono. Facing similar questions from another Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, he said: “If the supreme court rules on a topic, we will abide by that.”
The Guardian: New Zealand halts millions of dollars in aid to Cook Islands over deals struck with China
New Zealand has halted millions of dollars in funding to the Cook Islands over the “breadth and content” of agreements the smaller Pacific nation made with China, officials from the New Zealand foreign minister’s office has said.
New Zealand, which is the Cook Islands biggest funder, won’t consider any new money for the nation until the relationship improves, a spokesperson for foreign minister Winston Peters told the Associated Press on Thursday. Cook Islands prime minister Mark Brown didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Relations between other Pacific islands and their larger regional backers Australia and New Zealand have stumbled over ties with China in recent years as Beijing has vied to increase its Pacific sway. But the latest move by New Zealand’s government was striking because it reflected growing friction between two countries with strong constitutional ties – Cook Islands is self-governing but shares a military and passports with New Zealand – over two countries’ diverging approaches to managing relations with Beijing.
CTN news: China Sends Cargo Planes to Iran After Israeli Strikes, Raising Fears of Military Support
BEIJING – China has sent at least three Boeing 747 cargo planes to Iran soon after Israel carried out a series of surprise airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites. The first flights started only a day after Israel began its “Operation Rising Lion” on June 13.
This move has drawn sharp attention from analysts, who point out that these planes are often used to ship military cargo. As Beijing and Tehran grow closer, both in opposition to US power, these flights have raised serious concerns in both Washington and Tel Aviv. Data from flight trackers, as reported by The Telegraph, shows that the initial plane left China on June 14, followed by a second from a coastal city on June 15, and a third from Shanghai on June 16.
Each aircraft took a similar route, heading west over northern China, then across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, before going off radar near Iran’s airspace. Although the flight plans listed Luxembourg as their final stop, none of the planes were tracked in European airspace, which has only added to suspicions.
Aviation specialists have called attention to the choice of aircraft. John Harper, an aerospace analyst based in London, explained that Boeing 747 freighters are commonly used for heavy loads, such as military vehicles, weapons or missile parts.
He noted that the decision to turn off the transponders, making the planes untraceable, looks like a clear attempt to keep the cargo secret.
Bolding mine.
BBC: Japan's Nippon seals controversial US Steel deal after Trump pact
Japanese firm Nippon Steel has completed its long-sought takeover of US Steel, after agreeing to yield unusual control to the US government. Nippon's $14.9bn (£11bn) purchase of the smaller American company, will create one of the world's biggest steelmakers and turns Nippon into a major player in the US.
The plan, first announced in 2023, had been seen as a lifeline for the storied but struggling 124-year-old US Steel. But the deal ran into trouble during last year's presidential election, when US President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponents said they were concerned about the foreign acquisition of one of the last major steel producers in the US.
However, Trump reversed his stance, after Nippon made concessions which the President said had satisfied his national security concerns. He gave the official green light to the deal in an executive order on Friday.
Nippon agreed to pay $55 per share and take on the company's debt, a deal worth $14.9bn together.
……… element removed……...
It also granted the US government a "golden share" in the company, giving the government say over key decisions, including the transfer of jobs or production outside of the US, and certain calls to close or idle factories.
Times of India: 'Betrayal of all humanity': PM Modi urges G7 to hold Pakistan accountable; warns West against double standards on terrorism
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an address at the G7 outreach session on Wednesday, calling on the international community to act decisively against countries that support terrorism, indirectly targeting Pakistan. He warned that ignoring the threat of terrorism for geopolitical convenience would be a "betrayal of all humanity."Citing the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam as a “direct assault on the soul, identity and dignity of every Indian,” PM Modi told G7 leaders, “Our own neighbourhood has become a breeding ground for terrorism… any country that supports terrorism must be held accountable and made to pay the price.” He added that turning a blind eye to such actions would mean “history will never forgive us.”
He cautioned against selective treatment of terrorism. “Can those who spread terror and those who suffer from it be weighed on the same scale?” he asked, adding that nations backing terrorism were still being “rewarded” while others faced sanctions for lesser actions. PM Modi emphasised that “there must be no place for double standards” and called for global unity in fighting terror.
The Guardian: Canadian intelligence accuses India over Sikh’s killing as Carney meets Modi
Canada’s spy agency has warned that the assassination in British Columbia of a prominent Sikh activist signaled a “significant escalation in India’s repression efforts” and reflects a broader, transnational campaign by the government in New Delhi to threaten dissidents.
The report was made public a day after Mark Carney shook hands with Narendra Modi at the G7 and pledged to restore diplomatic relations in a very public attempt to turn the page on the bitter diplomatic row unleashed by the murder of the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
The meeting prompted immediate backlash from members of the Sikh community, who warned that the resumption of diplomatic ties “must not come at the expense of justice and transparency”. In its annual report to parliament, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said on Wednesday that India, China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan were the perpetrators of foreign interference efforts.
Times of India: Hurricane Erick: Category 3 storm nears Mexico; southern states on high alert
Hurricane Erick has strengthened into a powerful Category 3 storm and is closing in on Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, the US National Hurricane Center said on Wednesday. The NHC has warned that the storm could bring “potentially destructive winds and life-threatening flash floods.
”According to NHC, Erick had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 km/h) and was moving northwest at a speed of 9 mph (15 km/h). The storm was located about 55 miles (90 kilometres) south-southwest of Puerto Ángel and roughly 160 miles (260 kilometres) southeast of Punta Maldonado.
Forecasters said the hurricane is expected to strengthen before making landfall early Thursday, bringing dangerous storm surges, coastal flooding, and destructive waves to parts of the southern coast.
Times of India: Japan and China trade blame over Chinese fighter jets flying close to Japanese planes
Japan and China blamed each other on Thursday after Tokyo raised concern that a Chinese fighter jet came dangerously close to Japanese reconnaissance planes. The Chinese fighter jets took off from one of two Chinese aircraft carriers that were operating together for the first time in the Pacific, Japan's Defence Ministry said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that Japan conveyed its "serious concern" to China that such close encounters could cause accidental collisions.
According to Japan, a Chinese J-15 fighter jet took off from the Shandong aircraft carrier on Saturday and chased a Japanese P-3C aircraft on reconnaissance duty, coming within an "abnormally close distance" of 45 meters (50 yards) for about 40 minutes. A Chinese jet also crossed 900 meters (980 yards) in front of a Japanese P-3C for about 80 minutes on Sunday, the ministry said.
Times of India: Japan's US auto exports drop as tariff fears build
Japanese auto exports to the United States fell almost a quarter in May, data showed Wednesday, as worries over Donald Trump's tariffs grow with Tokyo and Washington yet to strike a deal.Roughly eight percent of jobs are tied to the auto industry in Japan, which is home to the world's top-selling carmaker Toyota as well as Honda, Nissan and other giants.
The government is seeking relief from the 25 percent US vehicle tariffs and other trade levies, but no agreement has been reached despite several rounds of talks.Japan posted a trade deficit for the second straight month in May, with imports exceeding the value of exports by 637.6 billion yen ($4.4 billion).To the United States specifically, exports fell around 11 percent, with automotive exports down 24.7 percent on-year, finance ministry data showed.
"Car exports to the United States in May declined both by volume and value, but the impact of lower prices is overwhelmingly large," NLI Research Institute's Taro Saito said, adding that export volume declined 3.9 percent."It appears that automakers are making large-scale price cuts so as to absorb the cost of the tariffs," he added.
Gotta wonder who’s running their IT. And whether to trust them.
Times of India: How to access 5,000+ government and private services with UAE Pass
Over 11 million users in the UAE are now using UAE Pass, the country’s first national digital identity platform that unifies access to thousands of services across government, semi-government, and private sectors. Whether you are a citizen, resident, or even a visitor, UAE Pass eliminates the need for multiple logins and physical paperwork, all while maintaining top-tier security standards
The app has rapidly become essential in the UAE’s push toward full digitisation, providing users the ability to perform secure transactions, access key documents, and complete a wide range of services directly from their phones.
What Is UAE Pass and How It Works
UAE Pass is more than a unified login system. It functions as a comprehensive digital identity platform that connects users to a vast array of services, from renewing a driver’s licence and signing legal documents, to accessing banking services and sharing official records. The system is backed by blockchain technology, ensuring that all transactions are secure, verifiable, and tamper-proof.
Deutcsche Welle: Iran summons German envoy after Merz' pro-Israel comments
- German, French, UK foreign ministers to meet with Iranian counterpart on Friday
- Iran has summoned the German ambassador over Chancellor Merz's comments on Israel
- Netanyahu has thanked Trump for US support, calling him 'a great friend of the state of Israel'
- Trump has said he 'may' or 'may not' get the US involved in the attacks on Iran, adding that Tehran has reached out asking for talks
- Iran denied Trump's claims, saying it does not 'negotiate under duress'
DW: US resumes student visas, demands social media access
The United States announced on Wednesday that it would resume processing of visa applications from foreign students but that all applicants would now be required to make their social media accounts available for review.
The State Department said that an applicant's failure to set their accounts to "public," the lowest-level privacy setting, could be taken as a sign they are trying to hide their online activity.
"Under new guidance, consular officers will conduct a comprehensive and thorough vetting of all student and exchange visitor applicants," read a statement.
"The enhanced social media vetting will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country."
DW: Budapest Pride ban threat sets up EU-Hungary showdown
Members from across the European Parliament's political spectrum on Wednesday condemned Hungary's likely ban of an upcoming Pride event in Budapest and called on the EU executive branch to intervene.
In March, the Hungarian Parliament passed a bill allowing the prohibition of public LGBTQ+ events on "child protection" grounds, and empowering police to use facial recognition technology to identify attendees.
Weeks before far-right nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban had warned Budapest Pride organisers "should not even bother" to organize a 2025 event.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony, a liberal political opponent of Orban, has pushed back by trying to hold a Pride celebration on June 28 that skirts the law by being a municipal event. On Wednesday, Orban's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said police would decide on the matter despite Karacsony's attempts to sidestep official review, Reuters news agency reported.
DW: Major oil companies face first 'climate death' lawsuit
On June 28, 2021, a heatwave saw temperatures rise to over 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit) in Seattle, the hottest ever recorded in the US coastal city. On that day, Juliana Leon was found unconscious in her car and died soon after from hyperthermia — the overheating of the body.
Now her daughter, Misti Leon, is suing seven oil and gas companies for wrongful death in a Washington State court. She alleges that they accelerated the extreme heat that led to her mother's death by manufacturing and marketing fossil fuels.
The filing claims
the companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP — had known for decades "that their fossil fuel products were already altering the earth's atmosphere."
The defendants willfully created a "fossil fuel-dependent economy" that would result in "more frequent and destructive weather disasters and foreseeable loss of human life," the complaint alleges.
Phys.org: Earliest evidence of humans in the Americas confirmed
Vance Holliday jumped at the invitation to go do geology at New Mexico's White Sands. The landscape, just west of Alamogordo, looks surreal—endless, rolling dunes of fine beige gypsum, left behind by ancient seas. It's one of the most unique geologic features in the world.
But a national park protects much of the area's natural resources, and the U.S. Army uses an adjacent swath as a missile range, making research at White Sands impossible much of the time. So it was an easy call for Holliday, a University of Arizona archaeologist and geologist, to accept an invitation in 2012 to do research in the park. While he was there, he asked, skeptically, if he could look at a site on the missile range.
>>>element removed<«
The tracks showed human activity in the area occurred between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago—a timeline that would upend anthropologists' understanding of when cultures developed in North America. It would make the prints about 10,000 years older than remains found 90 years ago at a site near Clovis, New Mexico, which gave its name to an artifact assemblage long understood by archaeologists to represent the earliest known culture in North America.
Critics have spent the last four years questioning the 2021 findings, largely arguing that the ancient seeds and pollen in the soil used to date the footprints were unreliable markers.
Now, Holliday leads a new study that supports the 2021 findings—this time relying on ancient mud to radiocarbon date the footprints, not seeds and pollen, and an independent lab to make the analysis. The paper was published in the journal Science Advances.
Phys.org: Organ-sculpting cells may hold clues to how cancer spreads
A new study by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveals that the cells shaping our organs may be far more mobile and coordinated than once believed. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
Using fruit flies as a model, researchers discovered that future muscle cells crawl across the surface of the developing testis and actively sculpt it into its final form. These dynamic cells don't work alone; they coordinate their movements using a communication system previously typically associated with brain development.
"While most organs are thought to be shaped by static, brick-like cells, our study highlights the powerful role of dynamic, migrating cells—and how they work together to sculpt living tissue," said Dr. Maik Bischoff, first and co-corresponding author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the Peifer lab at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Phys.org: Passive cooling paint sweats off heat to deliver 10X cooling and 30% energy savings
A new cement-based paint can cool down the building by sweating off the heat. The cooling paint, named CCP-30, was designed by an international team of researchers and features a nanoparticle-modified porous structure composed of a calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) gel network.
This design enabled it to achieve superior cooling by combining both radiative, evaporative and reflective cooling mechanisms, which allowed it to reflect 88–92% of sunlight, emit 95% of the heat as infrared radiation, and hold about 30% of its weight in water, making it a paint ideal for keeping spaces cool throughout the day and across seasons.
As per the findings published in Science, the paint provides 10 times the cooling power of commercial cooling paints in tropical climates, resulting in electricity savings of 30 to 40%.
Space cooling systems take up nearly 20% of the total electricity usage in buildings around the world today, making them a significant contributor to global warming due to high CO2 emissions. It also plays an important role in driving the urban heat island (UHI) effect, a phenomenon where city centers experience much higher air temperatures than the surrounding suburban areas. Passive cooling strategies have emerged as an energy-efficient and sustainable approach to reducing emissions and urban heat island (UHI) effects.
Phys.org: Energy transition: How coal mines could go solar
Disused coal mines could be refashioned to place vast fields of solar panels, a new report suggests, providing an unlikely solution to a common obstacle to uptake of the green energy source.
Hundreds of decommissioned surface coal mines worldwide offer an alternative to tracts of land that might be needed for food or housing, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a non-governmental organization focused on fossil fuel and renewable energy projects.
Abandoned coal mines are on land that has already been cleared, and tend to be near electrical grids, making them ideal for feeding in renewable energy.
"Over 300 surface coal mines recently out of commission could house around 103GW of photovoltaic solar capacity, and upcoming closures of large operations could host an additional 185GW of solar," according to the group.
That would allow the world to add the equivalent of 15% of existing global solar capacity by 2030, or about what it takes to power a country the size of Germany for a year, GEM added.
And to leave things on a light note:
Phys.org: Humanoid robot achieves controlled flight using jet engines and AI-powered systems
The Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) has reached a milestone in humanoid robotics by demonstrating the first flight of iRonCub3, the world's first jet-powered flying humanoid robot specifically designed to operate in real-world environments.
The research team studied the complex aerodynamics of the artificial body and developed an advanced control model for systems composed of several interconnected parts. The overall work on iRonCub3, including real flight tests, took about two years. In the latest experiments, the robot was able to lift off the floor by approximately 50 cm while maintaining its stability. The achievement paves the way for a new generation of flying robots capable of operating in complex environments while maintaining a human-like structure.
The aerodynamics and control studies have been described in a paper published in Communications Engineering.
The research was carried out by roboticists of IIT in Genoa, Italy, in collaboration with the group of Alex Zanotti at DAER Aerodynamics Laboratory of Polytechnic of Milan—where a comprehensive series of wind tunnel tests were performed—and the group of Gianluca Iaccarino at Stanford University—where deep learning algorithms were used to identify aerodynamic models.
