Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, jck, and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, 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.
We begin with this from Belgium, via Reuters:
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The brother of Belgium’s king joined a swelling debate about its past on Friday by saying that King Leopold II, under whose rule millions of Congolese were killed or maimed, could not have “made people suffer” because he never visited his colony.
From CNN:
London (CNN Business)The United Kingdom will delay the introduction of border checks on imports from the European Union by as much as six months in a bid to avoid piling on the pain for British business and choking off vital food supplies.
The
UK government on Friday backtracked on plans to impose full border checks on EU imports on January 1, 2021, in the hope of relieving pressure on companies
already slammed by the coronavirus and uncertainty over
terms of trade with the country's biggest export market.
From The Washington Post:
LONDON — In the predawn hours Friday, workers boarded up an iconic Winston Churchill statue outside the Palace of Westminster to protect the public art work from further vandalism. Last weekend, protesters tagged the wartime prime minister with graffiti calling him a racist.
From CNBC:
British Airways plans to auction off art worth millions as the airline looks to raise capital amid the coronavirus crisis.
The auction, first reported by U.K. newspaper The Evening Standard, will include works from Damien Hirst, Peter Doig and Bridget Riley, with one of the pieces valued at more than £1 million ($1.26 million).
From The Hill:
Prime Minister Scott Morrison apologized at a Friday news conference for saying earlier that there was “no slavery in Australia” after critics accused him of denying the country’s history of racial injustice and forced labor.
“My comments were not intended to cause offense and if I did, I deeply regret that and apologize for that,” Morrison said, adding that there were in fact “all sorts of hideous practices that have taken place.”
From the NYTimes;
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is far larger than it was when President Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea first met.
The timing was hardly coincidental when North Korea’s foreign minister declared on Friday that hopes for finding peace with South Korea and its protector, the United States, “faded away into a dark nightmare,” and that talking with President Trump had given way to focusing on a more “reliable force to cope with the long-term military threats from the U.S.”
from aL Jazeera:
Rally marks one year since crackdown on demonstrators surrounding legislature, leading to months of violent protests.
Thousands of people in Hong Kong have again taken to the streets, singing a protest anthem and chanting slogans as they marked the first anniversary of a pivotal moment in the pro-democracy protest movement.
From the BBC:
By Callistasia Wijaya and Rebecca Henschke
A video showing the body of a young man being callously thrown into the sea has sparked an international investigation, and shone a spotlight on the "slave-like" conditions allegedly suffered by Indonesian fishermen on board Chinese-owned vessels. This is the story of just two families, mourning sons and brothers who died trying to build a new life.
Sepri had never been to sea before, when he heard through a friend about the chance to work on a Chinese-owned fishing boat.
Also from Al Jazeera:
In India's worst-hit cities New Delhi and Mumbai, reports of people being turned away from hospitals continue.
A dire picture is emerging of how the world's second-most populous nation is coping with the coronavirus pandemic.
India has nearly 300,000 cases, but the number is climbing rapidly and the health system is struggling.
From the BBC:
By M Ilyas Khan
A couple in Pakistan accused of torturing their seven-year-old maid to death will be held in jail for two weeks while police arrange a polygraph.
Hospital staff in Rawalpindi alerted police at the end of May after the couple brought the injured girl, Zahra, for treatment. She died a day later.
It is illegal to employ anyone under 15 in Pakistan but it remains common.
Another from Al Jazeera:
At least four people, including prayer leader killed and many others wounded, says Afghanistan's interior ministry.
A blast in a mosque during Friday prayers in the western part of capital Kabul has killed at least four people and wounded at least eight, Afghanistan's interior ministry said.
From the BBC:
Hundreds of people have protested in cities across Lebanon for a second night over the handling of the country's economic crisis.
The Lebanese pound has fallen to record lows, having lost 70% of its value since October when protests began.
The financial crisis has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic.
From the BBC:
Video of an indigenous chief's violent arrest has shocked Canada, turning a spotlight on systemic racism in the country's police force.
The footage shows Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam being floored and repeatedly punched by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer.
The confrontation took place in Fort McMurray, Alberta, on 10 March.
From NPR:
With nearly 40,000 deaths, Brazil has registered the world's third-highest COVID-19 death toll and the second-highest confirmed caseload. Its neighbors fear the disease is spilling across Brazil's borders. Indeed, one Colombian frontier town has already turned into a coronavirus hot spot.
Located at the southern-most tip of Colombia, Leticia is an Amazon River port abutting Brazil and Peru. There are few flights and no roads connecting the town to the rest of Colombia. So, Leticia's 50,000 people get the vast majority of their food and supplies from the neighboring South American countries.
From The Guardian:
Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva fell nine storeys after being left alone by his mother’s employer, one of many richer white Brazilians employing black domestic workers
Mirtes Santana weeps when she remembers finding her son dying on the pavement outside the luxury seaside apartment block where she worked in north-eastern Brazil.
“I can’t bear it,” said the 33-year-old domestic worker. “It breaks my heart.”
And we end this evening with this from the BBC:
The leader of Tibetan Buddhism sees reasons for optimism even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. People are helping one another, he tells the BBC's Justin Rowlatt, and if seven billion people on Earth develop "a sense of oneness" they may yet unite to solve the problem of climate change.
The first time I met the Dalai Lama he tweaked my cheek.
It is pretty unusual to have your cheek tweaked by anyone, let alone by a man regarded as a living god by many of his followers.