Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, annetteboardman, FarWestGirl, Besame,and jck,. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, JeremyBloom, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos since 2007, 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.
The Guardian
Ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast elected Chile’s next president
The ultra-conservative former congressman José Antonio Kast has been elected as Chile’s next president.
With more than 99% of polling stations counted, Kast took 58.16% of the vote, against 41.84% for the leftist Jeannette Jara, a former labour minister under the current president, Gabriel Boric.
The son of a Nazi party member, an admirer of the dictator Augusto Pinochet and a staunch Catholic known for opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Kast built his campaign on a promise to expel tens of thousands of undocumented migrants.
“Here, no individual won, no party won – Chile won, and hope won. The hope of living without fear. That fear that torments families,” Kast told the thousands of supporters who waited more than two hours for his speech.
Kast repeatedly presented migrants as the reason for rising insecurity. During the campaign, he gave the roughly 330,000 undocumented migrants – most of them Venezuelan – an ultimatum to leave before the next president takes office on 11 March or be expelled “with only the clothes on their backs”.
ExtraTV
Rob Reiner & Wife of 36 Years Michele Confirmed Dead — Found with Knife Wounds
TMZ has confirmed that Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife of 36 years Michele Singer Reiner were found dead Sunday.
Reiner was 78, and his wife was 68.
The New York Post reports police were called to the home Sunday afternoon, and that detectives from the LAPD's robbery-homicide division were on hand.
The outlet confirmed the two were found dead with stab wounds in their Brentwood, California, home after police were summoned Sunday afternoon.
The home, covered in holiday decorations, was immediately sealed off by investigators.
Further info People Magazine
Rob Reiner and His Wife Michele Were Killed by Their Son
- Multiple sources tell PEOPLE that the killer was the couple's son, Nick Reiner
- Nick Reiner previously spoke publicly about his long battle with drug addiction and periods of homelessness
The Guardian
Venezuela oil exports reportedly fall sharply after US seizure of tanker
Venezuelan oil exports have reportedly fallen sharply since the US seized a tanker this week and imposed fresh sanctions on shipping companies and vessels doing business with Caracas, according to shipping data, documents and maritime sources.
The US seizure of the Skipper tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday was the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since sanctions were imposed in 2019 and marked a sharp escalation in rising tensions between the Trump administration and the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Since the seizure, only tankers chartered by US oil company Chevron have sailed into international waters carrying Venezuelan crude, the data reviewed by the Reuters news agency showed. Chevron has US government authorisation to operate through joint ventures in the country and export its oil to the US.NPR
AP News
Attacker who killed US troops in Syria was a recent recruit to security forces, official says
BEIRUT (AP) — A man who carried out an attack in Syria that killed three U.S. citizenshad joined Syria’s internal security forces as a base security guard two months earlier and was recently reassigned amid suspicions that he might be affiliated with the Islamic State group, a Syrian official told The Associated Press Sunday.
The attack Saturday in the Syrian desert near the historic city of Palmyra killed two U.S. service members and one American civilian and wounded three others. It also wounded three members of the Syrian security forces who clashed with the gunman, interior ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba said.
Al-Baba said that Syria’s new authorities had faced shortages in security personnel and had to recruit rapidly after the unexpected success of a rebel offensive last year that intended to capture the northern city of Aleppo but ended up overthrowing the government of former President Bashar Assad.
AP News
Morocco aims to boost legal cannabis farming and tap a global boom
BAB BERRED, Morocco (AP) — Since he started growing cannabis at 14, Mohamed Makhlouf has lived in the shadows, losing sleep while bracing for a knock on his door from authorities that could mean prison or his entire harvest confiscated.
But after decades of operating in secret, Makhlouf finally has gained peace of mind as Morocco expands legal cultivation and works to integrate veteran growers like him into the formal economy.
On his farmland deep in the Rif Mountains, stalks of a government-approved cannabis strain rise from the earth in dense clusters. He notices when police pass on a nearby road. But where the crop’s aroma once meant danger, today there is no cause for concern. They know he sells to a local cooperative.
“Legalization is freedom,” Makhlouf said. “If you want your work to be clean, you work with the companies and within the law.”
Abdelsalam Amraji, another cannabis farmer who joined the legal industry, said the crop is crucial to keeping the community afloat.
“Local farmers have tried cultivating wheat, nuts, apples, and other crops, but none have yielded viable results,” he said.
AP News
Authorities say they will release person of interest detained in Brown University shooting
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Officials in Providence say they will release a person of interest detained following a Brown University shooting that killed two students and injured nine.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and other officials made the disclosure at a hastily convened news conference on Sunday night, more than 12 hours after revealing that they had detained a person in connection with the attack.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A person of interest was in custody Sunday after a shooting during final exams at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, though key questions remained unanswered more than 24 hours after the attack.
The attack Saturday afternoon set off hours of chaos across the Ivy League campus and surrounding Providence neighborhoods as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter and urged students and staff to shelter in place. The lockdown, which stretched into the night, was lifted early Sunday, but authorities had not yet released information about a potential motive.
Reuters
How the US freight rail industry got dirtier than coal power plants
Dec. 14 (Reuters) - BNSF Railway, one of the crown jewels of Warren Buffett’s sprawling Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, calls itself an environmental leader in the U.S. rail industry with the cleanest locomotive fleet in North America.
“When you see our orange locomotives’ and freight cars’ steel wheels moving on steel rails, think green,” BNSF says in its latest sustainability overview.
.But the company is the largest player in an industry that has a pollution problem: U.S. freight railroads are a major source of pollution, chuffing out more nitrogen oxide, the primary component of smog, than all the nation’s coal-fired power plants combined, according to a Reuters calculation using government data.
U.S. railroads together produced about 485,000 tons of nitrogen oxide in 2024, compared to 452,000 tons emitted by U.S. coal-fired power plants, according to a Reuters calculation of reported annual fuel consumption multiplied by the EPA’s 2023 weighted-average emission rates.
Al Jazeera
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has indicated that Kyiv is prepared to drop its long-held ambition of joining NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees, as he held meetings with US envoys and European allies in Berlin.
The talks on Sunday came amid pressure from US President Donald Trump to reach a settlement. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner arrived in the German capital city of Berlin on Sunday for discussions involving Ukrainian and European representatives.
Ahead of the talks, Zelenskyy described the proposal on Sunday as a concession by Kyiv, after years of pressing for NATO membership as the strongest deterrent against future Russian attacks. He said the United States, European partners and other allies could instead provide legally binding security guarantees.
“From the very beginning, Ukraine’s desire was to join NATO; these are real security guarantees. Some partners from the US and Europe did not support this direction,” Zelenskyy said in response to questions from reporters in a WhatsApp chat.
Washington Post
Why floods threaten one of the driest places in the world
SAMAD AL-SHAN, Oman — On their final morning together in April of last year, two elderly sheikhs in a white Mercedes drove through a palm-tree-lined ravine to pay their respects at a funeral. Floods in this part of Oman, while rare, are not unheard of. Elders remembered that villagers used to fire guns to alert those downstream that water was coming. But as sheikhs Saif and Naser al-Mawaly drove through the date palm groves that morning, they had little warning beyond the steadily darkening sky that more than a year’s worth of rain would soon fall on their village.
In one of the most arid places on the planet, extreme rainfall is becoming a recurrent source of catastrophe. A dramatic atmospheric shift is moving more moisture onto the shores of the northern coast of Oman, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data. Here, the strongest plumes in the sky are surging at rates more than 1.5 times the global average.
