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, and annetteboardman. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke, Man Oh Man, 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 sometimes slightly later).
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On Friday nights I like to focus on news you might not have heard from abroad, so there is news here of other things than the attack in Sinai and/or the incident in London’s Oxford Street. We begin with links to pictures of the week from foreign news agencies: the BBC, Al Jazeera, Sputnik, and wildlife photos from The Guardian.
Speaking of wildlife news, here is a sad story from the BBC:
A tiger broke out of a circus in central Paris and roamed streets just south of the Eiffel Tower before its circus handlers shot and killed it.
Police tweeted that the tiger had gone on the loose in the 15th district but "the danger has been eliminated".
Nobody was hurt by the 200kg (31-stone) tiger, according to local reports.
Let’s begin the review of the news of today by looking at alternate information about North Korea, Zimbabwe, Egypt, and the UK, all places major in news coverage the past couple of days.
First comes North Korea, this via Newsweek:
Recently, a women who had escaped from North Korea gave the BBC an account of her time in the country’s military service, including that she and the other female soldiers stopped getting their periods.
"After six months to a year of service, we wouldn't menstruate any more because of malnutrition and the stressful environment," the former soldier, Lee So Yeon, told the BBC. "The female soldiers were saying that they are glad that they are not having periods. They were saying that they were glad because the situation is so bad if they were having periods too that would have been worse."
From USA Today:
Police in the Akita region found the men late on Thursday after a call from a local resident that "suspicious men" were standing at the seafront in the town of Yurihonjo. The men were taken into custody, walking unaided, according to Japanese national broadcaster NHK.
"We understand that the eight individuals are reporting that they came from North Korea for fishing, but drifted there after their ship experienced (mechanical) troubles," said Hachiro Okonogi, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission.
From Vox, also about North Korea:
Tensions between North Korea and the United States reached a boiling point this year, with President Donald Trump threatening to unleash “fire and fury” against Pyongyang, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saying he would “surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.”
But North Korea hasn’t launched a missile since September 15, when a projectile flew over Japan and landed harmlessly in the ocean. US Special Envoy for North Korea Joseph Yun speculated that a testing break this long could be a sign that Pyongyang was ready to start negotiations over its nuclear program.
The problem is that focusing on this relative period of calm shifts attention away from a more troubling possibility: that North Korea may be preparing to launch missiles in early 2018 during the Olympics in neighboring South Korea.
From Zimbabwe, via The Zimbabwean:
The Civil Society cluster on Freedom of Expression has called for radical media reforms following the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s new President, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Speaking at the National People’s Convention held at the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC) on November 24, 2017, stakeholders drawn from different civil society organisations and the media called for a robust and genuine transformation of the public media.
Presenting their position during a sideline Cluster meeting at the National People’s Convention, stakeholders bemoaned interference of the editorial policy by the government and politicians. They raised concern over the way the government has captured public media and the danger it causes in promoting media freedom.
There is another Zimbabwe story in the Arts Section, below.
There is other news from Egypt as well, but first check out the flag display at Tel Aviv’s city hall and the Eiffel Tower which has gone dark.
from Al Alhram:
Egyptian national football team and Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has announced his support for the 'Because I'm A Man' campaign, which calls for equality between women and men.
"[Because the campaign] understands that men and women have the same rights and duties, I decided to support the 'Because I'm A Man' campaign," Salah wrote on his official Twitter account.
Also from Al Ahram:
Egyptian officials have welcomed France's support for the country's plan towards urbanisation and sustainable cities during a conference Thursday that kicked off the French-Egyptian Urban Week in Cairo.
A delegation of France's main employers' federation MEDEF is attending the week-long forum.
The body's International Africa committee president Gerard Wolf told audience Thursday that Egypt can set a model of suitable cities for the rest of Africa. He said his country will provide necessary support to Egypt's plans while urging to swiftly move towards putting them in effect.
Egypt is building a new administrative capital on Cairo's eastern outskirts aimed at expanding the city's urban area, which faces increasing overcrowding.
And from The Guardian, about Egyptian material (I decided this belonged here and not in the Arts news):
Australia investigating allegations that Joan Howard would steal from archaeological sites during her husband’s diplomatic trips
The Australian government has confirmed it is looking into the case of a 95-year-old Perth woman accused of looting artefacts from countries including Egypt.
Monica Hanna of Egypt’s Heritage Taskforce posted an open letter to Australia’s ambassador to Egypt, Neil Hawkins, on Facebook this month, alleging Joan Howard spent most of her time during her husband’s diplomatic trips looting archaeological sites.
Howard’s husband, Keith, held senior roles with the United Nations in the Middle East in the 1960s and 70s.
Hanna said Howard had taken advantage of her diplomatic status and her behaviour was “not acceptable”.
“I demand that an investigation should be carried out on the sources of Mrs Howard’s collection now in Perth,” she wrote.
She shared a link to a Seven West Media story originally headlined “Indiana Joan and her trove of artefacts”, which described the former nurse as “WA’s real-life tomb raider”.
“There is a mischievous twinkle in the great-grandmother’s eye as she reveals why she has humbly kept quiet about her derring-do,” the article read.
And news from the UK, from Quartz Media:
The prevailing narratives about corruption in Nigeria rarely mention its international dimension. They tend to gloss over how the United Kingdom, United States, and other financial centers welcome the steady stream of illicit cash flowing out Africa’s largest economy.
Yet the country’s kleptocrats are increasingly exploiting weaknesses in the international financial system to launder and conceal their ill-gotten gains, often via high-end real estate in London, New York, and Dubai.This month’s release of the Paradise Papers—a juicy sequel to last year’s Panama Papers leak—is a glaring reminder of how offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions facilitate corruption in developing countries like Nigeria. According to Global Witness, the top five jurisdictions implicated in the Papers, are all UK Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies like the British Virgin Islands, Jersey, and the Isle of Man.
And from The Telegraph:
A Polish man who is now considered “London’s most wanted burglar” was deported in 2015 but has since returned to the UK without being detected, police officers have admitted.
Police are urging members of the public not approach Krystof Brzezinski, 31, a dangerous career criminal who has recently been linked to a series of raids.
Despite being deported two years ago, investigators have now confirmed that he has returned to Britain under European freedom of movement rules, and is now back in his former crime patch.
In other world news, the BBC has this:
Iran has accused the Saudi crown prince of being "immature" after he described the Iranian Supreme Leader as the Hitler of the Middle East.
In a war of words between the two regional rivals, Iran's foreign ministry said Prince Mohammed bin Salman should "ponder the fate" of regional dictators.
The prince, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, has taken a hard line on Iran.
He told the New York Times it could not be allowed to spread its influence.
"We learned from Europe that appeasement doesn't work. We don't want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East," he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
His remarks drew a strong response from Tehran.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi accused the "adventurist" crown prince of "immature, inconsiderate, and baseless remarks and behaviour", the semi-official Isna news agency reported.
"I strongly advise him to think and ponder upon the fate of the famous dictators of the region in the past few years now that he is thinking of considering their policies and behaviour as a role model," he said.
From Zimbabwe’s Independent online:
ANGELA CHARLTON
Paris - Police in five African countries arrested 40 suspected human traffickers and rescued hundreds of victims - including 236 minors - in an exceptionally large-scale Interpol-led operation.
Unusually, most of the suspects are women.
The traffickers lured vulnerable girls and young women into prostitution networks. Other victims were impoverished children whose parents handed them over to people promising them a better life. Instead, they were forced to beg in the streets and deprived of food or clean water or otherwise abused if they didn't bring in enough money, Interpol said.