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 JeremyBloom. 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. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
I know I very seldom include US stories, but I wanted to start tonight, and highlight, the sad end of one of my favourite stories of the past year and more. This breaking news from the New York Times:
Let loose by an act of vandalism, the Eurasian eagle-owl died after apparently striking an Upper West Side building, according to the zoo.
Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl whose escape from the Central Park Zoo and subsequent life on the loose in Manhattan captured the public’s attention, died Friday night after apparently striking a building on the Upper West Side, officials said.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoo, said in a statement that Flaco had been found on the ground after hitting a building on West 89th Street.
Another disappointing animal story, this from USA Today:
Guinness has spent the last month investigating Bobi, a supposedly 31-year-old Rafeiro do Alentejo from Portugal. They decided there's not enough evidence to prove his age.
The world’s oldest dog has officially been stripped of his
Guinness Record title, the authority for all things world-record-breaking said Thursday.
Guinness has spent the last month investigating Bobi, a supposedly 31-year-old Rafeiro do Alentejo from Portugal, in response to a “number of veterinarians expressing concern and skepticism over the dog’s age,” according to previous AP reporting.
Something a bit cheerier from the undersea world, via IFLScience:
Off the Pacific coast of Chile, another world exists.
More than 100 new species have been discovered on an underwater mountain range off the coast of Chile. Among the never-before-seen critters seen on the expedition are corals, glass sponges, sea urchins, amphipods, lobsters, plus a gaggle of peculiar fish and squid that are already known to science (but no less strange).
More sea stories, and highlights of world news, beneath the fold.
From CNN:
A cargo ship that was struck by a Houthi ballistic missile on Monday has created an 18-mile long oil slick in the Red Sea as it continues to take on water, two US officials said Friday.
The M/V Rubymar — a Belize-flagged, UK-registered, Lebanese-owned vessel — was carrying 41,000 tons of fertilizer when it was struck on Monday by one of two ballistic missiles fired from Houthi territory in Yemen.
From the BBC:
By Chloe Parkman & Chris Ellis
A 500kg (1,102lb) German World War Two bomb that forced the evacuation of thousands of people in Plymouth has been detonated at sea.
The unexploded device was found in a garden on St Michael Avenue on Tuesday, sparking four days of disruption.
From ABC News:
Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel were last seen in Grenada, family member said.
An American couple has gone missing in the Caribbean after three escaped prisoners allegedly used their yacht to island hop before getting recaptured by authorities, according to investigators.
Ralph Hendry and his wife Kathy Brandel disappeared from their yacht, Simplicity, which was docked in the waters of the southern Caribbean nation of Grenada, Hendry's sister, Suellen Desmarais, told ABC News.
From CBS News:
Colombia's government on Friday announced an expedition to remove items of "incalculable value" from the wreck of the legendary San Jose galleon, which sank in 1708 while laden with gold, silver and emeralds estimated to be worth billions of dollars. The 316-year-old wreck, often called the "holy grail" of shipwrecks, has been controversial, because it is both an archaeological and economic treasure.
Culture Minister Juan David Correa told AFP that more than eight years after the discovery of the wreck off Colombia's coast, an underwater robot would be sent to recover some of its bounty.
The rest of the news, or some of it anyway!
We begin with this from CNN:
An Australian police officer is facing two murder charges after allegedly killing his former boyfriend and his new partner and disposing of their bodies, which are yet to be found.
New South Wales police officer Beaumont Lamarre-Condon, 28, appeared in court on Friday afternoon charged with the murders of Jesse Baird, 26, and Luke Davies, 29.
From NBC News:
Almost two-thirds of the country’s young doctors are on strike against a government plan to admit more students to medical schools, forcing hospitals to turn away patients.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea raised its health alert to the highest level on Friday after a mass walkout by trainee doctors this week, while the prime minister said public hospitals would extend working hours to respond to growing strains on the medical system.
Almost two-thirds of the country’s young doctors have walked off the job to protest a government plan to admit more students to medical schools, forcing hospitals to turn away patients and cancel procedures, and raising fears about further disruption to the medical system should the dispute drag on.
From Deutsche Welle:
New Delhi has confirmed that some of India's citizens have signed up for "support jobs" with the Russian army. The Indian government says it is working with Moscow to secure their discharge.
The Indian Foreign Ministry said Friday that some of the country's citizens have signed up for jobs helping Russia in its war against Ukraine.
The ministry has not confirmed if any of those who signed up had taken combat roles.
From the Kyiv Post:
The Moldovan pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria, which lies across Ukraine’s southwestern border, may announce a renewed call for annexation by the Kremlin next week, ISW analysts warn.
According to a warning from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the pro-Kremlin breakaway Transnistria region of eastern Moldova may ask next week to be annexed to Russia as part of Putin’s Russky Myr, or Russian World, plan.
The new warning by the ISW says: “The pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria may call for or organize a referendum on Transnistria’s annexation to Russia at a recently announced Transnistrian Congress of Deputies planned for Feb. 28.”
From The Atlantic:
Photographs of how two years of war transformed a society
Jędrzej Nowicki, Introduction by Anne Applebaum
The Kremlin planned to take Kyiv in three days, the rest of Ukraine in six weeks. As Russian troops poured across the border on February 24, 2022, one Russian columnist declared early victory. “Ukraine,” he wrote, “will no longer exist.” Instead, Kyiv was not taken, the column was retracted, and, two years later, Ukraine still exists. The 24 months of fighting have nevertheless exacted an extraordinary toll on Ukrainians, creating a physical and psychological shock that will last for generations. Ordinary landscapes have become extraordinary. Cities have been pockmarked by war damage, villages reduced to rubble, wide areas of the countryside depopulated. Ordinary life has changed too. Ukrainians have reorganized their lives, fled their homes, learned to live with deep insecurity, and been forced to make extraordinary choices. Words that people took for granted in the past, or never thought much about—bravery, cowardice, patriotism—have acquired new significance. Look at these photographs with an eye to that history: They are an attempt to capture in images a transformation that sometimes defies description.
From Reuters:
Germany on Friday joined the small group of countries and jurisdictions that have legalised cannabis when the Bundestag passed a law allowing individuals and voluntary associations to grow and hold limited quantities of the drug.
The law passed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's ruling three-party coalition legalises cultivating up to three plants for private consumption and owning up to 25 grams of cannabis.
From the NY Times:
The blaze spread quickly in a pair of buildings in Valencia, Spain’s third largest city.
A day after a fire roared through a high-rise apartment complex in the Spanish city of Valencia, killing at least nine people, police investigators were trying to determine why the flames had engulfed the two buildings in less than an hour.
Early suspicion fell on construction materials, but it was hard to tell, since the two structures remained so hot that firefighters could not even enter the buildings until around noon on Friday — hours after rushing to the scene the previous evening.
From the BBC:
By Andre Rhoden-Paul & Dominic Casciani, home and legal correspondent
Shamima Begum has lost an appeal against a decision to revoke her UK citizenship.
The Court of Appeal ruling means the 24-year-old must remain in Syria. The government stripped her citizenship on national security grounds in 2019.
Ms Begum left London nine years ago aged 15 to travel to Syria and join Islamic State group, or IS.
From The Guardian:
When MPs are intimidated and precedent binned, let’s not pretend there’s any justification – whichever side it comes from
For reasons I won’t trouble you with, I missed the events of Wednesday afternoon and evening in the House of Commons. Normally, that would be a cause for anxiety in a person as committed to service journalism/category 5 drama as myself. Like many in the immediate wake of the political upheavals of 2016, I found myself sinking into the dopamine-assisted rhythms of the new normal, where, on both sides of the Atlantic, you sometimes felt you’d missed an entire news cycle if you left a screen to make a cup of tea.
In 2022, I did a book tour that involved nightly stage events discussing the political turmoil of the past few years/minutes. Because this coincided with the prime ministership of one Liz Truss, there came a point every evening where I worried my information may not be entirely au courant, and had to ask the audience (who had their phones) whether or not she was still prime minister. And, as you’ll recall, one day she wasn’t.
From the Middle East Eye:
Abu Dhabi will pay Cairo for Ras el-Hekma within two months, with the funds earmarked to alleviate Egypt's economic crisis
Egypt has agreed to a $35bn deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop the town of Ras el-Hekma town on its northwestern coast, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on Friday after weeks of speculations.
Madbouly said at a news conference, which was attended by Egyptian and Emirati officials, that Egypt will receive an advance amount of $15bn in the coming week, and another $20bn within two months.
And from Fox News (via Yahoo!):
Four warring Mexican drug cartels indiscriminately kill to assert dominance over an 80-mile stretch of resorts along the Caribbean coast to tap into the country's $30 billion tourism revenue, private investigator Jay Armes III told Fox News Digital.
In the process, Americans — and visitors from around the world — have become collateral damage, seen gruesome violence or "just disappear, wiped off the face of earth," Armes said.