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.
The OND concept was borne under the keen keyboard of Magnifico - proper respect is due.
Tonight I am stepping in a bit unexpectedly. My goal for this evening is to take your mind off the silly Republicans who seem to take themselves ridiculously seriously and show you there are other things going on in the world. It is the beginning of Armistice Day, so we will conclude with a bit of news about the Great War.
We start, however, with WWII, and a salute to those who served, in honour of Veterans' Day here in the US:
Topekan fought cold, Germans in Battle of Bulge
Posted: November 10, 2011 - 4:38pm
By Steve Fry
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Almost 67 years after the Battle of the Bulge, infantryman Horace High still suffers from the frostbite he experienced during the battle's brutally cold temperatures.
His hands are cool to the touch, he has little feeling in his feet, his knees were replaced in 1992 and 1994, and he will soon undergo surgery on one leg to try to improve his blood circulation.
"It was our worst enemy," High said of the frigid temperatures.
High, 90, is one of 40 World War II veterans interviewed in Tad Pritchett's newly released book, "From Farm to Field: In Their Own Words, Stories of the Battle of the Bulge."
In other news from Kansas:
Kansas judge dismisses felony charges against Planned Parenthood
By JOE LAMBE
The Kansas City Star
Johnson County prosecutors on Wednesday dismissed 49 charges, including 23 felonies, that were filed as part of the nation’s first criminal case against Planned Parenthood.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said that all copies of key documents needed to support those charges no longer exist, including a set destroyed in 2009 by Steve Six, who then was the Kansas attorney general.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment destroyed the original records in 2005.
Howe said he would prosecute the remaining 58 misdemeanors in the complaint Phill Kline filed in 2007, when he was the Johnson County district attorney. Those misdemeanor charges accuse Planned Parenthood of failing to test fetuses for viability and performing late-term abortions.
Your Canadian content begins with this article about the Toronto Zoo's most famous residents these days:
Same-sex penguins must separate soon
How do you a change a man?
The question asked on countless magazine covers and daytime talk shows is now the unenviable — and perhaps Herculean — task shared by Thandiwey and Farai, two unassuming African penguins charged with breaking up the Toronto Zoo’s most popular bromance.
Buddy and Pedro, the same-sex penguin pair who became international celebrities this week after their story went viral online, will be separated sometime this month for mating purposes.
Farai, 3, will be paired off with Buddy, 21; and Thandiwey, 4, will mate with Pedro, 10. While Buddy mated with a female before he met Pedro, Farai will be Pedro’s first.
Although they do not have a sexual relationship, Buddy and Pedro have been inseparable since meeting in an all-male group of penguins at a zoo in Toledo.
More Canadian zoology:
Canada's Loch Ness Monster Caught on Tape?
By ABC News
A possible sighting of Canada’s version of the Loch Ness monster at a lake in British Columbia has stirred up the legend of the sea creature long-rumored to reside there.
A man visiting British Colombia’s Lake Okanagan claims he filmed video of what could only be the elusive monster, known to locals as Ogopogo. The 30-second video shows two long ripples in the water in a seemingly deserted area of the lake.
“It was not going with the waves,” Richard Huls, who captured the scene on camera during a visit to a local winery, told the Vancouver Sun. “It was not a wave, obviously, just a darker color. The size and the fact that they were not parallel with the waves made me think it had to be something else.”
TV: Not Dead Yet
Guest post written by Jef Graham
A few years ago, many people were predicting the end of television as we know it. The rise of video-on-demand, social games and other Web-based diversions all were supposed to kill TV. Who could possibly want to watch an antiquated, live network or cable show, the theory went, when one could Tweet, surf Facebook or watch something cached on Hulu or streamed on Netflix instead?
Fast-forward to today. The TV business certainly has undergone some seismic shifts due to new technologies, which I’ll discuss in a minute. But the bottom line is, people are still watching the tube. Nielsen predicted that the number of U.S. homes with TV access would hit 115.9 million in the 2010-11 season, up 1 million from the year before and representing an all-time high. American teenagers, one of the most tech-savvy segments of the population, have seen their TV viewership actually increase six percent in the last five years, according to a Nielsen report.
But you will do yourself good if, instead of watching TV, you go to a museum this weekend:
Da Vinci’s Milan Masterworks Thrill in London Exhibit: Review
By Martin Gayford - Nov 10, 2011 6:00 PM CT
“Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,” the new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, is just as good as it promised to be.
The basic concept is extraordinary: gathering more paintings by one of the greatest artists than have ever been seen together. The experience is thrilling. What’s more, it’s likely to change the minds of experts on Leonardo (1452-1519). This is a triumph for the museum, and the curator, Luke Syson.
The subject isn’t the artist’s entire career, just the years Leonardo spent in Milan, from around 1482 to the end of 1499. That’s the central portion of his life, in which he developed into the artist, scientist and thinker we know. This period, as Syson says in the catalog, was “the making of him.”
Nazi-looted painting seized from Florida museum
U.S. authorities seized a painting on display in a Florida museum that was believed to be looted from its Jewish owner by the Nazis.
The nearly 500-year-old painting, “Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rascal” by Girolamo de’ Romani, was seized Nov. 4 by the Department of Homeland Security from Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Fla.
With otters, an airboat and hurricane-force winds, a museum grows
Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Discovery and Science unveils its $25 million expansion, including a booth with hurricane-force wind.
By Hannah Sampson
hsampson@MiamiHerald.com
Lured by a swirling vortex, a young boy ducked under a barrier and bounded into the new, still off-limits Storm Center at the Museum of Discovery & Science in Fort Lauderdale earlier this week.
This was not an uncommon occurrence, said Kim Cavendish, the museum’s president and CEO, as she conducted a preview tour.
“It’s hard to keep them out,” she said.
As of Friday, no one has to stay out of the new $25 million EcoDiscovery Center, a 34,000-square-foot addition to the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale. Going to the museum will cost a little more, though: Admission increased by $2 earlier this month.
In Education (sorta) (I am sending this one to friends!):
My major is better than yours
By Chelsey Francis, Staff Columnist
Every semester since I first came to N.C. State, I've gotten to introduce myself to my classes. "Stand up and tell us your name, major, and why it's your major." I wish all the different colleges would have introduced themselves before I arrived on campus. After three years here, this is what I think the colleges would have said, along with a new slogan for each.
Africa’s population bomb
From the Newspaper | Opinion | By Gwynne Dyer
According to United Nations Population Fund, Africa currently has one-seventh of the world`s people: just over one billion. But during the rest of the century, this single continent will add an extra 2.6 billion people, more than tripling the population, while the rest of the world will add just half a billion.
If it weren`t for the African population boom, the world`s population would never exceed 7.5 billion. That is still probably twice as many people as the planet`s resources could support comfortably for more than a couple of generations – but birth rates are falling to below replacement level in most places. If that were happening in Africa too, the global population could be headed back well before 2100.
It isn`t happening in Africa, or at least not nearly fast enough. Nor is the UN naively projecting current birth rates into the indefinite future. It assumes that the current average fertility rate for the African continent of 4.6 children per woman will fall to only three children per woman by 2045, though some countries — Niger, Mali and Uganda, for example — will continue to have higher birth rates.
Looking back at the 10th of November in history:
Memories of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald: Grand Rapids-area storm foreshadowed disaster
Published: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 12:42 PM Updated: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 2:03 PM
The Grand Rapids Press staff
Thirty-six years ago, the Grand Rapids area was getting a taste of the weather that would sink the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior, claiming 29 lives.
The top story on the front page of The Grand Rapids Press for Nov. 10, 1975, was headlined: "Hurricane-Force Wind Whips City, Suburbs." The story noted that a record high temperature of 66 degrees was set around 1 a.m. that day, and that eight hours later the temperature had fallen 20 degrees.
And to commemorate Veterans' Day/Armistice Day:
World War I spy-catching chemist honoured
CBC
A British woman who used her knowledge of simple chemistry to catch German spies during World War I is being recognized by the Royal Society of Chemistry ahead of Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day as it is known in the U.K.
Mabel Beatrice Elliott, who died in 1944, uncovered secret messages written in invisible ink between the lines of letters she inspected while working as a deputy assistant censor for the British War Office.
"Although her vigilance may have prevented an invasion by the Kaiser, she was never recognized for the coup in her own lifetime," said a news release from the London-based society of chemists this week.
War Resonates Anew on Hallowed French Ground
Le Musée de la Grande Guerre, or the Museum of the Great War, will be inaugurated Friday in Meaux, France.
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: November 10, 2011
CHÂTEAU-THIERRY, France — The rema‘There was a price paid in Niagara, too’s of World War I to be identified were found just a few years ago, buried in a vegetable garden in this little town, wine bottles clasped in their crossed arms. They had died of their wounds in a field hospital set up in an adjoining farmhouse.
The names of missing American soldiers are engraved on chapel walls at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau.
Because dog tags rusted so quickly, soldiers created their own unofficial method for future identification: They wrote a note identifying the dead, with the date and manner of death, and two comrades of higher rank signed it as witnesses. They then stuck the note in an empty bottle, corked it and buried it in the arms of the corpse, said David Atkinson, superintendent of the sweeping Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought, a site sacred to the Marine Corps.
‘There was a price paid in Niagara, too’
By Grant LaFleche Standard Staff
St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Region, Sun Media
The letter betrays nothing. Edith Wright's hand is steady. Her tone is formal but polite. She speaks of prosaic, everyday things such as they were in 1919 in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Then Edith writes about her family. Cracks appear. Her daughter Dorothy just turned 15 on March 10, 1919, the day the letter was written. Whatever joy she may have felt celebrating her child's birth is buried by a crushing grief that rises from beneath the smooth penmanship and measured words.
"This is Dorothy's birthday," Edith writes. "She is 15 today. My mind goes back to that time and how happy we were. I'm afraid I did not appreciate my good fortune in having such a fine and noble man for a help mate. How I long to have him back."