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Overnight News Digest: Heading into the Weekend Edition [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-08-30  

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, 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. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.

Fun stuff above the fold, and the serious stuff below. But first, pictures of the week from the BBC and aerial view from the same source:

Watch: Dolphins and seagulls fight for food off Malibu coast Aerial footage captured by a news helicopter shows the moment seagulls and dolphins compete in a literal food fight over a school of fish in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Malibu, California. The group of fish are seen in a large shadow just underneath the surface of the water.

From NPR:

A newly mapped underwater mountain could be home to 20 new species About 900 miles off the coast of Chile, scientists have discovered an underwater mountain home to "pristine ecosystems" they believe host at least 20 previously unknown species. The team mapped a 1.9-mile tall seamount, which is part of the Nazca Ridge, an underwater mountain range in the southeast Pacific Ocean.

From The Guardian:

Government seeking to make ‘fewer places where you can smoke’ – as it happened Jacqui Smith says Labour hopes to ‘make it much more likely’ that smokers will want to give up by Andrew Sparrow Here is a summary of the latest developments: The government’s outdoor smoking ban will aim to make “fewer places where you actually can smoke”, education minister Jacqui Smith has said. Responding to calls from industry that an outdoor smoking ban would be another “nail in the coffin” for hospitality, Smith told Sky News: “The biggest nail in the coffin of most people in this country is smoking – 80,000 people die every year from smoking related diseases.”

The reported outdoor smoking plans were met with despair by the pub industry, which claimed restrictions on outdoor smoking could harm a fragile sector still recovering from Covid. However, health experts backed the idea, while polling showed it had majority support among every demographic and voting group apart from Reform UK supporters.

From the Lawrence Journal-World (not an international story but... whatever):

Lawrence police catch goat that’s been on the loose In this body camera footage from Wednesday, Aug. 28, a Lawrence police officer holds onto a runaway goat after getting a lasso on it. With some impressive lasso work, Lawrence police have managed to catch a four-legged runaway who’s been on the loose in Lawrence — a brown-and-white goat. On Thursday, the department posted the body camera video from Wednesday afternoon on social media. It shows an officer using a lasso to catch the goat, which the department said had been “darting across streets and through town” for days.

From Deutsche Welle:

Japan's youth break tradition by embracing perfume Julian Ryall 14 hours ago Once seen as ostentatious, an imposition on others, and unnecessary in a culture that famously enjoys bathing, perfumes and scents are finally trending among young Japanese. Japan has traditionally been seen as a market where perfumes, deodorants and other scent-based products did not sell well. However, analysts say attitudes have "fundamentally changed" in a short space of time, and the allure of scent is being embraced by consumers.

From the Associated Press:

An Israeli boy who broke an ancient jar learns how the museum is piecing it back together ALEXIS TRIBOULARD and JULIA FRANKEL Byand HAIFA, Israel (AP) — As her 4-year-old son perused the Israeli museum’s ancient artifacts, Anna Geller looked away for just a moment. Then a crash sounded, a rare 3,500-year-old jar was broken on the ground, and her son stood over it, aghast. “It was just a distraction of a second,” said Geller, a mother of three from the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. “And the next thing I know, it’s a very big boom boom behind me.”

And finally, one I don’t know exactly where it belongs, above or below the fold. It comes from DW:

The Jerry Lewis Holocaust movie no one has ever seen Scott Roxborough 16 hours ago At the Venice Film Festival, a new documentary will reveal never-before-seen footage from "The Day the Clown Cried," a 1972 Holocaust movie from comedian Jerry Lewis that was never released, but has near-mythic status. Jerry Lewis, the legendary American comedian, once made a film so controversial it was never seen by the public. "The Day the Clown Cried," shot in 1972, tells the story of a circus clown who leads children to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp.

Lots of Africa news tonight, so we will start there, with this from Al Jazeera:

Why is Namibia culling elephants and hippos for meat? The country is facing its worst drought in decades and people are going hungry, officials say. By Shola Lawal More than 700 wild animals, including hippos and elephants, are being culled in Namibia’s game parks to provide meat for the country’s hungry, the government has said, as the arid Southern African region battles its worst drought in 100 years. A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation in the country as a “humanitarian crisis we’ve never spoken much of” at a media conference on Friday.

From the BBC:

Why Ethiopia is so alarmed by an Egypt-Somalia alliance Ian Wafula A military alliance between Somalia and Egypt is ruffling feathers in the fragile Horn of Africa, upsetting Ethiopia in particular - and there are worries the fallout could become more than a war of words. The tensions ratcheted up this week with the arrival of two Egyptian C-130 military aeroplanes in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, signalling the beginning of the deal signed earlier in August during a state visit by the Somali president to Cairo.

From DW:

Another from DW:

Also from DW:

Germany withdraws troops from junta-run Niger 8 hours ago The move, prompted by a spate of military coups in the region, means the Bundeswehr no longer has a presence in Africa's Sahel region. Russia has largely stepped in as a partner to military juntas there. Germany's army, the Bundeswehr, has officially withdrawn its last soldiers from Niger, ending an eight-year mission. The last 60 soldiers in the region were flown out of the army's now abandoned air base in the capital, Niamey, arriving in Germany late Friday.

There is some pacific and SE Asian in the news, then we will get to Asia and Europe. We begin with this, from The Guardian:

Pacific Islands Forum communique taken down after Chinese envoy calls Taiwan reference ‘unacceptable’ ‘Visibly angry’ Qian Bo demands correction of Taiwan’s ‘development partner’ label despite its use for more than three decades Daniel Hurst A summit of Pacific leaders has ended in drama after China’s regional envoy demanded the scrapping of language about Taiwan, with the communique later republished without the offending paragraph. The Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit in Tonga this week brought together Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories, only three of which still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Also from The Guardian:

Brendan Nelson suggested censoring chapters in Australia’s official history of Timor-Leste operations, Dfat head claimed Exclusive: Documents released under freedom of information show Nelson, the director of the War Memorial in 2019, subsequently opposed cutting the chapters, and they appeared in the published work Karen Middleton The former director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, offered in 2019 to censor nine chapters from the official history of Australia’s operations in Timor-Leste and seal them for 30 years, according to a claim made in correspondence from the then head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat). But within weeks Nelson decided to actively oppose the move, the documents released under freedom of information laws suggest, and the chapters were included when the volume was eventually published.

From the BBC:

Homes bulldozed in Timor-Leste ahead of Pope visit Nick Marsh Families' homes are being demolished near Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, in the area where Pope Francis will celebrate mass next month. Nearly 90 people have been told by the government that they must find somewhere new to live before he arrives, according to evicted residents who spoke to the BBC.

Another from the BBC:

Man jailed for plot to put wife on death row with weed Joel Guinto A man in Singapore who attempted to frame his estranged wife by planting cannabis in her car has been sentenced to almost four years in jail. Tan Xianglong, 37, planted what he thought was more than half a kilo of cannabis between the rear passenger seats of his wife's car, assuming it was enough to warrant the death penalty for drug trafficking.

Also from the BBC:

Search for woman swallowed by 8m sinkhole now 'too risky' Kelly Ng An extensive search for an Indian woman who disappeared into a pavement sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur hit a snag on its eighth day, as authorities now say it is "too risky" to continue deploying divers. The incident has gripped Malaysia, with some 110 rescuers working around the clock this past week in search of Vijaya Lakshmi Gali, 48.

One more from the BBC:

Nearly 40,000 people died home alone in Japan this year, report says Hafsa Khalil Almost 40,000 people died alone in their homes in Japan during the first half of 2024, a report by the country’s police shows. Of that number, nearly 4,000 people were discovered more than a month after they died, and 130 bodies went unmissed for a year before they were found, according to the National Police Agency.

BBC again:

'We survived a brutal famine in British India' At least three million people were killed in the 1943 Bengal famine, during World War Two. It's one of the largest losses of civilian life on the Allied side and there is no memorial to them anywhere in the world. In the video above, the BBC's Kavita Puri travels to rural Bengal to speak to three elderly Indians who lived through this dark chapter of Britain’s colonial past. For them, the famine isn't history.

From WorldCrunch (unfortunately behind a very high paywall, but I thought the first few paragraphs were interesting enough to include it:

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