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 Rise above the swamp. . 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.
Since 2007 the OND has been 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.
Some stories for tonight:
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Ukraine war 'catastrophic for global food’
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Ukraine conflict: Oil price soars to highest level since 2008
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Russia's war on Ukraine is dire for world hunger. But there are solutions
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Does Germany really need LNG terminals?
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Peace Corps volunteers out in world again after pandemic hiatus
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UK gets serious about cleansing London of Russian ‘dirty’ money
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Secret Documents Show It’s Not Going To Be Easy To Seize Russian Oligarchs’ Money
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Gazprom: Russia continues to deliver gas to Europe via Ukraine
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Three Florida Fires Scorch More Than 10,000 Acres and Continue to Grow
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Poutine not Putin: classic Quebec dish off the menu in France and Canada
BBC
Ukraine war 'catastrophic for global food'
The boss of one of the world's biggest fertiliser companies has said the war in Ukraine will deliver a shock to the global supply and cost of food.
Yara International, which operates in more than 60 countries, buys considerable amounts of essential raw materials from Russia.
Fertiliser prices were already high due to soaring wholesale gas prices.
Yara's boss, Svein Tore Holsether, has warned the situation could get even tougher.
"Things are changing by the hour," he told the BBC.
"We were already in a difficult situation before the war... and now it's additional disruption to the supply chains and we're getting close to the most important part of this season for the Northern hemisphere, where a lot of fertiliser needs to move on and that will quite likely be impacted."
Russia and Ukraine are some of the biggest producers in agriculture and food globally.
BBC
Ukraine conflict: Oil price soars to highest level since 2008
Oil prices have soared to the highest level since 2008 after the US said it was discussing a potential embargo on Russian supplies with its allies.
Brent crude - the global oil benchmark - spiked to above $139 a barrel, before easing back to below $130.
Energy markets have been rocked in recent days over supply fears triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Consumers are already feeling the impact of higher energy costs as fuel prices and household bills jump.
Stock markets in Asia fell on Monday, with Japan's Nikkei and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong down by more than 3%.
On Sunday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration and its allies are discussing an embargo of Russian oil supplies.
Not just fertilizer.
NPR
Russia's war on Ukraine is dire for world hunger. But there are solutions
Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't only jeopardizing the lives of Ukraine's citizens. The war is also on track to cause a surge in severe malnutrition and even starvation around the world.
That's the grim assessment of many experts on global food security, who point to how heavily the rest of the world relies on Ukraine and Russia for wheat and a slew of other essential commodities. As that supply is cut off, it will drive up food prices that are already at record levels – and at a time when the economic fallout from the pandemic has already pinched household budgets, most devastatingly in low-income countries.
(snip)
Much of this is through wheat. Ukraine alone accounts for more than 10% of the global market, says Glauber. Add in Russia and the share jumps to more than 30%.
But it doesn't end there. The two countries are also a major source of grains such as corn and barley that are mainly fed to livestock. Ukraine provides about 15% of the global supply of corn, for instance. And taken together Ukraine and Russia account for just under 30% of the world's barley supply.
Deutsche Welle
Does Germany really need LNG terminals?
Should Russia decide to cut or even halt its pipeline natural gas supplies to Europe, it could get rather cold in Germany unless sufficient supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are sourced.
The problem is there are no LNG terminals in Germany for freighters to feed their cargo into the national pipeline system. But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to change that as fast as possible. In response to Russia's war against Ukraine, he has announced the building of two LNG terminals in the country.
Other European nations are better prepared. Across the continent, there are now 37 such terminals, out of which 26 are located in EU member states. According to the European Commission, LNG imports cover about a quarter of the bloc's overall gas demand. Germany currently has to get LNG deliveries via terminals in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
Christian Science Monitor
Peace Corps volunteers out in world again after pandemic hiatus
For the first time in two years, the Peace Corps is once again dispatching volunteers to Zambia and the Dominican Republic where they will focus on helping communities overcome issues exacerbated by the pandemic, such as school dropout rates.
The Peace Corps will start sending volunteers overseas again in mid-March after it evacuated them from posts around the world two years ago due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government program announced Thursday.
An initial group of new volunteers and those who were evacuated in March 2020 as the coronavirus began to spread across the globe will go to Zambia and the Dominican Republic this month, according to a Peace Corps statement. Besides their primary work on local issues, volunteers will be involved in COVID-19 response and recovery, the Peace Corps said.
Christian Science Monitor
UK gets serious about cleansing London of Russian ‘dirty’ money
For years, Londoners have largely ignored the wealthy Russian oligarchs living among them.
Locals in affluent Highgate in North London certainly knew they were there. Every weekend, tours of billionaires’ homes walk past Russian-owned Witanhurst, the United Kingdom’s second-largest house after Buckingham Palace. So, too, were they aware a couple of miles away in Belgravia, where Londoners have renamed Eaton Square “Red Square,” due to its high concentration of Russian tycoon homeowners – among them Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, two billionaires closely allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As Mr. Putin pushes onward with war in Ukraine and renewed questions are being raised about the origins of oligarchs’ fortunes, the United Kingdom is moving to “clamp down on Russian money in the U.K.,” announced Prime Minister Boris Johnson on March 1. That signals a long-awaited U-turn in the historically laissez-faire attitudes adopted towards oligarchs and their “Londongrad” playground.
Buzzfeed
Secret Documents Show It’s Not Going To Be Easy To Seize Russian Oligarchs’ Money
As part of the sweeping financial repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House last week announced it would launch a transatlantic task force to “detect and disrupt” the billions of dollars that Russia’s sanctioned oligarchs and political leaders stash in the West.
But secret documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show how unsuccessful the US has previously been at tracking their wealth, and how great a challenge Biden’s task force faces as it commits to enforcing the rules. These documents, known as suspicious activity reports, or SARs, offer abundant evidence that Russian oligarchs hide their ownership of companies, aircraft, homes, and yachts, moving their money into and out of prestigious financial institutions in New York, London, and Paris with few questions asked. Although they are supposed to scrutinize anonymous shell companies to establish who is behind them and why they are conducting transactions, banks often fail to do even basic background checks on their clients.
Raw Story
Gazprom: Russia continues to deliver gas to Europe via Ukraine
Russia continues to deliver gas to Europe via Ukraine at normal levels, according to state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
"Gazprom carries out the supply of Russian gas for transit through the territory of Ukraine in the regular scale and according to the requirements of European consumers," Gazprom spokesperson Sergei Kupriyanov was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Interfax on Sunday.
Accordingly, some 109.5 million cubic metres of gas were to flow on Sunday.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western countries have imposed tough sanctions on Russia, with many fearing that the Moscow might cut off gas deliveries in retaliation.
New York Times
Three Florida Fires Scorch More Than 10,000 Acres and Continue to Grow
More than 1,100 homes have been evacuated in several counties on the Florida Panhandle after three fast-moving wildfires on Sunday continued to resist containment efforts.
The Adkins Avenue fire, which broke out on Friday and began near Panama City, Fla., had burned more than 1,400 acres and was 35 percent contained in Bay County, the Florida Forest Service said.
A much larger fire, the Bertha Swamp Road fire, had swept into Bay and Calhoun Counties after it began on Friday, the Forest Service said. It had burned around 9,000 acres and was 10 percent contained as of Sunday afternoon, Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news briefing.
“That’s a big boy and it’s raging very quickly,” he said.
The governor said that, given the windy and dry conditions on Sunday, “more serious fires” were possible. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to get any relief in terms of the weather,” he added.
The Guardian
Poutine not Putin: classic Quebec dish off the menu in France and Canada
Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has prompted demonstrations around the world, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to condemn the war.
But anger towards the Russian leader has also ensnared an unlikely casualty: a French-Canadian delicacy of potato fries, cheese curds and gravy.
Poutine, the famous dish, shares its name – in French – with the maligned Russian president. And as Putin becomes the target of protest, so too has one restaurant that sells the dish.
Maison de la Poutine, with restaurants in both Paris and Toulouse, said it has received insults and threats following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The row follows a decision by a Quebec-based diner to pull the name from the menu.
Le Roy Jucep, which claims to be the birthplace of poutine in the 1950s, said it was distancing itself from the name, instead describing itself as “the inventor of the fries-cheese-gravy”.
“Dear clients, Tonight the Jucep team decided to temporarily retire the word P**tine from its trademark in order to express, in its own way, its profound dismay over the situation in Ukraine,”