Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Man Oh Man, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke 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.
BBC
Iran plane crash: Hen party and crew feared dead
A Turkish private plane carrying 11 people has crashed in Iran while flying the daughter of a prominent businessman back from her hen party, Turkish media report.
Turkish officials said eight passengers and three crew were on board.
All are feared dead after the jet burst into flames on a mountainside near the city of Shahr-e Kord, in western Iran.
Turkey's Hurriyet news outlet said the passengers were 28-year-old heiress Mina Basaran and seven of her friends.
The group had been celebrating in Dubai ahead of her wedding, scheduled for next month.
The head of Turkey's Red Crescent organisation wrote on Twitter: "According to the last information we obtained from the Iranian Red Crescent, the wreck of the jet and the bodies have been found. They will be carried down from the mountain when the sun comes up. My condolences to those who lost their loved ones."
The Bombardier Challenger 604 plane reportedly belonged to a firm owned by Turkish business tycoon Huseyin Basaran - the bride-to-be's father.
BBC
Helicopter crash in New York City's East River kills two
At least two people have died after helicopter went down in the East River of New York City on Sunday.
Three passengers are in a critical condition in hospital after being pulled out of the water by rescue divers, said city police.
The New York City fire department said the pilot managed to free himself.
Authorities said it was carrying six people involved in a photo shoot before it hit the water near Roosevelt Island at 19:00 local time (23:00 GMT).
Video posted on social media showed a red helicopter appearing to make a semi-controlled descent before landing with some force in the water. It then began to tip over, its rotors still spinning and slicing into the water.
BBC
China's Xi allowed to remain 'president for life' as term limits removed (eat your heart out trump)
China has approved the removal of term limits for its leader, in a move that effectively allows Xi Jinping to remain as president for life.
The constitutional changes were passed by China's annual sitting of the National People's Congress on Sunday.
The vote was widely regarded as a rubber-stamping exercise. Two delegates voted against the change and three abstained, out of 2,964 votes.
China had imposed a two-term limit on its president since the 1990s.
But Mr Xi, who would have been due to step down in 2023, defied the tradition of presenting a potential successor during October's Communist Party Congress.
Instead, he consolidated his political power as the party voted to enshrine his name and political ideology in the party's constitution - elevating his status to the level of its founder, Chairman Mao.
The Guardian
'This could destroy China': parliament sets Xi Jinping up to rule for life.
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has succeeded in abolishing presidential term limits, a momentous political coup that paves the way for him to stay in power for years to come.Nearly 3,00
members of China’s National People’s Congress voted the highly controversial constitutional amendment through during a Sunday afternoon session at the Great Hall of the People – an imposing Mao-era theatre on the western fringe of Tiananmen Square.
Applause rippled through the auditorium as Xi cast his vote, using two hands to place a salmon-coloured ballot into a bright red box at 3.24pm. A further 2,957 ballots were cast in favour of the change while three delegates abstained and two voted against, a small hint of the outrage the move has caused in some liberal circles.
The identifies of the five dissenters is - and will almost certainly remain - a mystery.
“I can now announce that the proposals to amend the constitution of the People’s Republic of China has passed,” an announcer proclaimed, sparking a 20-second burst of applause.
Raw Story
Putin says will not change constitution to cling to power
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to be reelected for a fourth term in an upcoming ballot, said Saturday he had no plans to change the constitution to stay in the Kremlin beyond 2024.
Asked by the US television network NBC whether he would follow in the footsteps of China’s Xi Jinping, who is eyeing a limitless tenure, Putin insisted he had no such intentions.
“I never changed the constitution, I did not do it to suit myself and I have no such plans to do so today,” he said in an interview whose transcript was released by the Kremlin on Saturday.
Critics accuse Putin, who was first elected president in 2000 and is running for a fourth term in March 18 polls, of harbouring ambitions to stay in power indefinitely.
Putin has always prided himself on respecting the constitution, which bars him from serving more than two presidential terms in a row.
Rwanda Seventh-Day Adventist churchgoers killed by lightning Use the damn lightning rods!
A lightning strike killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more at a Seventh-Day Adventist church in Rwanda on Saturday, an official said.
Most of the victims died instantly when lightning hit the church in the southern district of Nyaruguru, local mayor Habitegeko Francois told AFP.
Two people died from their injuries, and 140 people were rushed to hospital and health centres.
Lightning also killed a student in the area on Friday, the mayor said.
The weather accident in the mountainous region near the border with Burundi took place around midday on Saturday while parishioners of the town of Gihemvu were at a church service.
"Doctors say that only three [more churchgoers] are in critical condition but they are getting better," Mr Francois told AFP on Sunday.
He said that in Friday's incident, lightning struck a group of 18 students in the area, killing one.
The Guardian
The web can be weaponised – and we can't count on big tech to stop it By Tim Berners-Lee
Today, the world wide web turns 29. This year marks a milestone in the web’s history: for the first time, we will cross the tipping point when more than half of the world’s population will be online.
When I share this exciting news with people, I tend to get one of two concerned reactions:
- How do we get the other half of the world connected?
- Are we sure the rest of the world wants to connect to the web we have today?
The threats to the web today are real – from misinformation and questionable political advertising to a loss of control over our personal data. But I remain committed to making sure the web is a free, open, creative space – for everyone.
That vision is only possible if we get everyone online, and make sure the web works for people. I founded the Web Foundation to fight for the web’s future. Here’s where we must focus our efforts:
Raw Story
‘We are all embarrassed’: Evangelical women are fleeing Trump and praying for an alternative before 2020
According to a deep dive into President Donald Trump’s Christian base, white women who identify themselves as “evangelicals” are having a hard time stomaching the president they voted for in 2016 because they believed he shared their values.
Responding to inquiries from the New York Times, the demographic that went solidly for Trump are having a form of buyers remorse, loving what Trump stands for, while loathing how he has conducted himself in the White House. Added to that, the continuing scandals that have now grown to include a reported sexual relationship with a porn star soon after his third wife gave birth to their son.
As one woman put it: “We are embarrassed.”
According to the Pew Research Center, support for Trump among white evangelical women in recent surveys has dropped from about 13 percentage points down to 60 percent, compared with about a year ago. That downward spiral is appreciably larger than the 8-point Trump approval drop among all women.
Carol Rains, a white evangelical Christian who hails from Dallas, said she still supports Trump’s agenda, but wishes it was championed by someone a bit more palatable.
Buzzfeed
Here’s How Fentanyl Took Over The US Drug Market In Just Five Years
In retrospect, the 2013 arrests of 20-year-old Rhode Island heroin dealer Victor “Fat Boy” Burgos and his 19-year-old accomplice were the earliest warning signs that a wave of deadly synthetic opioids had hit the US black market.
Between March and May 2013, the duo sold heroin laced with an unknown second drug. The tainted product led to the lethal overdoses of 14 people.
“I am going to spend the rest of my life in jail because of all those overdose deaths,” Burgos told the mother of one witness to him selling the adulterated heroin, as the Providence Journal reported.
After an investigation, Rhode Island health officials figured out the chemical identity of the mystery drug: a man-made, never-before-seen opioid called acetyl fentanyl.
“Probably it was already in lots of places besides Rhode Island,” medical anthropologist Jennifer Carroll of Brown University told BuzzFeed News. “But that’s where we noticed it first.”
Now five years later, fentanyl and its chemical cousins kill more people in the US than any other drug — accounting for around 20,000 deaths in 2016 and an estimated 25,000 in 2017. These synthetic drugs, used for decades in cancer and hospice care, are 30 to 50 times more potent than the plant-based heroin. In the last few years, fentanyl has been found lurking not only in heroin, but meth and cocaine, and drug users often have no idea how much, or whether, any fentanyl is in their illegal purchase.
Washington Post
White House vows to help arm teachers and backs off raising age for buying guns Of course.
The White House on Sunday vowed to help provide “rigorous firearms training” to some schoolteachers and formally endorsed a bill to tighten the federal background checks system, but it backed off President Trump’s earlier call to raise the minimum age to purchase some guns to 21 years old from 18 years old.
Responding directly to last month’s gun massacre at a Florida high school, the administration rolled out several policy proposals that focus largely on mental health and school safety initiatives. The idea of arming some teachers has been controversial and has drawn sharp opposition from the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers lobby, among other groups. Many of the student survivors have urged Washington to toughen restrictions on gun purchases, but such measures are fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Association, and the Trump plan does not include substantial changes to gun laws.
Rather, the president is establishing a Federal Commission on School Safety, to be chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, that will explore possible solutions, such as the age requirement for purchases, officials said.
N Y Times
The Mideast Peace Plan Is Nearly Finished. Is It Dead on Arrival?
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is putting the finishing touches on its long-awaited Middle East peace plan, three senior officials said on Sunday, and President Trump is likely to present it soon, despite risking swift rejection by the Palestinians and having already taken on another of the world’s thorniest disputes, with North Korea.
While the exact timing of the plan’s release is still not set, these officials said, the most immediate challenge for the White House is how to roll it out so that it is not proclaimed dead on arrival.
The Palestinians remain furious over the president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and they have refused White House entreaties to come back to the table. The administration is considering simply revealing the document, in the hopes that it will pressure the Palestinians to return.
Another complicating factor is the fluid political situation in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces indictment on fraud charges, may call early elections to try to win a popular mandate and shore up his position. His legal troubles, analysts said, will make him even less inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians because that could alienate his right-wing base.