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 JeremyBloom. 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, sometimes09OP0az 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.
I try to start the diary with fun and/or weird news. It is not a cheery world news situation this evening. Lots of crime, lots of war. Two more entertaining stories above the fold, and others below the fold.
We begin with the best news of the week, a new pretty flower. The story comes from CNN:
By Mindy Weisberger
Sometimes newfound flower species are lurking where scientists least expect to see them — in parks, gardens and even in planters on balconies.
That’s where researchers in Japan recently identified a new species of orchid, its pink-and-white blooms so delicate and fragile they look like they were spun from glass.
From Insider:
- Saddam Hussein's yachts were once luxurious signs of the dictator's power.
- One boat is now a wrecked picnic site for fisherman. Another was reportedly almost a hotel.
- Photos show these yachts today as Iraqi officials debate what to do with them.
We will start by talking about the global south, with more northern climes further down. First up, from NPR:
Cyclone Freddy, which battered southeast Africa over the past month, broke all kinds of meteorological records. The U.N.'s weather agency is currently accessing whether it is the longest cyclone ever recorded – lasting at least 36 days. And it's already broken the record for all-time accumulated cyclone energy in the Southern Hemisphere, a measure of the storm's strength over time, beating the previous record set by Cyclone Fantala in 2016.
From WION:
From the BBC:
Global cocaine production has reached record levels as demand rebounds following Covid lockdowns, a new report has found.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said coca cultivation rose by 35% between 2020 and 2021 to record levels.
Findings suggest new hubs for trafficking have emerged in West and Central Africa, with traffickers said to be using international postal services more often to get drugs to consumers.
From NBC:
The omelet rice dish, which is said to be favored by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, was on the menu as he dined with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida following a summit in Tokyo — the first between leaders of the two countries in 12 years.
By Jimin Lee and Carina Cheng
A rare summit between South Korea and Japan on Thursday was filled with signs of warming ties between the two U.S. allies, including a classic Japanese dish: omelet rice.
Known in Japan as “omurice” the dish is said to be favored by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and it was on the menu as he dined with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida after their summit in Tokyo — the first between leaders of the two countries in 12 years.
From Al Jazeera:
A government spokesperson says the visit will focus on semiconductors and not the island’s sovereignty.
Germany’s education minister is scheduled to make an official trip to Taiwan early next week, the highest-level visit by a German official since 1997 to an island that China claims as part of its territory.
Bettina Stark-Watzinger’s visit will aim to improve cooperation between Berlin and Taipei on semiconductors, a ministry spokesperson said on Friday, adding that the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty will not be the focus of the trip.
From Slate:
Meet the mischievous—and mistreated—creatures that may have started the pandemic.
On Thursday, a team of international researchers announced the discovery of a genetic link that may get us closer to finally understanding the origins of the COVID pandemic. There’s a very good chance, an analysis found, that it came from animals in a Wuhan wet market. Specifically, that it probably came from a raccoon dog.
If you are like the majority of Slate staffers (at least, according to a very scientific Slack poll), one of your first questions was … a what?
From NextShark (via Yahoo! News):
Bryan Ke
A teenage girl was forced to beg after dropping her 200 yuan (approximately $29) allowance, with the older woman who picked it up claiming that it was hers.
The incident reportedly occurred on the street in Guangzhou in southern China’s Guangdong province over the weekend.
From the Daily Beast:
Suspected Monastery Massacre in Myanmar Leaves 22+ Dead
HORRENDOUS
Dan Ladden-Hall
A suspected massacre at a monastery in Myanmar left at least 22 people dead last week, according to a doctor’s report. Opponents of the military junta ruling the Southeast Asian country say the nation’s army was responsible for the bloodshed in which victims—including three Buddhist monks—were reportedly found to have been killed by gunshots at close range. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said government forces were providing security with a local militia in the village of Nan Neint in Myanmar’s central Shan State when rebels belonging to the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) and another group arrived. “When the terrorist groups violently opened fire … some villagers were killed and injured,” he said. A KNDF spokesperson said it arrived in the village on Sunday where they found corpses already strewn around the monastery.
From Al Jazeera:
In a separate case, the Islamabad High Court suspends an arrest warrant issued against the PTI chief.
The Lahore High Court has granted protective bail to former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in multiple legal cases filed against him earlier this week.
The development on Friday came after days of a tense standoff between Khan’s supporters and security forces outside his residence in Lahore, which had escalated into clashes as the officers tried to arrest him on a separate court order.
From PBS:
JERUSALEM (AP) — Hundreds of elite officers in Israel’s military reserves say they will not show up for duty starting on Sunday in protest over the government’s plans to overhaul the judicial system.
The firm date is the first time set for an unprecedented political protest within the security services. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial legal overhaul has sparked weeks of mass protests across Israel amidst a deteriorating security situation in the occupied West Bank and rising tensions with Palestinians.
And from France24:
It's become an ominous fixture of the mass anti-government protests roiling Israel: a coil of women in crimson robes and white caps, walking heads bowed and hands clasped. They are dressed as characters from Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, “The Handmaid's Tale,” and the eponymous TV series.
The women, growing in numbers as the demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies intensify, say they are protesting to ward off what they believe will be a dark future if the government follows through on its plan to overhaul the judiciary.
From Business Insider:
- Ukraine has used a WWI-era machine gun on the front line to mow down the enemy.
- "It only works when there is a massive attack going on," a Ukrainian soldier told BBC News.
- The brutal fighting in Ukraine, filled with trenches and heavy casualties, has frequently been compared to WWI.
From Al Jazeera:
ICC President Piotr Hofmanski told Al Jazeera it was “completely irrelevant” that Russia had not ratified the Rome Statute.“
According to the ICC statute, which has 123 state parties, two-thirds of the whole international community, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in the territory of a state party or a state which has accepted its jurisdiction,” he said. “Ukraine has accepted the ICC twice – in 2014 and then in 2015.”
From Al Jazeera:
Finland and Sweden jointly applied for membership, but Ankara has so far backed only Helsinki’s bid.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey will ratify Finland’s NATO membership, paving the way for the country to join the military bloc ahead of Sweden.
Erdogan announced the decision on Friday after meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in Ankara. Without Erdogan’s approval, Finland would not be able to join because NATO countries must unanimously agree on new members.
From Deutsche Welle:
The German federal parliament, the Bundestag, is bursting at the seams. Now the ruling parties have pushed through legislation to make it smaller and limit its size. But the opposition argues that is unconstitutional.
After a fiery debate, chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) used its majority to pass a bill to reduce the size of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, to 630. 400 lawmakers voted in favor, 261 against and 23 abstained.
From USA Today:
Kathleen Wong
Amsterdam is taking a step closer to saying good riddance to wild bachelor parties and rowdy tourists.
The popular destination is launching a new campaign this spring aimed at curbing tourism-induced "nuisance and overcrowding" and building a more responsible visitor economy by 2035, according to the city's tourism plan. The campaign's new rules will impact some of the top tourist attractions: the Red Light District, river cruises, pub crawls and coffee shops.
From France24:
The amount of trash uncollected on Paris streets due to a waste workers strike has surged to 10,000 tonnes, despite efforts to force them back to duty, authorities said Friday.
The new estimate – up from 7,600 tonnes earlier in the week – comes after Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that strikers were being forced back under emergency powers designed to safeguard essential services.
From The Guardian:
The errors, exaggerations and lies that led to the invasion offer essential teachings for our own time, in conflict and beyond
I have spent the last week in the land of the second resolution, Hans Blix and 45 minutes. For much of the past seven days, I’ve been right back there, immersed in the realm of regime change, weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, and the dodgy dossier – along with the rest of the vocabulary that, in the lead- up to the invasion of Iraq, whose 20th anniversary falls on Monday, became the dominant lexicon of British and global politics.
I have gone back to the inquiries – Hutton, Butler and Chilcot – and dug out long forgotten newspaper columns and Commons speeches. I’ve listened to an outstanding new radio documentary series, and spoken to figures in the fatefully intertwined worlds of politics and intelligence, trading memories of the episode that remains the most lethal UK foreign policy disaster since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938.
From CBS News:
A 16-year-old wounded his mother with a firearm and then killed two police officers before taking his own life in western Canada early Thursday, officials told The Associated Press.
A police official and a senior government official said the male suspect shot and wounded his mother in Edmonton, Alberta. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as each was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
From NBC News (AP):
The motive in the killings has not been made public, but drug gangs in Mexico frequently dabble in kidnapping and contract killing.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities have arrested a 14-year-old boy nicknamed “El Chapito” for the drug-related killing of eight people near Mexico City, the federal Public Safety Department said Thursday.
The boy allegedly rode up on a motorcycle and opened fire on a family in the low-income Mexico City suburb of Chimalhuacan. Another man was also arrested in the Jan. 22 killings, and seven other members of the gang were arrested on drug charges.