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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
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No,it’s not Sunday. I’m subbing for maggiejean who won't return from Mexico till late this evening.
BBC
Europe cold weather death toll rises
More than 20 people are now known to have died as icy temperatures continue to grip much of Europe.
Ten people died of cold in Poland on Sunday. The bodies of three migrants, two Iraqi and one Somali, were found near the Turkish-Bulgarian border.
Deaths have been reported in Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia and Ukraine.
Dozens of flights have been halted. In Turkey, the Bosphorus is closed to shipping after a snowstorm. Even Greece's islands are covered in snow.
In Serbia, all river transport is suspended on the Danube.
The Medecins Sans Frontieres aid organisation said it was "very concerned about the thousands of vulnerable people across the continent in danger and stuck in undignified conditions".
It said "of particular concern are the 2,000 people living in informal settlements in Belgrade where temperatures are currently reaching -20C (-4F)". It added that the majority of them were young people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria.
BBC
Mosul battle: Iraq gaining momentum against IS
The announcement by the Iraqi military that its forces have reached the Tigris River for the first time in the battle for Mosul marks a significant moment in the 12-week campaign to recapture so-called Islamic State's (IS) last major stronghold in the country.
Lieutenant General Abdal-Amir al-Lami, the Iraqi deputy chief of staff for operations, confirmed on 8 January that the Iraqi security forces (ISF) had seized the eastern end of one of the bridges linking the two sides of the city.
A solid foothold seems to have been made in the riverside Beladiyat area, which is the site of many of Mosul's newer municipality offices and the Salam Hospital, the scene of a daring earlier attempt by Iraqi forces to punch a corridor through to the river.
North of Beladiyat, the 2nd Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) brigade experienced a simultaneous breakthrough towards the river in the Muthana neighbourhood and the ancient ruins of Nineveh.
Gains are also being made in north-east Mosul, as the 1st and 3rd ISOF brigades attempt the recapture of the Kindi military base and adjacent upper income neighborhoods.
Al Jazeera
US troops 'kill dozens of ISIL fighters' in Syria raid
US special forces have carried out a raid against ISIL in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Az Zor, according to an official and a monitoring group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group tracking developments in Syria's conflict, said on Monday that at least 25 fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, were killed in the village of al-Kubar during Sunday's raid.
A US coalition official also told Al Jazeera that a raid had taken place on Sunday in Deir Az Zor but did not confirm the number of casualties.
The raid was first reported by news outlet Deirezzor 24 on its Twitter account, which specialises in news from the province.
It reported that a 90-minute long clash took place near the village and that coalition troops - backed by two fighter jets - arrived at the scene in four helicopters.
According to Deirezzor 24, US troops took with them an unspecified number of bodies of ISIL members killed in the fighting and arrested several members of the group.
The Guardian
Talks to secure Cyprus reunification enter 'final stages'
A historic effort to end the division of Cyprus has begun in earnest as Greek and Turkish community leaders resumed reunification talks before a high stakes multilateral conference, the first since the island’s partition 43 years ago.
After 18 months of intensive negotiations to settle inter-ethnic divisions, Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akıncı will attempt to finesse the details of a peace deal in Geneva this week by poring over maps and discussing territorial trade-offs before tackling the potentially explosive issue of security.
Asked if he was optimistic as he arrived at the UN’s European headquarters on Monday morning, Anastasiades, the Greek Cypriot leader, said: “Ask me when we are finished.”
The Turkish Cypriot leader, Mustafa Akıncı. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
For an island the finer skills of peacemakers has long eluded, the talks are seen as a defining moment in the arduous process of resolving what has long been regarded as the Rubik’s cube of diplomacy.
On Sunday, the new UN secretary general, António Guterres, described the talks as a historic opportunity. In Nicosia officials on both sides of the buffer zonespoke of “the best and last chance” for a settlement. Other experts described the talks as the endgame.
The Guardian
Mexico protests: how gas prices lit the flame under a quietly smoldering rage
Marching with a boisterous but peaceful crowd through central Mexico City, Héctor Pérez, a sales manager with an insurance company, rattled off a list of grievances to explain a wave of furious protests which erupted after a rise in the country’s government-set petrol price.
“It’s not because we all have cars. When gasoline prices go up, everything else goes up: tortillas, public transportation, everything,” said Pérez.
Pressed a little harder, he voiced another set of reasons for his discontent: President Enrique Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) justified an agenda of structural reforms with the promise of growth for all – but have instead presided over a stagnating economy.
Meanwhile, a string of high-profile corruption scandals has heightened the perception that the while ordinary Mexicans have seen a gradual decline in spending power, the country’s politicians have grown rich.
“PRI governors in the states have robbed a lot of money and the president is not able to stop them,” said Pérez, referring to cases such as that of the former governor of Veracruz state Javier Duarte, who is currently on the run after being accused of pilfering the public purse.
Angry protests over the 20% hike in gasoline prices – known as the gasolinazo – have plunged parts of Mexico into chaos as citizens protest in the streets and block highways, petrol stations and installations of the state-run oil giant Pemex. More than 250 stores have been looted, amid allegations that paid agitators infiltrated the protests.
Christian Science Monitor
Germany's plan to fight fake news
JANUARY 9, 2017 —In May 2015, hackers infected some 20,000 computers in Germany’s parliament with malicious software designed to steal sensitive data. The vast and damaging cyberattack was the most expansive in the government’s history.
The culprits? Experts and officials blamed the hacking group "APT 28," the same outfit that the US government says hacked the Democratic National Convention in July 2015 and helped Russia execute an extensive influence operation to discredit Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Now, a growing number of German politicians are deeply concerned that Russia will interfere in their own elections this coming fall, seeking to discredit pro-European Chancellor Angela Merkel as she runs for a fourth term, and strengthen support for the burgeoning populist party Alternative for Germany (AFD). In response, Berlin is considering new ways of blunting any attempt from Moscow to influence its political process through cyberattacks and misinformation.
Raw Story
Jason Chaffetz promises to pursue investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails: It’s ‘not going away’
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Monday said he intends to continue the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State, insisting, “just because there was a political election doesn’t mean it goes away.”
Chaffetz told CNN Clinton’s use of classified emails is “the largest breach of security in the history of the State Department,” despite the FBI’s recommendation not to press charges against the former Democratic candidate.
Donald Trump made prosecuting Clinton a pilar of his campaign, entertaining calls by his supporters to “lock her up” and at one point dubiously insisting he would instruct his Attorney General to “get a special prosecutor to look into [her] situation.”
Following his election, Trump backed off his promise to put Clinton in jail, insisting the former Secretary of State has already “suffered greatly” and prosecuting her is “just not something I feel very strongly about.”
But Chaffetz promised he would continue to push the investigation in to Clinton’s email use, though he insisted his “job is not to be a cheerleader for” Trump.
The Guardian
Decline of the dentist's drill? Drug helps rotten teeth regenerate, trial shows
Dentists have devised a treatment to regenerate rotten teeth that could substantially reduce the need for fillings in the future.
The therapy works by enhancing the natural ability of teeth to repair themselves through the activation of stem cells in the soft pulp at the centre.
Normally, this mechanism is limited to repairing small cracks and holes in dentine, the solid bulk of the tooth beneath the surface enamel. Now scientists have shown that the natural process can be enhanced using an Alzheimer’s drug, allowing the tooth’s own cells to rebuild cavities extending from the surface to the root.
Prof Paul Sharpe, who led the work at King’s College London, said: “Almost everyone on the planet has tooth decay at some time – it’s a massive volume of people being treated. We’ve deliberately tried to make something really simple, really quick and really cheap.”
In the trial, in mice, the team showed that when defects were filled with a biodegradable sponge soaked in the drug, the tooth was gradually able to rebuild itself.
Restoring the tooth’s original dentine structure is preferable because dental cements used in conventional fillings weaken the tooth, leave it prone to future infections – and inevitably erode or detach.
Raw Story
We might get to watch a new star explode into the sky in 2022
To look up into the night sky is to gaze deep, deep into the past. Light moves fast, but not fast enough for us to get an instantaneous peek at the cosmos. So when we look at some of the glowing balls of plasma that light up our sky, we're actually seeing them as they looked thousands of years ago. Even the light from our own sun is eight minutes old before it reaches Earth.
But just because the sky is a glittering time capsule doesn't mean we can't occasionally see something new. Or new to us, anyway. Scientists think a massive star collision occurred about 1,800 years ago, and they're predicting that the resulting red flash will reach our eyeballs sometime around 2022.
"It's a one-in-a-million chance that you can predict an explosion," Calvin College astronomer Larry Molnar said in a statement. "It's never been done before."
For several years now, Molner and his colleagues have been studying the binary star called KIC 9832227, located about 1,276 light-years from Earth. The team bolstered the case for its star-making quality last week at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The two stars that make up this pair in the constellation Cygnus (the swan) are spiraling towards one another, destined to collide. When they do, they're likely to form a red nova—a red-flashing explosion resulting in one new, massive star. If the researchers are correct, their years of observation will have a massive payoff: this would be the first time scientists accurately predicted the collision of two stars ahead of time.
Tomato News
N Y Times
Tomatillo Fossils, 52 Million Years Old, Are Discovered in Patagonia
The nightshades have an ominous reputation, but this large plant family is more than just its most poisonous members, like belladonna. It contains more than 2,400 different species, including some of the most widely consumed fruits and vegetables in the world, such as potatoes, tomatoes and peppers.
By analyzing the fossil record through molecular data, scientists had estimated that the nightshade family was about 30 million years old, making it a relatively young plant family. But paleontologists in the Patagonia region in Argentina have discovered 52 million-year-old fossilized tomatillos, which are also nightshades. The discovery could push the age of the entire plant family, perhaps, back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Tomatillos are like the tomato’s oddball cousin. They are small, green and covered in a papery husk, which makes them look like Chinese lanterns. The berry beneath the sheath is the key ingredient in a tangy, zesty salsa verde. Until now, researchers thought tomatillos first evolved about 10 million years ago. But the new findings suggest that the fruits are actually five times that old. Because tomatillos are thought to be an evolutionarily young member of the nightshade group, the recent finding suggests that the entire family may be much older than scientists had previously estimated.