Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, jck, and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), 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.
From the BBC:
By Smitha Mundasad
Poor diets for school-age children may contribute to an average height gap of 20cm (7.9in) between the tallest and shortest nations, an analysis suggests.
It reports that in 2019 the tallest 19-year-old boys lived in the Netherlands (183.8cm or 6ft) and the shortest lived in Timor Leste (160.1cm or 5ft 3in).
Meanwhile the UK's global height ranking fell, with 19-year-old boys being 39th tallest in 2019 (1.78m or 5ft 10in) from 28th tallest in 1985.
From the Smithsonian Magazine:
In January 1536, the Tudor king fell from his horse and sustained significant injuries that troubled him for the rest of his life
From the NYTimes:
Threats against a high school teacher who displayed a political cartoon that supported the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo have alarmed Dutch officials.
A month after a teacher in France was beheaded for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class, fears are growing in the Netherlands that the ripple effects of the attack are spreading in that country.
From the BBC:
French police have arrested seven people accused of offering fake negative Covid-19 test certificates to departing passengers at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.
The six men and one woman were found to have more than 200 counterfeit certificates on their mobile phones.
The fakes would have been sold for up to €300 (£271) each, prosecutors say.
From the Washington Post:
BERLIN — Austria's interior minister acknowledged Friday that there had been "intolerable mistakes" in tracking the gunman in a deadly shooting Monday in Vienna as he ordered the closure of mosques deemed to be a security risk.
From the BBC:
Much of Italy is now in lockdown, including the densely populated northern Lombardy region, after the Covid-19 death toll for 24 hours hit 445 - a six-month record.
Italy is now split into three zones: red for high risk, then orange and yellow. The red areas are Lombardy, Piedmont and Aosta Valley in the north and Calabria in the south.
The whole country has a night curfew.
From the New York Times:
By Allison McCann and Lauren Leatherby
LONDON — More Europeans are seriously ill with the coronavirus than ever before, new hospital data for 21 countries shows, surpassing the worst days in the spring and threatening to overwhelm stretched hospitals and exhausted medical workers.
From NPR:
Airports can be emotional places, where loved ones part ways and families reunite. Now more than ever, as the pandemic hampers air travel, they are an embodiment of what the Germans call Fernweh, which — for want of an English word — roughly means the painful longing to be elsewhere, a wretched wanderlust or restlessness.
In Berlin, the city's airports provoke wildly different emotions, depending on which one you're talking about. Until a decade ago, there were three, then two — and soon there will be just one. But any mention of this long-awaited international airport tends to elicit expletives and laughter because of a succession of technical fiascos which set back construction by almost a decade, causing the construction budget to run over by more than $4.7 billion.
From The Guardian:
Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people’s everyday lives
by Jon Henley, Europe correspondent, and Kasia Strek in Warsaw
For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since
Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.
Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to Łódź, Poznań to Wrocław, Gdańsk to Kraków.
From Yahoo News:
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Scientists in northern Russia have discovered a huge walrus haulout on the shores of the Kara Sea where their habitat is under threat from shrinking ice and human activity.
The haulout, a place of refuge where walruses congregate, reproduce, and socialise, is located in a remote corner of Russia's Yamal peninsula, and scientists say they counted over 3,000 animals there last month.
From CBS:
Indian police said they arrested a firebrand television news anchor and charged him with abetment to suicide in connection with the 2018 deaths of an architect and the architect's mother. Senior Mumbai police officer Sanjay Mohite said Wednesday the charges against Republic TV founder Arnab Goswami are linked to the deaths of interior designer Anvay Naik and his mother, which police determined to be suicide.
A suicide note found by the police and determined to have been written by Naik said he took his life because Goswami and two others owed him a huge sum of money and had refused to pay it back. Goswami has denied the allegation.
From the BBC:
By Sanjana Chowdhury
Bangladesh's first religious school for transgender people has opened in Dhaka.
More than 150 students will study Islamic and vocational subjects free of charge at the privately-funded seminary, or madrassa, in the capital.
Many in the transgender community identify as a third gender which is now officially recognised in the country.
From CNN:
(CNN)Myanmar is set to vote on Sunday in its second democratic general election since the end of oppressive military rule -- a poll that's expected to be marked by ethnic divisions and health concerns over rising coronavirus infections.
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party (NLD) won a landslide in 2015 and established the first civilian government after 50 years of isolation and military authoritarianism.
From the BBC:
By Virma Simonette
Holding his youngest child in one arm, supporting his wife with the other, and his four older children clinging onto his back, Salvador Manrique tried to cross the rising floodwaters.
They had known a super typhoon was coming and early on Sunday were woken by fierce winds and torrential rain.
News of the Arts
Many of the continent’s museums, theaters, concert halls and bookshops have been forced to close again, and now, people’s reactions have changed.
LONDON — Just as cultural life in Europe was learning to adapt to social distancing, small audiences and the need to wear face masks, along have come new lockdowns.
Over the past month, Europe’s museums, theaters, concert halls and bookshops have found themselves forced to close for the second time this year as coronavirus cases have soared across the continent.
From WBRC (Alabama):
CULLMAN, Ala. (WBRC) - Fine Arts teachers face a unique challenge in getting students ready for performances during a pandemic. Cullman High School teachers are working to overcome obstacles for students.
“The theatre world has been dramatically impacted by this whole COVID thing,” said Wayne Cook, Theatre Director, Cullman High School.
From Playbill:
Members of the industry have taken to social media to express their experience watching the results roll in.
November 3 marked Election Day, by now a misnomer as ballots continue to be counted in battleground states with no clear timeline as to when a victory might be called. In the meantime, the theatre community has taken to social media to share their thoughts, experiences, and comparisons between the election and theatre life.
Audra McDonald
From Denver’s CBS station:
DENVER (CBS4) – If you take a quick glance at the photo below you might mistake it for a slightly inaccurate take on a coronavirus germ, right?
But it’s not. That’s a photo of a new piece of public art that has been installed near Denver International Airport. The sculpture — “Luminous Wind” — is drawing some attention for its similarity to an image that has become a symbol of the hardships of 2020.
From KGW (Oregon):
When Marilyn Joyce heard about the wildfire that swept through the Santiam Canyon, she wanted to do something to help.
Author: Christine Pitawanich
PORTLAND, Ore. — People are stepping up in so many ways to help the families that were affected by the wildfires.
But there are some people who are using art and creativity to hopefully help the healing process.
From WRBL (Columbus, Georgia) :
Last week, a vandal destroyed one of the “Black Lives Matter” art pieces on display at the Riverwalk. This week, the same art piece was vandalized for a second time. Following the initial vandalism, the artwork was reprinted and reinstalled this Tuesday. The piece was up for less than two days before it was torn down again.
“Well public art on occasion, not too often but occasionally is vandalized and it’s always… I have a hard time wrapping my head around why people would do such a thing, but it does happen and you just pick up the pieces perhaps literally and go from there,” Chris Whittey, the Department Chair of Art at Columbus State University, said.
From the New York Post:
Sotheby’s allowed a wealthy art collector to avoid paying sales tax on $27 million worth of artwork, a new lawsuit by the New York Attorney General alleges.
“Millionaires and billionaires cannot be allowed to evade taxes while every day Americans pay their fair share,” AG Letitia James said in a statement. “Sotheby’s violated the law and fleeced New York taxpayers out of millions just to boost its own sales.
From the Press-Herald:
They've asked to put legal proceedings on hold as they work out the details, which they have not disclosed.
The estate of Robert Indiana and the late artist’s longtime representative have tentatively agreed to settle their legal dispute and asked the judges in the complicated case involving his art and legacy to pause the proceedings so they can work out the details of the settlement.
The Indiana estate filed a letter Thursday in U.S. District Court in New York’s Southern District announcing a tentative agreement with the Morgan Art Foundation, which sued Indiana in May 2018 for copyright and other infringements and general mismanagement of the estate. Indiana died at age 89 within a day after the suit was filed. In addition to dragging on for more 2 1/2 years, the case has cost the Indiana estate as much as $8 million in legal fees.