Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, 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.
AFP
A digital war is unfolding in Mali alongside a jihadist conflict that has claimed thousands of lives: the battle to sway young minds is being waged on the mobile phone."Jihadists today are recruiting on WhatsApp. We have to stop the bloodshed," said Hama Cisse, a moderate imam.
He says fiery sermons relayed through the mobile phone application by jihadist leader Amadou Koufa are luring young men from the Fulani ethnic community to join his ranks. "Our children are leaving and getting themselves killed with Koufa, and there's more and more of them every day," Cisse said.
In the 1980s, then a Koranic student, Koufa was a roving storyteller -- a deep-rooted oral tradition in Mali -- reciting love poems in exchange for a few coins. Much later, after completing his religious education abroad, Koufa re-invented himself as radical, preaching a hardline form of Islam.
Using his honed oratorical skills and stirring ancient resentments against elites, his message went straight to the heart of many young Fulani, also called Peuls, whose herding community has long battled poverty and stigma.
His means for channelling this message have kept in lockstep with technology.
DW News
Germany is split over its strategy in the US-Iran conflict as tensions escalate at breakneck speed in the days following the killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.
Picking sides or diplomatic inaction risk further alienating the United States and Iran, both of whom are already critical of German and European responses to the conflict, analysts say. The challenge will be preserving Germany's trademark multilateralism amid conflicting domestic interests and pressure from abroad.
"Choosing sides will only harden the stances of the US and/or Iran and weaken the EU's mediation position in the long-term," Gert Hilgers, a doctoral researcher in international politics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, told DW. "For Berlin, this is not a matter of ambivalence or the avoidance of making hard decisions, but a matter of sticking to its foreign policy roots."
DW News
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday invited German Chancellor Angel Merkel to Russia this upcoming weekend to discuss the rising tensions in the Middle East following the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a US airstrike.
The Kremlin confirmed the meeting was set to take place on Saturday, but did not state where it would take place. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas will also attend.
As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia is "indispensable" when it comes to solving political conflicts, said German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert.
Germany and Russia are two of the world powers which have been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
In addition to the Middle East crisis, the conflicts in Syria and Libya, where Turkey has just begun deploying troops, will also be on the agenda. Russia said it will support Germany's peace initiative in the region.
It is thought both leaders will also want to discuss the Ukraine situation, ongoing since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Al Jazeera
All members of the Atlantic alliance stood behind the United States in the Middle East after it briefed NATO on its drone attack that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday.
Speaking after a rare NATO meeting on Iran and Iraq in which the United States briefed its allies about last Friday's drone attack, Stoltenberg also called for a de-escalation of tensions, echoing the statements of some European leaders.
The Guardian
There is a little good news.
The human toll from coal-fired pollution in America has been laid bare by a study that has found more than 26,000 lives were saved in the US in just a decade due to the shift from coal to gas for electricity generation.
The shutdown of scores of coal power facilities across the US has reduced the toxic brew of pollutants suffered by nearby communities, cutting deaths from associated health problems such as heart disease and respiratory issues, the research found.
An estimated 26,610 lives were saved in the US by the shift away from coal between 2005 and 2016, according to the University of California study published in Nature Sustainability.
The coal sector has struggled in recent years, with 334 generating units taken offline during the period analyzed in the study. A cheap glut of natural gas has displaced coal, with 612 gas-fired units coming online during this time.
The Guardian
Britain’s foreign secretary has said that targeting cultural sites in Iran would breach international warfare conventions in an implicit rebuke to Donald Trump for threatening to bomb protected heritage sites.
Dominic Raab did not criticise the US president directly over his threats, but said: “We have been very clear that cultural sites are protected under international law and we would expect that to be respected.”
The senior British minister was speaking after Trump said he could target 52 Iranian sites if Iran retaliated over the assassination of Qassem Suleimani – “some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture”.
Trump’s comments amount to threatening a war crime because such action would violate international treaties that the US has signed up to.
The president said that the number of targets chosen – 52 – matched the number of US hostages held by Iran in 1979, when a group of American diplomats and citizens were detained for 444 days in Tehran.
Reuters
Weinstein had been charged with sexual assault of two women in 2013, Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement. He was charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting the other.
“We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them,” Lacey said.
BBC
Huge crowds have packed the streets of the Iranian capital Tehran for the funeral of military commander Qasem Soleimani.
Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday on the orders of President Donald Trump.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei led prayers and at one point was seen weeping.
Iran has vowed "severe revenge" for the death of Soleimani and on Sunday pulled back from the 2015 nuclear accord.
Soleimani, 62, headed Iran's elite Quds Force, and was tasked with protecting and boosting Iran's influence in the Middle East.
BBC
Actor Russell Crowe has used his winner's speech at the Golden Globes to raise awareness of the deadly bushfire crisis in Australia.
"Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based," he said in a message read out on stage by show host Jennifer Aniston.
Crowe won the award for his portrayal of Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice in the Room.
His comments join a wave of celebrity support for the fire response.
At least 24 people have died since the fires began in September.
The fires are a natural part of the Australian weather cycle, but have been worsened this year by hotter-than-average temperatures and a persistent drought in many areas.
The New Yorker
he flag-draped coffin of General Qassem Suleimani was thronged by wailing mobs in Tehran on Monday, as the fallout from his death, in a U.S. air strike, accelerated with breathtaking speed. Iran has not seen such an outpouring of emotion on the streets since the death of the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wept openly—as did other political leaders and military officers—as he prayed over the casket. Esmail Gha’ani, Suleimani’s successor as head of the Quds Force, the élite wing of the Revolutionary Guards, vowed to confront the United States. “We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani’s path as firmly as before, with the help of God, and, in return for his martyrdom, we aim to get rid of America from the region,” Gha’ani said at the funeral.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on five Sunday talk shows—curiously, wearing a red tie on two shows and a blue tie on three others—to brag about the U.S. operation. “We took a bad guy off the battlefield,” he said, on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There is less risk today to American forces in the region as a result of that attack.” Yet nothing seems further from the truth. Some form of conflict between the United States and the Islamic Republic, overt or covert, seems more possible now than it has at any time since the 1979 Revolution. The U.S. investment in neighboring Iraq—thousands of American lives, hundreds of billions of dollars in American treasure, decades of American diplomacy—appears to be unravelling, with rippling effects across the Middle East. Diplomatic missions in other Middle Eastern and South Asian countries are on virtual lockdown, with American citizens urged to evacuate Iraq and Iran and lie low elsewhere in the region.
Instead of being a dead bad guy, Suleimani appears almost as potent in his “martyrdom” as he was in life. His death has already spurred anti-American sentiment across the Middle East. It has unified Iran’s divided society. And it has also precipitated the first action to wind down or end the American military presence in the region—Suleimani’s primary mission since he took over the Quds Force, in 1998.
NPR
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced on Monday that some forces are being repositioned inside Iraq, not leaving the country.
Two other U.S. officials told NPR that some are going to Kuwait temporarily.
The troop movement — signaled by heavy helicopter traffic out of a U.S. base in central Baghdad — was coupled with confusion about a letter sent by the U.S. military to Iraqi officials. That letter said the movements were in response to the Iraqi call for U.S. forces to leave the country, and the letter implied a withdrawal was underway. Late Monday, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the letter was "poorly worded."
Esper also told reporters at the Pentagon that an Iraqi parliament vote on Sunday to expel U.S. troops was nonbinding and that there are no plans to leave Iraq yet.
NPR
A 5.8 magnitude earthquake rattled the city of Guayanilla and nearby areas in southern Puerto Rico Monday morning, shoving brick houses off their foundations, knocking over walls and collapsing a local landmark: Punta Ventana, a natural rock archway that the ocean's waves had carved over centuries.
"Today our icon remains in the memory of all," Guayanilla press official Glidden López Torres said on Facebook.
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper strongly suggested on Monday that the U.S. military would not violate the laws of armed conflict by striking Iranian cultural sites, a move threatened by President Donald Trump.
Asked whether he was willing to target cultural sites, Esper told Pentagon reporters: “We will follow the laws of armed conflict.”
Pressed on whether he would then not target such sites, because that would be a war crime, Esper said: “That’s the laws of armed conflict.” He did not elaborate.
Targeting cultural sites with military action is considered a war crime under international law, including a U.N. Security Council resolution supported by the Trump administration in 2017 and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property.