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 TMZ;
Pope Francis is way too kneedy ... he eats too much pasta, and his doctors want him to drastically change his diet ... from A to Ziti.
The pasta-loving Pontiff's being advised to lose at least 4 lbs to help ease his sciatica and avoid a trip to the operating table, and now pasta and pizza are off the table ... according to The Sun.
From Axios:
The European Commission on Friday granted conditional approval of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for people 18 years and older.
Why it matters: This is the third vaccine to receive approval from the commission, coming hours after the Emergency Medicines Agency recommended its authorization.
From the BBC:
By John Campbell
The EU is introducing controls on vaccines made in the bloc, including to Northern Ireland, amid a row about delivery shortfalls.
Under the Brexit deal, all products should be exported from the EU to Northern Ireland without checks.
But the EU believed this could be used to circumvent export controls, with NI becoming a backdoor to the wider UK.
From BBC:
Portugal has tightened its coronavirus lockdown, banning all non-essential travel abroad and hiring foreign medics, as hospitals struggle and deaths reach record highs.
The country's pandemic death rate is now the highest in the EU.
From CNN:
Duarte Mendonca and Barry Neild
(CNN) — New travel bans imposed by the United Kingdom limiting arrivals from the United Arab Emirates and other destinations in an attempt to curb the spread of Covid are likely to impact what has become the world's busiest airline route.
The UK on Friday imposed the new restrictions as it tightened quarantine measures in an effort to reduce Europe's worst outbreak of the virus. Covid deaths this week crossed the 100,000 threshold in the UK.
From CNN:
Ottawa (CNN) —
To curb coronavirus transmission, Canada announced rules Friday to further discourage international travel, especially during spring break.
Most incoming travelers will be required to quarantine in government-approved hotels at their own expense, and flights to the sun-soaked Caribbean and Mexico will be suspended through April.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement as his government responds to new and worrying variants identified in several provinces.
"As soon as possible in the coming weeks, we will be introducing mandatory PCR testing at the airport for people returning to Canada. Travelers will then have to wait for up to three days at a government-approved hotel for their test results at their own expense," Trudeau said during a news conference in Ottawa.
Other things are happening, of course, and we begin that with this, from CNN:
(CNN)Two years ago, Joanne Su was anxious about turning 30 years old.
She worked for a foreign trade company in China's southern metropolis of Guangzhou, earned a decent income and spent her weekends hanging out with friends. But to Su and her parents, there was one problem -- she was single.
"Back then, I felt like 30 years old was such an important threshold. When it loomed closer, I came under tremendous pressure to find the right person to marry -- both from my parents and myself," she said.
From NBC (Reuters):
"I am immensely proud that we have brought in this new route for Hong Kong" Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
BEIJING — Hong Kong residents can apply from Sunday for a new visa giving them the chance to become British citizens following China's crackdown in the former colony, but Beijing said it will no longer recognise the special British passport already in use.
The U.K. government forecasts say the new visa could attract more than 300,000 people and their dependents to Britain. Beijing said it would make them second-class citizens.
From CNN:
Anita Patrick, CNN
(CNN)The creator of Indomie's popular 'mi goreng' flavor, Nunuk Nuraini died on Wednesday. She was 59.
Nurlita Novi Arlaida, the head of Indofood's Public Relations confirmed Nuraini's death In a statement to local newspaper,
Kompas.
The cause of death was not revealed.
From the BBC:
A small bomb has exploded near the Israeli embassy in the Indian capital, Delhi, damaging nearby cars but causing no injuries.
Police said a "very low intensity improvised device" caused the blast.
Israel said an investigation was under way but one Israeli official told news agencies it was being regarded as a "terrorist incident".
From Vox:
Navalny has worked to depose Putin for a decade. Now’s his greatest chance.
The greatest challenger to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule is a man whose name the dictator won’t say and whom he has tried to kill: Alexei Navalny.
Now, having defiantly returned to Russia after surviving a brazen assassination attempt, the opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader has rallied tens of thousands of supporters to his cause like never before — a real sign of trouble for Putin’s hold on power.
From the NYTimes:
An appeals court said a small group of farmers in the Niger Delta region whose livelihoods were affected by oil spills in 2006 and 2007 should receive payouts.
By Elian Peltier and Claire Moses
A Dutch court ruled on Friday that a subsidiary of the British-Dutch multinational Royal Dutch Shell was liable for oil spills in the Niger Delta in Nigeria in 2006 and 2007, ordering the company to compensate a small group of residents in the region and to start purifying contaminated waters within weeks.
Also from the NYTimes:
Camille Kouchner is pushing the country to a painful reckoning with incest, and with the elites who excuse one another’s sins.
PARIS — Camille Kouchner, a slight, cleareyed woman who for decades was consumed by guilt, has become the big disrupter of French society. Her battle to liberate herself from a painful family secret has touched a nerve across France.
For decades, Ms. Kouchner felt trapped. “Guilt is like a snake,” she writes in “La Familia Grande,” a book whose tale of incest and abuse is also the unsparing portrait of a prominent French family. It was a “poison,” a many-headed “hydra,” invading “all the space in my mind and my heart.” Until she felt she had no choice but to set down the unspeakable.
From the BBC:
An Austrian man has left a bequest to a French village as a gesture of gratitude decades after residents took in his family during World War Two.
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in south-east France, protected thousands of Jews and has a long-standing reputation for shielding people from persecution.
Eric Schwam, who died last month at 90, arrived there with his family in 1943.
News of the Art World
By Pat Eby Special to the Post-Dispatch
Artist Carolyn Lewis instinctively knew people needed more art in their lives when she opened the Little Art Gallery STL in November on Milentz Avenue in the quiet south side neighborhood of Princeton Heights.
Lewis is no stranger to creating public art. She painted a loveseat that traveled throughout the city inviting people to Sit Down and Listen to each other during the Black Lives Matter protests. She created a “Wings of Empowerment” for the Doors of Hope project to raise money for the American Cancer Society, and she’s painted two murals in her neighborhood of flowering meadows. Her Little Art Gallery STL project is the first time she’s organized a gallery, inviting the public to take and make tiny artworks.
From NPR:
Artists across the U.S. have been chiseling and hammering away on massive snow blocks for a chance to represent their state in the National Snow Sculpting Championship in Wisconsin.
From the Art Newspaper:
We ask artists, writers and experts on Middle Eastern art about their memories of the revolutionary movements—and what they think the lasting legacies are
When Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor, set himself on fire on 17 December 2010, he triggered a period of unrest that would eventually unseat the country's president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Bouazizi’s self-immolation in front of a government building in the town of Sidi Bouzid not only led to the downfall of the Tunisian leader, but also set off protests that engulfed much of the Middle East as people rose up against oppressive regimes. These uprisings—across Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Bahrain—formed part of the revolutionary pro-democracy movement known as the Arab Spring. Ten years on, we ask artists, writers and cultural leaders from the Middle East, or who specialise in the region, about the impact of the Arab Spring; its legacy for arts and culture; and, crucially, what the future looks like for its artists and institutions.
From Time:
Sanders is a screenwriter and author of
Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph.
When I wrote my first movie script 10 years ago with a close friend, he and I argued about whether or not the main characters should be Black. I believed then that we wouldn’t be able to sell a movie with Black protagonists.
Things are different now. In the past few years, while publishers, film studios, streamers and networks have shown a surge of interest in Black stories, I’ve sold a book, Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned From Tragedy and Triumph; a movie, One and Done, a story about a Black high school basketball phenom who commits a crime and resuscitates his dream at a historically Black university; and a television series, How to Survive Inglewood, about a suburban Black teenager who comes of age and comes to terms with his people after his parents’ ugly divorce.
From The Guardian:
Case between dealer Yves Bouvier and oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev has been ongoing since 2015
A long-running court case involving an art dealer who was accused of swindling $1bn from a Russian oligarch took a step closer to being resolved after Swiss prosecutors moved to close an action against him.
The dispute between the dealer, Yves Bouvier, and the oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev – known as the Bouvier Affair – has been ongoing since 2015, but this week the Geneva prosecutor’s office confirmed it was planning to end the criminal proceedings.
From Block Club Chicago:
The panel, formed after the removal of Christopher Columbus statues this summer, did not release its list or recommend what to do with the artworks.
CHICAGO — City leaders have flagged 40 pieces of public art throughout Chicago for review due to their connections to white supremacy, slavery and inaccurate portrayal of Indigenous people, the co-chair of a commission tasked with studying the city’s monuments announced Friday.
In August, Mayor Lori Lightfoot formed an advisory committee to study over 500 public monuments and memorials to identify problematic artworks and recommend new monuments to recognize a more diverse reflection of the city’s history.
Also from Block Club Chicago:
Artist Eduardo Vea Keating plans to put up more snowy artwork around Logan Square this weekend.
LOGAN SQUARE — The snow that hit Chicago earlier this week provided Logan Square with an extra treat: “snow graffiti.”
Local artist NosE has used the snow to decorate building walls with shapes, funny images and affirming words. He hopes the art can make people feel more connected and positive during the coronavirus pandemic, when many people have been isolated.
From the Chicago Sun Times:
The five-block stretch has been transformed from your typical, dreary Chicago alley to an artistic showcase, the scene of more than 100 murals by over 30 artists.
Five blocks of alleys in Edgewater used to be just that — garbage cans, parked cars, all the usual dreariness that says “Chicago alley.”
No longer. Now, the stretch that’s bordered on one side by a CTA Red Line L viaduct is a full-blown artistic showcase, the scene of more than 100 murals by over 30 artists.