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, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, 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.
Special thanks to JekylinHyde for the OND banner
Note: Subbing for Chitown Kev this evening. ………………………..
BBC
Chapecoense plane crash: Football rallies around Brazilian team
The football world has rallied around a Brazilian club which lost most of its players in a plane crash in Colombia.
Only six of the 77 people on board the charter plane, carrying members of the Chapecoense team, survived the crash.
The team were flying to what was billed as the biggest match in their history - the final of the Copa Sudamericana.
Their opponents, Colombian team Atletico Nacional, have offered to concede the game to ensure Chapecoense are declared the champions.
In a tweet, the club also asked that fans to turn up to their stadium at the time which the game was scheduled, dressed in white.
In a joint statement, Brazilian first division football teams have offered to lend players to Chapecoense free of charge, and asked the league to protect the club from relegation for the next three years.
BBC
Syria conflict: US admits mistakes led to strike on state forces
The US has admitted carrying out an attack in eastern Syria that killed dozens of Syrian forces fighting so-called Islamic State (IS).
The US-led coalition said the "mistake" on 17 September was intended to target IS positions.
Coalition aircraft from the UK, US, Denmark and Australia were involved in the attack near Deir al-Zour.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has maintained that the deadly airstrikes were intentional.
The attack, which the Russian army says killed at least 62 Syrian troops, were halted when Russia informed the US it was hitting Syrian forces.
"In this instance, we did not rise to the high standard we hold ourselves to, and we must do better than this," said US Lieutenant-General Jeff Harrigian.
A spokesman for US Central Command (Centcom), the wing of the American military in charge of all its Middle East forces, said the mistake was "regrettable", adding that it was not the intent to target Syrian troops.
Al Jazeera
Water supply cut off for half of Iraq's Mosul
Fighting between Iraqi forces and ISIL fighters has cut water supplies across a large part of Mosul, affecting 40 percent of residents in the city where poorer families are already struggling to feed themselves.
Water was cut to 650,000 people when a pipeline was hit during fighting between ISIL and the Iraqi government forces trying to crush them in their northern Iraq stronghold.
"We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe," said Hussam al-Abar, member of Mosul's Nineveh provincial council, adding that 1.5 million people were still inside Mosul.
"Basic services such as water, electricity, health, food are non-existent."
Barely more than a third of the 200,000 displaced that the UN had expected in the first few weeks of the Mosul offensive have fled their homes so far.
The Guardian
Cash for queues: people paid to stand in line amid India's bank note crisis
Outside the Churchgate branch of the Bank of India in south Mumbai, some of those queueing for cash have become familiar faces.
Ever since the prime minister, Narendra Modi, unexpectedly withdrew high-value 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes from circulation, wiping out 86% of India’s currency overnight, queueing for cash has become a national sport. But for some, such as Santosh Garg, who comes here every day on behalf of his bosses at an insurance company, lining up has become a part of his job description.
“Obviously I don’t like coming and standing in line for two hours in the sun,” Garg says. “I do it because my boss tells me to. It’s not like I can say no.”
Modi’s money crunch has prompted an unexpected boom in the queue-sitting business, where people are paid to stand in line. Some people send their employees to hold their place, while others hire workers paid by the day to do the job. Tech startups such as BookMyChotu and DoneThing have also swooped in to capitalise on the queueing crisis, offering “helpers” who will hold your place in a bank queue for 90-150 rupees (£1-£1.75) an hour. The proxies wait until they are close to the head of the queue then call their temporary employer, who makes the transaction.
Al Jazeera
India unveils the world's largest solar power plant
Images have been released showing the sheer size of the new solar power plant in southern India.
The facility in Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu, has a capacity of 648 MW and covers an area of 10sq km.
This makes it the largest solar power plant at a single location, taking the title from the Topaz Solar Farm in California, which has a capacity of 550 MW.
The solar plant, built in an impressive eight months, is cleaned every day by a robotic system, charged by its own solar panels.
At full capacity, it is estimated to produce enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes.
The project is comprised of 2.5 million individual solar modules, and cost $679m to build.
The new plant has helped nudge India's total installed solar capacity across the 10 GW mark, according to a statement by research firm Bridge to India, joining only a handful of countries that can make this claim.
Bloomberg
Photographer: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP via Getty Images Japan’s Parliament to Debate Legislation to Legalize Casinos
Japanese lawmakers are set to reopen debate Wednesday afternoon on a bill to legalize casinos, opening the possibility the legislation will be passed as soon as next month.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs the support of his Buddhist-backed junior coalition partner Komeito, whose lawmakers are more cautious on casinos because of ethical issues. The group will hold a meeting Wednesday morning to discuss their stance. Should the legislation pass, a further bill setting rules for operating resorts would have to be approved before any building could start.
While betting on horse, boat and bicycle races is allowed in Japan, casinos remain banned. International gaming companies have been mulling billions of dollars in investment as Tokyo gears to host the 2020 Olympic Games, promising to increase the number of tourists coming to the country. Japan has potential to transform into one of the biggest Asian gambling hubs with annual casino revenue of as much as $40 billion, according to CLSA Ltd.
N Y Times (I defeated the 10 story limit, hah)
How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’
WASHINGTON — Yascha Mounk is used to being the most pessimistic person in the room. Mr. Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard, has spent the past few years challenging one of the bedrock assumptions of Western politics: that once a country becomes a liberal democracy, it will stay that way.
His research suggests something quite different: that liberal democracies around the world may be at serious risk of decline.
Mr. Mounk’s interest in the topic began rather unusually. In 2014, he published a book, “Stranger in My Own Country.” It started as a memoir of his experiences growing up as a Jew in Germany, but became a broader investigation of how contemporary European nations were struggling to construct new, multicultural national identities.
He concluded that the effort was not going very well. A populist backlash was rising. But was that just a new kind of politics, or a symptom of something deeper?
To answer that question, Mr. Mounk teamed up with Roberto Stefan Foa, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. They have since gathered and crunched data on the strength of liberal democracies.
Their conclusion, to be published in the January issue of the Journal of Democracy, is that democracies are not as secure as people may think. Right now, Mr. Mounk said in an interview, “the warning signs are flashing red.”
Raw Story
Great Smoky Mountains fires leave ‘scene of destruction’
Officials said on Tuesday that “the worst is over” for two small Tennessee resort towns in the Great Smoky Mountains where wildfires destroyed or damaged some 150 homes and other structures, forced thousands to flee and threatened country music star Dolly Parton’s theme park, Dollywood.
The flames, driven to the outskirts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge overnight by hurricane-force winds and fed by drought-parched brush, forced 14,000 people to flee and sent three to hospitals with severe burns, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said.
NBC News reported that three people had been killed in the wildfires, citing local officials. Reuters could not immediately confirm that report.
While downtown Gatlinburg was untouched by the flames, heavy smoke and an orange sky hung overhead as motorists packed roads in an attempt to leave town.
“I can tell you that we’ve all been overwhelmed at the scene of destruction in the county and primarily in the city of Gatlinburg,” Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters told reporters at a press conference.
The Guardian
Theory challenging Einstein's view on speed of light could soon be tested
The newborn universe may have glowed with light beams moving much faster than they do today, according to a theory that overturns Einstein’s century-old claim that the speed of light is a constant.
João Magueijo, of Imperial College London, and Niayesh Afshordi, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, propose that light tore along at infinite speed at the birth of the universe when the temperature of the cosmos was a staggering ten thousand trillion trillion celsius.
It is a theory Magueijo has being developing since the late 1990s, but in a paper published on Monday he and Afshordi describe for the first time how scientists can finally test the controversial idea. If right, the theory would leave a signature on the ancient radiation left over from the big bang, the so-called cosmic microwave background that cosmologists have observed with satellites.
“We can say what the fluctuations in the early universe would have looked like, and these are the fluctuations that grow to form planets, stars and galaxies,” Afshordi told the Guardian.
BBC
World's oldest person Emma Morano celebrates 117th birthday
When Emma Morano was born, Umberto I was still reigning over Italy, Fiat had only just been established and Milan Football Club was still a few weeks off creation.
On Tuesday, this otherwise unassuming woman marked her 117th birthday, looking back on a life which has not only spanned three centuries but also survived an abusive marriage which started with blackmail, the loss of her only son and a diet which most would describe as anything but balanced.
Ms Morano, the oldest of eight siblings, all of whom she has outlived, was born on 29 November 1899 in the Piedmont region of Italy.
This year, she officially became the world's oldest living woman after American Susannah Mushatt Jones died in May. She is also officially the last person still living born in the 1800s.
Ms Morano's longevity, she admits, is partly down to genetics - her mother reached 91 and several sisters reached their centenary - and partly, she says, down to a rather unusual diet of three eggs - two raw - each day for more than 90 years.
It was a regime she took up as a young woman, after the doctor diagnosed her with anaemia shortly after World War One.
BBC
Canada police to punish drink-drivers with Nickelback
A Canadian police force is threatening festive drink-drivers with a cruel and unusual punishment: forcing them to listen to local band Nickelback.
Kensington Police Service, which looks after the residents of Prince Edward Island, will be handing out fines and criminal charges as usual.
But it seems it is the possibility of having to listen to Nickelback which has really upset the locals.
"Doesn't torture go against the Geneva Convention?" asked one on Facebook.
In recent years, the band has become a source of ridicule and hatred on the web - something the Kensington Police Service were apparently all too aware of when posting their annual advice to assign a designated driver before going out for the evening.
However, conscious not everyone would heed the law, officers warned they would be out "looking for those dumb enough to feel they can drink and drive".