Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, palantir, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Man Oh Man, Doctor RJ, 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.
Two OND editors met at Netroots.
Side pocket and Chitown Kev.
Alumni editor jlms qkw was there but not around when I finally caught up to Chitown Kev.
BBC
Turkey pledges action to calm markets
Turkey has pledged it will take action to calm markets after the lira plunged to a new record low in Asian trading.
The details would be unveiled shortly, the country's finance minister told Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.
"From Monday morning onwards our institutions will take the necessary steps and will share the announcements with the market," Berat Albayrak said.
On Friday, the lira lost 20% of its value versus the dollar. It had already fallen more than 40% in the past year.
Mr Albayrak said the country would "act in a speedy manner" and its plan included help for the banks and small and medium-sized businesses most affected by the dramatic volatility in the lira.
BBC
Arms depot blast in Syria's Idlib province kills 39 - monitor
At least 39 people - including 12 children - have been killed in a blast that brought down a building in Syria's mainly rebel-held north-western province of Idlib, reports say.
The building in the Sarmada town is said to have contained munitions belonging to an arms trafficker.
Dozens of people are still missing, a monitor and correspondents say.
Idlib is the last major rebel-held area, and is expected to be the next target for Syrian armed forces.
In recent months, the Syrian government, backed by Russia and Iran, has made major advances in its offensive against a number of rebel and jihadist groups across Syria.
On Sunday, rescuers in Sarmada used bulldozers to remove the rubble and pull out trapped people, an AFP correspondent in the town near the Turkish border reported.
N Y Times
Taliban Kill More Than 200 Afghan Defenders on 4 Fronts: ‘a Catastrophe
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan government forces lost more than 200 officers and soldiers in fighting over the past three days as Taliban insurgents launched sustained attacks on four different fronts.
The hardest-hit area was the southeastern city of Ghazni, where more than 100 police officers and soldiers had been killed by Sunday, a hospital official said, and the insurgents appeared to be in control of most of the strategic city aside from a few important government facilities.
Ninety miles west, in Ghazni Province, the Taliban seized control of the Ajristan District. The elite army commando unit that had been defending the district disappeared for two days, and their superiors were uncertain of their fate. When they found out on Sunday, estimates of the dead ranged from 40 to 100. Twenty-two survivors were carried to safety on donkeys by rescuers who found them lost in the mountains.
In Faryab Province, 250 miles to the northwest, an isolated Afghan National Army base of 100 soldiers lost more than half of its men in a Taliban assault that ended early Sunday morning. The defenders said they did not expect to last another night.
Al Jazeera
Five-nation deal paves way for tapping Caspian riches
The leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan have signed a landmark deal on the legal status of the resource-rich Caspian Sea, taking a big step towards resolving 22 years of dispute with the prospect of massive financial gains.
The five nations sharing the Caspian coastline agreed in the Kazakh city of Aktau on Sunday to treat the largest inland body of water in the world as a lake and a sea at the same time.
Defining it a lake would mean the Caspian should be divided equally among the five countries. But if it's a sea, then each state gets a share in proportion to the length of its shoreline.
"The crux of the problem was: Could you call the Caspian Sea a lake or is it a sea? This agreement says that it is not quite one and not quite the other, so there are going to be different rules applied to the surface of the water to those applied to the seabed," said Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Russia's capital, Moscow.
Al Jazeera
Indonesia earthquake: Death toll jumps to 387
The death toll from the major earthquake that hammered the Indonesian island of Lombok rose to 387 on Saturday.
The 6.9-magnitude quake last Sunday injured more than 13,000 people, left more than 387,000 people displaced, and damaged thousands of buildings.
"It's predicted the death toll will continue to grow because there are still victims who are suspected of being buried by landslides and under rubble, and there are victims that have not been recorded and reported," national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
Most deaths occurred in the north of Lombok, where 334 people died and more than 200,000 people were forced out of damaged homes.
The Guardian
More than 100 large wildfires in US as six new blazes erupt
Six large new wildfires erupted in the United States, pushing the number of major active blazes nationwide to over 100, with more expected to break out sparked by lightning strikes on bone-dry terrain, authorities said on Saturday.
More than 30,000 personnel, including firefighters from across the United States and nearly 140 from Australia and New Zealand, were battling the blazes that have consumed more than 1.6m acres (648,000 hectares), according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.
“We are expecting that there will be more fire-starts today,” Jeremy Grams, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma, said in an interview on Saturday.
He said dry thunderstorms, which produce lightning but little rain, are expected for parts of the Rocky Mountain region, while the US north-west has critical fire weather conditions that include strong winds and low relative humidity.
Firefighters were battling another day of extremely hot temperatures and strong winds on Saturday, the National Interagency Coordination Center said.
The Guardian
Greece: fires force evacuation of Evia island near Athens
A large fire broke has broken out on the Greek island of Evia near Athens, the government said, with two villages evacuated, less than a month after more than 90 people died in Greece’s worst-ever wildfire.
“The prime minister is in close contact with the interior minister over the large fire in Evia,” the prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ office said.
Agriculture minister Vangelis Apostolou, who was on the scene, told state agency ANA that fire-fighting forces were bracing for an all-night struggle.
“Forces from the entire region have been transfered here,” Apostolou said.
Some 500 people at the local villages of Kontodespoti and Stavros had earlier been evacuated as a precaution.
Around 250 firefighters with 62 fire engines supported by troops were operating in the area, about 92km (57 miles) north of Athens, officials said.
Reuters
Alaska seafood industry braces for China tariff pain
SEWARD, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska fishermen are used to coping with fickle weather and wild ocean waves. Now they face a new challenge: the United States’ trade war with China, which buys $1 billion in Alaskan fish annually, making it the state’s top seafood export market.Beijing, in response to the Trump administration’s move to implement extra levies on Chinese goods, last month imposed a 25 percent tariff on Pacific Northwest seafood, including Alaskan fish, in a tit-for-tat that has engulfed the world’s two largest countries in a trade war.
The results could be “devastating” to Alaska’s seafood industry, the state’s biggest private-sector employer, said Frances Leach, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest commercial fishing trade group.
“This isn’t an easily replaced market,” she said. If the tariff war continues, she said, “What’s going to happen is China is just going to stop buying Alaska fish.”
For Alaska’s seafood industry, the timing could not be worse. The state has worked for years to attract the Chinese market, and just two months ago, Governor Bill Walker led a week-long trade mission to China in which the seafood industry was heavily represented.
Reuters
Russia says will ditch U.S. securities amid sanctions: RIA
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will further decrease its holdings of U.S. securities in response to new sanctions against Moscow but has no plans to shut down U.S. companies in Russia, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on state TV on Sunday, RIA news agency reported. On Friday, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would regard any U.S. move to curb the activities of its banks as a “declaration of economic war” and would take retaliatory action.
Washington said on Wednesday it would impose fresh sanctions by the end of August after it determined that Moscow had used a nerve agent against a former Russian agent and his daughter in Britain, sending Russia’s rouble currency to a two-year low.
Speaking on a weekly TV talk show, Siluanov said the new U.S. sanctions, some of which could restrict purchases of Russian government bonds, were “unpleasant but not fatal”.
Buzzfeed
An 11-Year-Old Changed The Results Of Florida's Presidential Vote At A Hacker Convention.
Election hackers have spent years trying to bring attention to flaws in election equipment. But with the world finally watching at DEFCON, the world’s largest hacker conference, they have a new struggle: pointing out flaws without causing the public to doubt that their vote will count.
This weekend saw the 26th annual DEFCON gathering. It was the second time the convention had featured a Voting Village, where organizers set up decommissioned election equipment and watch hackers find creative and alarming ways to break in. Last year, conference attendees found new vulnerabilities for all five voting machines and a single e-poll book of registered voters over the course of the weekend, catching the attention of both senators introducing legislation and the general public. This year’s Voting Village was bigger in every way, with equipment ranging from voting machines to tabulators to smart card readers, all currently in use in the US.
In a room set aside for kid hackers, an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website within 10 minutes — and changed the results.
Raw Story
Computer researchers warn US House candidates are vulnerable to hacks
Three of every 10 candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives have significant security problems with their websites, according to a new study by independent researchers that underscores the threat hackers pose to the November elections.
The research was due to be unveiled on Sunday at the annual Def Con security conference in Las Vegas, where some attendees have spent three days hacking into voting machines to highlight vulnerabilities in technology running polling operations.
A team of four independent researchers led by former National Institutes for Standards and Technology security expert Joshua Franklin concluded that the websites of nearly one-third of U.S. House candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, are vulnerable to attacks. NIST is a U.S. Commerce Department laboratory that provides advice on technical issues, including cyber security.
Using automated scans and test programs, the team identified multiple vulnerabilities, including problems with digital certificates used to verify secure connections with users, Franklin told Reuters ahead of the presentation.
Washington Post
‘They be pirates’
CEDROS, Trinidad and Tobago — In the flickers of sunlight off the cobalt blue of the Caribbean sea, the vessel appeared as a cut on the horizon. It sailed closer. But the crew of the Asheena took no heed.
“We be lookin’ for our red fish as normal, thinkin’ they be fishin’, too,” said Jimmy Lalla, 36, part of the crew that had dropped lines in Trinidadian waters last April a few miles off the lawless Venezuelan coast.
The other vessel kept approaching. “They be needin’ help?” Lalla recalled wondering as it pulled aside their 28-foot pirogue. A short, sinewy man jumped on board, shouting in Spanish and waving a pistol.
“Then we knowin’,” Lalla said. “They be pirates.”
Centuries after Blackbeard’s cannons fell silent and the Jolly Roger came down from rum ports across the Caribbean, the region is confronting a new and less romanticized era of pirates.
Political and economic crises are exploding from Venezuela to Nicaragua to Haiti, sparking anarchy and criminality. As the rule of law breaks down, certain spots in the Caribbean, experts say, are becoming more dangerous than they’ve been in years.
NPR
Growers Are Beaming Over The Success Of Lasers To Stave Off Thieving Birds
During every berry-picking season in the Pacific Northwest, blueberry and raspberry growers fight to prevent birds from gobbling up the crop before harvest. This year, some farmers are trying something new to scare away the thieving birds: lasers.
Justin Meduri manages a large blueberry farm and cherry orchard outside Jefferson, Ore. Birds like both fruits.
"Flocks can move in of up to 2,000 to 3,000 starling birds," Meduri says. The starlings gorge themselves and knock down berries right as the crop is ready to pick. When he didn't take countermeasures, Meduri says the damage was "Inconceivable, huge. We had almost a 20 to 25 percent, maybe even 30 percent damage loss."
Meduri says he previously hired a falconer to protect his fields. But the falcons were expensive, temperamental and sometimes flew away. Then last year, he became one of the first farmers in the U.S. to install automated lasers.
"You're creating this kind of laser light show at 4 o'clock in the morning," Meduri says. "That's the time when birds come out."
The lasers cross over in erratic patterns. The sweeping green laser beams emanate from what look like security cameras atop metal poles.