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) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) 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 a little bit later if the diarist is me. I have a terrible habit of cutting things close.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Pictures of the week come from CNN, The Guardian (wildlife), BBC, BBC Africa, and Yahoo.
This week the news that is perhaps the most important in the sense of its long-term impact is from NBC:
Scientists around the world hail "measurement revolution."
By David Freeman
Talk about massive change. After meeting the needs of science, industry and commerce for more than 130 years, the kilogram has just been fundamentally reinvented.
At a meeting Friday in Versailles, France, representatives from the U.S. and 59 other nations adopted a resolution to define the familiar unit of mass in terms of the Planck constant, an unvarying and infinitesimal number at the heart of quantum physics.
We begin with stories about agriculture, as Thanksgiving is a harvest festival of a sort. This first story comes from Channel News Asia:
BEIJING: China's efforts to stem the spread of African swine fever were dealt a fresh blow on Friday when the agricultural ministry confirmed it had found the first case in a wild boar, deepening a three-month-old crisis for the world's top pork producer.
The country also confirmed the first outbreak in the southwest province of Sichuan, the country's leading pig-herding region, raising the likelihood of a major impact on pork supplies in coming months.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Honey being sold in Australia could be bulked up with sugar syrup but there is no reliable way to find out, the consumer watchdog has concluded, prompting it to call on the government to develop a new testing regime to protect consumers.
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission launched an investigation into a number of brands of honey, including one made by Australia's biggest honey producer Capilano, in September following a joint Fairfax Media - ABC investigation.
Also from Australia, this comes from ABC (the Australian version):
When the world's deadliest tsunami ravaged Indonesia's northern coastline on Boxing Day in 2004, it claimed the lives of almost 170,000 people.
The natural disaster left 62,000 farmers displaced.
Their fields were in ruins, swamped by debris, sediment and salt water, and stripped of vital nutrients.
Bapak Rahmad Kurniadi, an agriculture trainer in the hardest-hit region of Aceh, said the rice fields were covered in sand and mud.
"The biggest challenge we faced after the tsunami was returning the fertility to the soil," he said.
Following the tsunami, foreign aid poured into Indonesia from all over the world.
Non-government organisations were also quick to lend a hand.
But 14 years on, only one organisation remains: the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
From The South African:
The study examined water permit systems in Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
A new study has found that outdated, colonial-era water permit systems across Africa are unintentionally criminalising millions of small farmers who can’t obtain permits. This undermines efforts to boost farming production and meet economic growth goals.
The study examined water permit systems in five African countries: Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The permit system was introduced by colonial powers in the 1920s. They were designed to regulate water use in the interests of the colonial project by granting permits only to white settlers.
These systems established minority ownership of a natural resource that was vital for economies dependent on agriculture. African customary water arrangements were ignored and over-ridden.
And from CNBC Africa:
With Africa on the precipice of its own agriculture revolution it is technologies like these that could speed up the process of putting the continent’s 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land to use
Leah Olson (42), CEO of SeedMaster, Mfg and DOT Technologies is not your typical woman CEO. She is a farmer, hails for Saskatoon, the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, has an MBA, she is a level two certified rugby coach and is not afraid to apply the principles of rugby in her leadership style. Just like in rugby where you often have the right person in the wrong role and have to move them around, so she does this in the corporate world, Olson tells CNBC Africa during the 2018 Farms.com Precision Agriculture Conference, where she is speaking, a week after getting married. But what is most remarkable about Olson is she is heading up a revolution in farming that will likely have the same impact Ford Motor Company, had on the horse-drawn carriage. She is spearheading the charge into autonomous farming and she says she will do so safely.
One last Agriculture story, this one from December’s edition of The Atlantic (thus new on the news stands this week):
And other tales of agricultural banditry
RENE CHUN
Tuesday, september 11, 2018, was supposed to be harvest day for David Dunkenberger, a co-owner of Firefly Hill Vineyards, in Elliston, Virginia. He got to the fields early, eager to get this year’s grapes picked before the backwash of Hurricane Florence rolled in. As he scanned the vines, though, he began to feel queasy. His entire crop, about 2.5 tons of grapes, had vanished.
In the days that followed, Dunkenberger grieved the loss of his 2018 vintage and considered the ramifications. Factoring in sunk labor costs and lost sales, he figured he was out $50,000. He thinks that the job was planned by professionals—amateurs could never have snipped three acres clean so quickly—and that it likely would have required a crew of seven pickers, aided by headlamps and two pickup trucks. As for who would be motivated to carry out such a theft, Dunkenberger says he is reluctant to accuse a fellow grower, but can find no other logical explanation. Wine grapes are too sweet to eat. They perish quickly, so they are typically crushed or pressed within 24 hours. “A lot of people are under contract to grow grapes,” he told me, adding that this year’s wet weather had led to disappointing harvests. “If you can’t fulfill that contract, you don’t get paid.” When I spoke with Lieutenant Mark Hollandsworth of the local sheriff’s department, he supported Dunkenberger’s theory: “The rain this year did spoil a lot of grapes.”
More news below the fold.
From CBS news:
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s were convicted Friday by an international tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The regime's reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were top leaders in the regime, which forced residents out of the cities into the countryside where they labored under brutal conditions in giant agricultural cooperatives and work projects. The communist Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of the late Pol Pot, sought to eliminate all traces of what they saw as corrupt bourgeois life, destroying most religious, financial and social institutions.
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced by the U.N.-assisted court to life in prison -- the same punishment they are already serving after being convicted in a previous trial for crimes against humanity connected with forced transfers of people and mass disappearances. Cambodia has no death penalty.
From The Guardian:
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, who has stage 4 cancer, guides the country through 2,300 disasters each year and has become a national treasure
Kate Lamb in Jakarta
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho is the busiest man in Indonesia. As the spokesman for the national disaster agency, he deals with an average of 2,300 emergencies a year. This year has been the busiest in more than a decade – with a string of deadly earthquakes, a tsunami and, last week, a plane crash.
But Sutopo is also battling his own personal disaster. Less than a year ago he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Now, riddled with pain, and 21 kilograms lighter after the latest bout of chemotherapy, he says the nation’s relentless stream of tragedies keeps his mind off his own struggle.
“When a disaster hits, sometimes I forget that I’m sick. I get an adrenaline rush and my spirit back,” he says from his office in Jakarta. “But when I’m not working and I’m just at home, I feel the pain.”
From the BBC:
By Navin Singh Khadka
Indian forest officials are trying to capture two orphaned tiger cubs amid fears they may become man-eaters, authorities have told the BBC.
It is believed their mother, who was shot dead in the state of Maharashtra after a major hunt this month, had killed 13 people.
The six-year-old tigress had evaded capture for two years.
Her killing angered conservationists and it is hoped the 11-month-old cubs can be tranquillised and caught.
From NPR:
Protesters gathered Wednesday in Dublin to denounce the Irish legal system's treatment of women who said they had been sexually assaulted.
Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images
Protesters across Ireland took to the streets this week chanting and carrying thongs, after a 27-year-old man was acquitted of rape during a trial in which his lawyer cited the lacy underwear worn by his 17-year-old accuser.
"You have to look at the way she was dressed," defense attorney Elizabeth O'Connell said, according to the Irish Examiner. "She was wearing a thong with a lace front."
After deliberating for 90 minutes, the jurors – eight men and four women — unanimously found the man not guilty on Saturday.
The verdict incited outrage.
From the Daily Mail:
- Some 2,550 U.S. citizens sought asylum in Canada in 2017 - up from 395 in 2016
- America was the third-highest source of Canada's asylum seekers last year
- As of August 31, an additional 1,215 Americans applied for asylum in Canada
- The vast majority of U.S. citizens seeking protection in Canada are children of Haitian immigrants - and many fear losing legal status in the U.S. under Trump
By VALERIE BAUMAN
The number of Americans seeking asylum in Canada increased more than six fold in 2017.
While still modest, the 2,550 U.S. citizens who sought protection in Canada last year was a significant increase from the 395 who applied in 2016, according to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
America was the third-highest source of asylum seekers in Canada last year, following Haiti (7,785) and Nigeria (6,005), according to CNN.
From the BBC:
A Frenchwoman who hid her baby in a maggot-filled car boot for 23 months has been sentenced to five years in prison, three of them suspended.
Rosa-Maria Da Cruz kept her daughter, Séréna, between the Peugeot 307 and an unused room in her house for two years.
She is said to have hidden the pregnancy and birth from her partner and three older children.
From CNN:
London (CNN)A tourist is suing British Airways, claiming he suffered injury and loss of earnings from having to sit next to an obese passenger on a 12-hour flight.
Stephen Prosser, 51, from Penygraig, South Wales, told Pontypridd County Court on Friday that British Airways cabin crew ignored his warnings he would be injured if he was forced to sit next to the man, the Press Association reported.
Some news from entertainment and the arts, beginning with this from the Beeb:
By Ian Youngs
The judges get dressed in broom cupboards, the physio's treatment room is in the disabled toilet, and the props won't fit through the doors. But Strictly Come Dancing loves coming to Blackpool.
When you move Britain's biggest TV show to one of the country's most historic ballrooms, you have to make use of every available space.
"We turn broom closets into dressing rooms for our cast. They literally are tiny little broom closets," explains Strictly's line producer Kate Jones, who is in charge of all the backstage logistics.
From Quartzy (the cute picture is subtitled “Art lovers, or hooligans?”:
It may have been the seductive call of museum-grade air conditioning. It may, as the museum’s curator suggests, have been a glimpse through the windows of friendly-looking black cats in a photo exhibition. It may simply have been feline curiosity.
Whatever the reason, in the summer of 2016, the security guards of the Onomichi City Museum of Art in Hiroshima, Japan, found themselves fending off an irrepressible visitor: a sleek, black tomcat.
From Vogue:
It’s pretty hard to buy another person an actual piece of art, but if you’re looking for gift ideas for art lovers that go beyond a subscription to Aperture or a membership to the Met, there are plenty of colorful and creative options. And when you are able to spring for an art piece, here are a few unique ideas for meaningful gifts.
After all, Christmas shopping is traditionally supposed to start after Thanksgiving, I guess.