C/NET
We're just hours away from North America's last total solar eclipse until 2044, and as we prepare to look to the sky, NASA is preparing to launch three rockets.
Before, during and after the eclipse on Monday, NASA will fire three sounding rockets to determine how the total eclipse could affect radio communications on Earth. The findings could pave the way for NASA to develop new technologies to protect radio communications during both brief and extended periods when solar behavior disrupts particles on Earth.
Stargazers from Mexico to the US and Canada are standing by for the
last total solar eclipse to
pass over the contiguous US for the next 20 years. The duration of totality, or the time during which the moon completely shrouds the sun from view, will last 4 minutes and 27 seconds. The eclipse will reach Texas at approximately 1:10 p.m. ET and Maine by 2:22 p.m. ET. By 4:17 p.m. ET, it will move beyond the eastern North American border.
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.
BBC
The devastated landscape of their city feels unreal to the thousands of Palestinians who have been returning to Khan Younis in Gaza.
Through the rubble of the streets, they have been filing back on bicycles, donkey carts and by foot, looking for their homes or what trace is left of them.
"I am going to my house, even though I know that it is destroyed. I am going to remove the rubble to get a shirt out," Mohammed Abou Diab said.
Israel's military pulled troops out of southern Gaza, leaving just one brigade in the area.
BBC
It began with hints. Intimation.
Now, it's no holds barred accusations.
The Russian authorities are aggressively pushing the line that Ukraine and the West were behind last month's Crocus City concert hall massacre outside Moscow which left 145 people dead.
The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. But soon after the suspected gunmen were detained President Vladimir Putin hinted at a Ukrainian connection.
At the weekend Russian state TV broadcast interrogation videos of the four suspects, all citizens of Tajikistan. One of the men said on camera that the post-attack plan had been "to head towards Kyiv".
Deutsche Welle
Mortar fire in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) killed three Tanzanian soldiers who were part of a Southern African peacekeeping mission sent to help government forces fight M23 rebels, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said on Monday.
"This unfortunate incident happened after a hostile mortar round had fallen near the camp they were staying at," the 16-member bloc said in a statement. Three other Tanzanian soldiers were wounded, it added.
Deutsche Welle
On Monday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the US continues to oppose a full-scale invasion of Rafah.
Miller spoke with reporters after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a "date" had been set for an Israeli military operation in the southern Gazan city.
Since February, the US has warned an invasion of Rafah would unleash a humanitarian disaster. More than 1 million displaced people are sheltering in the city.
"We have made clear to Israel that we think a full-scale military invasion of Rafah would have an enormously harmful effect on those civilians and that it would ultimately hurt Israel's security," Miller said.
The White House has said it has not seen signs a major ground operation is imminent in Rafah.
Al Jazeera
Mbyo/Kigali, Rwanda – Mukaremera Laurence gazed at the ground as Nkundiye Thacien spoke about how he used a machete to kill her husband 30 years ago.
The three of them had been neighbours and lifelong friends, living together in the Rwandan village of Mbyo. But then, in 1994, Thacien received orders to kill.
“It was an order and if you didn’t obey they threatened to kill your family,” Thacien told Al Jazeera, “so I felt like I had to do it.”
He speaks about one of the 20th century’s most macabre events, when the majority Hutu group he belonged to, which ruled Rwanda at the time, began a campaign of mass killing against the Tutsis – the minority ethnic group to which Laurence’s husband belonged.
Al Jazeera
Dearborn Heights, Michigan, the US – For most of her life, Yasmeen Hamed has been an observant Muslim. But by her own admission, she did not often wear the hijab in public. She was hardly an apostate - here in this Detroit suburb, the Palestinian American mother of four is known for her charity work caring for gravely injured Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation, and she did don the hijab at the mosque – but she stopped short of complying with the religious edict requiring women to wear the veil at all times in public.
But then the images from Israel’s siege of Gaza began to unspool across her phone screen and she found herself traumatised by the violence and its unimaginable scale, yet also drawn to the religious devotion of the embattled Palestinian women continuing to wear their bloodied and tattered prayer garments – known as an “isdal” or “toub salah” – even at night in the event that they are killed in their sleep.
Kyiv Independent
Ukraine's Culture Ministry has recognized a number of TV channels, circuses, and other cultural institutions as "critically important" companies during wartime, allowing some of their employees to defer military service, according to decrees published on the ministry's website.
The controversial decisions come amid the Ukrainian government's efforts to update the legal framework around mobilization in order to ramp up its number of available troops in 2024.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently approved laws to lower the minimum age of compulsory military service from 27 to 25, allowing younger men to be mobilized, create the online register for conscripts, and cancel the "partially eligible" status in the military medical examinations.
Since the beginning of 2024, the Culture Ministry has issued decrees designating dozens of media companies and TV channels, including those participating in Ukraine's TV marathon, "as critically important for the functioning of the economy and ensuring the livelihood of the population in a special period."
The Guardian
The Vatican has described the belief in gender fluidity as “a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”, as it released an updated declaration of what the Catholic church regards as threats to human dignity.
The new Dignitas infinita (Infinite Dignity) declaration released by the Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday after five years in the making reiterates Pope Francis’s previous criticism of what he has called an “ugly ideology of our time”.
“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the gospel,” the 20-page document says.
The Guardian, Australia
Julie Bishop – the only woman in Tony Abbott’s 2013 federal cabinet – believes the then prime minister really wanted an all-male senior ministry and only included her because her elected position as deputy leader meant he could not avoid it.
The former foreign minister remains convinced that Abbott’s preference was to have no women at all.
“I wasn’t appointed by Tony, I was there in my own right as the elected deputy leader, so they had no choice but to have me in cabinet,” Bishop says in a lengthy podcast interview with Helen McCabe, founder of professional development and advocacy organisation Future
Women.
The Guardian, Medical Research
Whether it is a hug from a friend or the caress of a weighted blanket, the sensation of touch appears to bring benefits for the body and mind, researchers say.
The sense of touch is the first to develop in babies and is crucial in allowing us to experience the environment around us as well as communicate. Indeed, the loss of touch from others during the Covid pandemic hit many hard.
However, while myriad studies have suggested touch is
beneficial for our health, few have attempted to draw the vast field of research together.
Now experts have done just that, revealing a simple message: touch helps.
Dr Helena Hartmann, a co-author of the research from University Hospital Essen, said: “More consensual touch events throughout our day can help alleviate or potentially buffer against mental and physical complaints.”
NPR
Federal and state regulators aren't doing enough to stop the growing problem of rogue health insurance brokers making unauthorized policy switches for Affordable Care Act policyholders, say consumers, agents, nonprofit enrollee assistance groups, and other insurance experts.
"We think it's urgent and it requires a lot more attention and resources," says Jennifer Sullivan, director of health coverage access for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the ACA, "has acknowledged the issue," says former Oklahoma insurance commissioner John Doak. "But it appears their response is inadequate."
NPR
KYIV, Ukraine — The head of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog agency on Sunday condemned a Ukrainian drone strike on one of six nuclear reactors at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, saying such attacks "significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident."
In a statement on the social media platform X, Rafael Mariano Grossi confirmed at least three direct hits against the ZNPP main reactor containment structures took place. "This cannot happen," he said.
He said it was the first such attack since November 2022, when he set out five basic principles to avoid a serious nuclear accident with radiological consequences.
CNN
Connecticut became the first Division I men’s college basketball team to win back-to-back championships since Florida 17 years ago, as the Huskies downed Purdue 75-60 in the NCAA title game Monday.
The Huskies (37-3) have now won six national championships since 1999, more than any other men’s team in that span and second only during that time to the school’s women’s team (10).
Connecticut was led by guard Tristen Newton with 20 points and seven assists. Guard Stephon Castle had 15 points.
The game was close throughout the first half before the Huskies went on a 15-7 run to propel themselves from a 2-point deficit to a 36-30 lead at the intermission. Newton scored 11 points in the period.
Edey had 16 first-half points, and during one stretch early in the period the 7-foot-4 center scored all 11 Purdue points. But the deficit at half was the first time the Boilermakers trailed after the first 20 minutes in the tournament.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, 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.