Greetings from the land of dying computers (I am getting afraid to touch a laptop, after the most recent purchase lost its cursor and suddenly had more and more problems, after only two days!). I am putting this together at an elderly desktop, which still works. But there is news happening in the world. We’ll take a look at it, but first:
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, Besame, and annetteboardman. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke, Man Oh Man, 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 (or sometimes slightly later).
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Pictures of the week, from the BBC, and BBC Africa.
Let’s just get the big story out of the way. This from the BBC:
What the US president says in public about other countries has been a major part of international diplomacy for the last 100 years.
But one year ago, Americans elected a man who prefers plain speaking to the language of custom and niceties.
As he approaches the anniversary of his inauguration, find out what President Donald Trump has said about your country, which foreign leaders he has met or called since taking office, and which countries he has mentioned in his tweets.
Of course it isn’t just us as the BBC assures us:
A New Zealand restaurant has been accused of using mocking racial clichés on its menu.
Asian fusion restaurant Bamboozle in Christchurch features dishes with the names "Chirri Garrik an Prawn Dumpring" and "Ho Lee Kok".
The restaurant has operated with the menu for two years, local reports said, but a picture was posted to Twitter by a social media user this week.
Also from the BBC:
Saudi Arabia has for the first time allowed women to spectate at a football match, part of an easing of strict rules on gender separation by the ultra-conservative Muslim country.
Women fans filed into a stadium in the city of Jeddah on Friday, through family gates into family seating.
More from the Middle East, this from the South China Morning Post:
Beijing strategically placed its first overseas military base in Djibouti, an area vital for Chinese exports, but rising regional tensions make it a tough place to do business
BY JAMES M. DORSEY
T
he six-month-old Gulf crisis has expanded to the Horn of Africa, potentially fuelling simmering regional conflicts that could place massive Chinese investment at risk in a part of the world that is home to the
People’s Republic’s first overseas military base.
Anxieties about the stand-off in the Horn – a region pockmarked by foreign military bases that straddles key Indian Ocean trade routes and 4,000km of coastline – deepened last month when Sudan granted Turkey the right to rebuild a decaying port city and construct a naval dock to maintain civilian and military vessels on its Red Sea coast.
From Minnesota Public Radio (with audio):
For Maxamed Adan, who lives in Minnesota with his wife and children, the prospect of being forced to return to Somalia is a frightening one.
From Quartz:
Since the start of the year, Nigerians have been served bloody reminders that Boko Haram is
no longer the country’s biggest internal security threat.
States in Nigeria’s middle belt have been rocked by attacks from suspected Fulani herdsmen in a new wave of violence which primarily stems from disputes over grazing areas for cattle. Attacks in villages in Benue state since the start of January have left 73 people dead. With communities razed and buildings destroyed, the state emergency agency says 40,000 people have been displaced by the attacks.
From Africanews.com:
Nigeria officially has 68 registered political parties the Independent Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC) has disclosed.
The INEC chair, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, was speaking when 22 new political parties were issued certificates of registration on Wednesday (January 10, 2018).
At a glance, almost every country has a story about Trump, like this from the AP, via News24:
Johannesburg - An opposition lawmaker in Ghana is calling for a boycott by developing countries against the United States until President Donald Trump leaves office following his derogatory remarks against immigrants from Haiti and African nations.
From Newshub:
Ghanian school girls are facing a new obstacle on their way to school - a local river god has banned them from crossing the river while menstruating or on Tuesdays.
The BBC reports the ban has outraged children's activists, as it prevents many from being able to cross the river to get to school.
The ban applies to part of the River Ofin, which forms a boundary between the Ashanti and Central regions.
From allAfrica:
Luanda — Culture Minister Carolina Cerqueira highlighted Thursday the need for Angolan artists to use music as an instrument of culture of peace, dignification of women and education of society.
According to the Cabinet minister, who was speaking during an audience granted by the gospel singer Sister Jolly, musicians must bet on the production of songs whose messages extol human dignity, love of neighbor, patriotism and appreciation of the identity traits of Angolan culture.
From Deutsche Welle:
The increasing demand for traditional Chinese medicine is putting Mozambique's Manta rays in danger since their body parts are sought as ingredients. Rangers and researchers have teamed up for a fight.
From Bloomberg:
By Taonga Clifford Mitimingi
From The Daily Mail Limited (Zambia):
MATERNAL mortality is one of the issues the country is still grappling with as the number of deaths per 100,000 births is still high. What measures are Government and other stakeholders putting in place in order to help alleviate this challenge to acceptable numbers?
In 2017, Zambia Maternal Health co-ordinator Swebby Macha said Government, through the Ministry of Health, embarked on a National Health Survey Plan 2017-2021, which targets to reduce maternal mortality ratio to 100 per 100,000 live births by 2021.
Dr Macha said the ministry has put in place a number of interventions such as having skilled attendants at birth, on-site mentorship on emergency obstetrical and neonatal care, strengthening the maternal and neonatal referral system, and comprehensive abortion care among others.
A couple of interesting items from Asia, the first from The Guardian:
Smoke inhalation suspected to have killed 21-year-old who lit fire to keep warm while observing controversial practice of sleeping outside during menstruation
A woman has died in a remote village in Nepal because of a controversial tradition that means menstruating women are required to sleep in huts.
Temperatures in Nepal can fall below zero degrees celsius in the winter months, but women are still forced to sleep in outdoor sheds that are often poorly insulated and unheated.
Government administrator Tul Bahadur Kawcha said the 21-year-old woman is believed to have died from smoke inhalation after lighting a fire to keep warm.
And a video from the BBC:
A crocodile in Indonesia's Palu has been stuck in a tyre for more than a year.
Officials in Sulawesi province are trying to rescue it before it grows bigger and gets strangled.
The last pair of news stories is from the UK, about a woman the age of my father, who died earlier this year. I am starting to like her more and more, and she seems to be doing just fine.
First, a video from the BBC:
The Queen has described her journey to her Coronation in the gold state coach as "horrible".
And from Vanity Fair:
“The service got rather boring as it was all prayers . . .”
by JULIE MILLER
In a new documentary debuting Sunday, Queen Elizabeth recalls witnessing her father’s 1937 coronation when she was just 11 years old. The ceremony had actually been intended for Elizabeth’s uncle Edward VIII, but Edward VIII unexpectedly abdicated before his reign as sovereign had even formally begun. Elizabeth’s father, George VI, who was suddenly thrust onto the throne, wanted his daughter to feel more prepared for her coronation day than he did for his. As such, the king had his young daughter pen a review of his coronation to ingrain it in her memory.
And as usual on a Friday, we finish with some Arts news, first from The Guardian:
A childhood love of science fiction gave photographer Aydın Büyüktaş a new lens through which to view the Turkish city
Elle Hunt
The surreal, digitally altered photographs of Aydın Büyüktaş defy time and space, presenting his home city of Istanbul as though viewed through a wormhole.
His images are the culmination of his reading during his childhood and adolescence in Ankara – science fiction by writers such as Isaac Asimov and HG Wells, as well as scientific and technical journals. “These books made me question the issues of wormholes, blackholes, parallel universes, gravitation and bending of space and time,” he said by email from Istanbul.
From africanews:
The black boy in the middle of a ‘racist’ advert by Swedish designer H&M continues to make news headlines. He has been spotted in Angola’s capital Luanda.
Not physically though, the now viral photo of the boy in his green hoodie has inspired a graffiti art on an ancient building in Luanda – the most expensive global capital for expatriates.
From The Baltimore Sun:
When former Walters Art Museum director Gary Vikan remembers the late 1990s, he gets a little wistful.
It was a time when as many as 600,000 people crowded through the doors of the city’s two largest art museums each year. Local celebrities would hit him up for tickets. Airline employees checking him in for his flight recognized his name.
“Sometimes on Sundays, the galleries would get so full you could barely move,” Vikan said. “It was fun while it lasted.”
Twenty years later, the scene in Baltimore and nationwide is very different.
From Hyperallergic:
Alison Marks’s sculptures, paintings, and textiles often appear gently familiar, but then take a deeper, more troubling turn.
SEATTLE — In 2000, a wooden Tlingit bear mask was sent into outer space with an American astronaut, aboard a Russian spacecraft. It orbited the Earth for four months on the International Space Station before returning to its home, in Alaska. I learned of this in Alison Marks’s exhibition One Gray Hair, at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum. The Tlingit artist’s painting “Space Bear” (2017) references this journey with a silver formline rendering of the bear mask and a neon-green, alien-like figure engaged in a surreal dialogue in outer space. The lunar sky and alien form’s sci-fi familiarity at first lent the piece a natural lightness, infused with the optimism of space travel’s portrayals in mainstream popular culture. However, after reading the backstory and considering the colonization of the Tlingit people by the US and Russia, the painting’s underlying darkness emerged. I became fixated on the other side of space travel — the fatalities, losses, and loneliness that so often underlay journeys and conquests. The mask started to feel more like Laika, the Russian dog sent into space who only survived a few hours before falling victim to overheating — a captured being, violently taken away from her home, left to wonder how she ended up in a place so unfamiliar and ultimately so tragic.