These are tonight’s stories:
- Fundamental justice:’ Judge clears 2 in Malcolm X slaying
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Defense attorneys rest their cases at Arbery death trial
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Oklahoma governor grants clemency, spares Julius Jones’ life
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Brazil’s Amazon deforestation surges to worst in 15 years
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Doubts over China tennis star’s email raise safety concerns
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Belarus moves migrants and refugees away from Polish border
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US jobless claims fall to pandemic low in tight labour market
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New Asian American Muppet prompts CPAC president to call for defunding PBS
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Hubble's Grand Tour of the Outer Solar System
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Bee Expert Finds 800,000 Wild Honeybees Thriving in Ancient English Forest, Now Naturalists are Buzzing With Hope
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.
AP News
Fundamental justice:’ Judge clears 2 in Malcolm X slaying
More than half a century after the assassination of Malcolm X, two of his convicted killers were exonerated Thursday after decades of doubt about who was responsible for the civil rights icon’s death.
Manhattan judge Ellen Biben dismissed the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, after prosecutors and the men’s lawyers said a renewed investigation found new evidence that undermined the case against the men and determined that authorities withheld some of what they knew.
“The event that has brought us to court today should never have occurred,” Aziz told the court. “I am an 83-year-old man who was victimized by the criminal justice system.”
It pained Islam’s sons, Ameen Johnson and Shahid Johnson, that their parents died before seeing the conviction reversed. Still, Ameen Johnson said his father would have been ecstatic to clear his name.
Defense attorneys rest their cases at Arbery death trial
Defense attorneys rested their case in the Ahmaud Arbery trial Thursday after calling just seven witnesses, including the shooter, who testified that Arbery did not threaten him in any way before he pointed his shotgun at the 25-year-old Black man.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley scheduled closing arguments in the trial for Monday, setting up the possibility of verdicts before Thanksgiving for the three white men charged with murder in Arbery’s death.
Under cross-examination by the prosecution on his second day of testimony, Travis McMichael said that Arbery hadn’t shown a weapon or spoken to him at all before McMichael raised his shotgun. But, McMichael said, he was “under the impression” that Arbery could be a threat because he was running straight at him and he had seen Arbery trying to get into the truck of a neighbor who had joined in a pursuit of Arbery in their coastal Georgia neighborhood.
“All he’s done is run away from you,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said. “And you pulled out a shotgun and pointed it at him.”
Oklahoma governor grants clemency, spares Julius Jones’ life
Oklahoma’s governor spared the life of Julius Jones on Thursday, just hours before his scheduled execution that had drawn widespread outcry and protests over doubts about his guilt in the slaying of a businessman more than 20 years ago.
Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the 41-year-old Jones’ death sentence to life imprisonment. He had been scheduled for execution at 4 p.m.
“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’ sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Stitt said in a news release.
Brazil’s Amazon deforestation surges to worst in 15 years
The area deforested in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high after a 22% jump from the prior year, according to official data published Thursday.
The National Institute for Space Research’s Prodes monitoring system showed the Brazilian Amazon lost 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest in the 12-month reference period from Aug. 2020 to July 2021. That’s the most since 2006.
The 15-year high flies in the face of Bolsonaro government’s recent attempts to shore up its environmental credibility, having made overtures to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and moved forward its commitment to end illegal deforestation at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow this month. The space agency’s report, released Thursday, is dated Oct. 27 — before talks in Glasgow began.
The Brazilian Amazon hadn’t recorded a single year with more than 10,000 square kilometers of deforestation in over a decade before Jair Bolsonaro’s term started. in Jan. 2019. Between 2009 and 2018, the average was 6,500 square kilometers. Since then, the annual average leapt to 11,405 square kilometers, and the three-year total is an area bigger than the state of Maryland.
Doubts over China tennis star’s email raise safety concerns
A Chinese professional tennis player not seen in public since she accused a former top government official of sexual assault purportedly sent an email claiming she was safe and that the allegation was false, a message that only amplified concerns about her safety and demands for information about her well-being and whereabouts.
So far, those calls have been met by silence.
Chinese officials have said nothing publicly since the accusation about two weeks ago by Grand Slam doubles champion Peng Shuai that she was sexually assaulted by Zhang Gaoli. The first #MeToo case to reach the political realm in China has not been reported by the domestic media and online discussion of it has been highly censored.
Steve Simon, the chairman and CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association, questioned the authenticity of what Chinese state media said was an email intended for him in which Peng says she is safe and that the assault allegation is untrue. It was posted Thursday by CGTN, the international arm of Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Al Jazeera News
Belarus moves migrants and refugees away from Polish border
Belarus has moved migrants and refugees away from the main camps at the Polish border, according to Belarusian media and officials, in a change of tack that could help ease a crisis that has spiralled in recent weeks.
Thousands of refugees and migrants have tried to reach the European Union via Belarus since the summer.
European countries have accused Belarus of deliberately creating the crisis by flying in people from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to cross its borders into Poland and Lithuania. Minsk has rejected the allegations.
Belarusian state-run media reported on Thursday that many asylum seekers had moved into a heated warehouse not far from the border, emptying out a makeshift camp.
Bosnia needs urgent action to prevent secession: Analysts
Aggressive diplomatic action and the preparation of defence are urgently needed to address secession threats by Bosnia’s Serb President Milorad Dodik, analysts say.
Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, fuelled the country’s biggest political and security crisis in 26 years with his October announcement that the Republika Srpska entity will withdraw from key state institutions – including the armed forces – and set up Serb-only bodies in its place, in violation of the Dayton peace agreement.
The US-brokered Dayton accords signed in December 1995 in Paris officially ended the war in Bosnia, but they split the country into two administrative entities: the Serb-run entity Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat dominated Federation entity.
US jobless claims fall to pandemic low in tight labour market
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell close to pre-pandemic levels last week as the labour market recovery continues, though a shortage of workers remains an obstacle to faster job growth.
Thursday’s weekly unemployment claims report from the United States Department of Labor, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also showed jobless benefits rolls declining to a 20-month low in early November. The economy is regaining momentum following a lull over the summer as a wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the Delta variant battered the nation.
“Demand for labour is very strong and workers are in short supply, so layoffs are very low right now,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
NBC News
New Asian American Muppet prompts CPAC president to call for defunding PBS
Matt Schlapp, the president of the Conservative Political Action Committee, has drawn criticism from Asian Americans and others across social media this week after he called for “Sesame Street” to be defunded for introducing its first Asian American Muppet.
Schlapp, a conservative lobbyist, tweeted a news story about the coming debut of a Korean American character, Ji-Young. The Muppet has been praised for letting Asian American children see a character like themselves on screen, but Schlapp slammed the host network, PBS, which receives both government and private-sector funding.
“What race is Ernie is Bert?” Schlapp tweeted Monday. “You are insane PBS and we should stop funding you.”
NASA
Hubble's Grand Tour of the Outer Solar System
From its vantage point high above Earth’s atmosphere, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has completed this year's grand tour of the outer solar system – returning crisp images that complement current and past observations from interplanetary spacecraft. This is the realm of the giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune – extending as far as 30 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Unlike the rocky terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars that huddle close to the Sun’s warmth, these far-flung worlds are mostly composed of chilly gaseous soups of hydrogen, helium, ammonia, methane, and deep water around a packed, intensely hot, compact core.
Good News Network
Bee Expert Finds 800,000 Wild Honeybees Thriving in Ancient English Forest, Now Naturalists are Buzzing With Hope
800,000 native honeybees, which some thought to be extinct, were found in an ancient oak woodland at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. Experts said they could be the last remaining descendants of the British isle’s original forest honeybee populations.
If true, this would represent one heck of a second chance for the subspecies—because they are thriving.
The insects were found living in the hollow of some oak trees—typical for this forest bee species. The hollow was tiny, and quite high in elevation. Curiously, there had been no record of any bees living in Blenheim before, and immediate thoughts turned to escaped swarms of domesticated bees from nearby hives.
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