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.
Nice stories above the fold, and the more depressing/newsy ones past the break (am I in the last generation to know what “above/below the fold” actually means?
From CBS News:
An elephant in Kenya has given birth to a set of twins, a conservation group said on Friday, a rare event for the planet's largest land mammals. Save the Elephants said that the twins, both female, were born in the Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya to a mother named Alto, describing it as "double joy."
Twins make up only about one percent of elephant births, although another pair -- one male and one female -- were born in the same reserve in early 2022.
And from CNN:
Fragments of musical scores discovered at Auschwitz will be played for the first time next week after being painstakingly restored by a composer.
Leo Geyer, 31, who is also a conductor, said he stumbled upon the collection of musical manuscripts by accident during a visit to Auschwitz in 2015.
We begin with news about travel, with this from the BBC:
China is trialling visa-free travel for citizens from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia for a year, its foreign ministry said.
From December to 30 November 2024, ordinary passport holders from these countries can do business or travel in China without a visa for up to 15 days.
This is to help "promote China's high-quality development and opening up", spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Friday.
From euronews:
Venice is rolling out a tourism tax to try to stop overcowding on peak weekends.
Venice authorities have unveiled a pilot program for their long-mooted plan to charge day-trippers to visit the city.
The tourist tax was due to launch earlier this year but was delayed over logistical issues and fears it would hit tourist revenue.
From the NY Times:
A fishing town that was evacuated this month will probably be spared, but residents can’t return until all danger has passed.
The likelihood that a volcanic eruption will engulf the fishing town of Grindavik, Iceland, is decreasing by the day, officials said on Friday, even as they continued to warn that an eruption could still occur.
Grindavik, with more than 3,000 people, was evacuated this month after it was determined that a nine-mile-long underground river of magma was moving beneath the town to the ocean.
From CNN:
By Xiaofei Xu, Maya Szaniecki and Claudia Colliva
A 64-year-old French pilot has been given a one-year suspended prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter after being found guilty of killing a skydiver with his plane’s wing during a jump, a criminal court in Montauban, southern France, confirmed to CNN Thursday.
The incident happened in July 2018 over the small town of Bouloc, near the city of Toulouse in the country’s southwest, according to an investigation report published by the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety in 2020.
From ABC News (Associated Press):
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised quick action to fix a budget crisis after a court decision blew a large hole in the almost-finished plan for next year
ByDAVID MCHUGH
FRANKFURT, Germany -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday promised quick action to fix a budget crisis after a court decision blew a large hole in the almost-finished plan for next year and threatened to disrupt spending on efforts to fight climate change and cushion the impact of high energy prices caused by Russia's invasion of
Ukraine.
“Some are asking whether the financial support from the federal government, which caps high energy prices, can keep flowing or must be paid back," he said in a video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. "Those are “justifiable questions.”
From euronews:
By Giorgia Orlandi
Several protests and vigils were held across Italy and a national rally has been called on Saturday in the capital Rome which also marks the International Day against gender violence.
A few from Africa, starting with this from the BBC:
By Paul Njie in Yaoundé & Danai Nesta Kupemba in London
Chad's military-led government has issued an amnesty to security forces responsible for killing at least 50 opposition protestors.
In 2022 people took to the streets to oppose interim President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno extending his rule.
The authorities responded with a brutal crackdown which officials say left 50 people dead on what has been called "Black Thursday".
Also from the BBC:
By Daniel De Simone & Natasha Booty
Former Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius is to be freed from jail on parole, nearly 11 years after murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
He shot her multiple times through a bathroom door on Valentine's Day in 2013, later claiming he mistook her for a burglar at their Pretoria home.
And one last one from the BBC:
Somalia has joined the East African Community (EAC) in a move intended to boost economic growth in the country following three decades of war.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said joining the regional trade bloc was a "beacon of hope" for Somalia.
He said it offered "hope for a future of opportunities and prosperity".
From NBC:
Helsinki says Moscow is funneling migrants to the border, a charge the Kremlin has denied.
Finland has temporarily closed all but one of its eight passenger crossings to
Russia in response to an unusually high inflow of migrants for which the Nordic country accuses Moscow.
More than 700 migrants from nations such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, have in the past couple of weeks entered Finland via Russia. Helsinki says Russia is funneling migrants to the border, a charge the Kremlin has denied.
From ABC News:
A Russian lawmaker and staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin has denied media allegations that he adopted a 2-year-old girl who was seized from a Ukrainian children’s home and changed her name
By EMMA BURROWS
LONDON -- A Russian lawmaker and staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin has denied media allegations that he adopted a missing 2-year-old girl who was removed from a Ukrainian children’s home and changed her name in Russia.
Sergey Mironov, 70, the leader of political party A Just Russia, asserted on social media that the Ukrainian security services and their Western partners concocted a “fake” report to discredit true Russian patriots like himself.
From the Associated Press:
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday announced a plan to endorse a national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence, emphasizing that it’s essential to prevent a Western monopoly.
Speaking at an AI conference in Moscow, Putin noted that “it’s imperative to use Russian solutions in the field of creating reliable and transparent artificial intelligence systems that are also safe for humans.”
From Reuters:
NEW DELHI, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's embassy in New Delhi has closed as diplomats appointed by the Afghan government ousted by the Taliban two years ago failed to secure visa extensions from their Indian hosts, the outgoing ambassador said in a statement on Friday.
India does not recognise the Taliban government which seized power in 2021, and had allowed Ambassador Farid Mamundzay and mission staff to stay in place, issuing visas and handling trade matters.
From WION:
'Restore Monarchy' protest in Nepal: Thousands of protesters call for abolishment of Republic
15 years after Nepal abolished its Monarchy, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Kathmandu on Thursday, demanding its restoration. Riot police with batons fired tear gas and water cannons to block their march.
From CNN:
Hospitals in Beijing and northern China are grappling with a surge of children with respiratory illnesses as the country enters its first winter since relaxing stringent Covid-19 controls nearly one year ago.
Wait times to see doctors stretch for hours, with hundreds of patients queuing at some children’s hospitals in major cities across northern China, according to CNN reporting and Chinese state and social media.
From Al Jazeera:
State media shows leader Kim Jong Un and his family enjoying a banquet with scientists and engineers involved in the project.
And lastly, from CBS News:
An Australian crocodile egg hunter was killed after the helicopter he was dangling from ran out of fuel mid-flight, accident investigators said this week.
The pilot of the Robinson R44 helicopter took cocaine in the days before the February 2022 accident, and likely failed to refuel as planned during the Northern Territory outing, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in its final report.