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
Mexico missing students: Official account rejected
An independent investigation into the disappearance of 43 Mexican students nearly a year ago has rejected the government's account of events.
The government investigation said the bodies were burned at a rubbish dump hours after the students went missing.
But the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights says it has found no evidence to support claims that the bodies were incinerated.
The Mexican government has now ordered a new investigation.
Shortly after the IACHR report was published, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said a new forensic team would return to the area where the bodies were supposed to have been burned.
Relatives have always rejected the official investigation.
They accused the authorities of covering up the alleged involvement of high-ranking officials and possibly the army in the killings.
The case shocked Mexico and led to weeks of protests against official impunity and the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto.
After a six-month investigation, the Washington-based IACHR has released a report of nearly 500 pages urging the government to continue looking for the missing students.
A Peruvian fire expert hired by the commission concluded that it was impossible for all the bodies to have been burned at the landfill site in the municipality of Cocula, in the western state of Guerrero.
BBC
New Zealand Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior bomber apologises
The French intelligence agent who led the deadly attack on the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand 30 years ago has for the first time apologised for his actions.
Jean-Luc Kister told the TVNZ station that the action "resulted in the accidental death of an innocent man", photographer Fernando Pereira.
Greenpeace called for a Paris street to be named after Mr Pereira.
The ship was mined to stop Greenpeace protests against French nuclear tests.
The Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985 was due to sail to Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia where the tests were due to be conducted.
The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says it was one of the most notorious acts of state sabotage.
The mines planted by Mr Kister, a naval frogman, sank the vessel in Auckland harbour, killing Mr Pereira.
Al Jazeera
Israel's Trump Card
Israel to build fence to keep refugees out
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the start of construction of a fence along Israel's border with Jordan after calls for Tel Aviv to take in Syrian refugees.
Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would not allow Israel to be "submerged by a wave of illegal migrants and terrorist activists".
"Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of Syrian and African refugees... but Israel is a small country, very small, without demographic or geographic depth. That is why we must control our borders", he said at the weekly cabinet meeting according to his office.
The announcement came a day after Isaac Herzog, Israeli opposition leader, said on Saturday that Israel should take in Syrian refugees, recalling the plight of Jews who sought refuge from past conflicts.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, also called for Israel to allow Palestinians from Syria's refugee camps to travel to the Palestinian territories, whose external borders are controlled by Tel Aviv.
Al Jazeera
Refugees and Europe face perfect storm as crisis deepens
BUDAPEST — Thousands fleeing warzones are now reaching Germany, where they hope their search for safety will finally end, but for the European Union and neighboring Balkan states the refugee crisis is far from over.
Even after Hungary relented to pressure on Friday, allowing refugees to leave the country and continue west into Austria and Germany, the EU remains split over what to do next as problems look set to deepen.
A perfect storm appears to be developing. As the EU’s 28 countries squabble over how many refugees to accept, some member states are seeking to seal their borders to new arrivals, and continued fighting in Syria is driving people to embark on the trek from the Middle East to Europe now, before winter sets in.
When many hundreds of refugees in Hungary breached police lines and walked westward on Friday, they compelled the country to allow them to use public transport to leave, and they eased pressure at the Budapest train station where thousands were gathered in increasingly tense and squalid conditions.
But Hungary has now stopped providing buses to take refugees to Austria, and it is not clear how long trains will keep carrying them west, as the government prepares to include the army in a huge security effort to stop more refugees arriving through Serbia.
The Guardian
UN agencies 'broke and failing' in face of ever-growing refugee crisis
The UN’s humanitarian agencies are on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to meet the basic needs of millions of people because of the size of the refugee crisis in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, senior figures within the UN have told the Guardian.
The deteriorating conditions in Lebanon and Jordan, particularly the lack of food and healthcare, have become intolerable for many of the 4 million people who have fled Syria, driving fresh waves of refugees north-west towards Europe and aggravating the current crisis.
Speaking to the Guardian, the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said: “If you look at those displaced by conflict per day, in 2010 it was 11,000; last year there were 42,000. This means a dramatic increase in need, from shelter to water and sanitation, food, medical assistance, education.
“The budgets cannot be compared with the growth in need. Our income in 2015 will be around 10% less than in 2014. The global humanitarian community is not broken – as a whole they are more effective than ever before. But we are financially broke.”
The Guardian
Israel plans to demolish 17,000 Arab buildings in West Bank, UN says
Israel plans to demolish up to 17,000 structures, most of them on privately owned Palestinian land in the part of the illegally occupied West Bank under full Israeli military and civil rule, a UN report has found.
Between 1988 and 2014, Israel’s Civil Administration, the governing body that operates in the West Bank, issued 14,000 demolition orders, of which more than 11,000 are still outstanding and could result in the demolition of up to 17,000 structures owned by Palestinians in Area C, including houses, sheds and animal shelters, according to the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In Area C, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Israel retains control of security and land management and “views the area as there to serve its own needs”.
Nearly 4,500 of the demolition orders affected Palestinian Bedouins, who human rights groups argue are at the centre of Israeli plans to force them off their land to allow for expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
N Y Times
U.S. Revamping Rebel Force Fighting ISIS in Syria
WASHINGTON — In an acknowledgment of severe shortcomings in its effort to create and field a force of moderate rebels to battle the Islamic State in Syria, the Pentagon is drawing up plans to significantly revamp the program by dropping larger numbers of fighters into safer zones as well as providing better intelligence and improving their combat skills.
The proposed changes come after a Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda attacked, in late July, many of the first 54 Syrian graduates of the military’s training program and the rebel unit they came from. A day before the attack, two leaders of the American-backed group and several of its fighters were captured.
The encounter revealed several glaring deficiencies in the program, according to classified assessments: The rebels were ill-prepared for an enemy attack and were sent back into Syria in too small numbers. They had no local support from the population and had poor intelligence about their foes. They returned to Syria during the Eid holiday, and many were allowed to go on leave to visit relatives, some in refugee camps in Turkey — and these movements likely tipped off adversaries to their mission. Others could not return because border crossings were closed.
NPR
Mother And Child Behind Bars: The Women Of Afghanistan's Prisons
In 2010, photographer Gabriela Maj was working on a project about an artist in Afghanistan when one of her editors suggested she take a look at Afghan women's prisons. Maj recalls: "He said, you know there are all these stories kind of floating, kind of bubbling up in the international media about women being incarcerated for something known as 'moral crimes.' And they're being put into these prisons with their kids.'"
Her editor was right. When she arrived at Badam Bagh, a women's prison in Kabul, her first thought was, "It sounds more like a kindergarten or elementary school during recess than it does a prison facility."
That's because many of the inmates are mothers who either gave birth in the facility or brought their children to live with them after they were incarcerated.
Maj has photographed over 100 incarcerated women in eight different prisons and is now presenting her portraits in the book Almond Garden.
As she worked on the project, she learned that "moral crimes" include premarital sex (a charge applied even to victims of rape) and adultery. Sentences can run up to 15 years. According to Human Rights Watch, there has been an increase of such incarcerations: "The number of women and girls imprisoned for 'moral crimes' in Afghanistan has increased by 50 percent in the period from October 2011 to May 2013
L A Times
Less water might be plenty for California, experts say, and conservation is only the start
Across California this summer, residents have been racking up water conservation numbers that defy expectations — a 27% reduction in June, followed by 31.3% in July.
Perhaps more impressive than the percentage figures, however, is the actual volume of water saved over two months: 414,800 acre-feet.
That's a lot of water — more than twice the amount projected to be available annually from two proposed storage facilities that would cost a combined $3.5 billion to build: the Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River and an expansion of Shasta Dam.
The conservation performance raises a host of possibilities, and profound questions, for water policy analysts and managers as they contemplate California's hydrological future in an era of climate change and increased competition for an essential natural resource.
Some experts see an approach following the lead of the energy sector in California.
In the last quarter century or so, a "soft path" to energy reliability — one built on conservation, innovation and mutual incentives for buyers and sellers alike — has replaced the brute strategy of building all the generation plants needed to power all of the state all of the time.
Advocates for a comparable approach regarding water envision a mix of heightened consumer awareness, especially when it comes to landscaping options, as well as increased efficiencies in homes, industry and agriculture.
Raw Story
US-backed egg lobby targeted food bloggers, celebrity chef in effort crush anti-egg vegan start-up: report
A government-controlled industry group targeted popular food bloggers, major publications and a celebrity chef as part of its sweeping effort to combat a perceived threat from an egg-replacement startup backed by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, the Guardian can reveal.
The lobbyists’ media counterattack, in possible violation of US department of agriculture rules, was coordinated by a marketing arm of the egg industry called the American Egg Board (AEB). It arose after AEB chief executive Joanne Ivy identified the fledgling technology startup Hampton Creek as a “crisis and major threat to the future” of the $5.5bn-a-year egg market.
C/Net
'El Chapo' Guzman's son said to have tweeted out his location
Kids.
They think they know so much more about technology than do adults. This may be true. What we (and they) forget is that the technology they believe is de rigueur might expose more than some would wish.
This is especially true if you're one of the most wanted people in the world.
The head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known as "El Chapo" Guzman, is on the run after escaping in July through tunnels beneath the Mexican prison in which he was held.
But where is he now? Costa Rica's ICR News believes it may have a clue. It espied a tweet sent on August 31 from an account that claims to be Guzman's son, 29-year-old Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar.
The tweet included a picture of Guzman Jr. with what may have been his dad. The message roughly translated to: "Satisfied here, you already know with whom."
Family reunions are indeed satisfying things. However, if your dad happens to be the most popular drug lord in the world, perhaps it's best not to use the location feature on your Twitter feed.
S F Gate
Astronaut shares gorgeous photo of San Francisco from space
Astronaut Scott Kelly has gained a following for stunning photos taken during his year-long mission aboard the International Space Station. On Saturday, he posted a photo of San Francisco amid the holiday weekend sunshine.
"#GoodMorning #sanfrancisco! Looking good this #Saturday morning!" Kelly wrote on Twitter.
Check out the photo above, and see some of his other shots from aboard the space station.