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 are not limited to) palantir, wader, 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 (or if it is Friday night and the editor is me, a bit later).
We begin with Cuba, in this item from Politico:
Could Trump's new policy put a fragile opening at risk?
By Danny Vinik
If you were to guess who brought in a load of artisanal charcoal earlier this year from Cuba—the first commercial Cuban import to the U.S. in more than 50 years—you probably wouldn’t have picked Scott Gilbert. A D.C.-based lawyer who mostly works on insurance, mass tort and bankruptcy cases, Gilbert doesn’t have a deep personal history with Cuba, or experience importing products into the U.S. And until a few years ago, he certainly didn’t know much about charcoal.
But Gilbert did represent Alan Gross, the USAID contractor, when Gross was imprisoned in Havana, and during that time built some personal relationships with important American and Cuban officials. When Gross was released in 2014 as part of Obama’s historic opening to Havana, Gilbert saw an opportunity to help crack open Cuba’s state-controlled economy. “Since that day,” he said, “I’ve been working and my colleagues have been working to try to promote engagement between our countries and economically empower the Cuban people.”
And from The Hill:
By Julia Manchester
The Cuban ambassador to the United States trolled President Trump on Twitter on Friday, following Trump’s announcement of his decision to roll back several of former President Barack Obama’s policies aimed at normalizing relations with the island nation.
“#Cuba Now it is official: these are the new enemies of US Foreign Policy. Watch out!!” José Ramón Cabañas tweeted Friday, along with a picture of what appears to be a family of tourists walking by a street vendor.
And more of Trump’s foreign policy, this from the Business Insider:
Asked on Thursday by Rep. Tim Ryan of the House Appropriations Committee to explain why the US doesn't just go to war to stop North Korea from developing the capability to hit the US, Secretary of Defense James Mattis painted a grim scenario.
"I would suggest that we will win," Mattis said. "It will be a war more serious in terms of human suffering than anything we've seen since 1953.
And in the Middle East, this news from Reuters:
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Friday the four Arab states that broke ties with Doha were drawing up a list of "grievances," and would present them soon, warning that Qatar could not fund extremism and remain on good terms with neighboring states.
The minister, Adel al-Jubeir, told journalists in London that Qatar should respond to demands to halt its support for "extremism and terrorism" which, he said, were being made by the whole world and not just Gulf states.
And in case you missed this item from yesterday, here is another story from Reuters:
A $12 billion deal to buy U.S. F-15 fighter jets shows Qatar has deep-rooted support from Washington, a Qatari official said.
DOHA, June 15 (Reuters) - A $12 billion deal to buy U.S. F-15 fighter jets shows
Qatar has deep-rooted support from Washington, a
Qatari official said on Thursday, despite President
Donald Trump’s repeated accusations that Doha supports terrorism.
Qatar is facing a severe economic and diplomatic boycott by Saudi Arabia and its regional allies who cut ties last week, in the worst rift among Gulf Arab states in years. They accuse Qatar of funding terrorism, fomenting regional unrest and cosying up to their enemy Iran, all of which Qatar denies.
And from Popular Mechanics:
A neglected $6,000 renovation may have cost dozens of lives.
Early Wednesday morning, a catastrophic fire engulfed Grenfell Tower, a 24-story block of public housing in the Kensington area of London. The flames spread rapidly through the 120 apartments and the entire building was destroyed in the blaze. Firefighters rescued many of the occupants, who had been advised to stay in their homes, but at the time of this writing
30 people are confirmed dead. That number is likely to rise as many of the people living on the upper floors have not yet been accounted for.
Today, one major question remains, how did the fire spread so rapidly?
According to news reports since the fire, the answer, in part, seems to lie in cladding that was applied to the building as part of a refurbishment completed last year. Described as "rain screen cladding," it was added partly to improve the appearance of the building. A London newspaper has suggested that the cladding was to make the raw concrete tower less ugly when seen from new luxury housing nearby. (Public housing aside, Kensington is a prestige neighborhood where the average apartment price exceeds $1.7 million.)
From The Guardian:
Peter Rau, who headed the MFB in 2014 when the building went into flames, says he would never allow his children to live there
The former head of Victoria’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade has said he would not allow his children to live in a Melbourne apartment block that caught fire in a similar manner to London’s Grenfell Tower, and it remained a fire risk.
Peter Rau was chief fire officer of the MFB in November 2014 when a cigarette burning on an eighth floor balcony of the Lacrosse building in Docklands sparked a fire that raced up the aluminium-clad walls to the 21st floor within 11 minutes.
A post-incident report said aluminium composite panels that were not approved for external use on a high-rise building in Australia, were the direct cause of the “speed and intensity of the fire spread”.
The Grenfell Tower in west London, which caught alight on Wednesday, leaving at least 30 people dead and 70 still missing, was recently clad in aluminium panels.
And the first of two about the Afghan War, this from The New York Times:
By ROD NORDLAND and FAHIM ABED
“In these times, our photos
Live longer than ourselves.’’
Those two lines of verse, posted on the Facebook page of Ramazan Hussainzada last month, proved sadly prophetic. Mr. Hussainzada, a prominent Kabul businessman and philanthropist, was among four people killed by a suicide bomber who blew himself up at Al Zahra mosque in the Afghan capital on Thursday night.
The attack was the latest outrage attributed to Afghanistan’s small but growing wing of the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility in a message on Telegram, a WhatsApp-like service, noting pointedly that the mosque was a Shiite one.
And there are Canadian troops there, and they suffer as do many. This is from The Globe and Mail:
No one knows for sure why, 10 years after serving in Afghanistan, Lionel Desmond took a gun to his wife, his daughter, his mother and then himself. But an investigation by Lindsay Jones sheds new light on the pressing need to better understand soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – and to find ways to support them before it’s too late
Lindsay Jones, Upper Big Tracadie, N.S.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Behind the vinyl-clad trailer on the hill, the tires on Shanna Desmond’s newly leased red Dodge pickup truck are flattened, punctured by knife marks.
Shanna’s father, Ricky Borden, is standing in the driveway, which has been churned into a mud pit by the steady stream of police and medical-examiner vehicles. He and a friend fortify themselves with bottles of beer before going inside to tackle the grimmest of tasks: patching the bullet holes that now riddle the walls and ceiling of the home. “Can you imagine having to do that?” he said, staring straight ahead.
More news from elsewhere below the “fold.”
From The West Australian:
Tim McIntyre
Traveling in Uganda, Kate Webster was bitten by two mosquitoes -- each one carrying a separate strain of malaria.
At the time, she did not even know she had been bitten and thanks to a seven day incubation period, it was not until she was in midair on her plane journey back to Australia that the travel journalist began to feel sick.
"I wasn’t feeling the best on the plane and by the time we had stopped over at Johannesburg, I had deteriorated," Ms Webster said.
"When we touched down in Brisbane, I was so sick I had to be taken off the plane in a wheelchair."
More from Australia, this from abc.net.au:
An international group of scientists have used new technology to plumb the dark depths of Australia's eastern abyss for the first time, revealing an exciting array of rare sea life but also rubbish a kilometre under water.
A month after the CSIRO's research ship set off from Tasmania on a voyage into the unknown, the scientists have arrived in Queensland.
Forty scientists, representing 14 organisations and seven different countries, have come together on the RV Investigator to explore Australia's eastern waters.
Dr Tim O'Hara, from Museums Victoria, is the chief scientist of the project and he said it had been a fishing expedition like no other.
"It's really exciting — it's completely new and it's never been done before in Australian waters," he said.
And from Huffpost Australia:
You can keep your coat in the cupboard for a while yet.
Winter? Technically we're in it, yes. But it's feeling a lot more like spring or autumn out there.
Australia is enjoying a super warm start to winter 2017, with temperatures well above average in all capital cities except Darwin.
The good news? It'll be a gorgeous sunny weekend ahead in 90 percent of the country. So get out there and enjoy yourself -- especially if you live in Sydney, where a shower or two may fall but sea temps are still a balmy 20 degrees.
And in more happy environmental news, this from abc.net.au:
By Prue Adams
An Australian farmer's invention, which destroys weed seeds during harvest, has the potential to reduce the need for herbicides in grain farming and is gaining interest from around the world.
The Harrington Seed Destructor (HSD) is the brainchild of Western Australian farmer Ray Harrington.
The machine can be retro-fitted into modern grain harvesters and, with cage mill technology adapted from the mining industry, pulverises weed seeds to the point where they are no longer viable.
This means that when the chaff is spread back over the paddocks after harvest, viable weed seeds are not spread in the process.
And finally, news from the Art world:
From the Orillia (Canada) Packet:
A Toronto man must pay $2,000 for altering an area of Georgian Bay shoreline as part of “large waterfront art project.”
John Paul Adamovsky, of Etobicoke, was found guilty in Barrie court under the Public Lands Act for deliberately creating breakwater-like structures and a small island near his parents’ cottage in Tiny Township, just off Concession Road 18 West.
During sentencing June 1, Justice of the Peace Carol Seglins fined Adamovsky $1,000 for unlawfully filling shore lands and an additional $1,000 for failing to comply with a stop-work order.
From the New York Daily News:
Police in Queens are canvassing for a criminal with expensive, minimalist tastes.
Cops are investigating a break-in at a Sunnyside storage facility in which $12 million in art was taken, officials said Friday.
The stolen artwork included masterpieces from minimalist painter Frank Stella and French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, owner William Pordy told police.