Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck and Rise above the swamp. . Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
Since 2007 the OND has been 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.
Some stories for tonight:
- Trump social media firm says it has raised $1bn
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India Nagaland: Security forces kill 13 civilians amid ambush blunder
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Former GOP Sen. David Perdue will challenge Brian Kemp in Georgia governor primary
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Thomas Gavin might be America's most prolific artifact thief — but the jig is up
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At least 13 people are dead after volcano erupts on the Indonesian island of Java
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Far-right French presidential hopeful promises 'reconquest' at rally
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WHO says Omicron in 38 countries, no deaths reported
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West Africa: Explosions, attacks in Mali, Niger kill over 100
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Stamping Bar Codes on Cells to Solve Medical Mysteries
BBC
Trump social media firm says it has raised $1bn (Probably a lie.)
Donald Trump's new social media firm says it has entered into agreements to raise $1bn (£755m) from investors ahead of a planned stock market listing.
The Trump Media & Technology Group is working to launch a social media app called Truth Social early next year.
It comes as Mr Trump remains banned from Twitter and Facebook following the attack on the US Capitol in January.
"$1bn sends an important message to Big Tech that censorship and political discrimination must end," he said.
"As our balance sheet expands, Trump Media & Technology Group will be in a stronger position to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech."
Mr Trump announced plans to launch Truth Social earlier this year, saying it would allow conversation "without discrimination on the basis of political ideology".
BBC
India Nagaland: Security forces kill 13 civilians amid ambush blunder
Indian security forces have killed at least 13 civilians in a botched ambush near the Myanmar border, officials say.
An army patrol mistakenly opened fire on miners returning home after work, killing six. Seven more civilians and an Indian soldier died when angry locals confronted troops.
Home Minister Amit Shah said he was "anguished" and vowed to investigate.
The army has been battling separatist militants in the north-eastern state of Nagaland for years.
But it is not the first time Indian security forces have been accused of wrongly targeting innocent locals in their operations.
Soldiers from the Assam Rifles, an Indian army unit, opened fire on a truck carrying 30 or more coalmine labourers near their camp.
"The troopers had intelligence inputs about some militant movement in the area and on seeing the truck they mistook the miners to be rebels and opened fire killing six labourers," a senior police official told Reuters.
NPR
Former GOP Sen. David Perdue will challenge Brian Kemp in Georgia governor primary
Former Sen. David Perdue is set to launch a primary challenge against Gov. Brian Kemp, the latest escalation in former President Donald Trump's attack on Republicans that failed to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
The news of Perdue's expected re-entry into politics, first reported by Politico, comes less than a week after Democratic rising star Stacey Abrams announcedher own campaign for governor, seeking a potential rematch after losing to Kemp by about 55,000 votes in 2018.
A representative for Perdue could not be reached Sunday, but multiple national and local media outlets report the 71-year-old, who lost to Sen. Jon Ossoff in a January runoff that gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, plans to release a video message announcing his run Monday.
Trump has openly pushed for Perdue to run and attacked the governor often, exacerbating a fractured Republican Party that saw stunning losses in Georgia's presidential and Senate races after decades of dominance in the new battleground state.
NPR
Thomas Gavin might be America's most prolific artifact thief — but the jig is up
Thomas Gavin may be one of the most prolific artifact thieves in U.S. history.
There are no movies or books about him, and no wild police chases or Indiana Jones-like adventures. In fact, until a couple of years ago no one even knew who he was.
But Gavin had been on a tear in the '60s and '70s, hitting nearly a dozen museums on the East Coast. He mostly stole antique firearms and stashed them in his hideout — a cluttered, non-descript barn in rural Pennsylvania.
Gavin's crime spree was so under the radar, no one caught on until 2018, when he tried to unload a rare, Revolutionary-era rifle to a local antiques dealer.
It wasn't just any old gun, but one of the few surviving rifles made by master gunsmith John Christian Oerter.
The copy Kinzle thought he bought for $4,000 was actually valued at $175,000. In court last week, Gavin pleaded guilty to one count of disposal of an object of cultural heritage stolen from a museum. The judge took Gavin's age and declining health into consideration and, incredibly, sentenced Gavin to one day in prison for decades of theft.
NPR
At least 13 people are dead after volcano erupts on the Indonesian island of Java
LUMAJANG, Indonesia — The death toll following the eruption of the highest volcano on Indonesia's most densely populated island of Java has risen to 13, with seven people still missing, officials said Sunday as smoldering debris and thick mud hampered search efforts.
Mount Semeru in Lumajang district in East Java province spewed thick columns of ash more than 12,000 meters (40,000 feet) into the sky, and searing gas and lava flowed down its slopes after a sudden eruption Saturday triggered by heavy rains. Several villages were blanketed with falling ash.
A thunderstorm and days of rain, which eroded and finally collapsed the lava dome atop the 3,676-meter (12,060-foot) Semeru, triggered the eruption, said Eko Budi Lelono, who heads the geological survey center.
He said flows of searing gas and lava traveled up to 800 meters (2,624 feet) to a nearby river at least twice on Saturday. People were advised to stay 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the crater's mouth, the agency said.
Reuters
Far-right French presidential hopeful promises 'reconquest' at rally
VILLEPINTE, France, Dec 5 (Reuters) - French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour promised on Sunday a "reconquest" against decades of decline at his first political rally, as scuffles with anti-racism protesters broke out on its fringes.
"If I win this election, it won't be another rotation of power but a reconquest of the greatest country in the world," Zemmour said in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech.
He said he was calling his party "Reconquest", a name that evokes the historic period known as the Reconquista, when Christian forces drove Muslim rulers from the Iberian peninsula.
With echoes of Donald Trump's first campaign for U.S. president, Zemmour promised to slash immigration and taxes to cheers from flag-waving supporters that organisers put at 15,000. A Reuters count put their number at around 10,000.
Separately, as Zemmour moved through the crowd towards the stage to give his speech, a man lunged and grabbed him briefly by the neck before being tackled by security and later put in custody by police.
Al Jazeera
WHO says Omicron in 38 countries, no deaths reported
The World Health Organisation said Omicron has been detected in 38 countries but there are no reported deaths so far from the new COVID-19 variant.
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier also said it is “commendable” that makers of COVID-19 vaccines are planning for the “likelihood” of needing to adjust their products to protect against the Omicron variant.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan urged people not to panic over the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant and said it was too early to say if COVID-19 vaccines would have to be modified to fight it.
Swaminathan said during an interview at the Reuters Next conference on Friday that the right response was to be prepared and cautious and not to panic in face of the new variant.
Deutsche Welle
West Africa: Explosions, attacks in Mali, Niger kill over 100
Explosions rocked a truck and a UN camp in Mali on Sunday while another attack targeted an international military base in neighboring Niger.
West African nations have struggled to contain jihadist insurgencies in the region, with some groups pledging fealty to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida or the so-called Islamic State (IS).
The attack in Niger was aimed at a base that countries in the region use to fight insurgencies. Officials said 79 attackers and 29 soldiers were killed.
An army spokesman said a large group consisting of hundreds had approached the Fianto base in the Tillaberi region on motorcycles to carry out the attack.
The Fianto base is used by the G5 Joint Force, which consists of the five Sahel countries of Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso. It was created in 2017 to establish order on their common border regions.
New York Times
Stamping Bar Codes on Cells to Solve Medical Mysteries
No one really knew why some patients with a white blood cell cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or C.L.L., relapsed after treatment and got a second cancer. Were some cancer cells just resistant?
An unexpected answer to this mystery has been found using a new technique that researchers call bar coding: The treatment does not always target the right cells.
Scientists discovered that the cancer does not always originate in the mature bone marrow cells where it is found and where textbooks say it originates. Instead, for some patients, the mother lode of the cancer can be primitive bone marrow cells, the stem cells, that give rise to all of the body’s white and red blood cells. Those cells, not affected by the chemotherapy treatment, can spawn new cancer cells, causing a relapse.
The discovery is one early fruit of the bar coding method, which is aiding the study of the origins of cancer and other diseases.