OND Editors OND is a 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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
OND Editors Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
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BBC
New York gunman told public 'watch what I'm going to do'
The man who shot dead two New York police officers told members of the public "watch what I'm going to do" shortly before the attack, police say.
Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, had a history of violence and mental instability.
Candlelit vigils have been held in New York in memory of the two officers, Liu Wenjin and Raphael Ramos.
Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Brinsley had "no history of radicalisation" but that he was "often violent"
Brinsley shot them as they sat in their patrol car in a Brooklyn neighbourhood before running into a nearby subway station and shooting himself.
He had posted messages on social media saying he would kill police officers in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner, a black man who died when white police officers arrested him.
The Rev Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights activist, said Mr Garner's family had no connection to the gunman and called the killings "reprehensible".
Brinsley, 28, had been arrested at least 19 times and had a troubled childhood so violent that his mother was afraid of him, police said
BBC
France Dijon: Driver targets city pedestrians
A driver shouting the Islamic phrase "God is great" in Arabic has run down pedestrians in Dijon, France, injuring 11, two seriously, French media say.
He was arrested after targeting pedestrians in five different parts of the city in the space of half an hour.
He is said to be "apparently imbalanced" and to have spent time in a psychiatric hospital.
French police shot dead a man on Saturday after he attacked them with a knife, also shouting "God is great".
The lives of the two people seriously injured in Dijon are not said to be in danger.
Witnesses told police the driver, aged around 40, had also said he was "acting for the children of Palestine", an unnamed source close to the investigation told AFP news agency.
A spokesman for the interior ministry told French TV he believed the attacker had been acting alone.
The driver has been known to police for minor incidents dating back 20 years, he added.
BBC
Sony hack: US mulls putting N Korea back on terror list
President Barack Obama has said the US is considering putting North Korea back on its list of terrorism sponsors after the hacking of Sony Pictures.
A decision would be taken after a review, he said, calling the attack an act of cyber-vandalism, not of war.
North Korea denies the attack over The Interview, which depicts the fictional killing of its leader Kim Jong-Un.
Sony cancelled the Christmas Day release after threats to cinemas. It is considering "a different platform".
In a CNN interview, President Obama described the hacking as a "very costly, very expensive" example of cyber-vandalism.
He said US officials would examine all the evidence to determine whether North Korea should be put back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"I'll wait to review what the finding are," Mr Obama said, adding that he did not think the attack "was an act of war"
CNN
North Korea denies Sony hack but warns U.S. : Worse is coming
(CNN) -- North Korea is accusing the U.S. government of being behind the making of the movie "The Interview."
And, in a dispatch on state media, the totalitarian regime warns the United States that U.S. "citadels" will be attacked, dwarfing the hacking attack on Sony that led to the cancellation of the film's release.
While steadfastly denying involvement in the hack, North Korea accused U.S. President Barack Obama of calling for "symmetric counteraction."
"The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans," a report on state-run KCNA read.
Reuters
Lawmaker calls for strong U.S. response to Sony hack, including sanctions
(Reuters) - The U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman on Sunday called for a "very serious" U.S. reaction, including sanctions, to a North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures, saying it was not enough for the United States to restrict that country's cyber capability.
U.S. Representative Mike Rogers criticized President Barack Obama on "Fox News Sunday" for getting on a plane to Hawaii on Friday and not acting immediately against North Korea.
"The problem here was not that the fact that we didn't have the capability to do something nearly in immediate time. We just didn't get a decision from the president," Rogers said.
There's going to be a lot of red faces when Anonymous confesses.
Raw Story
The rise of Maulana Fazlullah, the ruthless Taliban leader who ordered the Peshawar school killings
As Pakistanis united in revulsion at the massacre of 141 pupils and teachers at Peshawar's Army Public School last week and the government began executing convicted terrorists in response, the Taliban commander who ordered the slaughter emerged from hiding to justify it.
Umar Mansoor, a long-bearded, 36-year-old father of three known as "Slim" for his athletic build and passion for volleyball, shook his finger at the camera and said it had been a simple act of revenge for the women and children killed in the Pakistan army's war on terrorism in the Taliban's tribal strongholds along the Afghan border.
"If our women and children die as martyrs, your children will not escape," he said.
His finger wagging, however, was a sleight of hand: the Taliban leader really pulling the strings is Maulana Fazlullah, a bearded terrorist demagogue best known for the attempted assassination of Malala Yusufzai, the 15-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot in the head in 2012 for defying his ban on girls attending school.
His orders to shoot Malala were widely condemned around the world – though not universally in Pakistan, where Malala was also criticised as a Western pawn whose campaign was being used to tarnish Pakistan.
N Y Times
Cuba Seizures Now Present Opportunities
MIAMI — It was a routine Saturday morning, almost two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, when Lois and Roy Schechter went to check on their tobacco farm 100 miles west of their home in Havana.
The American couple encountered soldiers posted outside their property.
“My husband got out of the car, exchanged a few words with the soldiers, got back in the car, and we drove away,” Mrs. Schechter, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., recalled of that day in October 1960. “Things were getting scary, and there was nothing else we could do.”
After nearly 60 years in the country, the Schechter family fled and never returned.
[snip]
On Wednesday, President Obama announced that the United States will begin normalizing relations with Cuba, bringing the Schechter family a step closer to resolving its decades-old property claims. Although the president did not mention the contentious issue in his announcement, lawyers are scrambling to determine whether normalized relations with Cuba will create an opportunity to get compensation for lost properties now estimated to be worth nearly $7 billion.
N Y Times
In 2008 Mumbai Killings, Piles of Spy Data, but an Uncompleted Puzzle
In the fall of 2008, a 30-year-old computer expert named Zarrar Shah roamed from outposts in the northern mountains of Pakistan to safe houses near the Arabian Sea, plotting mayhem in Mumbai, India’s commercial gem.
Mr. Shah, the technology chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terror group, and fellow conspirators used Google Earth to show militants the routes to their targets in the city. He set up an Internet phone system to disguise his location by routing his calls through New Jersey. Shortly before an assault that would kill 166 people, including six Americans, Mr. Shah searched online for a Jewish hostel and two luxury hotels, all sites of the eventual carnage.
But he did not know that by September, the British were spying on many of his online activities, tracking his Internet searches and messages, according to former American and Indian officials and classified documents disclosed by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.
[snip]
What happened next may rank among the most devastating near-misses in the history of spycraft. The intelligence agencies of the three nations did not pull together all the strands gathered by their high-tech surveillance and other tools, which might have allowed them to disrupt a terror strike so scarring that it is often called India’s 9/11.
C/Net Dish viewers win!
Fox News channels go dark on Dish as contract talks stall
Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network were pulled from Dish Network's channel lineup late Saturday after negotiations for a new distribution deal broke down.
Dish, which has for weeks been negotiating a new carriage contract for the 21st Century Fox channels, said the channels were blocked after Fox introduced fee increases for other sports and information channels not part of the original contract. The channels' removal marks the third major blackout to hit Dish subscribers in recent months.
And finally some good news on the California drought.
L A Times
Recent storms send Yosemite waterfalls rushing back
In other winters it was a sight to behold, but to be expected. This year, the return of Yosemite's waterfalls was more.
Because they had disappeared.
When California is not in a historic drought, winter snow piles up high in the backcountry. Come spring, it melts, running down rivers and over cliffs. Yosemite Valley's waterfalls build to thundering crescendos and drum all summer. Some seasons, if it's hot and dry, the cascade of water stops for a beat at the tail-end of summer, until the autumn rains.
This has been the hottest year on record in California. Wildfires raged around and in the park. Fall rains didn't come.
The famous granite walls were mostly dry by the end of June, and no one was sure whether the waterfalls would return by Christmas.
In the first week of December a storm passed over the Sierra Nevada. It rained for two days up high near Tuolumne meadows.
"One day later, Yosemite Falls came back," said Ryan Sheridan, a park employee at Denegan's Deli. "I was riding my bike to work and I just stopped and kept looking. It's hard to miss. It's the essence of pure power."
Bridalveil Fall and Cascade Fall also were running. He feared it wouldn't last. But just as the rumble of water started to fade, another storm renewed the volume.