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 with guest editors annetteboardman and Chitown Kev. 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. Or, if it is me and it is Friday night, it might be a little later (sorry).
First off, Happy New Year from the Straits Times:
str.sg/...
We begin with news of the earth and those who live on its thin crust. There was an earthquake in Taiwan just a couple of hours ago (from the BBC):
Deadly earthquake topples buildings in Taiwan city of Tainan
An earthquake has toppled several buildings in the south Taiwan city of Tainan, killing at least three people.
Rescue teams were trying to reach people trapped in rubble after the magnitude 6.4 quake struck early on Saturday as people were sleeping.
A baby and one other person died after a high-rise residential block collapsed. More than 220 people have been rescued.
From The Guardian, another story of death:
Italian actor pronounced clinically dead after on-stage hanging
Raphael Schumacher was part of immersive theatre production in Pisa and in front of just one audience member when accident occurred
An Italian actor who was left in a coma after he accidentally hanged himself during a live theatre performance has been pronounced clinically dead.
Raphael Schumacher, 27, was performing in a production of Mirages at the Teatro Lux in Pisa, Italy, when the incident occurred.
He was taken to hospital on Saturday night and has been in a coma since. Doctors say his condition has worsened and that he was not responding to treatment.
The BBC reports that following a six-hour procedure to establish brain death on Thursday, the hospital issued a statement: “The family and the prosecutor’s office have both authorised that his organs be donated, but their removal will be subject to a medical assessment to be performed in the course of the night.”
Mirages is a six-scene immersive performance staged in different parts of the theatre, with audience members walking between them. At the time of the incident, Schumacher was reciting a monologue from Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening alone in a courtyard in front of just one spectator.
A couple of articles about education from The Guardian:
From Jules Howard:
Do whales have nipples? Why discussing evolution in schools can occasionally be tricky
It’s not the contested issue you’d think it is, looking at Twitter. But I have to be honest, it can be difficult when religious supervisors attend my science sessions
Evolution is not a fact. That’s why it’s called a theory!” Post these words online and, ironically, you will see something rather biblical appear. Airing an opinion like this on Facebook or Twitter can make swaths of educated people become pain-stricken, as if in the midst of a great plague. You will hear them moan and wail in indignation. For evolution (by natural selection) is both a fact and a theory.
This is roughly what happened when headteacher Tina Wilkinson posted the quote above on Twitter in response to an article by fellow headteacher Tom Sherrington, who’d written about teaching evolution in school assemblies.Hellfire ensued. The usual Twitter-hate rained down upon her, because evolution is now a science topic in the national curriculum for primary schools, and because Wilkinson is a headteacher of a primary school. Wilkinson has left Twitter and I feel quite sorry for her. She was only stating an opinion, after all. But that, of course, is part of the problem.
From Richard Adams:
'Massively' improved state schools threaten private sector
Better behaviour and results are attracting families who can afford private school fees, says Good Schools Guide editor
Ralph Lucas, editor-in-chief of the guide regarded as the bible for middle-class school choice, said that as results and behaviour improved even those families who could afford private school fees were increasingly choosing the state sector.
“We are getting parents approaching us saying: ‘We want to know more, we’re really taking state schools seriously, don’t just tell us about independent schools,’” Lord Lucas said, adding that the number of private schools was likely to shrink as a result.
“You are seeing a pattern in the country as a whole – outside London – of independent schools becoming free schools or academies, or closing, and I think that will continue.”
And a couple of environmental stories from the British Isles, the first from The Guardian, by Damian Carrington:
The truth about London's air pollution
Invisible pollution kills up to 9,000 people a year in the capital. But under government plans, from school gates to shopping streets, Londoners will be breathing dangerous air until 2025. What more can be done?
In the morning, this traffic island is packed with children and pushchairs and they are about a metre from all the exhausts,” says Shazia Ali-Webber. She is walking her three boys to school in Hackney, the eldest of whom, Zain, is eight and asthmatic.
Crossing choked Mare Street, where the heavy traffic grinds slowly past, is her biggest concern. “Children’s lung development is affected by air pollution: they have smaller lungs for life,” she says. “The government’s new plan says pollutionwill not fall to legal levels till 2025. But I don’t have time to wait: Zain will be 18 by then. They are condemning a generation of children to ill-health.”
Ali-Webber, like a growing number of people, is alarmed by the illegally high levels of air pollution across London and other UK cities, largely caused by diesel vehicles that meet emissions limits in official lab tests but emit far more on the road.
From STV:
Endangered Scottish wildcat 'caught on camera' in Angus Glens
One of the world's most endangered animals may have been caught on camera in the Angus Glens.
Experts say there could be as few as 35 pure-breed Scottish wildcats left, making them rarer than the Siberian tiger.
But one of the elusive felines may have been spotted enjoying a meal on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park.
The Angus Glens were identified last year as one of six priority areas for wildcat conservation in Scotland.
From The New York Times, by
About the Middle East:
From The Guardian, by Natalie Nougayrède:
What happens next in Aleppo will shape Europe’s future
If there were any doubts about Vladimir Putin’s objectives in Syria, the recent Russian military escalation around this city must surely have set them aside
It is hardly a coincidence that the bombardment of Aleppo, a symbol of the 2011 anti-Assad revolution, started just as peace talks were being attempted in Geneva. Predictably, the talks soon faltered. Russian military escalation in support of the Syrian army was meant to sabotage any possibility that a genuine Syrian opposition might have its say on the future of the country. It was meant to thwart any plans the west and the UN had officially laid out. And it entirely contradicted Moscow’s stated commitment to a political process to end the war.
From Al Ahram (Egypt) comes this article from Kamel Abdallah:
Precarious agreement in Libya
Speculation is rife as to whether the countdown has begun for another international military intervention in Libya, this time to fight the growing threat of the Islamic State (IS) group in the country.
Washington has made it clear that it is ready to act and has begun to campaign abroad to prepare the international climate for this option, which appears to have the support of the US’s European allies, most notably France and Britain. However, haze still hovers over the question of timing and of potential partners in the operation, especially given divergences of opinion over recent developments in Libya.
Western moves towards another military intervention in Libya, five years after the fall of the regime led by former Libyan leader Muammar Al-Gaddafi, come at a time of mounting complexities internally, as each side, including IS, scrambles to turn conditions in its favour.
Also from Al Ahram, news from Iraq contributed by Salah Nasrawi:
Row over the Mosul Dam
Of all its multiple problems and daunting challenges, Iraq is probably now facing its most serious existential threat, a catastrophe that could cause more damage and deaths than all Iraq’s communal conflicts, political chaos and economic hardships put together.
The only problem is that the warning is coming from top American officials, and too many Iraqis, including in the government, are taking it with a pinch of salt.
Conspiracy theories abound, with a plot to partition Iraq, a secret plan to outmanoeuvre Islamist militants in Mosul, and corruption charges topping the list.
For months US officials have been warning of the possibility that Iraq’s Mosul Dam, the country’s largest water reservoir, is at risk of bursting, triggering prophesies of doom in a country already beset by a war against brutal terror groups and threats of secession by its Kurdish minority.
Last week, the top US general in Iraq, lieutenant-general Sean MacFarland, said the potential collapse of the Mosul Dam in northern Iraq could send a surge of water down the heavily populated Tigris River valley, sweeping away all before it.
From The New York Times, by Declan Walsh:
Outrage Grows as Italy Investigates Student’s Death in Egypt
CAIRO— The furor surrounding the death of an Italian student whose body was discovered Wednesday on an Egyptian roadside grew Friday as Italian investigators flew to Cairo to help find his killers, and it emerged that the young man had secretly written from Egypt for a left-wing Italian newspaper.
And one from Asia to round out the list:
From the New York Times:
North Korea Launches Newest Offensive: Cigarette Butts
SEOUL, South Korea —
North Korea likes to call
South Korea a land of “political filth” and its leaders, including President
Park Geun-hye, “human trash.” Now, apparently to highlight its contempt, it has begun sending balloons into the South with an unusual payload, the police here said on Thursday:cigarette butts.
The South turned on high-powered loudspeakers to blare pop songs and harsh criticism of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, across the border. The North began sending balloons into the South loaded with leaflets.
The balloons were timed to detonate their payloads, scattering thousands of messages that, among other things, called Ms. Park a “filthy president.”