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.
There are some stories about Ukraine and Russia and about the plague. But there is more news — just scroll down if you want to escape the overwhelmingness.
From the Guardian:
‘I thought, “I’m going to show these videos to my kids and say that’s what we had to go through”,’ says Diana Totok
As Diana Totok and her sister reached through the wire fence separating Romania from Ukraine to grasp her father’s hand, it occurred to her that she might never see him again.
Ukraine’s new wartime laws barred their father, a pastor, from fleeing the country with them. Nevertheless, he promised his teenage daughters and wife, Svetlana, that they would meet again soon.
From Reuters:
LVIV, Ukraine, March 11 (Reuters) - An adviser to Ukraine's president said on Friday Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko was meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow as Russian jets carried out what Ukraine said was a false-flag attack on Belarusian villages.
Moscow did not immediately comment on a statement by Ukraine’s border service that several Belarusian border villages had been bombed by Russian warplanes to create a reason for Belarus to join Russia’s war against Ukraine.
From NPR:
PRZEMYSL, Poland — As the mayor of a small city hugging the border with Ukraine, Wojciech Bakun admits he was ill-prepared to become a front-line humanitarian worker dealing with the fastest exodus of refugees in Europe since World War II.
More than 2.5 million people have left Ukraine in the two weeks since Russia began its invasion of the country, and Poland has taken the majority of them.
From the BBC:
By Guy Delauney
People in Croatia's capital Zagreb were rudely awakened to the Ukraine conflict when a military drone crashed in the city late last night.
There was an explosion in the southwestern Jarun district shortly after 23:00 (22:00 GMT). Residents found a crater and wreckage scattered close to student accommodation.
Zagreb's mayor Tomislav Tomasevic said "it's amazing that no-one was injured".
Croatia's president said there was no sign the country had been targeted.
From the New York Times:
Answering your questions about the threat of attack.
He thought this would be easy.
President Vladimir Putin anticipated Russian tanks would roll in and overwhelm Ukraine. He claimed his troops might even be welcomed in some corners of the country.
From the AP:
Mounds of abandoned clothes and other personal items lie strewn along corridors leading out of Ukraine. The farther people carry their things, the harder it is, so they leave them behind, said Ludmila Sokol, a
gym teacher fleeing Zaporizhzhia in the south.
But their pets, they keep alongside them.
From CNBC:
KEY POINTS
- Supply-side risks arising from the war have stoked extreme volatility across global commodity markets, with oil, nickel and wheat also surging alongside natural gas in recent weeks.
- Natural gas is once again front and center after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned that Moscow could halt its exports to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
And there’s something going around these days. This from CNBC:
By Ben Turner
Cases have been reported in both Europe and the U.S.
Scientists have confirmed the existence of a new COVID-19 variant that combines mutations from both omicron and delta variants for the first time, and there are reported cases in both Europe and the U.S.
The new hybrid variant, unofficially dubbed "deltacron", was confirmed through genome sequencing performed by scientists at IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseille, France, and has been detected in several regions of France, according to a paper posted to the preprint database medRxiv on Tuesday (March 8). Cases have also been found in Denmark and The Netherlands, according to the international database GISAID. Separately, two cases have been identified in the U.S. by the California-based genetics research company Helix, according to Reuters. In addition, about 30 cases have been identified in the U.K., according to The Guardian.
From CNN:
Hong Kong (CNN)China is fighting its biggest Covid-19 outbreak since the early days of the pandemic, with discontent spreading on social media after one university cluster left students reportedly without access to bathrooms or drinking water.
The country reported 1,100 new locally-transmitted cases on Thursday -- which, though nowhere near the level seen in other nations, is considered high by China's standards. It marked the highest daily total since the virus emerged in
Wuhan in 2020, prompting alarm among local and national leaders.
But there are other things in the news. For example, check out this item from The Guardian:
From the BBC:
Jonathan Amos
While the world gaped at the extraordinary preservation of Shackleton's Endurance ship, one group of people were agog at something else in the crystal clear underwater footage.
These were polar biologists, and they were wrapped up in the different animals they could see.
There were the expected invertebrates - filter-feeders such as sea anemones and sea lilies - but some surprises, too.
The star, undoubtedly, was the squat lobster seen climbing over the wreck.
Another on the same topic, from the New York Times:
A who’s who of the new invertebrate crew steering Ernest Shackleton’s sunken ship in the Weddell Sea.
From CNN:
By Paradise Afshar, Amy Simonson and Susannah Cullinane, CNN
(CNN) Police in the US and Canada are warning drivers to take extra steps to protect their vehicles from possible gas thefts as fuel prices surge at a pace not seen in over a decade.
Sanctions against oil producer Russia over its invasion of Ukraine have pushed up fuel prices already inflated by
lowered production due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It means Americans returning to commuting and travel are facing rising costs at the pump on top of
two years of financial strain.
From the NY Post:
An online dating site that matches Chinese men with Eastern European women has seen a spike in interest in Ukrainian brides since the war began last month.
From Live Science:
By Nicoletta Lanese published about 6 hours ago
This week, news outlets reported that the head of Russia's Space Agency threatened to leave American astronaut Mark Vande Hei — the record-holder for the longest spaceflight — aboard the International Space Station (ISS) rather than allowing him to return to Earth on a Russian spacecraft. It turns out that the threat isn't true, Ars Technica reported.
Vande Hei began his mission on April 9, 2021, and is scheduled to return to Earth on March 30, 2022, meaning he will have spent 355 consecutive days in Earth orbit, according to NASA. The plan is for Vande Hei to land in Kazakhstan along with two Russian cosmonauts, Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov and Commander Anton Shkaplerov, aboard the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship, a Russian vessel.
From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — American officials are examining the ownership of a $700 million superyacht currently in a dry dock at an Italian seacoast town, and believe it could be associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to multiple people briefed on the information.
United States intelligence agencies have made no final conclusions about the ownership of the superyacht — called the Scheherazade — but American officials said they had found initial indications that it was linked to Mr. Putin. The information from the U.S. officials came after The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Italian authorities were looking into the 459-foot long vessel’s ownership and that a former crew member said it was for the use of Mr. Putin.
From the NY Times as well:
The country’s vast array of historic buildings, artworks and public squares are an integral part of Ukraine’s cultural identity. Amid the violence of war, many are being reduced to rubble.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought searing images of human tragedy to witnesses around the world: thousands of civilians killed and injured; broken families, as mothers and children leave in search of refuge while fathers and other men stay behind to defend their country; and millions of refugees having already fled to neighboring countries, after just two weeks of war.
I guess it is hard to escape the war. But we will end with something from The Guardian:
I’ve seen the menu for the Oscars afterparty and it does not look promising. Will someone please get these poor actors some carbs?
This is a perilous time for the Oscars. Last year’s ceremony – held in a train station, don’t forget – was watched by just a tiny dribble of viewers. This year, the lack of a televised Golden Globes has hobbled awards season, and anticipation is at an all-time low. The Academy’s plan to lure viewers by handing out a bunch of awards off-screen has been widely criticised by the film-making community. Simply put, things are getting desperate.
But we’ve all thrown parties without knowing whether anyone will actually turn up, and the Oscars are currently doing the most sensible thing possible: they’re focusing on the catering.