Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, 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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
BBC
Poland fury at Holocaust comment by FBI's James Comey
Poland has summoned the US ambassador and demanded an apology over comments on the Holocaust by FBI director James Comey.
The foreign ministry said Mr Comey had suggested in a Washington Post article that some Poles were accomplices.
After the summons US envoy Stephen Mull said he made it clear the US believed "Nazi Germany alone" was responsible.
Six million Polish citizens were killed by the Nazis during World War Two, half of them Jewish.
In the Washington Post article on Thursday, aimed at raising education about the Holocaust, Mr Comey wrote: "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil.
"They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do."
The words sparked a storm of protest in Poland.
BBC
Mediterranean migrant deaths: EU faces renewed pressure
Italian PM Matteo Renzi has led calls for more European Union action on sea migration after the latest deadly capsize of a boat in the Mediterranean.
Demanding a summit on the issue, Mr Renzi said trafficking was "a plague in our continent" and bemoaned the lack of European solidarity.
The 20m (70ft) long boat was believed to be carrying up to 700 migrants, and only 28 survivors have been rescued.
Up to 1,500 migrants are now feared to have drowned this year alone.
Human smugglers are taking advantage of the political crisis in Libya to use it as a launching point for boats carrying migrants who are fleeing violence or economic hardship in Africa and the Middle East.
Also see gjohnsit's
diary on the subject.
Al Jazeera America
US: Iraq troops clear ISIL fighters from country's largest oil refinery
The Iraqi government has regained full control of a contested and strategically important oil facility that has been besieged for days by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group, the U.S. military said Sunday.
Iraqi soldiers had surrounded and entered the country's biggest oil refinery on Saturday, according to senior Iraqi officials, but skirmishes had continued. On Sunday, a statement put out by the Combined Joint Task Force — the U.S. military operation in charge of fighting ISIL in Iraq and Syria — said Iraq’s government was now in “full control” of the refinery, “having successfully cleared the massive facility of any remaining ISIL fighters.”
Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military effort to help the Iraqi government battle back ISIL, has entailed 47 airstrikes over the course of nine days against ISIL targets in and around the facility, as well as elsewhere in Iraq.
Holding the oil refinery at Baiji, some 155 miles north of Baghdad, is seen as a strategically vital for the Iraqi government, as the facility accounts for a little more than a quarter of the country's entire refining capacity.
The refinery produced about 175,000 barrels per day before it shut in June when ISIL fighters seized it at the same time as the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which ISIL still holds.
The Guardian
US civilians and veterans leave home for Isis fight with help from social media
From his muddy outpost on the front line in North Iraq, Grim can see the black flag of the Islamic State snapping in the wind just 500 metres away.
The 52-year-old Boston native – who several months ago found his way to a peshmerga base south of Kirkuk – sits in a crude breeze-block shelter, surrounded by mud and dirt, gunfire crackling in the background.
“We are fighting a scourge,” said Grim, who did not want to disclose his real name. “We are fighting murderers and rapists: people who burn people in cages, people who behead people. This is not a civilised army. They are animals.”
Grim said he had been moved to leave behind his life in the US and take up arms after reading about the militant group’s persecution of Yazidi and Christian civilians. “I have two kids and a beautiful woman at home,” he said. “She knows I’m here and she’s not happy about it, but she understands.”
He is just one of dozens – and possibly scores – of Americans who have traveled thousands of miles to northern Iraq to fight alongside Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Christian militias and against Isis. Some of the volunteers are civilian with no military experience; others are veterans of the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan; most have washed up in a war zone with little more than a one-way ticket and a few contacts made through Facebook.
Al Jazeera America
Pesticide the likely cause of Nigeria 'mystery disease'
Pesticide poisoning was the likely cause of the mysterious deaths of at least 18 people in a southwestern Nigerian town earlier this week, the World Health Organisation said Sunday.
The "current hypothesis is cause of the event is herbicides", WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in a Tweet.
"Tests done so far are negative for viral and bacterial infection," he added.
The victims began showing symptoms early last week in what Ondo state spokesman Kayode Akinmade called a "mysterious disease", prompting fears of a new infectious disease outbreak in a region ravaged by Ebola.
The victims, whose symptoms included headache, weight loss, blurred vision and loss of consciousness, died within a day of falling ill in the town of Ode-Irele, in southwestern Ondo state.
The Ondo state health commissioner, Dayo Adeyanju, told AFP news agency on Saturday that 23 people had been affected.
The Guardian
Pennsylvania officer charged with homicide after shooting caught on video
Video from a camera attached to a police officer’s stun gun shows how David Kassick died, authorities say: two bullets, four seconds apart, fired into his back as he lay face down.
Two months before a police officer was captured on video shooting a South Carolina motorist eight times in the back, Kassick was killed by a Pennsylvania officer who is now charged with criminal homicide.
“I think it would be impossible not to see some similarities between the two, inasmuch as the manner in which both individuals are shot,” said Christopher Slusser, a lawyer working for Kassick’s family who has seen the video in question.
Unlike the video in the South Carolina case, which has itself resulted in a murder charge, the footage recorded by Hummelstown police officer Lisa Mearkle’s stun gun has not been released. Attorneys for the officer want to keep it that way: they asked a judge on Friday to bar the prosecution from releasing it.
Al Jazeera America
Body cameras could transform policing – for the worse
The day after video surfaced of a North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back, the town’s mayor announced plans to outfit all its police officers with body cameras. The New York Police Department has started to put cameras on officers, and the White House has announced a $263 million program to supply 50,000 body cameras to local police.
Advocates for these cameras hope that they will hold police accountable for their behavior. Skeptics point out that unobstructed video footage did nothing to win an indictment in the police killing of Eric Garner. But this debate has overlooked another possibility. Even if cameras reduce police violence, they could transform how citizens interact with police once facial recognition technology allows officers automatically to identify each individual they lay eyes on.
Facial recognition technology isn’t science fiction. Police in the United Kingdom, Dubai and Canada already wear cameras that can recognize faces to identify suspects and missing persons. Apps for Google Glass allow wearers to automatically connect faces to photos, and Taser — the leading seller of police body cameras — is developing cameras that integrate facial recognition with police databases.
This technology will amplify rather than resolve some of the problems highlighted by recent police killings.
Reuters (LOL story)
Republican Graham says '91 percent' chance he'll run for president
(Reuters) - He is not yet ready to commit himself, but South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday there was a "91 percent" chance he would enter the Republican presidential race.
Graham, a prominent Senate critic of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, was among a group of potential and actual Republican candidates who gathered this weekend in New Hampshire, which holds next year's first presidential primary.
Reminded during a "Fox News Sunday" interview that fellow Republican Carly Fiorina had said recently there was a 90 percent she would become a candidate, Graham was asked what percent chance there was he would run.
"Ninety-one," he replied.
"I've got to put the means together," Graham said. "I think I've got a good message. I think I've done more right than wrong on foreign policy. I've criticized the president for being weak and indecisive.
C/Net
George Lucas to build affordable housing in one of the richest parts of America
When "Star Wars" creator George Lucas planned to build a Lucasfilm production studio on his Grady Ranch property in the affluent Marin County, California, he was met with staunch opposition. The local residents protested the project, citing increased traffic, ruined views and potential damage to the local environment. In 2012, Lucasfilm announced that it had scrapped the 263,701-square-foot project.
"The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbours," the company wrote in a statement in April 2012.
Prior to Lucas' purchase of the land, the 1,000-acre Grady Ranch had been zoned for residential use, and the company planned to sell it so that it could revert to that use. Less than a month later, however, the Marin Community Foundation announced it would be working with Lucasfilm to develop affordable housing on the land.
After three years in stasis, working with the regulations that govern affordable housing grants, George Lucas now plans to foot the bill himself -- to the tune of upward of $150 million. This not only allows the project to proceed without jumping through those hoops -- it also means that the housing can be allocated to specific groups, such as seniors, nurses and teachers.
N Y Times
Arrest by F.B.I. Is Tied to $500 Million Art Theft From Boston Museum, Lawyer Says
BOSTON — Federal agents trying to solve the biggest art theft in the nation’s history arrested a 79-year-old Hartford man on Friday after conducting their second sting against him in three years to force him to disclose the whereabouts of $500 million in stolen art, the man’s lawyer said.
The suspect, Robert V. Gentile, was arrested by F.B.I. agents on charges of selling a .38 Colt cobra revolver on March 2 to an unidentified man who was acting as a confidential informant for the authorities. Investigators say Mr. Gentile, who has been on probation as a result of a 2013 conviction that was part of the first Federal Bureau of Investigation sting against him, received $1,000 for the sale.
Mr. Gentile’s lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, said his client knew nothing about the art theft, which occurred 25 years ago at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and included works by Rembrandt and Vermeer. Officials investigating the robbery have said in recent weeks that they thought Mr. Gentile remained their strongest lead in the frustrating case because most of the men they had identified as suspects in the robbery were dead.
Detroit Free Press (Story suggested by vzsk3s on kitchen Table Kibitzing)
Shipping Great Lakes water? That's California dreaming
Amid rising water supply crises, could the parched American Southwest ever get its hands on the world's most abundant and valuable liquid fresh water supply — our Great Lakes?
Setting aside the astronomical expense and infrastructure requirements, as a policy matter, a large-scale diversion of Great Lakes water is a virtual impossibility. But that's only because of states and Canadian provinces around the lakes coming together to solidify protections within the last decade.
The latest need for a big water supply is a longstanding, but still escalating, crisis in drought-stricken California. Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month mandated a 25% water-use reduction for residents and nonagricultural businesses.