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.
Images of the day from The Guardian and, from the same source, wildlife photos of the week.
From the South China Morning Post:
Company boss says cats improve morale and team bonding, force staff to take necessary breaks
While having a cat in the office is no longer a novelty, hosting nearly a dozen certainly is.
After adopting its first cat, Futaba, from a sushi restaurant in 2004, Qnote, a Japanese tech company, simply could not resist “hiring” more felines.
Another Japan story, this one from the Asahi Shimbun:
A capsule hotel in Tokyo is collecting and analyzing heart rates, breathing frequencies and other data of guests to improve the quality of sleep.
Information technology provider NTT Data Japan Corp. opened the Sleep Lab hotel on Aug. 9 in front of Shinagawa Station in the capital.
One more Japan story, this one from the AP:
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
TOKYO (AP) — In a big milestone for Japan’s royal family, Prince Hisahito turned 18 on Friday, becoming the first male royal family member to reach adulthood in almost four decades. It is a significant development for a family that has ruled for more than a millennium but faces the same existential problems as the rest of the nation — a fast-aging, shrinking population.
Hisahito, who is set to become the emperor one day, is the nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito. His father, Crown Prince Akishino, was the last male to reach adulthood in the family, in 1985.
From Deutsche Welle (DW), link is to a video:
Claudio Sieber in Taipei
13 hours ago
The practice of burning items as a sacrifice honouring the dead dates back thousands of years. Now 3D design and other technologies are making it even easier to "sacrifice" a deceased person's car, home or furniture.
From The Guardian:
‘Talking dictionaries’ among the tools used by researchers to document languages and record Indigenous environmental knowledge
Joe Natuman watches for falling leaves and new shoots on trees as a sign it’s time to garden. Then, when a southern wind begins to blow in his small village in Vanuatu’s Tafea province, he is the first to plant yams. Soon, others will follow his lead.
Like his forefathers, Natuman is a tupunus, meaning he was born into a lineage that is trained to develop an understanding of how natural forces impact agriculture and wellbeing. As a tupunus, Natuman is respected for his knowledge and ability to identify and use hundreds of plant species and special inherited stones to practise “weather magic”. He also senses winds and uses weather to help his community.
Another video, from DW:
Andrea Kasiske
14 hours ago
A Greek innovation ensures greater inclusion for beachgoers with limited mobility. Seatrac is a track mechanism that enables them to reach the sea without assistance.
More of the serious news below the fold.
From Deutsche Welle:
After shattering records in 2023, the globe is well on its way to make 2024 the hottest year ever seen, scientists at the EU climate agency warn.
The
northern summer of 2024 saw the highest global temperatures
ever recorded, beating last year's record and making 2024 likely to be Earth's hottest year yet, according to EU's climate monitor Copernicus.
The global average temperature between June and August was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit). That's 0.69 degrees Celsius above the 1991 to 2020 average, Copernicus said in a report.
From US News and World Report:
PORT MORESBY (Reuters) -Pope Francis on Saturday called for better treatment of workers in Papua New Guinea, a nation of some 600 islands in the Southwestern Pacific that has become a major target of international companies for its gas, gold and other reserves.
In a speech to political authorities in the country, which is home to hundreds of tribal groups and more than 800 spoken languages, the 87-year-old Catholic pontiff also made a heartfelt appeal for an end to a spate of ethnic violence that has killed dozens in recent months.
From NPR:
The Chinese government plans to mostly end its international adoption program — a devastating blow for hundreds of families from the U.S. and around the world who had been hoping to adopt from the country.
China's Foreign Ministry formally announced the decision Thursday, adding the the only exception will be for families who are adopting the children or stepchildren of blood relatives in China.
From DW:
The massive facility using artificial snow and cooling machines is modeled like a glacier and opened fully to customers, after lengthy delays, on Friday. China's northern natural pistes are shrinking amid climate change.
Shanghai opened the world's largest indoor ski resort on Friday amid searing temperatures outside as China reported its hottest August in 60 years.
Temperatures were already at 30 degrees Celsius (roughly 86 Fahrenheit) by 9 a.m. during Friday's outdoor opening ceremony in a mock Alpine square, but were closer to freezing point inside the building.
From the South China Morning Post:
Top monks and religious experts gather for seminar aimed at making Tibetan Buddhism ‘compatible with socialist society’
Senior Buddhist figures in China have emphasised the importance of government approval in the recognition of reincarnated Tibetan religious leaders, at a meeting this week less than a year before the
Dalai Lama is expected to announce his succession plan.
More than 50 Tibetan Buddhist
monks and religious experts attended a seminar in Lanzhou, Gansu province, on Tuesday about policies and regulations for the “reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism”, according to Tibet.cn, an official Beijing-based website.
From Al Jazeera:
What happens when vigilantes, emboldened by the BJP, shoot a Hindu teenager dead after a 40km chase, ‘mistaking’ him for a Muslim?
Nadim Asrar
At about 1am on August 24, Aryan Mishra, a 19-year-old 12th-grade student received a phone call.
Two of his friends, both sons of Mishra’s landlord, wanted him to join them for a late-night snack – noodles, according to reports.
From DW:
The Lithuania-bound flight was forced to land in Minsk after controllers claimed a bomb was on the plane. Upon landing, Belarusian authorities arrested opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich, who was a passenger on board.
From the Washington Post:
Hvaldimir the beluga won hearts in Norway’s coastal communities after showing up wearing a harness that read “Equipment St. Petersburg.”
Hvaldimir, suspected of being a Russian spy whale, spent five years schmoozing Norway’s coastal communities, charming the locals with his toothy grin and seemingly insatiable appetite for attention. But two animal activist groups this week said that someone fatally shot him and left his bullet-riddled body floating in coastal waters.
From the Washington Post:
Recent elections in Germany show the limits of the nation’s statist efforts to stamp out far-right extremism and ultranationalism.
Column by Ishaan Tharoor
The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is not in power in any German state or federal assembly. Germany’s decades-old, systemic wariness of any political faction that carries echoes of its hideous fascist past has seen the AfD repeatedly kept out of ruling coalitions — sidelined by more establishment parties that cast themselves as defenders of the country’s post-World War II democracy.
From DW:
An 18-year-old Austrian national fired a total of nine gunshots at the Israeli consulate, a Nazi-era museum and at armed officers before being shot by police in Munich on Thursday, officials confirmed.
Speaking to reporters in the southern German city on Friday, police chief Christian Huber said prosecutors were investigating a "terrorist attack related to the consulate of the State of Israel."
Also from DW:
After a forest fire broke out in the Harz Mountains of central Germany, hundreds of people were bussed to safety from the country's highest mountain in the massif, the Brocken.
About 500 people have been evacuated from a mountain in central Germany because of a forest fire, a spokesman for the Harz region said Friday.
Tourists, hikers and athletes are being bussed down from the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, as the blaze continued to spread despite efforts to contain it.
From Politico Europe:
Gennaro Sangiuliano will be replaced by Alessandro Giuli.
Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano resigned from his post on Friday after admitting to an affair with someone he tried to hire.
“After having thought a lot, in painful days filled with hatred against me from parts of a certain political media system, I have decided to resign in irrevocable terms as minister of culture,” he wrote in a letter sent to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in which he also thanked her for defending him. Meloni accepted his resignation.
From CNN:
Rome is considering limiting access to the Trevi Fountain, one of its busiest monuments, ahead of an expected bumper year for tourism in the Eternal City, city council officials say.
The Italian capital is preparing to host the 2025 Jubilee, a year-long Roman Catholic event expected to attract 32 million tourists and pilgrims.
From Al Jazeera:
Judge says that like the other outbreaks of violence in England in early August, the case was ‘suffused with racism.’
A British man who helped fuel a fire outside a hotel housing more than 200 asylum seekers has been sentenced to nine years in prison, the longest punishment handed down so far to those involved in last month’s wave of far-right riots in the United Kingdom.
At the sentencing at Sheffield Crown Court in northern England on Friday, painter and decorator Thomas Birley pleaded guilty to the charge of arson with the intent to endanger life at the Holiday Inn Express hotel in nearby Rotherham.
From The Guardian:
As sources of inspiration, havens from noise or social support service, council-run libraries have had a positive impact on lives all over the UK
“There’s a random element to life, which I think is important to preserve. Browsing through books is not a rational activity; it’s not like using a computer search to find what you want. Serendipity is another word that comes to mind.”
For Jamie Page, 66, libraries can provide the kind of chance encounter that you can’t find in bookshops that mainly tout new titles. In 1980, he was an unemployed graduate wondering what sort of career he might have. One day, at Brompton library in Kensington, he stumbled across a book on bacteria. “I found it fascinating, he says. “It started my career and I’ve been working in science ever since.”
From The Guardian:
Exclusive: Campaigners accuse ministers of making misleading promises about protecting green belt sites
Huge expanses of green belt land in England could be built on to meet government housing targets, it has emerged, with guidelines saying that councils lacking enough brownfield sites will be expected to offer untouched plots for construction.
The proposals, set out in consultation documents for the revised planning rules across England, prompted condemnation from campaigners, who accused ministers of making misleading promises about protecting the green belt.
From the New York Times:
Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry wanted to show me another side of Cork.
Mr. O’Connor and Ms. Sherry moved to Cork, a city in the south of Ireland, in 2018 after a two-year stint in the Netherlands. They were immediately struck by the number of vacant and derelict properties they found. (In Amsterdam, Mr. O’Connor noted, if a building is empty for more than 12 months, the council can order the owner to take a tenant.) They started a project photographing empty properties and posting them online. Altogether, they said, they found some 700 empty properties within about a mile of downtown.
From The Guardian:
A pioneering mission into a mysterious and violent world may reveal ‘speed bumps’ on the way to global coastal inundation
There are stadium-sized blocks of ice crashing from the soaring face of the Kangerlussuup glacier in western Greenland. Fierce underwater currents of meltwater are shooting out from its base and visibility below the surface is virtually zero thanks to a torrent of suspended mud and sand. It’s little wonder scientists have never explored this maelstrom.
Yet today, they are sending in a multimillion-dollar remotely operated submarine, potentially to its death. As the scientists onboard the Celtic Explorer research ship repeatedly say: “It’s a high risk, high reward mission.”
A few from Africa, beginning with DW:
A staggering 60% of African youth are considering leaving their home countries due to corruption, something many of them believe leads to a downward spiral that results in a lack of services and jobs and more corruption.
"Corruption creates a lot of uncertainity in the country," according to Someleze Sigudu, a 28-year-old South African, who, like many of his peers, has become frustrated by the uptick of corruption in the country and a lack of accountability by political leaders.
This is also seen in the recently released 2024 African Youth Survey where over 5,600 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 voiced their concerns over corruption in their countries.
From Al Jazeera:
How illegal gold mining is leaving a trail of destruction and threatening lives in the mineral-rich city of Kwekwe.
By Calvin Manika
Kwekwe, Zimbabwe – Dorothy Moyo says a prayer every time she walks, runs or drives around her neighbourhood in central Zimbabwe – afraid that the earth will give away from beneath her feet, dragging her underground.
The 36-year-old’s fear is not uncommon among the hundreds of families living in the Globe and Phoenix community, a mining compound in Kwekwe, more than 200km (125 miles) from the capital Harare.
Another from Al Jazeera:
Authorities aim to start vaccinations in October but face logistical challenges as doses need to be kept cold.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has received its first batch of mpox vaccines, which health authorities hope will help curb an outbreak that has prompted the United Nations to declare a global public health emergency.
The Central African country of about 100 million people is at the epicentre of an mpox outbreak that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency last month.
From DW:
A UN-mandated fact-finding mission has called for an international peacekeeping force to be dispatched to Sudan after documenting war crimes committed by both sides in the country's civil war.
A United Nations backed human rights mission in Sudan on Friday called for an "independent and impartial" peacekeeping force to protect civilians who it suspects have been the victims of war crimes during the country's ongoing civil war.
In a 19-page report based on 182 interviews with survivors, family members and other witnesses, the investigators accused both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of abuses including the torture, mutilation and murder of civilians.
From CNN:
Brazil’s Center for Research and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) said on Friday that a preliminary report into the August crash of a Voepass airliner showed icing detectors had been activated on the ATR aircraft.
According to a Cenipa official, the plane’s airframe icing button was activated at least three times during the flight, while cockpit recordings showed the copilot said there was “a lot of icing.”
From DW (link to a video):
Felipe Abondano in Bogota, Colombia
16 hours ago
Truck drivers in Colombia are blocking highways around the country's cities to protest higher fuel prices. The cost of diesel rose some 20% over the weekend, sparking blockades that have spread quickly. Supplies of basic products are running short.
ours ago
