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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
Paris attacks: Millions rally for unity in France
More than three million people have taken part in unity marches across France after 17 people died during three days of deadly attacks in Paris.
Up to 1.6m are estimated to have taken to the streets of the French capital.
More than 40 world leaders joined the start of the Paris march, linking arms in an act of solidarity.
The marchers wanted to demonstrate unity after the attacks on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, police officers, and a kosher supermarket.
The French government said the rally turnout was the highest on record.
Lyse Doucet reports from Paris: ''Francois Hollande was at the head of the march''
The rally, led by relatives of the victims of last week's attacks, began at the Place de la Republique and concluded in the Place de la Nation.
Several other French cities also held rallies. The interior ministry said turnout across France was at least 3.7 million, including up to 1.6 million in Paris - where sheer numbers made an exact tally difficult.
Rallies also took place outside of France, with thousands of people gathering in London, Washington, Montreal and Berlin.
I was on a thread last night which contrasted the response to the Paris attacks to the near blackout of the Boko Harum slaughter. OND did report it and I'm always defensive regarding OND so I promised to report on it tonight. No mention on the usual sources; I had to google to find it.
The Independent
Nigeria's forgotten massacre: 2,000 slaughtered by Boko Haram, but the West is failing to help
One of Africa's most senior church leaders has accused the West of ignoring the threat of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, days after the reported slaughter of up to 2,000 people by the group.
Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of Jos and president of the Nigerian Bishops Conference, spoke as bodies lay strewn on the ground in Baga, in north-east Nigeria, after a surge by Boko Haram fighters who took over the border town earlier this month.
He highlighted the stark difference between the West's willingness to act when 17 people were killed by militants in France and the approach to the slaughter in Africa.
Estimates of the death toll in Baga and surrounding villages, which were razed by fire, have been put at up to 2,000. Most of the dead were women, children and the elderly who could not flee in time, said Amnesty International, which labelled it the group's deadliest massacre yet.
A further 30,000 people are thought to have fled their homes, 7,500 seeking sanctuary in Chad and the rest adding to Nigeria's tens of thousands of displaced people.
Al Jazeera America
Deadly suicide bombing hits Nigerian city
A suicide bomb attack in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri has killed at least six people, police in Borno state say, while medics say at least 16 people were killed in the blast, capping one of the bloodiest weeks yet in the country’s ongoing fight with separatists.
Saturday’s blast, which occurred just days after violence in Borno left an estimated 2,000 people dead, was triggered by a girl suicide bomber who may have been as young as 10 years old, according to Agence France-Presse.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but several reports say signs point to the armed group Boko Haram.
Following the Maiduguri attack, two suicide bombers in nearby Yobe state blew themselves at a police station Potiskum. A death toll for that attack was not immediately available.
Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, has witnessed several bombings as it lies in the heartland of an insurgency by Boko Harem, which wasts to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. The fighters are responsible for the kidnapping of hundreds of school girls over the last year. Many of the children remain missing—some feared married against their will to Boko Haram fighters.
BBC
AirAsia QZ8501: Divers recover 'black box' flight recorder
Indonesian divers have retrieved the flight data recorder of crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501, say officials.
The head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, Bambang Soelistyo, said teams were still looking for the second device, its cockpit voice recorder.
AirAsia flight QZ8501 disappeared in bad weather on 28 December with 162 people on board.
The aircraft was flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore and is lying 30m (98ft) deep in the Java Sea.
Dozens of bodies have been recovered but most of the victims are believed to still be inside the fuselage, which has not yet been found.
It is hoped that the recovery of the flight data recorder will help investigators find out what happened to the plane during what should have been a brief flight.
The footage of the AirAsia plane has been captured by the Indonesian Navy
Speaking in Jakarta, Bambang Soelistyo told reporters: "I received information from the National Transport Safety Committee chief that at 07:11 AM (00:11 GMT), we succeeded in bringing up part of the black box that we call the flight data recorder."
Al Jazeera America
Oil industry accidents put North Dakota hospital $1.5 million in debt
Dr. Gary Ramage is a physician who has lived in Watford City, North Dakota, for 20 years. When he first arrived in the area, it was a farming and ranching community. Some of its fewer than 1,500 residents had wealth tied up in their land and the livestock they raised. “Land rich, cash poor or cow rich, cash poor,” as Ramage told Fault Lines.
Today, thanks to an oil boom that began six years ago, the town’s population has more than doubled. Land in western North Dakota that once cost a few hundred dollars per acre is now going for hundreds of times more. Some of Ramage’s friends are collecting royalty checks totaling $80,000 every two weeks for letting oil companies drill on their property. The boomtown economy has trickled down to the businesses that support the new drilling operations, like convenience stores, where Ramage said clerks are paid $17 per hour with benefits, even though the state’s minimum wage is only $7.25.
But there are other consequences to the oil boom: The people of Watford City, the largest town in McKenzie County, which is near the center of the new gold rush, say their cost of living now includes a so-called “Bakken surcharge”—named after the Bakken shale that companies are fracking for its crude. They incur higher prices for groceries and other goods and services than others in the state and those in neighboring states. Ironically, they even pay more for gas.
Another consequence is that Ramage’s caseload at McKenzie County Hospital has also picked up significantly. The influx of new, unskilled workers taking on relatively dangerous industrial jobs resulted in a sharp rise in accidents and injuries in the region. In fact, North Dakota’s oil and gas operations have the highest fatality rate in the industry nationwide.
Raw Story ooops
North Dakota fracking town’s economy collapses as oil prices plummet
CROSBY, N.D. (Reuters) – Just over a decade ago, this sleepy farming community on the fringe of North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation hosted the state’s first horizontal oil well to be hydraulically fractured, or fracked, helping set in motion an economic revolution that shook the world.
Today, Divide County may be another vanguard for the state, this time ominous, as the first to feel the full effect of a collapse in prices that has lopped more than 50 percent off the price of oil since the summer.
Only five oil rigs were drilling in Divide County this week, down from 12 last August, according to state data. While those only account for a handful of the more than 162 rigs still drilling in North Dakota, the drop has been much steeper than elsewhere in the state and could signal trouble across the No. 2 U.S. oil producer behind Texas if prices continue to slide.
A “Coming Soon” sign still marks the spot on a patch of fallow farmland just outside of Crosby, the county seat, where a 200-person “man camp” to house oil workers was set to be built. Late last fall, Timberline Construction Group, an Alabama-based contractor, put the project on hold after an oil company pulled out of a housing contract.
USA Today
Holder: 'Highest levels' at DOJ to decide Petraeus fate
Attorney General Eric Holder says the leadership of the Justice Department will decide whether prosecutors will pursue criminal charges against retired general David Petraeus, but wouldn't say whether that would be him or his successor.
"I would expect that — to the extent that there is a matter of this magnitude — that would be decided at the highest levels of the Justice Department," Holder told CBS' Face The Nation.
Holder is due to retire soon; President Obama has nominated New York-based U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch to be the new attorney general, but it's not known when the Senate might vote on her confirmation.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, are recommending that Petraeus, also a former CIA director, face criminal charges for passing classified information to his former mistress, Paula Broadwell.
Raw Story ooops
Albuquerque cop mistakenly guns down undercover narcotics officer during bungled $60 meth bust
An undercover narcotics officer nearly died on Friday after he was shot by an Albuquerque police officer during a drug bust over $60 of methamphetamine.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, Police Chief Gorden Eden announced on Saturday that the undercover officer was in critical condition. However, Eden did not name any of the officers who were involved in the shooting.
A criminal complaint identified detectives Holly Garcia and Jacob Grant as two undercover officers who were assigned to the case.
The complaint said that Garcia had attempted to buy $60 worth of meth “shards” from Damien Bailey. Garcia reportedly drove with two suspects to an Econo Lodge, where she purchased the meth.
The shooting occurred after Garcia drove to a nearby McDonald’s and gave the signal for officers to move in for the drug bust. An undercover officer was shot multiple times, police said. Witnesses reported hearing around five gunshots.
Police declined to detail what went wrong during the drug bust, and they did not say why the officer opened fire. But the criminal complaint said nothing about the suspects being armed.
N Y Times
New Rules to Limit Tactics on Hospitals’ Fee Collections
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has adopted sweeping new rules to discourage nonprofit hospitals from using aggressive tactics to collect payments from low-income patients.
Under the rules, nonprofit hospitals must now offer discounts, free care or other financial assistance to certain needy patients. Additionally, hospitals must try to determine whether a patient is eligible for assistance before they refer a case to a debt collector, send negative information to a credit agency, place a lien on a patient’s home, file a lawsuit or seek a court order to seize a patient’s earnings.
The rules, issued at the end of last year by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, lay out detailed requirements for nonprofit hospitals that have or want tax-exempt status, about 60 percent of hospitals nationwide.
Health care lawyers said the rules could set an industry standard, influencing the practices of for-profit hospitals, because another federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had endorsed them. The bureau has broad authority to supervise credit reporting companies and debt collectors.
C/Net
Colliding black holes could warp space-time itself
A team of prominent researchers has discovered what appears to be the start of two massive black holes at the centers of their own galaxies beginning to collide.
Such an event should come as no surprise, considering that there are up to 200 billion galaxies in the universe (according to Space.com), so two of them are bound to bump into each other from time to time. In fact, astronomers have already observed the merging of galaxies (as seen in the image above), but they've never before witnessed the end-stage process of galaxy commingling, which results when the two central black holes smash into each other, releasing some pretty violent cosmic fireworks that could warp space-time itself.
The researchers, including scientists from Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, have theorized that an unusual light signal they're seeing from quasar PG 1302-102 -- essentially a black hole emitting light from the superheated particles swirling around its gravitational drain -- is being caused by the cosmic dance between two black holes in the system, each located less than the length of our solar system apart. The theory was published this week in the journal Nature.
While other cosmic phenomena could explain the light signature, the scientists became confident that their theory is the most likely after analyzing the quasar's light spectrum.
CNN
'La Dolce Vita' actress and 1950s sex symbol Anita Ekberg dies
(CNN)Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born actress whose role in "La Dolce Vita" made her into an international symbol of sensuality, died in Italy on Sunday.
Her death was widely reported in Italian media, citing complications from a longtime illness. She was 83.
Ekberg died in the country that made her an international star thanks to her turn as Sylvia, Marcello Mastroianni's unattainable dream woman the 1960 Federico Fellini classic. However, she was often quoted as saying that Fellini owed his fame to her, not the other way around.
A scene from "La Dolce Vita" of her bathing in Rome's Trevi fountain, clad in a black gown with a plunging neckline, cemented her sex symbol status, a designation she would later refer to as a "handicap."
American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan also immortalized Ekberg in the song "I Shall Be Free."
The Independent
Golden Globes 2015: Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt wins for role in rape storyline
British actress Joanne Froggatt has taken home the Golden Globe for best supporting actress in a series, miniseries or TV movie gong.
The 34-year-old plays Lady Mary's maid Anna Bates in the hit ITV period drama and has never won at the awards before.
Her recent storyline, in which she was attacked and raped by a visiting valet, led in part to her triumph and she paid tribute to those who had thanked her for addressing the issue.
"I received a small number of letters from survivors of rape," Froggatt said in her acceptance speech. "One woman summed up the thoughts of many by saying she wasn't sure why she'd written but she just felt in some way she wanted to be heard.
"I'd like to say, I heard you and I hope saying this so publicly in some way means you feel the world hears you."