All aboard! The Overnight News Digest is nightly series dedicated to chronicling the day’s news of import or interest. Everyone is welcome to add their own news items in the comments. Friday night’s digest collects news from around the world, organizes into tasty 2-3 paragraph snippers, adds little flags like you’d find in overpriced drinks in downtown bars, and then throws it out to this little DK neighborhood for booze… er newshounds to drink in. So, in other words, cheers!
NYT - Flint Weighs Scope of Harm to Children Caused by Lead in Water
[…] Dr. Hanna-Attisha would waste no time adding King and his sister, Taeyana, to a new database of children under 6 who may have been exposed to lead in Flint’s water, a group she said she believes could number 8,000.
Of all the concerns raised by the contamination of Flint’s water supply, and the failure of the state and federal governments to promptly address the crisis after it began nearly two years ago, none is more chilling than the possibility that children in this tattered city may have suffered irreversible damage to their developing brains and nervous systems from exposure to lead. […]
Emails released by the office of Gov. Rick Snyder last week referred to a resident who said she was told by a state nurse in January 2015, regarding her son’s elevated blood lead level, “It is just a few IQ points. … It is not the end of the world.”.
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Guardian - Oregon militia leaders may be in prison longer than men who inspired standoff
🇺🇸 The leaders of the rightwing militia in Oregon could spend more years in prison than the two ranchers whose prosecution and imprisonment inspired the occupation.
Days after law enforcement officials arrested protest leader Ammon Bundy and shot and killed militiaman LaVoy Finicum, 11 people associated with the occupation are behind bars, facing federal felony charges and possible six-year prison sentences.[…]
Legal experts say the FBI and federal prosecutors have deliberately targeted the occupation’s leaders – most of whom are from out of state – with a broad charge that encompasses numerous offenses they have committed during the last month at the federally protected wildlife sanctuary.
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Wired - New York Is Going to Turn Off Niagara Falls
🇺🇸 Sometime within the next five to seven years, a section of Niagara Falls will go dry. This isn’t a case of the great western drought creeping east, but rather New York’s plan to, for lack of a better term, turn off the famed waterfall. The most astonishing part of the whole idea is that it’s not nearly as crazy, difficult, expensive, or novel as it may sound.
There’s an official, underwhelming word for the procedure: dewatering. And it’s been done before. The American Falls section of the continent’s greatest water feature was dammed for about five months in 1969 so engineers and researchers could study erosion of the bedrock. Horseshoe Falls, the much larger section that’s mostly in Canadian territory, wasn’t affected then, and won’t be this go-around, either. The blockage was billed as a once in a lifetime event, sparking a surge of tourists eager to gape at the novelty of the craggy, usually submerged floor and the 70-to-100-foot-tall stone cliff over which millions of gallons of water usually plummet every hour. Now, it’s happening again. […]
This round of dewatering needs to happen so engineers with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation can scrap two 115-year-old bridges that have reached—well, exceeded—the end of their useful lives.
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Spiegel - German Interior Minister on Refugee Crisis: 'We Want Clarity on the Refugee Crisis by Spring'
🇩🇪 🇹🇷 🇪🇺 In an interview, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, 62, warns that the government in Berlin only has a few weeks left to solve the refugee problem. He fears that Europe's open-border policies may soon end if a solution isn't found.
De Maizière: We want clarity by spring. Compared to September and October, when on some days as many as 10,000 people entered Germany, the number has decreased significantly. In January, an average of 2,000 people came per day, which, projected over a year would still be very many -- too many. So no matter what, we need to prevent the influx from massively increasing again in the spring. Time is running out.[…]
Turkey and Europe have common interests. Europe is prepared to help with providing shelter for refugees in Turkey. Turkey is demanding relaxed visa requirements from the EU. There is also a connection between the issue of refugees and the battle against the so-called Islamic State. The perpetrators in Istanbul who killed 10 Germans at the beginning of January were registered as refugees according to Turkish investigators. It will surely not contribute to the stabilization of Turkey domestically if it remains a transit country for refugees in the long term.
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Telegraph - Fugitive mafia bosses arrested by Italian police after hiding in secret bunker
🇮🇹 Two of Italy’s most dangerous mafia fugitives were arrested by police in a secret bunker packed with automatic weapons on Friday after being on the run for more than a decade.
Giuseppe Ferraro and Giuseppe Crea were arrested during a dramatic dawn raid by anti-mafia police in the southern region of Calabria, the heartland of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
The bunker, hidden in the countryside, was equipped with a kitchen and bathroom, enabling the men to live in relative comfort. Its entrance was concealed by bushes and trees and was only discovered by police after months of investigation.
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Human Rights Watch - Morocco: Declining Tolerance for Dissent
🇲🇦 Tolerance for dissident voices in Morocco and Western Sahara diminished during 2015, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2016.
Authorities blocked events organized by the outspoken Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH), filed charges against five activists for “harming internal security” after they organized a foreign-funded workshop on citizen journalism, and systematically prohibited demonstrations by pro-independence activists in Western Sahara. Royal pardons during the year included none of the many activists sentenced in past years in unfair trials.
“Morocco may not be rocked by turmoil and bloodshed like many countries of the Middle East, but neither is it the model of reform that it claims to be,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director.
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VoA - Boko Haram Dents Chad, Cameroon Economies
🇹🇩 🇨🇲 Attacks from Boko Haram militants are hurting the economies of Chad and northern Cameroon.
The militants often attack trucks transporting goods to the two central African nations. Some of the goods come from Borno state in nearby Nigeria.
Naffissa Adja works at one of the most popular stores in N’djamena, the capital of Chad. She says she was not paid last month. She adds that the store has not received supplies from Borno state for several months. Business is slow because of attacks on the store’s supply trucks.
Tocba Haman is a truck driver. He says he no longer goes to Nigeria for supplies because Boko Haram targets trucks and kills drivers.
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LAT - Syria peace talks get off to rocky start in Geneva
🇸🇾 Long-awaited Syria peace talks got off to a rocky start Friday, as officials of President Bashar Assad’s government arrived at United Nations headquarters amid a persistent lack of clarity about who would represent opposition forces.
A Saudi Arabia-backed opposition faction, the High Negotiations Committee, has vowed to stay away from the talks if Damascus does not meet a number of preconditions, including ending bombardment of rebel-held zones and allowing delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas.[…]
“We will not participate in the negotiations before our humanitarian demands are met,” the committee’s coordinator, Riyad Hijab, told Saudi television late Thursday. “What the regime did not get through fighting, it will not get by negotiations.”
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AJE - Deadly attack rocks Shia mosque in Saudi Arabia
🇸🇦 Four people were killed and 18 wounded on Friday when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Shia-populated eastern Saudi Arabia, state media said. […]
Saudi authorities prevented two suicide bombers from entering Imam Rida Mosque in Mahasen neighborhood in Al-Ahsa region during Friday prayers, Saudi state news agency SPA reported, citing a statement by the ministry's spokesman.
“When security men stopped them, one blew himself up at the entrance of the mosque and there was an exchange of fire with the other. He was wounded and arrested wearing an explosive belt,” the spokesman said.
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The Intercept - Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence
🇮🇱 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 American and British intelligence secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world.
Under a classified program code-named “Anarchist,” the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, working with the National Security Agency, systematically targeted Israeli drones from a mountaintop on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. GCHQ files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include a series of “Anarchist snapshots” — thumbnail images from videos recorded by drone cameras. The files also show location data mapping the flight paths of the aircraft. In essence, U.S. and British agencies stole a bird’s-eye view from the drones.
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AP - Top US General in Iraq Warns Mosul Dam Could Collapse
🇮🇶 The top U.S. general in Iraq warned Thursday of the potential collapse of Mosul Dam in the country's north, saying such an event could prove "catastrophic."
The U.S.-led coalition is still determining the likelihood the hydroelectric dam could collapse but has developed a contingency plan alongside the Iraqi government, said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland.
Built in the early 1980s, the dam is made largely of earth and situated on soft mineral foundations, which are easily dissolved by water. A report in 2006 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called it "the most dangerous dam in the world" because of its propensity to erode.
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WaPo - Education is becoming an extremist battleground in Pakistan
🇵🇰 The one year anniversary commemorations of the heinous attack on a Peshawar public school were barely over when gunmen once again went from classroom to classroom killing students and staff at a Pakistani university nearby. The sickening attack confirmed that the Taliban is waging a carefully considered ideological war in Pakistan — and the nation’s more than 200,000 public and private schools are now at the front lines.
In doing so, they are attacking the one area of Pakistani society where there is clear reason for optimism, as the growth of low-cost private schools in recent decades has given more and more young people, particularly girls, access to education.
There are very visible casualties of this strategy: not only Malala Yousafzai, now world-famous and a Nobel laureate, but Aitzaz Hasan, the 15-year-old boy who died preventing a suicide bomber from entering his school in the northern district of Hangu and chemistry professor Hamid Hussain, who died while trying to stave off the Taliban gunmen so his students could escape.
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Reuters - Indonesian city reprimands Muslim hardliners for harassing gays
🇮🇩 Indonesia's third-largest city has ordered a hardline Muslim group to take down "provocative" banners targeting the gay community and calling for them to leave, officials said on Friday.
The move comes after members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) raided boarding houses in Bandung where they believed gay people were staying and put up the signs.
"I have reprimanded the FPI for what they admitted they did," mayor Ridwan Kamil said in a text message forwarded to Reuters by an aide. "Provocative banners have to be taken down."
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FT - Japan joins negative rates club
🇯🇵 The Bank of Japan has cut interest rates to minus 0.1 per cent, stunning analysts and sparking a surge in equity and bond markets, as policymakers around the world respond to mounting worries about the outlook in China and the risks of a global slowdown.
The BoJ’s move forms part of a trend that has emerged in recent weeks, with many of the world’s major central banks signalling that they stand ready to counter the slowdown in emerging markets and slumping oil prices. These hints have helped shore up equity markets that began the year with sharp falls.[…]
The unexpected action in Japan highlights the global weakness of inflation and could spark renewed fears of so-called “currency wars” as monetary stimulus in Europe and Japan weighs on the euro and the yen.
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China Daily - Whole-year profits of industrial companies stumble
🇨🇳 Chinese full-year industrial profit dropped by 2.3 percent last year, raising the risk of a rash of debt defaults amid a weaker economic growth outlook.
In December, the total profit of industrial companies fell by 4.7 percent from a year earlier, after undergoing a 1.4 percent year-on-year decline in November, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.
The last time a full-year profit drop was recorded was 18 years ago, when annual profit plummeted by 17 percent amid the Asian financial crisis.
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TASS - Russian weapons exported to Fiji at its official request — foreign ministry
🇷🇺 🇫🇯 Russian weapons are being supplied to Fiji at the official request from that country and will be used to boost the efficiency of a peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
"Reports about more ‘Russian traces’ spotted, this time, in the south of the Pacific have turned to be another failure of conspiracy theorists," she said. "A batch of Russian small arms and munitions is being supplied to Fiji at the official request of that country. These weapons will be used by Fiji’s mechanized infantry battalion which part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) deployed in the Golan Heights."
She said these weapons would be officially transferred to Fiji’s armed forces in February.
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Guardian - Mexico City officially changes its name to – Mexico City
🇲🇽 Mexico has rechristened its capital city, embracing the name by which it is known worldwide, but causing a conundrum for residents who for decades have referred to the sprawling megalopolis as the Federal District – or “DF”
President Enrique Peña Nieto officially changed the capital’s name to “Mexico City” on Friday as part of a reform to devolve power from the federal government, allowing the city’s mayor to name senior officials including the police chief.
It also turns the capital’s 16 boroughs into entities similar to municipalities, with their own mayors and councils.
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AFP - Brazil's Lula summoned in money-laundering case
🇧🇷 Brazilian prosecutors summoned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Friday for questioning over allegations he laundered money and hid assets linked to a massive corruption scandal.
Lula, Brazil's hugely popular president from 2003 to 2011, is accused of failing to declare a condominium in the resort of Guaruja that was allegedly given to him by construction company OAS, one of the firms caught up in a multibillion-dollar scandal at state oil giant Petrobras.[…]
Lula, an icon of the "pink tide" of leftist leaders who swept to power in Latin America at the turn of the millennium, denies the accusations.
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WaPo - Venezuela is on the brink of a complete economic collapse
🇻🇪 The only question now is whether Venezuela's government or economy will completely collapse first.
The key word there is "completely." Both are well into their death throes. Indeed, Venezuela's ruling party just lost congressional elections that gave the opposition a veto-proof majority, and it's hard to see that getting any better for them any time soon — or ever. Incumbents, after all, don't tend to do too well when, according to the International Monetary Fund, their economy shrinks 10 percent one year, an additional 6 percent the next, and inflation explodes to 720 percent. It's no wonder, then, that markets expect Venezuela to default on its debt in the very near future. The country is basically bankrupt.
That's not an easy thing to do when you have the largest oil reserves in the world, but Venezuela has managed it. How? Well, a combination of bad luck and worse policies. The first step was when Hugo Chávez's socialist government started spending more money on the poor, with everything from two-cent gasoline to free housing. Now, there's nothing wrong with that — in fact, it's a good idea in general — but only as long as you actually, well, have the money to spend. And by 2005 or so, Venezuela didn't.
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Canadian Press - Environment ministers meet to discuss national carbon-cutting strategy
🇨🇦 Canada’s environment ministers were meeting on Friday in an effort to negotiate a national carbon-cutting strategy to meet the country’s ambitious international targets.
Provincial and territorial ministers arrived Thursday for talks with federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna, in advance of a full-blown first minister’s conference with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tentatively set for the first week of March.
It’s the first ministerial meeting on the climate file in almost a decade, a period during which provinces have each pursued their own climate policies in the absence of an over-arching national plan.
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Cedar Rapids Gazette - Squirrel! Winter is perfect time to watch squirrel antics
Few wild animals enjoy living in cities and suburbs as much as squirrels. Wherever a few trees grow, they are there. Especially near bird feeders. We find winter to be the best season to enjoy watching their antics. […]
Both squirrel species reproduce in an unrodentlike way. When you see a squirrel chasing another in the middle of winter it’s probably a lusty male seeking a willing mate. Often the chase takes them up, down and around trees. Sometimes several males join the melee and give chase.
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