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, perhaps a bit later).
We start with the pictures of the week, of the world, from the BBC, and of Africa, also from the BEEB.
Some good news begins our round-up. This comes from Canada’s CTV news:
TORONTO -- Canadian activists lobbying for gender-neutral options on government documents say Ottawa has sent an important message in support of their cause by announcing the arrival of passports that allow people to opt out of declaring themselves as either male or female.
The federal government had long indicated that gender-neutral passports were on their way, but formally announced the move on Thursday. Canadians who don't want to specify a male or female gender will now have the option to indicate their preference on passport application forms starting on Aug. 31.
From CNN, news from India:
By Huizhong Wu and James Masters, CNN
New Delhi (CNN) Deadly clashes erupted in northern India after a controversial spiritual leader was found guilty of raping two of his followers.
Police said that at least 17 people were killed as followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh clashed with officers in the city of Panchkula.
Singh, known as the "guru of bling" on account of his flashy dress sense and penchant for diamonds, was convicted of raping two women in a case that dates back to 1999.
From Reuters, in The Guardian:
Yingluck did not show up on Friday for a negligence ruling in which she faces up to 10 years in prison
Former prime minister of Thailand Yingluck Shinawatra has fled to Dubai, senior members of her party said on Saturday, a day after she failed to show up for a negligence ruling in which she faced up to 10 years in prison.
Sources in her Puea Thai party said she left Thailand last week and flew via Singapore to Dubai where her brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for corruption, has a home.
I seem to have found a lot of crime news this evening. This from Agence France Presse is also published in The Guardian:
Peter Madsen claims Wall died in an accident on board his submarine before he dumped her body in the sea
A Danish inventor being held over the death of the Swedish reporter Kim Wall, whose headless torso was found on the Copenhagen waterside, has denied killing her and mutilating her body, police have said.
“The suspect denies murder and desecration of a human body,” Copenhagen police said in a statement on Friday, referring to Peter Madsen.
Madsen, 46, who has been held in formal custody since 12 August on suspicion of “negligent manslaughter”, says Wall died in an accident on board a submarine he had built. He claims he subsequently dumped the 30-year-old’s body in the sea south of Copenhagen.
From The Independent:
Madrid police also reports 'xenophobe and islamophobic' banners hanged from far-right group headquarters
Chloe Farand
A Muslim woman wearing a hijab was beaten by a group of young boys in what police are treating as an Islamophobic attack, one week after terrorists targeted Barcelona and Cambrils killed 15 people and injured more than 100.
The 38-year-old woman suffered injuries after a group of "two or three young men" she did not know attacked her in front of the Usera metro station in the south of the Spanish capital.
And from The Guardian:
Lawyers say pistol found by officers after shooting in Kirkby has been used in 19 incidents in the past seven years
Frances Perraudin North of England reporter
A semi-automatic pistol seized by police after a shooting in Merseyside is believed to have been used in 19 firearms incidents in the past seven years, an extraordinary history which has emerged after a rise in gun crime in the region.
Officers found the Beretta 9000S while investigating an incident in Kirkby, north-east of Liverpool, in which a gunman fired at a vehicle in a suspected targeted attack.
Police discovered the weapon when they raided the home of 24-year-old Adam Bigley the following day, hidden in a bathroom behind boxed-in pipes. His DNA, along with that of at least three other people, was found on the safety catch of the weapon.
The magazine was attached and contained four factory-loaded 9mm live rounds. The serial number had been erased. There is no evidence this particular weapon was used in the Kirkby shooting.
And from the Sydney Morning Herald:
by John Silvester
My father has been gone now for nearly 15 years but every now and again I can hear his voice. He was a man who rarely spoke loudly - not because he was shy but because he assumed others would fall silent when he wanted to be heard.
He spent his latter years pottering around the Gippsland Lakes, restlessly retired and feeling he had left business unfinished. I can still see him – sitting in his armchair reading a newspaper report on the latest expose on organised crime. "About bloody time!" he would say with a shake of the head, before finding a dog-eared police report he had written decades earlier that predicted just such an event.
It is hard to imagine, but for many years police not only didn't have a strategy to combat organised crime but failed to admit it existed at all.
And neither crime, nor Art (that will come afterwards), this story from the BBC magazine:
By Joanna Jolly and Georgia Catt
Every year, thousands of Britons vanish from their lives. Kirsty and Zack had just celebrated the birth of their son when Zack suddenly walked out of their home. This is the story of how Kirsty tried to track him down.
It's breakfast time and Zack, 28, is running late for his job in a High Street bank. His partner, 34-year-old Kirsty, tells him to hurry up, but he's laughing. He gives Kirsty a kiss and says goodbye to the children - a seven-year-old and a baby of just five weeks. As he walks out to the street, the eldest child goes to the window and makes heart shapes with her hands to Zack below. It's an ordinary morning.
A couple of hours later, Kirsty receives a text message from Zack to say he's not coming back.
And now for the pleasant chaser. As we do every Friday, let’s take a look at art This first is from the BBC:
Once rejected, street art is now appearing throughout the city, communicating Thai humour, beauty and social issues to its people. Jason Lai takes a closer look.
Underground – and specifically street art – has emerged in Bangkok as a new and vibrant way for artists to share creativity that often contains social or humorous messages.
Alex Face is a prominent street artist whose signature is the ‘baby face’, which was inspired by his daughter as a new-born. Face uses the baby-face symbol as a way of communicating messages about the future.
“I want to represent humans’ next generation. I make them look worried – they worry about the future”, Face explains to Jason Lai.
From The Guardian:
Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals was taken off the No 1 spot after fellow YA authors, sceptical of ‘a book that no one has heard of’, uncovered a pattern of strategic preorders
A young adult novel has been removed from the No 1 position on the New York Times bestseller lists, after detective work worthy of Nancy Drew by YA writers on Twitter uncovered a trail of strategic preorders being placed in particular US bookshops.
Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals is about “a free-spirited young woman, from a long dynasty of tarot-card readers, fortunetellers, and practitioners of magick [who] travels to Las Vegas and uses supernatural powers to become part of a premiere magic show”. It took the top spot on the New York Times young adult bestseller list this week, ahead of Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give. Industry monitor Nielsen Bookscan recorded 18,597 sales of Handbook for Mortals in one weekend.
From the BBC:
Star Wars spin-offs are landing in a galaxy near you, with Obi-Wan Kenobi said to be next in line.
Yoda and bounty hunter Boba Fett could also get their own prequels, and there's even chatter on fan sites about a Jabba the Hutt film. Who knows what he might have looked like when he was younger...
But are we reaching saturation level with all these prequels and spin-offs?
Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry is said to be poised to take on the Obi-Wan film, although it hasn't had the green light yet.
"Talks are at the earliest of stages and the project has no script," the Hollywood Reporter said.
And we finish with an essay from the Wilson Quarterly:
From oil paintings and poetry to militarization and melting (and yes, even video games), our quest to understand the region at the top of the planet continues – and the stakes today are higher than ever.
“We were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea-room in which she floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were encompassed round by a very thick fog.”
These are the observations of Mary Shelley’s fictional Arctic explorer Captain Robert Walton as he sails ever closer to the North Pole – spurred on by the promise of scientific discovery, geographic knowledge, and international acclaim.
“… The mist cleared away, and we beheld vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention, and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile: a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge, and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller with our telescopes, until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice.”