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, jck, 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.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Pictures of the week come from
We begin with news from the BBC’s China Blog:
By Beijing bureau
Since protests against a proposed extradition bill began, Hong Kong has drawn global attention. But on the Chinese mainland, it took a while for the story to be picked up, and people have been fed a selective and sometimes misleading narrative.
State media have dismissed the protesters as a small and violent group of separatists, enabled by foreign powers and disliked by locals. In recent days, state media have intensively distributed the most violent moments of the incident, making a hero of a mainland journalist who was beaten up at the airport.
Here's how reporting has evolved in China.
From the CBC:
Protests in Hong Kong are hurting its economy, with the CEO of Cathay Pacific resigning following pressure by Beijing on the airline over participation by some of its employees in anti-government protests, and protesters organizing a boycott of Disney's Mulan after its lead actor voiced support.
From The Guardian:
Exclusive: Frank Bainimarama says Australian leader is pushing nations towards China
Kate Lyons
Scott Morrison has been accused of causing an extraordinary rift between Australia and Pacific countries by the prime minister of Fiji, who said the Australian prime minister’s insulting behaviour while at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu would push nations closer to China.
From Al Jazeera:
Closed-door meeting discusses the situation in Kashmir for first time in decades at the request of China and Pakistan.
The Indian government has revoked the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir in its constitution, the most far-reaching political move on the disputed region in nearly 70 years.
A presidential decree issued on August 5 revoked Article 370 of India's constitution that guaranteed special rights to the Muslim-majority state, including the right to its own constitution and autonomy to make laws on all matters, except defence, communications and foreign affairs.
From CNN Business:
By Hadas Gold
London (CNN Business)As a communications blackout continues in Kashmir, the BBC is using one of the only ways to reach listeners in the Indian-controlled state: shortwave radio.
The BBC is extending its Hindi radio output by 30 minutes, launching a 15-minute daily program in Urdu, and expanding its English broadcasts by an hour. All are being broadcast via shortwave signals.
From Deutsche Welle:
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to provide relief to citizens when he came to power last year, but his government has only added to their misery, says Harris Khalique of Pakistan's human rights commission.
When Imran Khan was elected as Pakistan's prime minister on August 17, 2018, some Pakistanis saw him as the the best option, but others saw Khan as a messiah, and followed him like blinkered members of a populist cult.
Khan's victory was the triumph of Pakistan's self-righteous and self-serving affluent urban middle class. They were aided internationally by a well-meaning but naive diaspora, and domestically by the leadership of the politically dominating and psychologically impatient judiciary and military.
As Stephen Colbert says, “Meanwhile...” (also from Al Jazeera)
Trump's mismanagement of the nuclear issue in the Middle East is damaging the international nonproliferation regime.
Over the past three months since the Trump administration imposed severe sanctions on Iran, which have significantly curbed its oil exports and exacerbated its economic crisis, tensions in the Gulf have escalated. Commercial vessels have been attacked, oil tankers seized and drones shot down. Despite these escalations, both sides are holding back and at least in the short-term, an open conflict so far seems unlikely.
In the long-term, however, the highly-problematic approach that the United States has adopted towards the nuclear issue could have devastating consequences. Two recent developments point in that direction.
From Deutsche Welle:
Hundreds of firefighters are battling monster blazes in Greece and France. Extreme heat and drought conditions brought on by climate change are leaving much of Europe vulnerable to wildfires.
In Greece, firefighters have worked to extinguish half a dozen massive blazes in less than a week. In France, hundreds of hectares of pine land burned up in hours. This is Europe's fire age.
Two stories about Norway, the first from CNN (links to a video):
The second comes from Al Jazeera:
Over the last decade, Norway has donated more than $1.2bn to the Amazon Fund, which protects the Brazilian rainforest.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has reacted angrily to a decision by Norway to stop funding projects to curb deforestation in Brazil after its right-wing government blocked operations of a fund receiving the aid.
"Isn’t Norway that country that kills whales up there in the North Pole?" he told reporters after Norway said it would halt the payment of about $33m. "Take that money and help Angela Merkel reforest Germany."
From The Guardian:
Danish politicians dismiss US president’s apparent interest in island as ‘hopefully a joke’
Jon Henley
Donald Trump may have expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland for the US, but Denmark thinks the idea is frankly insane and Greenlanders have pointed out their home is not actually for sale.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the US president has asked his aides and the White House counsel to look into the possibility of buying the world’s largest island, a largely autonomous country of the kingdom of Denmark.
The Greenland government was diplomatic, saying it had a good working relationship with the US and saw the inquiry as “an expression of general greater interest in investing in our country and its opportunities”. But it added firmly: “Greenland is obviously not for sale.”
From NPR:
One of the biggest fears of the fresh fruit industry just came true.
A fungal disease that has been destroying banana plantations in Asia has arrived in Latin America.
"For me, the worst moment was [seeing] the first pictures," says Fernando Alexander García-Bastidas, a banana researcher at the Dutch company Keygene, who carried out tests confirming what had happened.
Arts news, and we begin with the BBC:
By Paul Glynn
This year will be remembered for the UK leaving the EU (maybe), England winning a Cricket World Cup (finally), and the latest utterly pointless social craze -
the bottle cap challenge (nope, me neither).
For cinema-goers though, 2019 has been the year of the music film.
It's not yet September and we've already had movies powered by the sonic might of Sir Elton John, The Beatles, Motley Crue and Bruce Springsteen, as well rockumentaries on Liam Gallagher, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
With Judy Garland, Michael Hutchence, Suzi Quatro and George Michael-flavoured features still to come, by Christmas we'll have seen enough singers at the pictures to fill up an entire 2020 wall calendar.
Also from the Beeb:
By Emma Saunders
It was a tragic real-life story that gripped the public due to flawed heroics, a long search for justice and the huge moral dilemma at its heart.
Now the story of a double murder and the search for a killer has been made into an ITV drama A Confession, starring Sherlock's Martin Freeman.
"Modern policing is broken. It's not fit for purpose, politics plays too big a part and there's not enough emphasis on solving crime," says Jeff Pope, writer and executive producer of the drama.
From The Art Newspaper:
Objects are reportedly linked to antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor who is facing criminal charges in the US
Kabir Jhala
The looted artefacts were returned during a ceremony at India House, London Photo courtesy Twitter/@HCI_London
Two artefacts, linked to one of the world’s largest smuggling rings, have been repatriated to India through a joint US-UK operation.
In June this year an unnamed London-based collector came forward to the US Department of Homeland Security (HSI), “expressing a desire to surrender the pieces”, according to a report released by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
From Hyperallergic:
When an unexpected opportunity arose to spend her year living in the famed Palazzo Rucellai, Allison Levy seized on it.
Five years into a tenure-track position at a respected East Coast college, art historian Allison Levy snagged a sabbatical year in Florence to work on a book about Renaissance tomb sculpture. Burned out from gratuitous faculty meetings, undergraduate grading, and grinding East Coast winters, she felt a little entombed herself. So when an unexpected opportunity arose to spend her year living in the famed Palazzo Rucellai — a touchstone of Renaissance architectural history — though pricey for an academic, she seized on it.
House of Secrets: The Many Lives of a Florentine Palazzo, published by Tauris Parke, Bloomsbury Publishing, is about what happens when a staid historian eschews the strictly academic for the adventure of real life. And it’s about the astonishing accretion of significant human history within the walls of a single home.
From MentalFloss:
Last year, The
Neon Museum in Las Vegas
announced that it would be hosting an exhibition of fine art by Tim Burton in 2019. Anticipation has been high ever since: The Vegas show will mark the filmmaker's first major art exhibition in the United States since his work was displayed at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York a decade ago. Now, tickets for the October event are finally on sale.
Tim Burton is best known as the director of such movies as Batman (1989), Beetlejuice (1988), and Edward Scissorhands (1990), but he got his start as an artist. His distinct drawing style even got him a job at Disney's animation division in the early 1980s.
And finally from Forbes (part of their paid program, from Cole Haan):
Sometime after graduating from college-era dorm posters and Ikea art, many young professionals decide it’s time to invest in art that’s worth something, elevating their home decor while possibly making some money.
And while developing a personal art collection is a form of social currency, it’s also a quantifiable investment—one that may feel intimidating to anyone getting started.