Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, 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 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
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BBC
Turkey wedding suicide bomber 'was child aged 12-14'
A suicide bombing which killed 51 people in the Turkish city of Gaziantep was carried out by a 12 to 14-year-old, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Mr Erdogan said the so-called Islamic State (IS) was behind the attack, which targeted a Kurdish wedding party. Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, is known to have several IS cells.
The bomb wounded 69 people, Mr Erdogan added, 17 of them seriously.
The bomber targeted the wedding guests as they danced in the street.
The BBC's Seref Isler, who is from Gaziantep, says the city of 1.5 million was already on edge because of events in Syria, where IS has been battling Syrian Kurdish forces.
A suicide bomber believed to have links to IS killed two policemen in Gaziantepin May.
N Y Times
Kurdish Militia Launches Assault to Evict Syrian Army From Key City of Hasaka
HASAKA, Syria — The Kurdish YPG militia launched a major assault on Monday to seize the last government-controlled parts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka after calling on pro-government militias to surrender, Kurdish forces and residents said.
They said Kurdish forces began the offensive after midnight to take the southeastern district of Nashwa, close to where a security compound is located near the governor's office close to the heart of the city.
The powerful YPG militia had earlier captured Ghwairan, the only major Arab neighborhood still in government hands.
The fighting this week in Hasaka, which is divided into zones of Kurdish and Syrian government control, marks the most violent confrontation between the Kurdish YPG militia and Damascus in more than five years of civil war.
The Syrian army deployed warplanes against the main armed Kurdish group for the first time during the war last week, prompting a U.S.-led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect American special operations ground forces.
The YPG is at the heart of a U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Syria and controls swaths of the north, where Kurdish groups associated with the militia have set up their own government since the Syrian war began in 2011.
BBC
Iraq hangs 36 IS jihadists for Camp Speicher massacre
Iraq has hanged 36 men convicted over the killing of up to 1,700 military recruits at a former US base in 2014.
The massacre at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, was carried out by fighters from so-called Islamic State (IS) as it seized territory across northern Iraq.
Outrage over the massacre of the mostly Shia cadets helped mobilise Iraq's Shia militias in the fight against IS.
IS militants released photos and video documenting the massacre in 2014. Mass graves were found a year later.
The graves were discovered when Iraqi government forces recaptured the area.
"The executions of 36 convicted over the Speicher crime were carried out this morning in Nasiriyah prison," a spokesman for the governor's office in Dhiqar, the province of which Nasiriyah is the capital, told Agence France-Presse news agency.
BBC
Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte threatens to leave UN
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to "separate" from the UN after it criticised his war on drugs as a crime under international law.
Mr Duterte said he might ask China and African nations to form another body. He also accused the UN of failing on terrorism, hunger and ending conflicts.
Mr Duterte, elected in May, has sanctioned the killing of traffickers to try to wipe out the drugs trade.
The UN has repeatedly condemned the drive as a violation of human rights.
Some 900 suspected drug traffickers have been killed since Mr Duterte was elected on 9 May.
Duterte: 'Punisher' to president
Last week, two UN human rights experts said Mr Duterte's directive for police and the public to kill suspected drug traffickers amounted to "incitement to violence and killing, a crime under international law".
The Guardian
Ventotene summit to chart roadmap for EU's response to Brexit vote
The leaders of the eurozone’s three largest countries will meet on a small southern Italian island on Monday for further talks on the way forward for the European Union following Britain’s shock vote to leave.
Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, will welcome the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, François Hollande, to Ventotene off the coast of Naples for a second round of trilateral talks before an informal EU summit in September.
The meeting aims “to show the unity of Europe’s three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club”, French diplomatic sources said, adding that the main goal was to prepare the informal Bratislava summit to map out a post-Brexit course for the bloc.
Renzi chose the island because of its part in the foundation of the EU, the Italian government said. Imprisoned there during the second world war, two Italian intellectuals, Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, wrote the influential “Ventotene manifesto” calling for a federation of European states.
The Guardian
Is Uganda the best place to be a refugee?
When they fled to Kampala from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in February 2008, Robert Hakiza’s family had food for two months. “The third month was a disaster,” he says. By May, though, his mother and two sisters were out making money. “My sister started selling necklaces,” he says. “At one point, she was keeping the entire family of eight.”
Eight years on, the organisation Hakiza founded, Young African Refugees for Integral Development, employs 16 staff, comprising both refugees and Ugandans. Though his sisters dream of resettlement elsewhere, he is content. “Uganda is one of the best places to stay for refugees,” he says.
By 2015, Uganda had become the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, after Ethiopia and Kenya, with more than half a million refugees. That number is rising rapidly. Alongside ongoing crises in Burundi and DRC, violence in South Sudan has driven more refugees to Uganda during three weeks in July than in the first six months of 2016. The Danish Refugee Council warned last month the situation in northern Uganda could become “catastrophic” if they don’t receive more support for assisting the influx of refugees from South Sudan.
But these recent arrivals are among the lucky ones: Uganda is one of the most favourable environments in the world for refugees, according to the UNHCR. While many countries keep refugees in camps away from citizens, Uganda allows them to set up businesses, work for others, and move freely around the country.
BBC
Canada’s 'dirty oil' climate change dilemma
A debate is raging in Alberta over plans to get more "dirty oil" out of the ground, which some say is in conflict with Canada's environmental commitments. BBC HARDtalk went to investigate.
When Hanna Fridhed welcomed us into her home in Fort McMurray last month, there was no door to walk through and no windows to look out of, just the charred remains of a house obliterated by fire.
The culprit? The Beast - the name given to the massive wildfire that swept through northern Alberta in Canada in May, destroying parts of Fort McMurray and forcing the evacuation of its roughly 90,000 residents.
For many environmentalists, the wildfire was not simply a natural disaster but partly the result of man-made climate change, a point brought uncomfortably close to home by Fort McMurray's proximity to Alberta's vast oil sands deposits.
The oil sands, sometimes referred to as "dirty oil", have long been a target of climate
change campaigners who insist that the energy-intensive extraction of oil sands and the greenhouse gas emissions it generates, mean most of the remaining deposits must stay in the ground.
The Guardian
Hidden codex may reveal secrets of life in Mexico before Spanish conquest
One of the rarest manuscripts in the world has been revealed hidden beneath the pages of an equally rare but later Mexican codex, thanks to hi-tech imaging techniques.
The Codex Selden, a book of concertina-folded pages made out of a five-metre strip of deerhide, is one of a handful of illustrated books of history and mythology that survived wholesale destruction by Spanish conquerors and missionaries in the 16th century.
Researchers using hyperspectral imaging, a technique originally used for geological research and astrophysics, discovered the underlying images hidden beneath a layer of gesso, a plaster made from ground gypsum and chalk, without damaging the priceless later manuscript.
The underlying images must be older than the codex on top, which is believed to have been made about 1560 and was donated to Oxford’s Bodleian library in the 17th century by the scholar and collector John Selden.
The codex is one of fewer than 20 dating from before or just after the colonisation, which were saved by scholars who realised the importance of the strip cartoon-like images, a complex system that used symbols, stylised human figures and colours to recount centuries of history and beliefs, including religious practice, wars, the founding of cities and the genealogy of noble families.
Raw Story
Landmark Hearst Castle closed as California wildfires bear down
Firefighters in California said they are making progress slowing the advance of several devastating wildfires, but authorities ordered the temporary closure of a historic villa in the path of one dangerous inferno.
The iconic Hearst Castle, also known as San Simeon, is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the state, drawing millions of visitors each year, according to local tourism officials.
Administrators of the castle — a national landmark once owned by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst — said on its website that the site is “closed until further notice due to wildfires in the area.”
“Fire conditions will be assessed daily to determine when Hearst Castle reopens and tours commence,” the site read.
Built in 1919, the Hearst Castle is the site of a museum and state park that houses a large European art and antiques collection.
Local media reported that the leading edge of the 24,000-acre Chimney Fire was just two miles from the castle, located some 40 miles from the town of San Luis Obispo.
We are scheduled to travel exactly there next weekend. Maybe not so much.
BBC
Prince death: Powerful drugs found in singer's home 'were mislabelled'
Pills seized from the home of singer Prince contained the dangerously powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl but were mislabelled, according to reports.
Speaking to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, officials investigating the artist's death said the pills were labelled as hydrocodone, a weaker type of opioid.
Autopsy results released in June revealed Prince died of an accidental fentanyl overdose.
Officials told the Associated Press the singer had no prescriptions for controlled substances at the time.
Prince was found dead at 57 in an elevator inside his Paisley Park home in April.
According to the Star Tribune report, the musician weighed just 50kg (8 stone) at the time of his death and had significantly more than a fatal dose of fentanyl in his system.
Raw Story
New map reveals what the average penis size is in every country
For the men out there who can’t help but wonder how they stack up in the size department down under, wonder no more — thanks to a nifty interactive graphic recently released by Target Map. The map, appearing to use data taken from earlier studies, shows how long the average erected penis is on a country by country scale. If you move the mouse over North America, for instance, you'll find the average men there has an erect penis size of 14.2 centimeters (5.59 inches).
When it comes to top honors though, the U.S. and its neighbors are decidedly in the middle of the pack. It's actually men in Western African countries like Ghana who are the biological winners, with the average length upwards of 16 centimeters. On the flip side, men in Asian countries have the smallest lengths, with the average size ranging from 9.3 centimeters (3.6 inches) to 10.5 centimeters (4.1 inches).
[snip]
None of this is to say penis size is meaningless and not worth caring about, only that it's probably a lot less important than we think it is. For those of us who remain understandably curious, though, you can check out the map here.