(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest: Honoring John Lewis [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-08-18 NPR A Georgia square that was home to a Confederate monument for more than a century will now host a statue of the late civil rights icon John Lewis. Authorities began installing the sculpture of the former Georgia congressman in Decatur last week ahead of its official unveiling on Saturday. “It’s exciting to see it going up and exciting for the significance of what it represents and what it’s replacing,” Basil Watson, the artist behind the new statue, said at the installation. Its arrival comes about four years after Decatur officials removed a 30-foot-tall obelisk erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908. This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments. I’m filling in for side pocket who is on vacation. I hope you’re having fun side pocket. C/NET It's not apparent from the curb what makes the Hillside development at O'Brien Farm in South Burlington, Vermont, different from any other tract of homes being built around suburban America. The street I pull onto looks like an evolutionary chart of suburbia: At one end stand complete, freshly painted 2,500-square-foot houses with well-manicured lawns and landscaping. Moving northward along Leo Lane, I see some homes missing finishing touches, then some missing garage doors, then wooden skeletons. Finally, there are bare patches of dirt. I get stuck behind a dump truck. I had to look — and listen — closely to see what makes this development a glimpse of something new. It's not just an innovative way of building a community. It's a way of future-proofing the American electric grid through the clean energy transition and climate change. C/NET Our lives take a toll on our eyes. Whether it's staring at a screen for work or spending the summer under the sun, your daily activities could be increasing your risk for eyestrain and vision problems. And that gets truer as we get older. Aging vision means changing vision, and not usually for the better. As the years tick by, it's common to have problems seeing things up close, distinguishing between colors and more. A lot of the problems you might encounter with aging eyes stem from specific conditions. Here are six to keep on your radar. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the eye conditions that can arise with aging vision, but it's a good place to start. BBC Ukraine says it has destroyed a second strategic bridge in a week as it continues its incursion into Russia's Kursk region. The Ukrainian military on Sunday released aerial footage of the strike on the bridge - reported to be over the Seym River in Zvannoe. "Minus one more bridge," Ukrainian Air Force commander Lt Gen Mykola Oleschuk posted on social media. Ukraine is nearly two weeks into its biggest attack on Russian territory since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Deutsche Welle Social media website X, formerly Twitter, will wind up its local operations in Brazil after a legal battle at the Supreme Court over the platform's rights and responsibilities, owner Elon Musk said Sunday But the company said the website would remain available to users in Brazil. While X argued that it was protecting free speech and standing up against "illegal secret censorship," Brazil's Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes argued he was standing up against disinformation and tyranny in Brazil. In April, Moraes had ordered an investigation into Musk, accusing him of "criminal instrumentalization" of the platform. An order seen by AFP detailed that Musk had reactivated banned accounts and was then threatened with a fine for each instance. This comes roughly a week after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro banned the website for a 10-day period over an election result dispute and accused Musk of inciting hate, civil war, and death. Musk has been increasingly outspoken on Latin American politics, as he has on politics in general, of late. Deutsche Welle Moscow has denied a report that Ukraine's attack on Russia's Kursk region had derailed indirect talks with Kyiv. The Washington Post reported Saturday that the two sides were set to send delegations to Qatar this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure. The Post said the deal would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and that video talks had been scheduled for August 22. The newspaper said the talks were derailed due to Ukraine's attack on Russian sovereign territory. Responding to the report, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry, said: "No one broke anything off because there was nothing to break off." "There have been no direct or indirect negotiations between Russia and the Kyiv regime on the safety of civilian critical infrastructure facilities." "There is nothing to talk about with people who unleash such things," Zakharova said, referring to the Kursk incursion. Al Jazeera Sudan has been stricken by a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly two dozen people and sickened hundreds more in recent weeks, health authorities said. Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement on Sunday that at least 22 people have died from the disease, and that at least 354 confirmed cases of cholera have been detected across the war-torn country in recent weeks. On Saturday, he declared a cholera epidemic in Sudan and noted that the outbreak was “because of the weather conditions and because drinking water has been contaminated”. He said the decision was taken in conjunction with authorities in the eastern state of Kassala, United Nations agencies and experts after the “discovery by the public health laboratory of the cholera virus”. Al Jazeera Muhammad Yunus, the interim leader of Bangladesh, has delivered his first major government policy address in which he promised to support the Rohingya community seeking refuge in the country and maintain Bangladesh’s garment trade. Setting out his priorities in front of diplomats and UN representatives on Sunday, Yunus pledged that his government “will continue to support the million-plus Rohingya people sheltered in Bangladesh”. “We need the sustained efforts of the international community for Rohingya humanitarian operations and their eventual repatriation to their homeland, Myanmar, with safety, dignity and full rights,” he said. Bangladesh is home to about one million Rohingya. Most of them fled neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 after a military crackdown now the subject of a genocide investigation by a United Nations court. The Guardian, US The US secretary of state has arrived in Israel for 11th-hour talks aimed at shoring up a deal for a lasting ceasefire in the war in Gaza, amid signals from Israeli and Hamas officials that a breakthrough may not be as close as international mediators had suggested. Antony Blinken flew into Tel Aviv on Sunday as part of Washington’s renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire in the 10-month-old conflict, negotiations seen as even more urgentafter last month’s back-to-back assassinations of a top Hezbollah commander and the Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh. It is hoped a ceasefire would lower the temperature in the Middle East and dissuade Iran and Hezbollah from retaliatory action that could cause the war in Gaza to slide quickly into a region-wide conflict The Guardian, UK Sperm donated in the UK is being exported and can be used to create large numbers of children across multiple countries, contradicting a strict 10-family limit that applies in the UK, experts warn. A legal loophole means that, while a single donor can be used to create no more than 10 families in UK fertility clinics, there are no restrictions on companies making sperm or eggs available for additional fertility treatments abroad. With the lifting of donor anonymity and the ability to track down genetic relatives on DNA testing sites, this raises the prospect of some donor-conceived children navigating relationships with dozens of biological half-siblings across Europe The Guardian, UK Two weeks ago Abdullah, a Pakistani-born man living in the UK, was watching the news in fear. Far-right riots had spread across the country, with mosques being attacked and hotels housing asylum seekers set alight. After a horrific knife attack on children in Southport, disinformation spread quickly on social media falsely claiming the perpetrator was a Muslim seeking asylum in the UK. “Everyone was concerned, scared. They were scared of going to the mosque. They were not able to do their religious obligations,” said the security guard who lives in London. “Especially my friends who are living in Manchester and in the north, they were more concerned because there were more protests over there.” Little did Abdullah know that just days after the riots had appeared to subside, he would be at the centre of another appalling story involving an attack on a child. But the 29-year-old was not to be a blame figure, rather one praised for his bravery and selflessness. NPR (8/17/2024) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the 2016 memoir from Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, once again began flying off the shelves after former President Donald Trump named Vance as his running mate. Many have turned to the memoir to find out the story of Vance’s upbringing, a core part of why he’s on the Republican ticket to begin with. But the book also brings along a host of assumptions that many authors still find not to be true. Pulitzer-winning author Barbara Kingsolver said she felt that it was her duty to tell a different story of Appalachian life than the one that Vance presented in the book. “It used the same old victim-blaming trope. It was like a hero story: ‘I got out of here, I went to Yale,’” Kingsolver said of Vance. “‘But those lazy people, you know, just don't have ambitions. They don’t have brains. That’s why they’re stuck where they are.’ I disagree. And that’s my job, to tell a different story.” Kyiv Independent In his evening address on Aug. 18, President Volodymyr Zelensky had mentioned the ongoing Ukrainian incursion in Kursk Oblast and the country's defense near Toretsk in Donetsk Oblast. "Today, we achieved good and much-needed results in destroying Russian equipment near Toretsk. It is now our primary task in defensive operations overall, to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible," Zelensky said. "In particular, this is the creation of a buffer zone on the territory of the aggressor - our operation in Kursk Oblast." In his address, Zelensky also said that the "coming weeks will be crucial for our diplomatic efforts with various partners in Europe, America, and the Global South." CNN A volcano has erupted following a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck off Russia’s east coast, spurting a column of ash miles into the air, according to state-run media. The Shiveluch volcano is around 280 miles from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a coastal city with a population of about 180,000 that lies in Russia’s eastern region of Kamchatka. “According to visual evaluations, the ash column is rising as high as 8 kilometers (5 miles) above the sea level,” TASS reported Sunday morning local time, adding the volcano had released a gush of lava. 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