What is going on in Punxsutawney, PA, this weekend? We’ll hear enough about it tomorrow, certainly, but in the meantime, here is news from elsewhere.
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 the BBC, BBC (Africa), The Guardian (wildlife), National Geographic (your shot photos), Balkan Insight, and Leeds Live (snowy England). And pictures of Niagara Falls from Deutsche Welle.
Speaking of England, they are still facing the looming Brexit (which will come in March). This take is from The Guardian:
Exclusive: leaked emails show officials planning crisis centres to manage halt in waste exports to EU
Damian Carrington
Government officials are preparing to deal with “putrefying stockpiles” of rubbish in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to documents leaked to the Guardian.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 29 March, export licences for millions of tonnes of waste will become invalid overnight. Environment Agency (EA) officials said leaking stockpiles could cause pollution.
The EA is also concerned that if farmers cannot export beef and lamb, a backlog of livestock on farms could cause liquid manure stores to overflow. A senior MP said the problems could cause a public health and environmental pollution emergency. An EA source said: “It could all get very ugly, very quickly.”
And from Reuters:
LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England will have more than Brexit on its mind when it meets next week, as a slowdown in the global economy tests its plan to return to raising interest rates before too long.
Governor Mark Carney and his fellow interest rate-setters are expected to keep borrowing costs on hold at 0.75 percent on Thursday, with Britain at risk of leaving the European Union just 50 days later without a transition deal in place to ease the shock.
And from The Independent:
Government brands provocative statement 'completely innapropriate' as bloc escalates row over British Overseas Territory
The EU has provocatively described Gibraltar as a "colony of the British crown" whose sovereignty is disputed by Spain.
In a move branded "completely inappropriate" by the UK government, a proposed EU regulation granting Britons visa-free access to the bloc in the case of a no-deal Brexit made a distinction beween those living in Britain and those who are citizens of the British Overseas Territory.
Before we get to specific country-based news, the news that has the world (particularly Europe) in shock:
EU leaders are concerned that the US withdrawal from the INF treaty could spark a new arms race. Can Russia and the US be convinced to resume talks?
The US has announced it will withdraw from the Cold War-era Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty on 2 August 2019, blaming Russia for violating the agreement. EU foreign ministers, meanwhile, are unsure how to react. Some fear the beginning of a new arms race, while others urge the US and Russia to do everything in their power to save the treaty. So far, however, no concrete steps have been taken towards this end.
Unsuccessful attempts to salvage treaty
Over the past weeks, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has endeavored to save the deal. He traveled to Moscow to discuss the matter with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, but to no avail; his talks in Washington proved similarly fruitless. Perhaps German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who posses far greater experience and international clout, could take up the matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin to see whether there is any chance Russia and the US might resume talks.
The UK has other things happening, of course. This comes from The Guardian:
UK hospital visits for illnesses common in Victorian era up by 3,000 a year since 2010
Sarah Marsh
There has been a sharp rise in hospital visits for diseases that were common during the Victorian era, such as scarlet fever, whooping cough and gout, research reveals.
Despite certain illnesses virtually being eradicated in the 1950s, hospital attendances for some “Victorian diseases” have risen by 52% since 2010-11, an increase of over 3,000 admissions a year.
The rise has been put down to sustained cuts to local authority public health budgets, which experts say have resulted in the services that protect against illness being scaled back.
Helen Donovan, the Royal College of Nursing’s professional lead for public health, said the findings were concerning.
Other health news, this from the Local Italy:
More than ten thousand Italian doctors and eight thousand nurses left Italy to work abroad between 2005 and 2015, Italian news outlets reported on Friday.
The data was released by the European Union and comes from a report published by the research foundations Eurispes and Enpam, according to Ansa.
The most popular overseas destination for medical graduates was Britain, favoured by 33% of medics, followed by Switzerland, the preferred destination of 26% of Italian doctors.
Most were aged between 28 and 39 years, and Veneto was the region which saw the highest number of departures.
From Deutsche Welle:
The death of a Spanish toddler who fell into an illegal borehole has put the country's water crisis on the spot. It's estimated there are over one million illegal wells in Spain.
Rescue teams dug for two weeks in the Andalusian countryside to try to save a boy who fell down one of Spain's many illegal wells. The 2-year-old Julen Rosello was found dead in an open borehole in the town of Totalan, near Malaga.
Based on surveys of known illegal wells, researchers have estimated there are over one million of these unauthorized wells dotting the country. They are known locally as pozos luneros or "moonshine wells" because they are often dug by the light of the moon when authorities are not watching.
And from The Guardian:
Families question how experts did not immediately recognise remains were ancient
Human remains found at property in Rome owned by the Vatican belonged to an ancient Roman man and not to either of two teenage girls missing since the early 1980s, authorities have said.
The discovery of the remains in October raised hopes of a breakthrough in the cases of Mirella Gregori and Emanuela Orlandi, both of whom were 15 when they disappeared within weeks of each other in 1983.
Mirella was last seen on 7 May after telling her mother she had a date, and Emanuela on 22 June as she left for a music class.
From Deutsche Welle:
Media reports have sparked public outrage, leading to a search for a new site. Critics said the initiative showed a lack of historical awareness.
What seemed liked a done deal has turned into an uncomfortable public relations situation for the German city of Mühlhausen, a private investor and an association known as "Friends of the Thuringian Sausage."
On Thursday evening the Mühlhausen city council overwhelming approved rezoning of the site of an annex to the Buchenwald concentration camp, known as "Martha II," for use by the investor as the new home of the German Sausage Museum.
The museum is currently located in nearby Holzhausen, but developers want to expand the business, adding a theater, hotel and other attractions.
Economics news from the UK, from The Guardian:
The city centre has lost 18% of its shops in five years. What’s really to blame?
Amy Walker
“Look at it, everything’s leaving,” says Linda Shaw, nodding at a “to let” sign outside the branch of Next on Sheffield’s Fargate. It’s hard to argue with her. Once at the heart of the steel city, the shopping road is now pocked with vacant shops. Soon H&M will follow Next in relocating to the Moor, a recently redeveloped part of town.
For residents like Shaw, 70, the deserted feeling is enough to give up shopping here altogether. “The only reason I bother to come into Sheffieldnow is to go to the bank because they’ve closed so many outside of town,” she says.
According to a new Guardian analysis, over the last five years, while English and Welsh town centres have lost an average of 8% of their stores – itself a stark indicator of the crisis on British high streets – the city of Sheffield has lost 17.8%. The drop is nearly as bad in nearby Rotherham.
Some news from Africa, beginning with Political Analysis — South Africa:
A law on universal health coverage in Chad will be adopted in the coming days, the Minister of Communication, Oumar Yaya Hissein, disclosed on Thursday, 31 January 2019.
He was speaking in N’Djamena shortly after a cabinet meeting on the issue chaired by President Idriss Déby.
“The objective of this law is to put in place a new health social protection mechanism that will allow everyone to have access to a minimum level of quality health care,” the minister explained.
And from TimesNow (India):
Dreaded underworld don Ravi Pujari had secured new identity for himself and his family in Burkina Faso and was running many restaurants in partnership in few West African nations.
Bengaluru: Underworld don Ravi Pujari who was arrested in Senegal recently was living with a new identity and had secured a Burkina Faso passport for himself and his family. The notorious don also ran a chain of restaurants in few West African nations. According to Karnataka police Pujari took a new identity as Antony Fernandez and had got Burkina Faso passport for himself, his wife and children. He, however, ran away from Burkina Faso to Senegal as he was afraid that his identity might get exposed.
Additional Director General of Police (intelligence) Dr Amar Kumar Pandey coordinated with the National Crime Record Bureau to expedite the Red Corner Notice to Interpol on the directions of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy to ensure the arrest of the dreaded gangster who is wanted in several cases in Karnataka, including extortion, reported news agency PTI.
A follow up to last Saturday’s dam collapse in Brazil, from Reuters:
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil (Reuters) - The collapse of a Brazilian dam controlled by miner Vale a week ago likely happened because parts of the sand and dried-mud structure dissolved into liquid, a state regulator said in an interview, similar to what caused another deadly mining disaster less than four years ago.
Rescue workers attend a mass for victims victims of a collapsed tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA, in Brumadinho, Brazil February 1, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
With 115 people confirmed dead and another 248 missing, according to information from the rescue team on Friday evening, the tailings dam collapse in the town of Brumadinho could be Brazil’s deadliest mine disaster.
News from out of this world, from The Independent:
Meteoroid about the size of a beach ball appears to have collided with the 'blood moon'
Something crashed into the blood moon during the lunar eclipse – and now scientists think they know what it is.
As the world looked up to watch the spectacle of the lunar eclipse, some noticed that something pecular appeared to collide with the moon. A small flash was observed in its side, though it wasn't clear what happened.
Normally, such a collision would have been invisible, because of the light from the Sun on the Moon's surface. But it was darker, because of the eclipse, meaning that the bright collision was still visible.
And it was seen by a huge number of people, either watching themselves or viewing the spectacle through livestreams. Because of the eclipse, the event is probably the most documented collision ever by some distance.
And from the Cyprus Mail:
Two rocks on Mars have been given names by NASA in the Cypriot dialect, honouring the work of a Cypriot scientist who works on the NASA InSight mission.
Dr Constantinos Charalambous is a Cypriot planetary scientist born in Limassol and a research member of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO).
Since InSight’s landing on Mars on November 26, he has been supporting surface operations for the mission at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
News of the arts, beginning with this from Deutsche Welle:
Rembrandt, who died 350 years ago, has become one of the best known painters of the Dutch Golden Age. A series of celebrations across the Netherlands honoring him includes a look at his social support system.
There's never a shortage of works by the golden boy of the Dutch Golden Age on display in museums across the Netherlands. Yet the painter who inspired millions with his masterpieces and his works will be drawn even more into focus in 2019 as museums around the country honor the artist and his legacy, 350 years after his death.
From the Mauritshuis in The Hague to the Museum Prinsenhof Delft, the Jewish Cultural Quarter and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, cultural institutions are planning special exhibitions intended to shed new light on the artist and present his work to younger generations in an interesting way.
From The Guardian:
Esther Addley
More than a decade after he cheekily stuck a fake artwork to the wall of one of its galleries, Banksy has officially joined the collection of the British Museum for the first time.
The museum has acquired its first work by the anonymous graffiti artist, a fake £10 banknote depicting Diana, Princess of Wales, which will join its collection of coins, medals and other currency.
Tom Hockenhull, curator of modern money at the museum, said he had been trying for years to get hold of a genuine Di-faced Tenner to add to the museum’s collection of “skit notes”, or parodies of real banknotes. “The problem is, because [Banksy] was effectively producing them as photocopies, anyone else could do that as well, so there was no way to really verify whether they were from Banksy or not.”
Also from The Guardian:
Advance copies of Amélie Wen Zhao’s Blood Heir were criticised for its depiction of slavery, for which the author apologised and pulled publication
Alison Flood
An up-and-coming young adult author has cancelled the publication of her highly anticipated debut novel, following a flood of online criticism from readers over her depiction of race and slavery.
Amélie Wen Zhao’s novel, Blood Heir, was sold to publishers for a high six-figure sum last January. A fantastical retelling of the Anastasia storyinvolving “a princess hiding a dark secret and the conman she must trust to clear her name for her father’s murder”, it was scheduled to be published in June.
But in a statement on Wednesday, Zhao said that negative feedback from the young adult community had led to her asking her publisher, Delacorte Press, not to release the book “at this time”.
And from The Independent:
Anne Hathaway has confirmed that a Princess Diaries sequel is in the works – and has revealed that Julie Andrews is on board to make it happen.
The actor gave more insight into a possible Princess Diaries 3 on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, making it clear that there is a lot of enthusiasm about the project.
"There is a script for the third movie," Hathaway said.
She added: "I want to do it, Julie want to do it, Debra Martin Chase our producer wants to do it.
From Indianapolis Monthly:
With Flying Colors: Sarah Urist Green looks back on five years of constructing futuristic meat towers, cleaning up crayfish spills, and debunking museum myths—all in a day’s work for her YouTube series, “The Art Assignment.”
Sarah Bahr
It’s one task you won’t procrastinate on. Green, 39, the former contemporary-art curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, gives out homework for “The Art Assignment.” But you’ll actually want to tackle it. From creating a work of art and then having someone destroy it, to meeting a friend at the precise geographic midpoint between the two of you, her 296,000 subscribers are always in for an adventure.
Think of it as Picasso, without pretense. Green was fed up with visitors thinking they had to be high-minded to appreciate art. “So many people [at the IMA] would walk into a gallery, throw their hands up, and say, ‘This is ridiculous,’’’ she says. “I thought a series of free videos would help me talk to those people. I knew it couldn’t happen through wall labels in a gallery.”
Wait, is that … John Green? The Fault in Our Stars novelist occasionally co-hosts the 8- to 20-minute episodes with his wife of 12 years. He plays an art-dummy middleman, asking the questions you’re secretly wondering about, too. “I just have to say that on some level, to me, art is painting,” he says in the first episode in response to the idea of performance art. “Well, it’s still that,” Sarah says. “It’s just that it’s also this too, now.”
And from Mexico News Daily:
Material Art Fair returns with its sixth edition and continues to grow on the world stage
By Andy Hume
Mexico City’s Material Art Fair has built itself over the past six years to become one of the world’s preeminent independent contemporary art fairs, this year featuring 73 galleries from 22 countries and 37 cities – the most geographically diverse to date.
In addition to the international showing, the fair features 18 Mexican galleries, with Mexico City favorites, LABOR, joségarcia and Lulu among them. Material has made a name for itself partly for its fellowship with the community it espouses, welcoming art fans of all levels with open arms.
This will mark Material’s second year at Frontón México, a breathtaking Art Deco-era jai alai stadium at the foot of the Monument to the Revolution in Colonia Tabacalera. Inside the stadium, gallery booths are situated throughout a two-story structural feat of scaffolding designed by the Mexico City-based architectural studio, APRDELESP, to display a full horizontal and vertical panorama of the offerings.