Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. 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.
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.
I know there is a lot of news about Ukraine. I had hoped to avoid the war and give people a break. But it really is leading the news and I don’t want to give any impression that I am avoiding the top story in the news. So we start with that.
From Newsweek:
Video footage captured the terror of a Sky News reporter and his photographer as they were fired upon and struck by Russian bullets near Kyiv.
Stuart Ramsay, correspondent with the British television network, on Friday published his account along with video footage of the chilling incident. Ramsay said he and his crew were "lucky" after he and camera operator Richie Mockler were not seriously injured. But the incident signals that the conflict is becoming potentially more lethal as civilians and now journalists are in harm's way.
From the New York Times:
As Russian forces begin to encircle the Ukrainian capital, tens of thousands are clambering for a way out that may soon be closed off.
KYIV, Ukraine — The crowds of exhausted, frightened women and children at Kyiv’s central train station on Friday suddenly surged in a near-stampede to a station platform where a train heading to safety in western Ukraine was rumored to be arriving soon.
From NPR:
It's a fact of modern life that some wars get more attention than others. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine has captured the public's attention in the West in a way that other recent wars — like those in Yemen or Ethiopia — simply haven't.
The reason is obvious, says Christopher Blattman, an economist at the University of Chicago and the author of Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace. This is more than a regional conflict. It's a potential global conflagration. Superpowers are taking sides. There are fears that it could lead to nuclear escalation.
From Reuters:
PARIS, March 4 (Reuters) - The European Union wants Ukraine to become a member state "as soon as possible", Commissioner Maros Sefcovic told journalists on Friday after a ministers' meeting.
"It's time for signaling that the Ukrainian people is one of the European peoples and we want them in as soon as possible", he said, but added that at the moment, the bloc needed to focus on short-term measures linked to the war.
From CNN Business:
New York (CNN Business)Russian President Vladimir Putin's creeping authoritarianism got a lot more overt on Friday when he signed a censorship bill into law making it impossible for news organizations to accurately report the news in or from Russia.
From the LA Times:
IRPIN, Ukraine —
The last minutes before the train pulled out were chaos: A mass of people pushed toward the carriage doors as uniformed men carrying machine guns screamed at slow-moving babushkas, teary-eyed girls and the many, many children straggling onto the platform.
No men were allowed. One managed to slip past the guards with his dog in tow, but a crush of soldiers pounced on him. They chased him, raised their rifles at his dog and shoved him onto the tracks. A soldier grabbed the phone of a bystander filming the fracas, smashed it on the ground, then stomped on it twice.
There was other news, not necessarily any cheerful news, though:
From the Associated Press:
By KATHY GANNON and RIAZ KHAN
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The Islamic State says a lone Afghan suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people.
The Islamic State affiliate in the region known as Islamic State in Khorasan province and headquartered in Afghanistan claimed Friday’s devastating attack in a statement translated by the SITE Intelligence group.
From CNN:
By Yoonjung Seo, Junko Ogura and Jessie Yeung, CNN
(CNN) North Korea fired what is presumed to be a single ballistic missile into waters off the east of the Korean Peninsula on Saturday, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country's ninth such test of the year.
"The South Korean military is maintaining a readiness posture by monitoring related movements in preparation for additional launches," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
And sort of about the war, but more cheery, this from CNN:
(CNN) It makes sense that Hollywood has rallied around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
After all, he's one of their own.
Before he entered politics, Zelensky was a comedian, actor and writer, starring in romantic comedies and as a high school teacher who becomes president in the Ukrainian political satire series, "Servant of the People."
From the BBC:
By Georgina Rannard
A discarded part of a rocket should have crashed into the Moon's far side by now, say scientists who were expecting the impact at 12:25 GMT.
The three-tonne rocket part had been tracked for a number of years, but its origin was contested.
From The Guardian:
The cheese, made by Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus, comes from a small dairy that works with just 12 farmers
The cheese from Bern, Switzerland, made its maker, Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus, a three-time winner. Spycher also won in 2020 and 2008. The cheese, called Gourmino Le Gruyère AOP, earned a score of 98.423 out of 100.
From the Guardian:
Queensland and NSW bear the brunt of catastrophic weather conditions that have claimed 16 lives
When Jenni Metcalfe returned to her Brisbane home to survey the damage as the nearby river peaked, water had already risen a metre up the back wall. There was nothing she could do. “I sat in the gutter and watched it and cried,” she said.
The east coast of Australia has been battered by more than a week of torrential rain, as communities begin to survey the wreckage of fatal flash flooding that has left townships looking like war zones.
And also from The Guardian:
A new trailer reveals that Secrets of Dumbledore, the third Harry Potter prequel, is heading back to the wizarding school once again
They say never go back. But then “they” never had to cope with derisive reviews, tumbling box office receipts and the highly public fall from grace of an A-list star. In the ranks of movies based on the works of JK Rowling, Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald, released in 2018, was the Wizarding World equivalent of that time Neville Longbottom accidentally transplanted his own ears on to a cactus; an episode so muddled and painful that the average Hogwarts student would need a magic spell just to understand what the hell was supposed to be going on and why any of us should care.
Last story, from the BBC:
Dunwich: The British town lost to the sea
By Lizzie Enfield
The thriving port town of Dunwich was lost to storms in the 13th Century. But scientists recently have discovered that it wasn't lost at all – it's simply underwater.
Midway between the town of Aldeburgh and the seaside resort of Southwold, two popular spots on Britain's Suffolk coast, lies the quiet rural village of Dunwich. Around 200 people live in this one-road settlement with its cosy pub/B&B, local museum, long gravel beach and monastery ruins.
You wouldn't know it now, but in the Middle Ages the village was a thriving port the size of the City of London's square mile, built on fishing, trade and religious patronage. Greyfriars Monastery was established by Franciscan monks in the 1250s on lower-lying ground closer to the sea.