Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man with guest editors annetteboardman and Chitown Kev. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) 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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Tonight’s diary is my attempt to highlight some of the rest of the things going on around the world and places that might intrigue you. There are some terrorism stories (it is hard to avoid it these days), but there is still a lot of good in the world. Today’s featured story is from Egypt, courtesy of the National Geographic. Just because.
The Search for Queen Nefertiti Enters a New Phase Mounting evidence suggests the legendary monarch’s burial chamber is hidden in King Tut’s tomb. By Mark StraussThey are two of the most renowned figures in Egyptian history.
But, while King Tutankhamun owes his fame to the stunning treasures that were buried with him after his death, Queen Nefertiti is remembered for her remarkable life.
She ruled alongside her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten, more than 3,300 years ago, during an era of both tremendous affluence and unprecedented social upheaval. A bust of her face, unearthed by archaeologists, attests to her legendary beauty. Her name translates as “a beautiful woman has come,” and her titles included “Lady of All Women,” “Great of Praises,” and “Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt.”
And yet, the tomb of Nefertiti has never been found. Her mummified body, prepared for its journey to the afterlife, likely rests in the Valley of the Kings. But where?
Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves believes the illustrious Egyptian queen has been hiding in plain sight, within a large chamber behind a concealed door in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. Recent scientific surveys of the ancient building have found tantalizing clues that are consistent with Reeves’ theories.
From the Phnom Penh Post comes this story by Charles Rollet:
In playboy’s absence, an island empire falls into ruin
In Koh Dek Koul, a tiny island off the Cambodian coast, Russian real estate tycoon and playboy Sergei Polonsky’s extravagant lair is slowly but steadily falling apart.
Since Polonsky’s deportation in May to face fraud charges over a real estate scheme in his native Russia, the island, despite its seizure and occupation by Cambodian police, has been left more or less abandoned.
Weeds grow in the cracks of the narrow passageways that crisscross the island, while some of the buildings are already falling apart. A giant metal frame inside the generator room has crashed through a wall, leaving a gaping hole in the building. Metal staircases lie irreparably twisted by the sun and salty spray.
From the Kiama Independent comes this story by Ben Groundwater:
After the terrorism: Why you should visit the good places where bad things have happened
Who was it an attack upon? Who was the target? When the gunshots rang out on the beach in Sousse, Tunisia, when tourists ran for cover, when they sprinted for their lives, who was in the firing line?
Conventional wisdom has it that the attack by a lone gunman in Tunisia earlier this year was an assault on the West. That the tourists from France, Germany and Britain were the ultimate targets, that this was a statement of intent, a declaration of war on Western values, a frightening sign of the spread of Islamic State.
It's the same as it was at the Bardo Museum in the nation's capital, Tunis, a few months earlier, when terrorists stormed the building and began firing indiscriminately. Tourists were the target. The West was being challenged. And that's probably true. But there was another victim in all of this mess, one that's often forgotten. Perhaps it was the ultimate victim, the true target after all: Tunisia.
From the Associated Press:
Russia cuts visa-free travel with Turkey in rift over downing of Russian plane by Turkish jet
by Vladimir Isachenkov
MOSCOW – Russia announced Friday that it will suspend visa-free travel with Turkey amid the escalating spat over the downing of a Russian warplane by a Turkish fighter jet at the Syrian border.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Moscow will halt the existing visa-free regime starting Jan. 1, saying that Turkey has become a conduit for terrorists and has been reluctant to share information with Moscow about Russian citizens accused of involvement in terrorist activities.
From The Daily Mail:
Migrant blunder splitting Germany in two: Weeks ago, Merkel threw open Germany's doors. Today, amid fears it's importing anti-Semitism, many worry their way of life is under threat
Angela Merkel controversially opened the country to all Syrians in August
Most Germans were at first buoyant, delighted to be able to help refugees
But thousands of economic migrants grasped the chance to enter Europe
Germany is now divided, as many claim it is facing a population time bomb
By Sue Reid In Germany For The Daily Mail
The pretty spa town beside a winding river is getting ready for Christmas. A Santa Claus statue stands near the main square, tinsel decorates shop windows and at medieval St Paul’s Church carols will soon be sung by enthusiastic worshippers.
A stroll from this festive scene in Bad Kreuznach in Germany, 33-year-old Aline runs an estate agency, letting out houses and flats from a smart office. A few weeks ago she received a call from a man who, in faltering German, said that a newly arrived Syrian migrant family was looking for a home.
Aline agreed to show the family an empty four-bedroom apartment but, when she arrived at the address, the group of three men, a veiled woman and a gaggle of children suddenly said they had ‘no interest’ in viewing the place.
From The Mirror comes this article by Emily Beament:
Thousands set to march through major UK cities calling for action on climate change
The events are part of a worldwide campaign urging strong action on climate change ahead of the UN talks in Paris to secure a deal to curb global warming
Some 2,300 events are being held across the world after a huge march in Paris was cancelled in the wake of the terror attacks .
The events, which range from yoga in India to runs through Egypt’s two biggest cities, are designed to urge strong action on climate change ahead of United Nations talks in Paris to secure a new deal on curbing global warming.
Fiona Macdonald, of the BBC, has a linguistic take on environmental issues:
The vanishing words we need to save
Robert Macfarlane collects words that describe nature – and which are dying out. On the eve of the Paris climate talks, he explains how saving this language could save us all.
Robert Macfarlane is a compiler of words: an explorer of hedgerows and roadsides, salt marshes and sea-caves. But he is also a magician, of sorts – one who weaves spells using lost phrases that recall a different connection with our landscape. In his latest book Landmarks, the British naturalist calls for “a glossary of enchantment for the whole earth, which would allow nature to talk back and would help us to listen”.
We speak on the phone the day before he is due to talk at the Hay Festival. I am sitting in my car at a rest stop next to the river Wye in Wales, opposite public toilets, trying to stay still to keep my mobile from cutting out. Macfarlane is in the kitchen of his home in Cambridge, also clinging to a patch of reception. He laughs as I describe my location. This is a man who has found peregrine falcons at a power station and water voles at a municipal dump, claiming in his 2007 book The Wild Places that “the human and the wild cannot be partitioned”.
Similarly, he doesn’t believe that the words he has collected in Landmarks are just for shepherds or hill-walkers. “I’m talking to you from my edge-of-the-suburb house in Cambridge – most people are in cities now,” he says. “The book is about all of us finding ways to celebrate and enrich the language that we have for landscape and nature.”
Reuters brings us this story by Chine Labbe and Marie-Louise Gumuchian:
Insight - Voice of Paris attacks; Did he have bigger role?
PARIS/ALENCON, France (Reuters) - The voice that claimed Islamic State was responsible for the deadly Paris attacks is known to many in the small French provincial town of Alencon.
To family, Fabien Clain was a "big teddy bear", to neighbours he was polite and at the local mosque he was a fellow worshipper who came to pray.
To the French authorities, he was a veteran jihadi jailed once in the past for recruiting militant fighters and believed by them to have fled to Syria this year. They now think he may have played a bigger role in the Nov. 13 attacks, the worst in France since World War Two.
From The Guardian, by Rob Sharp:
The Black Years: how Nazi art came back to Berlin
In a rare exhibition, Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum is exploring the dark side of Germany’s art history – and revealing why works from the Nazi era should not be hidden away
German artist Rudolf Belling’s 1924 sculpture Dreiklang (Triad) is a ragged twist of interlocking prongs made from lustrous birchwood. Inescapably modern, it is a pioneering example of abstract sculpture, and was Belling’s first real success. Its split structure might symbolise the schools of painting, sculpture and architecture that Belling sought to unify – or foreshadow his work’s disjointed reception in the tumultuous decades that followed its creation.
In 1937 Dreiklang was one of more than 650 artworks exhibited in Munich’s infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition at the former Institute of Archaeology in the city centre’s Hofgarten. Conceived by Reich propagandist Joseph Goebbels and authorised by Adolf Hitler, the show took aim at modern work that was deemed “decadent” or “racially impure” by the National Socialist party – but its presence underlined the confusion and complexity surrounding the Nazis’ cultural approach. Away from the Hofgarten, Belling’s more traditional sculpture of the German boxer Max Schmeling was simultaneously shown in the state-sanctioned Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibition) in Munich’s Haus der Deutschen Kunst, the House of German Art. When the authorities realised the coincidence, Belling’s “degenerate art” pieces were quietly removed.
Also from The Guardian comes this news about Pope Francis’s visit to Africa:
Pope Francis criticises 'new colonialism' in emotive Kenya speech
Rapturous welcome for pontiff in Nairobi’s Kangemi slum as he condemns inequality and injustice during his first Africa tour
by Murithi Mutiga in Nairobi and Harriet Sherwood in London
Pope Francis has launched a blistering attack on “new forms of colonialism” that exacerbate the “dreadful injustice of urban exclusion” while speaking to thousands of people in one of Nairobi’s most impoverished slums.
On his last day in Kenya before travelling to Uganda on Friday, the pontiff criticised wealthy minorities who hoard resources at the expense of the poor and praised the values of solidarity and mutual support in deprived neighbourhoods. Such values, he said, had been forgotten by “an opulent society, anaesthetised by unbridled consumption” and were “not quoted in the stock exchange, are not subject to speculation and have no market price”.
Francis received a rapturous welcome as he arrived in Kangemi, one of 11 slums in Nairobi, where thousands of people live in shacks without sewerage.
Singing and ululating erupted as the popemobile weaved through a sea of tin-roofed homes to the local Catholic church, St Joseph the Worker.
From Latin America, news (via The Guardian) about the huge canal project in Nicaragua:
$50bn Nicaragua canal postponed as Chinese tycoon's fortunes falter
Environments concerns and Chinese stock market woes mean world’s biggest canal project will not begin for at least another year
Jonathan Watts Latin America correspondent
The world’s biggest canal project – a $50bn interoceanic canal through Nicaragua– has been delayed, following an environmental report and a collapse in the fortunes of the Chinese businessman behind the company that planned to build it.
The Hong Kong Nicaragua Development (HKND) Group announced on Wednesday that it would be another year before the start of major works on the proposed rival to the Panama canal.
The company said the “design of the canal is being fine tuned”, in accordance with recommendations contained in an environmental impact assessment.
I hope you can enjoy the last bit of whatever break you were able to take. Travel safely this weekend, wherever you might be going.