OND Editors OND is a 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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
OND Editors Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, Doctor RJ and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
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BBC
Copenhagen shootings: Danish gunman 'had violent past'
Danish police say the gunman believed to have attacked a free-speech debate and a Copenhagen synagogue was 22, born in Denmark and known to them because of past violence.
The presumed gunman was shot and killed early on Sunday morning by police who were monitoring an address in the Norrebro district of the city.
The man's name has not been released.
A film director and a synagogue guard were killed in separate attacks. Five police officers were also injured.
Police believe the gunman was acting alone.
He was known to them in connection with criminal gangs and had convictions for violent offences and dealing in weapons.
"It was the case that when the suspect was shot and killed during police action, he was armed with pistols," police commissioner Thorkild Fogde told a news conference.
He also said police had found a weapon which may have been used in the first shooting.
BBC
Ukraine crisis: Minsk ceasefire 'generally holding', say EU leaders
France and Germany believe the ceasefire in Ukraine is "generally" being observed, a statement from the French presidency says.
But the countries' leaders, who helped broker the truce, said some "local incidents" must be "quickly" resolved.
Shelling has continued around the besieged town of Debaltseve.
However, fighting in the area is reported to have lowered in intensity since the ceasefire began at midnight Saturday (22:00 GMT).
Pro-Russian rebels had previously said they were entitled to fire in the town, as they believe the territory belongs to them.
Meanwhile, a military spokesman said Ukrainian troops had come under fire 60 times in the hours after the truce came into force, AFP reports.
The spokesman said Debaltseve continued to be the scene of most clashes.
The town - a key transport hub - has been the object of some of the fiercest fighting in the conflict zone in recent weeks, and the ongoing struggle there appears to pose the gravest threat to the truce.
BBC
Islamic State: Egyptian Christians held in Libya 'killed'
I'll skip the horrible content, except for this:
The Coptic church said it was "confident" Egypt would exact retribution. Egypt has declared seven days of national mourning.
Al Jazeera America
Rallies in Greece, around world ahead of eurozone ministers' bailout talks
Tens of thousands of people gathered in central Athens on Sunday to support the newly elected government's push for a better deal on Greece's debt. Similar rallies were held in several other Greek cities, and about 40 other anti-austerity demonstrations were planned to show solidarity across Europe and in Australia, Brazil and the United States.
The rallies came on the eve of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers that will address Greece’s unpopular bailout.
In Lisbon about 300 people took to the streets with banners reading "Greece, Spain, Portugal, our battle is international."
In Athens, between 15,000 and 18,000 protesters carried banners denouncing economic austerity and Greece's creditors.
"We want justice here and now ... for all the suffering Greece has gone through the past five years," 58-year-old Theodora, who has been unemployed for the last three years, told Agence France-Presse.
Al Jazeera America
Political cartoonists face threats worldwide
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jeff MacNelly once said that if political cartoonists couldn't draw, they probably would have become hired assassins — sharp words that underscore the provocative nature of a cartoonist's work.
Corrupt 19th-century New York politician William M. “Boss” Tweed might well have agreed. “Stop the damned pictures," he said of the work of legendary cartoonist Thomas Nast. "My constituents can’t read, but, damn it, they can see pictures.”
The merciless probing and caustic scrutiny of the cartoon antagonizes politicians across cultural and geographic lines. And while the savage killings of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris last month and Saturday’s shooting attack at a Copenhagen event featuring Swedish artist Lars Vilks — known for controversial cartooning — shocked the world, the struggle faced by cartoonists internationally is as old as the medium itself.
Just days ago, Malaysian cartoonist Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque, better known as Zunar, was arrested over a tweet he posted criticizing Malaysia's judiciary. A cartoon he posted on his Twitter account showed Prime Minister Najib Razak as the judge in a high-profile case involving an opposition leader.
Governments have historically employed tools ranging from threats, smears and prison time to assaults and even murder to silence cartoonists, according to Edward Lordan, professor of communications at West Chester University and author of “Politics, Ink: How Cartoonists Skewer America's Politicians.” "As thought leaders, cartoonists can be extremely influential," Lordan said.
Al Jazeera America
Leaving buggies behind, Amish snowbirds flock to Florida for winter
PINECRAFT, Fla. — It’s a weekday at 2 p.m. Though definitely past the peak lunch hour, there’s still a line of customers waiting to be seated at Yoder’s Restaurant. It’s an eclectic collection of patrons — overall-clad construction workers in yellow hardhats, college students in university sweatshirts and flip-flops and an Amish family from Wisconsin, easily recognizable in their bonnets, beards and plain dress.
In other Florida resort towns, the Amish family might seem out of place. But not in Pinecraft, a small enclave on the eastern, inland edge of bustling, tourist-friendly Sarasota. The little town is an Amish tourism resort attracting thousands from the cold North and Midwest desperate for a bit of warm winter sunshine.
No one knows exactly how many Amish arrive each year. But 3,000 is a number people in Pinecraft bandy about, though that does not count those staying on nearby Siesta Key. The Pinecraft Neighborhood Association says there are perhaps 500 habitable dwellings in and around the village. Most Pinecraft Amish visitors go for just a few weeks at a time before heading back, and most stagger their trips between Christmas and Easter. There are a few — perhaps several dozen Amish — who spend the whole year in Pinecraft.
Maybe because:
N Y Times
Dangers, Frustrations and Snow Keep Piling Up in New England
BOSTON — Leaden skies tested the patience and sanity of winter-weary New Englanders once again over the weekend, unleashing more than two feet of new snow on parts of the region. It was the latest installment in a relentless string of storms that have blended, one into the next, enveloping every car and every home so that nothing has a distinct shape anymore; the landscape is just one seamless blanket of white.
It is hard to remember when the snows began, and even harder to imagine when they might end. There are almost no humans to be seen outdoors, just the blowing, drifting sheets of whiteness, punctuated by an occasional beeping yellow plow pushing its catch up against mounds already eight feet high, 10 feet high, even 15 feet high, further burying long-submerged cars that now seem lost forever in a frosty version of Pompeii.
A television news show flickered with images sent in by viewers, taken inside homes where the snow had piled up above windows and entombed the occupants.
“It reminds me of ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ when Pa walked to the barn from his second-story window,” chirped the anchorwoman.
But for others, the bleak elegy of James Joyce has crept to mind: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
Raw Story
Boehner ready to let funding lapse for Homeland Security agency
John Boehner, the Republican House of Representatives speaker, said he is willing to let funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapse as part of a Republican push to roll back President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
With a Feb. 27 deadline looming for funding the department, Senate Democrats three times this month blocked consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill, which has already been approved by the House.
“Senate Democrats are the ones standing in the way. They’re the ones jeopardizing funding,” Boehner told Fox News on Sunday. Asked if he was prepared to let financing for the department lapse, he said: “Certainly. The House has acted. We’ve done our job.”
Arizona Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on national security matters, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” of his alarm at the situation.
“The American people did not give us majority to have a fight between House and Senate Republicans,” McCain said, referring to Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate after November’s congressional elections. “They want things done. You cannot cut funding from the Department of Homeland Security. We need to sit down and work this thing out.”
Democrats want to fund the department but oppose House amendments stripping funding from Obama’s 2012 and 2014 executive orders lifting a deportation threat for millions of illegal immigrants.
Raw Story
US oil refinery managers forced to camp out in offices as strike enters third week
TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) – U.S. oil refinery managers are going to the mats, literally, during the biggest fight with union workers in 35 years, bedding down for a third strike week that experts and some employees say raises concerns over safety and operations.
At the 135,000 barrel-per-day refinery just outside of Toledo, Ohio, run by BP Plc and Husky Energy Inc , most of the nearly 300-person staff have been calling the refinery home since Feb. 9. For the last week, they have slept on recently purchased mattresses inside rental trailers to rapidly respond to any problems and avoid striking workers, sources say.
On Tuesday, a van full of washing and drying machines gingerly cut through about a dozen United Steelworkers carrying pickets and walking a strike line at the facility’s front gate.
Those efforts underscore how far operators are willing to go to retain normalcy in the face of the largest national U.S. refinery strike since 1980. And as more replacement workers join the ranks here and the other eight refineries where strikes have occurred, more questions are arising about potential safety and production risks from an extended walkout.
Reuters
Freighter backlog worsens outside major West Coast ports
(Reuters) - Growing numbers of freighters were backed up around the two busiest U.S. cargo hubs on Sunday because of a dispute between shipping companies and dockworkers that has led to a partial shutdown of ports along the West Coast.
With cargo delays rippling through the U.S. economy, Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co Ltd said it planned to slow production at some of its North American plants starting on Monday because of a lack of parts from Asia.
Under pressure to address the months-long strife, President Barack Obama on Saturday dispatched U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez to California to help broker an agreement.
By Sunday morning, 34 container ships, tankers and other cargo vessels were waiting to dock at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, up from 32 on Saturday, said Lee Peterson, a spokesman for the port of Long Beach.
Cargo ships waiting at anchor and unable to load their goods were visible from highways and beaches for miles along the coast, an unusual spectacle, he said.
Those delays have slowed deliveries of a wide range of goods, from agricultural produce to housewares and apparel, leading retailers to pressure Obama to intervene.
BBC
French actor Louis Jourdan, star of 'Gigi' dies aged 93
The French actor Louis Jourdan, best known for his role in the multi-Oscar winning 1958 musical Gigi, has died in California aged 93.
Born in Marseilles, he began his career acting in French films before being lured to the US.
Often seen in roles that capitalised on his Gallic charm, he described himself as Hollywood's "French cliche".
His later years saw him play evil villains, including in the 1983 Bond film Octopussy.
Jourdan died at his home in Los Angeles, his official biographer Olivier Minne said.
"He embodied French elegance and Hollywood offered him the parts to go with that," he told the AFP news agency.
Gigi was one of the biggest films of the 1950s.
Other key roles included a part in the Alfred Hitchcock's 1947 film The Paradine Case, and with Grace Kelly in The Swan.
His early career in France was interrupted by World War Two. He refused to star in Nazi propaganda films and joined the resistance.