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, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man with guest editor Chitown Kev and Magnifico. 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 Friday night and the editor is me, a bit later).
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Our lead story this evening comes from Egypt, but it is not about the Egypt Air crash. You can find information on that elsewhere, and even Egyptian newspapers have nothing new to add. But did you know that Egypt Air pilots had just ended a strike at the beginning of this week?
From Al-Ahram’s Nevine El-Aref:
Honours for Luxor
Four New Kingdom tombs at Deir Al-Medina have been opened in Luxor, chosen as the International Tourism Capital for 2016
Luxor, the ancient city of Thebes, the capital of Egypt during the ancient New Kingdom and the glorious city of Amun, is thriving today.
Four New Kingdom tombs were inaugurated on Friday on the west bank of the Nile after restoration. It coincided with the 103rd meeting of the executive council of the UN World Tourism Organisation, held in Malaga in Spain last week, where Luxor was designated as the 2016 Capital of International Tourism.
The city was selected by the 50 countries of the council to host the organisation’s 104th meeting, planned to take place at the end of October. Luxor will also host the Fifth Summit on City Tourism from 1-3 November, which observers expect will be attended by even more participants than those who attended the Malaga meeting.
Probably even more important to a larger number of people is this news from Al-Ahram Weekly:
Hajj tensions grow
Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia may lead Iranian pilgrims to miss this year’s hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, writes Camelia Entekhabifard
Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have escalated to the point that Iranian pilgrims may miss this year’s hajj, or religious pilgrimage, to Mecca.
Iran’s official news agency IRNA has quoted Iranian Islamic Guidance and Culture Minister Ali Jannati blaming Riyadh for the impasse, while the Saudi Hajj Ministry has blamed Iran for refusing to sign an agreement laying out the arrangements for this year’s pilgrimage.
“The arrangements have not been made, and now it is too late to make them,” Jannati said.
Angry Iranians who blame Saudi Arabia for not making proper arrangements for the hajj have taken to social media to post messages criticising Riyadh. The rivalry between the two countries has meant that even the most holiest and spiritual matters have become politicised and a matter for Iranian and Saudi regional competition.
And from Reuters comes this story by Tarek Amara:
Tunisian Islamists Ennahda move to separate politics, religion
TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's Islamist party Ennahda will separate its political and religious work, its chief said on Friday, moving away from its tradition of political Islam.
Ennahda was the first Islamist party to come to power in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions and it took part in the first government coalition after the overthrow of Tunisia's autocratic leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.
It won the first post-uprising election by appealing to many Tunisians who saw its Islamist identity as an antidote to the years of corruption and repression under the Ben Ali government in one of the region's most secular nations.
Free elections, a new constitution and a compromise politics between secular and Islamist parties have helped Tunisia avoid the turmoil seen in several other Arab nations.
From Barbara Opall-Rome, via Defense News:
Analysis: Netanyahu Upends Israeli Politics With Defense Pick
TEL AVIV, Israel — In a move aimed at securing his seat as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu dumped a defense minister widely admired as "a principled warrior," one with deep combat experience that underlies a nature of restraint. In his place, Netanyahu has empowered as a perceived war monger with no combat experience who advocates hostilities as a first course of action.
As part of a political deal to bolster his razor-thin coalition, Netanyahu tapped former foreign minister and political rival Avigdor Lieberman to head Israel’s Ministry of Defense.
The rough-edged former immigrant from Moldova brings six seats to Netanyahu’s previous 61-seat majority in a 120-seat government, widely viewed here as the most right wing in Israel’s history.
Other regions, other topics, all below the fold.
Cynicism in politics, this time Chinese, from The Guardian’s Tom Phillips:
Chinese officials 'create 488m bogus social media posts a year'
Harvard researchers say leaked documents show bureaucrats fabricate positive posts to distract from criticism of government
The Chinese government is fabricating almost 490m social media posts a year in order to distract the public from criticising or questioning its rule, according to a study.
China’s “Fifty Cent Party” – a legion of freelance online trolls so-named because they are believed to be paid 50 cents a post – has long been blamed for flooding the Chinese internet with pro-regime messages designed to defend and promote the ruling Communist party.
However, the study by Harvard University researchers (pdf) claims many of those comments are not posted by ordinary citizens, as previously thought, but by civil servants who double as online stooges.
An analysis of nearly 43,800 posts found that 99.3% were the work of government employees working for more than 200 agencies, including tax and social security and human resources bureaux.
Other odd news of China, this from the Straits Times:
China denies exporting human meat to African supermarkets
The Chinese government has issued a statement strongly dismissing reports it is packaging human meat as corned beef and sending it to African grocery stores.
The government was forced to respond after a Facebook post featuring grisly images, supposedly of human meat being processed, went viral earlier this month (May 2016).
The outlandish post by Facebook user Barbara Akosua Aboagye was shared over 26,000 times.
And another item about not-dead not-humans, from the BBC:
Naked woman sandcastle police apologise for 'bad taste' sculpture
A police force has apologised after its officers made a sandcastle "crime scene" featuring a naked dead woman.
The sculpture, depicting a sprawled murder victim surrounded by police tape, was crowned winner of the Cornwall Beach Games sandcastle competition.
But Devon and Cornwall Police was criticised after boasting officers tweeted about their victory.
Labour councillor Hannah Toms said some would find it "very offensive".
Environmental news:
From the New York Times comes this story by Nida Najar and Hari Kumarmay:
Pray for Shade: Heat Wave Sets a Record in India
NEW DELHI — People weren’t frying eggs on the sidewalks in Phalodi during India’s hottest day ever — in fact, it was so hot that many did not venture out at all.
Heat is a familiar part of life in Phalodi, in the deserts of Rajasthan, so residents were following a familiar drill even before temperatures soared to 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday: When the heat comes, stay indoors, chug buttermilk and, if you must go out, cover your head and pray for shade. It is a drill that may prove ever more necessary if temperatures continue to rise.
Dr. Bhani Ram Paliwal, the principal medical officer at a government hospital in Phalodi, could not remember a day like Thursday in 15 years of working there. Roughly 500 patients, almost double the average number, visited his outpatient department, many complaining of diarrhea and fever.
“It was like heat waves were coming out of a clay oven,” he said.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce faces the reality of climate change
It was the moment Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, a renowned climate change sceptic, confronted the reality of global warming.
Over two days in early April, Good Weekend writer Frank Robson and photographer Nic Walker accompanied Mr Joyce on a swing through the drought-ravaged backblocks between Armidale and Tamworth. Mr Joyce took the pair to his parent's property in Rutherglen late on Saturday afternoon.
Robson writes in the Good Weekend this Saturday that not for the first time, Mr Joyce anguished over how much work the place needs. At one stage, he writes, I notice him standing beside the ever-diminishing creek, near his one-time childhood Hobbit hole, looking as though he might cry.
"It's the driest I've ever seen it," Mr Joyce said.
And from the Huffington Post, a different outcome of climate change:
How Climate Change Is Fueling Violence Against Women
As women have to walk further to fetch water, kidnappings and rapes increase.
COPENHAGEN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Carla Lopez remembers the first time she heard a suggestion that climate change was a factor leading to the rape of young girls.
“I was in Santa Maria Xalapan of Guatemala when a group of women said young girls were being kidnapped and raped because there was a water crisis. It was a revelation,” said the executive director of the Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres, a women’s fund based in Central America.
In the indigenous Xinca society of Xalapan, men often kidnap and rape young girls before marrying them, Lopez said, and for about a decade, the local women’s group had been campaigning to end this trend.
But in the last two years, groundwater was becoming scarce, because of weather changes and increased mining in the region. As women and girls had to walk further to fetch water, the number of kidnappings and rapes more than doubled over that period, local women said.
Animal news:
From The Guardian’s New East Network (The Moscow Times):
Chechen leader Kadyrov turns to Instagram for help finding his lost cat
Authoritarian leader appeals to 1.8m followers, saying he is ‘seriously worried’ about missing pet Toyger
He is best known as the authoritarian leader of Chechnya, famous for his ruthlessness, extravagance and self-promotion.
But Ramzon Kadyrov, who regularly uses Instagram to document his macho lifestyle, has displayed a softer side to his 1.8m followers.
Alongside his all-action posts of wrestling crocodiles and cuddling tigers, Kadyrov has issued a heartfelt plea for help finding his missing cat.
The cat, a Toyger, disappeared 10 days ago, the post said. “We have begun to seriously worry,” Kadyrov added, saying he would be “grateful for any information” about its whereabouts.
Ashifa Kassam writes for The Guardian:
Aggressive spiders cause panic on Canada-bound plane
Two tarantulas that likely escaped from a passenger’s bag caused upheaval on an Air Transat flight from Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, to Montreal
The sight of tarantulas scurrying through the cabin on a recent Canada-bound flight left passengers screaming and standing on their seats, as flight attendants warned them to keep their ankles covered.
The two hairy spiders were spotted towards the end of an Air Transat flight from Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, to Montreal in April.
“I was wearing a skirt and a spider crawled up my leg,” Catherine Moreau of Québec told Radio-Canada. “It was during the meal. My husband managed to catch the spider in a plastic container, but it wriggled its legs out. My daughter was crying, she was in shock.”
Flight attendants, she added, weren’t sure what to do, with some of them scared to come near the spiders.
And let's finish with some tales of Art:
From Jessica Steinberg, of the Times of Israel:
Iranian poster art goes on display at Jerusalem museum
As a counterweight to Iran’s anti-Semitic Holocaust cartoon contest, Islamic art institute pays tribute to Persian history
It took a curator from a gallery in Brno in the Czech Republic working with an Israeli graphic artist to bring 60 original Iranian art posters for exhibition in Jerusalem’s Museum for Islamic Art.
The exhibit, “Sign from Iran,” displays the remarkable works of 27 Iranian artists and graphic designers. The works — consisting of posters — were used over the last 40 years to advertise various events in Iran, from theater performances and political statements to public service announcements and art exhibits.
It’s the first time, however, that they’re being displayed together in an exhibit, said Marta Sylvestrová, curator of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, a “small, boutique museum” in the Czech Republic’s second-largest city. Sylvestrová curated the Iranian poster exhibit together with Yossi Lemel, an Israeli poster artist, and also worked with the Trnava Poster Triennial from Slovakia.
Claire Voon writes, for Hyperallergic.com:
Virginia Arts Commissioners Threaten to Defund Museum Over “Anti-Christian” Paintings
Members of a Virginia arts commission are calling a pair of Mark Ryden paintings blasphemous and threatening to slash funding for the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) for including them in a forthcoming show. The offending works are the pop-surrealist artist’s “Fountain” (2003) and “Rosie’s Tea Party” (2005), which both show young, doll-like girls in unsettling scenes: In the former, a figure cradles her own head as blood springs from her neck; in the latter, a girl is surrounded by an assortment of meats and slicing a hunk of ham inscribed with the papal encyclical “Mystici corporis Christi.” The paintings go on view starting this weekend as part of Turn the Page: The First Ten Years of Hi-Fructose, a retrospective celebrating the artworks that have appeared in the pages of the San Francisco–based contemporary art magazine. Besides Ryden, artists showcased include Kehinde Wiley, Olek, and Shepard Fairey.
As WAVY reported, Ben Loyola of the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission described the works as “very anti-Christian and anti-Catholic” after receiving a brief on the exhibition.
And finally this evening, Matt Hickman’s story for Mother Nature Network will make you wish it rained a bit more often (if you live in Seattle):
Seattle's hidden street art is only revealed after a good soaking rain
Rainworks latest rain-activated installation makes waiting for the bus a touch less tedious.
For street art-spotting Seattle commuters, a bit of drizzle isn't always such a bad thing ... (Photo: Seattle Department of Transportation)
Unsavory encounters with strangers aside, one of the very last things you want to happen while you’re waiting at a bus stop is for it to start pouring rain. Along one bus route in Seattle, however, commuters now have the chance to be pleasantly distracted while waiting in the rain for the bus to arrive.
Several stops along the city’s newly expanded RapidRide C Line, which stretches from suburban West Seattle to the busting-out-of-its-seams downtown neighborhood of South Lake Union, are now home to the singular street art creations of Rainworks. Founded by artist Peregrine Church with the simple mission “to turn rainy days into something to look forward to,” the start-up specializes in works of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t sidewalk graffiti that can best be described as a rain-activated hybrid of sidewalk chalk stenciling and those Invisible Ink activity books your parents used to keep you preoccupied during long childhood road trips.
Using stencils and a super-strength nontoxic hydrophobic coating that's not too dissimilar to the “spray back” paint applied to walls in San Francisco to
deter public urination, Rainworks’ has been gracing the sidewalks at city bus stops with only-visible-when-wet art for over a year now. The temporary installations — they only last two to four months before fading away depending on foot traffic, weather conditions, etc. — along the C Line, however, are the first to be
officially commissioned by the Seattle Department of Transportation.