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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The Guardian
A new study has found that higher water temperatures have ravaged the Great Barrier Reef, causing the worst coral bleaching recorded by scientists.
In the worst-affected area, 67% of a 700km swath in the north of the reef lost its shallow-water corals over the past eight to nine months, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies based at James Cook University study found.
“Most of the losses in 2016 have occurred in the northern, most-pristine part of the Great Barrier Reef,” Prof Terry Hughes said. “This region escaped with minor damage in two earlier bleaching events in 1998 and 2002, but this time around it has been badly affected.”
US NEWS
NPR
The governor of North Dakota has issued an evacuation of the area used to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline, citing "anticipated harsh weather conditions" and the unauthorized camps erected by the thousands of demonstrators. The order, issued Monday, is effective immediately and will stay in place indefinitely.
However, the state "won't be using law enforcement or the national guard to enforce the order," said North Dakota Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong in an email to NPR. Fong added:
"The biggest reason, in my estimation, is that we don't have the force to do so. That said, we have real concerns about the safety of those remaining in the camp because of severe weather."
Gov. Jack Dalrymple's order says anyone who does not follow the order "does so at their own risk." He notes that "emergency services probably will not be available under current winter conditions." On Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the land would be closed by Dec. 5 "to protect the general public."
The Guardian
For nearly a decade, the National Rifle Association has spurred its members with apocalyptic warnings that the Democratic president wanted to confiscate Americans’ guns.
Now, the NRA has won. The candidate the NRA backed with an unprecedented $30m in ad buys is heading to the White House. Republicans will control both houses of Congress. Donald Trump has pledged to nominate a supreme court justice who supports gun rights.
“This is our historic moment to go on offense,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre told members in a post-election video address.
Compared with European countries, most of America’s laws are already extremely friendly to gun owners, and many states have continued to roll back gun restrictions to make it easier to carry guns in public – including on university campuses.
“Part of the problem for the NRA is that they’ve been so successful already that there’s not a lot for them to accomplish,” said Adam Winkler, a University of California Los Angeles law professor and gun politics expert.
LaPierre pledged to go after the “tyrannical erosion of gun rights” in the relatively small number of states with very strict gun control laws, such as New York and California. He assailed their “deceitful web of gun bans, ammo bans, magazine bans, exorbitant fees, and taxes and registration schemes”.
The Guardian
Donald Trump has threatened to reimpose sanctions on Cuba that had been lifted by the Obama administration, but gave no details or explanation.
The threat came – like many of the president-elect’s statements since his upset victory on 8 November – in the form of a tweet, that raised more questions than answers.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal.
The tweet, coming two days after the death of Fidel Castro, appeared to restate threats made during the election campaign to reverse the opening to Havana made by the Obama administration over the past year, including an end to the travel ban, the resumption of commercial flights and the relaxation of some trade restrictions.
The Guardian
The white man accused of murdering nine black churchgoers during a racist assault in South Carolina will be allowed to represent himself at trial, a federal judge has ruled.
It means Dylann Roof, 22, could have the opportunity to cross-examine survivors of the mass shooting or relatives of those he is accused of murdering should they testify during proceedings. He faces the death penalty for the alleged hate crime.
Roof made the dramatic request on Monday morning as the court continued with jury selection after a two-week delay to the trial following a competency application made by the defendant’s attorneys. The application, which was sealed by the court, was rejected last Friday during closed-door proceedings.
US district judge Richard Gergel said on Monday that he would reluctantly accept Roof’s “unwise” decision to represent himself.
After the ruling, the 22-year-old’s experienced death penalty attorney, David Bruck, moved over to allow Roof to take the lead chair, according to the Associated Press. Roof’s legal team will be allowed to assist their client if he requests help.
Reuters
A new crop of ads on New York City subway cars reads "Justice now, but justice how?" The words evoke the tone of street protests over police killings of black men across the United States during the past three years.
But the ads are not a plea from civil rights activists. They are a recruiting pitch from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. One of them reads, "If the system is ever going to change, this is the place where change will begin."
John Jay is one of a number of schools that are making academic changes in the wake of the high-profile killings of black men and boys by police in recent years in places like Cleveland, Chicago, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Ferguson, Missouri, that have fueled a debate about racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.
At the same time, police have been targeted by gunmen in places like Dallas, Baton Rouge, New York, Philadelphia and Des Moines, Iowa.
Scores of U.S. colleges and universities offer undergraduate and graduate course work in criminology. Graduates end up in a variety of jobs, from police detectives to social workers to corporate investigators.
BBC
A Somali-American has become the first to compete in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant wearing a hijab and burkini.
Halima Aden, 19, donned the traditional Islamic dress and full-body "burkini" during the event's swimsuit segment.
Ms Aden, who was born in Kenya and moved as a child to St Cloud, Minnesota, was one of the top 15 contestants in the two-day pageant.
She said she hopes her participation inspires other Muslim women to be confident about their identity.
BuzzFeed News
Toward the end of the spring 2014 semester, Sara Weckhorst reported to Kansas State University officials that she had been raped at a fraternity house by two male students. Usually this sort of disclosure would trigger a university investigation, since Weckhorst and the alleged assailants were KSU students subject to the school’s code of conduct.
Instead, according to a federal lawsuit, Kansas State’s affirmative action office told Weckhorst it would not investigate or sanction the accused rapists because the alleged attack had happened off campus. Now, a new court filing argues that this decision had disastrous consequences, leading to another student, Crystal Stroup, being raped by one of Weckhorst’s accused assailants in October 2015.
“K-State’s deliberate indifference to Sara’s reports of rape ultimately led to J.G’s assault on Crystal,” the lawsuit alleges, using the initials of the alleged assailant, Jared Gihring.
Reuters
A student drove a car into a crowd of pedestrians at Ohio State University on Monday morning and then jumped out and stabbed several people with a butcher knife, injuring 11 people, before a police officer shot and killed the attacker, officials said.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan was shot and killed within minutes after plowing into the group by a police officer with less than two years on the force, said Monica Moll, director of public safety for Ohio State University.
"It frankly took a piece out of everybody here at our beautiful Ohio State University that this could have happened here," Ohio Governor John Kasich said at a news conference.
A U.S. government official confirmed the assailant was from Somalia, 18 years old and a lawful permanent resident of the United States. A second government source said investigators had reason to believe the attacker at the campus in Columbus was a Somali refugee. Columbus, the state capital, has a large Somali population.
Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump stepped up his search on Monday for a new U.S. secretary of state, with the focus on David Petraeus, a former U.S. military commander in Iraq whose mishandling of classified information led to his resignation as CIA chief in 2012.
Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence have met with about 70 people so far as they look to shape their White House and Cabinet team before taking office on Jan. 20. Pence told reporters there would be "a number of very important announcements" on Tuesday.
…
Petraeus, who led international forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to two years' probation and fined $100,000 last year for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified information.
He admitted sharing classified information with his biographer, with whom he was having an affair. The scandal forced Petraeus to resign from the CIA in 2012.
WORLD NEWS
AFP
Massive crowds of Cubans streamed onto Havana's iconic Revolution Square to pay tribute to Fidel Castro on Monday, kicking off an emotional, week-long farewell to the divisive Cold War titan.
Long lines of mourners, many of whom had been waiting since before dawn, filled the square as the memorial began with a salvo of 21 cannon shots from a colonial fort overlooking Havana harbor.
They filed silently past a black-and-white picture of "El Comandante" as a young, black-bearded revolutionary, many clutching bouquets of flowers, and many in tears.
Lourdes Rivera, a 66-year-old retired civil servant, was so overcome with emotion while waiting in line that she sat on a curb and cried.
"He's the father of all Cubans. My dad was my dad, but he couldn't give me what (Castro) gave me. He gave me everything. My freedom. My dignity," she said.
Castro, whose 1959 revolution toppled a dictatorship with the promise of bringing justice and equality to the Caribbean island, was a towering figure of the 20th century.
AFP
Syria's rebels lost all of the northern neighbourhoods of their stronghold in east Aleppo on Monday, as the army made significant advances in its offensive to recapture the entire city.
The regime gains have prompted an exodus of thousands of desperate civilians, some fleeing to districts held by the government or Kurdish forces, others heading south into areas still under opposition control.
"The situation is disastrous," said Ibrahim Abu Al-Leith, a spokesman for the White Helmets rescue group in the Ansari neighbourhood.
The United Nations said it was "deeply concerned" about the plight of civilians in the east, where international aid is exhausted and food stocks are desperately low after more than four months of siege.
The UN has appealed for access to the east many times, but has failed to secure the necessary guarantees to enable aid deliveries.
Al Jazeera
Dressed in a white jumpsuit, mittens and socks, the baby girl lay quietly in the Malaysian heat.
"I picked her up and she smiled," said Hartini Zainudin, recalling the hot Saturday morning that changed her life.
Hartini is well known in Malaysia as a child rights activist who rescues unwanted babies.
She thought this was another of those cases. But then the woman who had been caring for the baby at a house in the port town of Klang, about an hour's drive from Kuala Lumpur, got down to business.
For $3,000, she said, Hartini could take the baby home immediately and raise her as her own.
"They said, 'You can buy her … or she'll go to Thailand'," Hartini recalled.
She stepped outside and phoned a fellow activist, who told her that trafficking gangs sometimes maim young children before forcing them to beg in Thailand.
Hartini's decision was instant. She walked back into the house and agreed to buy the little girl, another deal done in Malaysia's lucrative underground baby trade.
An exclusive Al Jazeera investigation for 101 East has revealed that baby selling rackets are thriving in Malaysia.
A complex web of traffickers and doctors is turning the youngest, most vulnerable human lives into commodities, putting them up for sale to the highest bidder.
Al Jazeera
The death toll from a weekend of fighting in western Uganda has risen to 62 after clashes between police and a militia loyal to a tribal king, according to regional police.
An initial 55 deaths had been reported on Sunday.
"So far we managed to kill 46 of the royal guards and we also arrested 139 [guards]," regional police spokesman Mansur Suwed told the Reuters news agency.
He said the number of police killed had risen to 16 from 14 after two officers died from their wounds.
Police arrested King Charles Wesley Mumbere on Sunday and accused his supporters of trying to create a new state in the area near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mumbere has distanced himself from the cause. However, the authorities accuse his royal guards of training in the mountains beside separatist militia forces to attack government installations.
The Guardian
Vladimir Putin, Justin Trudeau and Theresa May are among the world leaders who have already decided not to attend the funeral of Fidel Castro, and it seems very likely that Barack Obama will also stay away despite his historic visit to Cuba earlier this year.
The seniority of politicians sent to attend a funeral is carefully calibrated in diplomatic circles, and most countries – apart from Latin American countries with leftwing governments – have chosen distinctly middle-ranking delegations for Castro’s ceremony.
Russia has announced that Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of Putin and chairman of the lower house of parliament, will head the Russian delegation for the 4 December funeral. The decision underlines the extent to which Moscow no longer regards Cuba as a client state, as it seeks to focus on extending its influence in the Middle East, Asia and central Europe.
Reuters
Islamic State has arrested dozens of Mosul shop owners accused of raising food prices in the nearly besieged city, to tamp down discontent as a U.S.-backed offensive closes in on the group's last major stronghold in Iraq, residents said on Monday.
The arrests took place on Sunday morning in Bursa, a commercial district in the western part of the city, said a witness who asked not be identified as Islamic State punishes with death those caught communicating with the outside world.
About 30 shop owners in the area were arrested and taken away blindfolded to unknown destinations, he said.
The Sunni hardline group is relentlessly cracking down on people who could help the biggest ground offensive in Iraq since the U.S-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Most of the people executed previously in Mosul were former police and army officers, suspected of disloyalty or plotting rebellions against the militants' rule. The arrest of the shop owners is meant as a warning to retailers to refrain from price hikes that would cause unrest in the city.
NPR
There's a new museum in the West Bank dedicated to an iconic and controversial world figure: the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Visitors can get a peek at Arafat memorabilia and walk through the small compound in Ramallah where he was kept confined, surrounded by Israeli tanks, in the final years of his life.
When Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, died in 2004, he was buried in a parking lot amid the ruins of his compound, which Israel had partially demolished while Arafat was still holed up in it. Today, Arafat's grave is a mausoleum of glass and stone, and next to it is the gleaming, three-story Yasser Arafat Museum.
Tour guides have been leading groups of Palestinian high school students through the museum, which opened Nov. 10, the eve of the anniversary of Arafat's death. The $7 million museum was funded by the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank.
NPR
When I visited Chief Inspector Paulito Sabulao in September, he was getting heat from his boss — who was getting heat from his bosses — about why Sabulao's men hadn't killed any drug suspects in the two months since the drug war began.
Sabualo is not in trouble anymore.
"We've recorded 12 dead," he says, with dozens more arrested. In one of the most recent encounters, Sabulao had a close call when a suspect fired at him with a .38 caliber revolver.
His vest saved him, Sabulao says, unbuttoning his shirt to show me the bruise. One of his men was wounded in the shoulder.
"Did you shoot the guy who shot you?" I ask.
"Twice," Sabulao says with a laugh. "I shot him until he was down.”
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (Nov. 26, 2016)
A group of the countries most at risk from climate change said they would strive to make their energy production 100 percent renewable "as rapidly as possible," as part of efforts to limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which numbers 48 nations, also committed to update their climate action plans submitted as part of the U.N. climate pact agreed in Paris last year and prepare low-carbon development strategies for mid-century, both before 2020.
But they emphasised they would need additional funding for more ambitious steps to reduce emissions and protect their people from extreme weather and rising seas.
"Today's commitment by the member countries of the Climate Vulnerable Forum to move toward powering their economies entirely with renewable energy is a bold vision that sets the pace for the world's efforts to implement the Paris Agreement and move even more quickly to solve the climate crisis," former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said in a statement.
Mattlan Zackhras, minister in assistance to the president of the Marshall Islands, said his Pacific island country was "pioneering" the transformation towards 100 percent renewable energy and wanted other countries to follow.
AFP
About 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops depend on pollinators, researchers said Monday warning of a dire threat to human welfare if the falls in bee and butterfly numbers are not halted.
"World food supplies and jobs are at risk unless urgent action is taken to stop global declines of pollinators," said a statement from the University of Reading, whose researchers took part in the global review.
Animal pollination directly affects about three-quarters of important crop types, including most fruits, seeds and nuts and high-value products such as coffee, cocoa and oilseed rape.
Pollinators added some $235-577 billion (222-545 billion euros) to crop output per year, said the team.
"Agriculture employs 1.4 billion people, approximately one-third of the world's economically active labour force," said the review published in the journal Nature.
"This is particularly important to the world's poorest rural communities, 70 percent of whom rely on agriculture as the main source of income and employment."
Most pollinators are insects such as bees, butterflies, moths, wasps and beetles, but others include birds, bats and lizards while some crops are pollinated by wind.
The Guardian
Hackers have managed to infect and take over more than 2,000 computers used to operate San Francisco’s public transport system, forcing the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) to open the gates and allow passengers to ride for nothing.
The attackers used a variant of the HDDCryptor malware to infect 2,112 computers on Friday, encrypting their data and preventing them from operating normally – holding them to ransom for 100 bitcoin (£58,514, $73,086), according to the Register,.
Every computer was left displaying a black screen with a ransom note written across it stating: “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted. Contact For Key (yandex.com)ID:681, Enter.”
A San Francisco MTA spokesperson declined to comment beyond saying: “There’s no impact to the transit service, but we have opened the fare gates as a precaution to minimise customer impact.”
Reuters
The top priorities of Viacom Inc's (VIAB.O) acting president and chief executive are improving key relations with affiliates as well as the struggling media company's internal culture, Bob Bakish told Reuters at the end of his first week on the job.
Bakish, Viacom's third CEO in less than three months, is seen by many investors as a caretaker until the company is merged into CBS Corp (CBS.N), a deal controlling shareholders Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari are pushing.
But the long-time head of international at Viacom appears intent on having an impact while in charge of the company.
In his first week on the job, he met with talent, as well as distribution partners and executives and employees on both U.S. coasts, including at Paramount Studios, he said in an interview last week from his yet-to-be decorated office in New York.
"The company has been through a lot and part of my job is to revitalize the culture," Bakish said. "It's about starting to create a positive buzz and having people believe we can do great things.”
NPR
Patients and their advocates are getting an ever-larger voice in how medical research is carried out. They participate in the design of experiments and have a greater say in what outcomes they care about most — and it's not always simply living longer.
Sharon Terry has lived through a couple of decades during which patients went from being complete outsiders to participants. She worries now that they risk being co-opted by the medical research juggernaut.
Her story started in Boston in the mid-1990s, when she discovered that her two young children had been born with a rare genetic disease called pseudoxanthoma elasticum. It's a progressive disorder that causes connective tissue to gradually get hard, and can impair, skin, eyes and blood vessels.
"Researchers came and took blood from us and our kids," Terry says.
A few days later, another set of researchers wanted to take blood, too.
"We didn't understand why they weren't sharing. And we also didn't understand why they weren't working together," she says.
Don’t forget to visit Doctor RJ’s post:
Dreams built upon fairy tales and fantasy, princes and princesses, and everything in-between can be some of the most cherished memories of childhood. But the term "Disney princess" has taken on negative connotations in recent years. The argument being the classic female archetype seen in the likes of Snow White and Sleeping Beautyencourages young girls to define femininity by beauty, and sees the main goal in a woman's life as being romance and finding a "Prince Charming." And those sort of gender roles and stereotypes filter down into everyday life in the ways women are perceived in the boardroom and in politics. Disney has been well aware as to how this can sometimes come off, and for at least the past two decades tried to move their female characters away from these criticisms. Mulan is a warrior, both Tiana from The Princess and the Frog and Merida from Brave want independence and to achieve on their own merits, and with Frozen the story is about the love between two sisters and how they're saved by being true to themselves. Frozen has been hailed by some for feminist and progressive values, and been bashed by others for promoting a "pro-gay, pro-bestiality agenda." So you can't please everyone.