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:Greece bailout: Four-month extension in eurozone deal
Greece bailout: Four-month extension in eurozone deal
Greece and eurozone nations have agreed a deal to extend financial aid after bailout talks in Brussels.
Eurozone finance ministers reached an agreement to extend Greece's financial rescue by four months.
Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup, said that Athens had pledged to honour all its debts.
"This is a very positive outcome," he told a news conference on Friday night.
BBC:Ebola crisis: Liberia to open borders as infection falls
Ebola crisis: Liberia to open borders as infection falls
Liberia is to reopen its borders following a reduction in the number of Ebola cases being reported in the country.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf made the announcement on Friday and said nationwide curfews would also be lifted.
New infections have dropped to one-tenth of the level seen when the virus was at its peak.
But health officials warned the decline has levelled off in the last month.
BBC:India struggles with deadly swine flu outbreak
India struggles with deadly swine flu outbreak
Indian health officials are struggling to contain a swine flu outbreak that has killed more than 700 people since it took hold in mid-December.
The number of cases has doubled since last week to more than 11,000.
Critics have accused the government of failing to distribute medicines, but officials insisted the situation was under control.
This year's outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which causes swine flu, is the deadliest in India since 2010.
BBC:Syria crisis: UN may release 'war criminal' lists
Syria crisis: UN may release 'war criminal' lists
United Nations investigators are considering revealing the names of an estimated 200 individuals suspected of committing war crimes in Syria.
The move would reverse a long-held policy of not naming alleged war criminals in the Syrian conflict.
Investigators said on Friday there had been an "exponential rise" in atrocities committed in Syria.
UN figures show that more than 220,000 people have been killed during Syria's four-year civil conflict.
BBC:Fire rips through Dubai skyscraper
Fire rips through Dubai skyscraper
A fire has swept through the Torch skyscraper in Dubai, one of the tallest residential buildings in the world.
Strong winds helped the blaze to spread across the 336.1m (1,105ft) high building in the marina district.
One eyewitness told the BBC "there was debris flying everywhere, falling into neighbouring buildings". Later reports said the fire was under control.
It is not known what caused the blaze. Hundreds of people were evacuated and there are no reports of any casualties.
BBC:Ukraine: UK and EU 'badly misread' Russia
Ukraine: UK and EU 'badly misread' Russia
The UK and the EU have been accused of a "catastrophic misreading" of the mood in the Kremlin in the run-up to the crisis in Ukraine.
The House of Lords EU committee claimed Europe "sleepwalked" into the crisis.
The EU had not realised the depth of Russian hostility to its plans for closer relations with Ukraine, it said.
It comes as French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke about the crisis at a joint news conference in Paris.
Reuters:Court temporarily halts U.S. policy of detaining asylum-seeking mothers, children
Court temporarily halts U.S. policy of detaining asylum-seeking mothers, children
(Reuters) - A federal court on Friday temporarily halted the Obama administration policy of detaining mothers and children seeking asylum in the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a lawsuit in December against the so-called no-release policy by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on behalf of mothers and children who said they had fled violence in Central America.
ICE, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, had implemented the policy during a spike in illegal entries into the United States from Central America during the summer.
The ACLU said that by holding mothers and children who had fled violence and persecution, the administration had sought to deter other asylum-seekers from coming to the United States.
Reuters:U.S. health officials push for stricter 'superbug' defense
U.S. health officials push for stricter 'superbug' defense
(Reuters) - The U.S. government is close to finalizing instructions to prevent medical devices responsible for transmitting "superbugs" from spreading the potentially fatal pathogens between patients, the scientist leading the effort said.
The new protocol for the reusable devices, called duodenoscopes, is being developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whose disease detectives have investigated duodenoscope-transmitted infections since 2013.
In the latest outbreak, duodenoscopes spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria to seven patients at a University of California at Los Angeles hospital, contributing to two deaths.
The CDC's guidance would not be mandatory. Only the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authority to require a manufacturer to include more stringent safety instructions for medical devices. The FDA can also order products be redesigned.
Reuters:U.S. FDA knew devices spread fatal 'superbug' but does not order fix
U.S. FDA knew devices spread fatal 'superbug' but does not order fix
(Reuters) - U.S. health regulators have known since at least 2009 that the medical devices at the center of the "superbug" outbreak at UCLA can transmit lethal infections but have not recommended any new safety requirements, a lapse that threatens patient safety, experts in hospital-acquired infections said.
The latest outbreak involving the reusable devices called duodenoscopes, which are inserted down the throat, may have exposed 179 patients at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles and contributed to two deaths.
It is far from the first time medical investigators traced the sometimes-fatal spread of pathogens to the devices, which are manufactured by the medical units of Japanese companies Olympus Corp (7733.T), Pentax and Fujifilm Holdings Corp (4901.T). UCLA uses an Olympus model.
In 2013 and 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration received a total of 75 reports of adverse events associated with the devices, resulting in harm to 135 patients, the agency said. Because healthcare providers do not always submit such reports, the FDA said, that is likely an underestimate.
Reuters:Strike at Brazil plant catches General Motors off guard
Strike at Brazil plant catches General Motors off guard
(Reuters) - General Motors Co was caught by surprise on Friday by a strike at its Brazilian car factory as workers protested a planned furlough and layoff of hundreds of staff, in the latest labor disruption in the nation's slumping auto industry.
The company said in an email it had asked a labor judge to mediate the dispute and that a hearing had been set for Monday afternoon.
The local metalworkers union said workers had voted for an indefinite strike, bringing production to a standstill, to protest GM's proposal to furlough nearly 800 workers for two months before laying them off in April.
Representatives for GM declined to comment on its labor proposal, but criticized the union for the decision to strike.
Reuters:Contract negotiators for U.S. West Coast ports reach tentative deal
Contract negotiators for U.S. West Coast ports reach tentative deal
(Reuters) - Shipping companies and terminal operators clinched a tentative deal with the dockworkers union on Friday, settling a labor dispute that led to months of cargo backups at 29 U.S. West Coast ports and snarled trans-Pacific maritime trade with Asia.
The deal, confirmed by a source close to the situation, was reached after the U.S. labor secretary arrived in San Francisco this week to help broker negotiations that had dragged on for nine months between the shippers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
There was no official word from either side that an accord was reached, but U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez scheduled a conference call with reporters for later in the evening to discuss a recent development in the dispute.
Tensions arising from the talks have played out in worsening cargo congestion that has slowed freight traffic at the ports, which handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 percent of the nation's imports from Asia.
Reuters:U.S. envoy to Africa lakes region stepping down: State Department
U.S. envoy to Africa lakes region stepping down: State Department
(Reuters) - The U.S. special envoy to Africa's Great Lakes region, Russ Feingold, will step down next month, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Friday.
The former U.S. senator, a Democrat from Wisconsin, has led U.S. efforts to end the conflict in Central Africa's Great Lakes region since June 2013 when he said he would stay in the role for one year.
Some U.S. publications speculated that Feingold was leaving his Africa role to run for his old Senate seat in 2016.
"Special Envoy Feingold is stepping down sometime next month," Psaki told daily briefing. "We will continue to devote sustained, high-level attention to the Great Lakes region," she said, adding that a successor would be named.
LA Times:Superfish vulnerability traced to other apps, too
Superfish vulnerability traced to other apps, too
On Thursday security researchers warned that an adware program called Superfish, which was preloaded on some Lenovo consumer laptops, opened computers to attack. However, it seems that the same poorly designed and flawed traffic interception mechanism used by Superfish is also used in other software programs.
Superfish uses a man-in-the-middle proxy component to interfere with encrypted HTTPS connections, undermining the trust between users and websites. It does this by installing its own root certificate in Windows and uses that certificate to re-sign SSL certificates presented by legitimate websites.
Security researchers found two major issues with this implementation. First, the software used the same root certificate on all systems and second, the private key corresponding to that certificate was embedded in the program and was easy to extract.
With the key now public, malicious hackers can launch man-in-the-middle attacks via public Wi-Fi networks or compromised routers against users who have Superfish installed on their systems.