Overnight News Digest: It is 2016! (yay?)

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.  Or, if it is me and it is Friday night, it might be a little later (sorry).

The beginning of the year always brings concerns along with hope.  I apologize, but this week I have a collection of a lot of concerns.

We begin with three stories from The Guardian.  The first is from the Associated Press:

Saudi Arabia: beheadings reach highest level in two decades

Number of people executed for non-lethal offences and drug-related crimes is on the rise in the kingdom, which follows Sharia law

Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in the kingdom in two decades, according to several advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide. Coinciding with the rise in executions is the number of people executed for non-lethal offences that judges have discretion to rule on, particularly for drug-related crimes.

Amnesty International said in November that at least 63 people had been executed since the start of the year for drug-related offences. That figure made up at least 40% of the total number of executions in 2015, compared to less than 4% for drug-related executions in 2010.

Amnesty said Saudi Arabia had exceeded its highest level of executions since 1995, when 192 executions were recorded.

And also in The Guardian, from Agence France Presse:

Fifth man working for publishers critical of Chinese government goes missing

Lee Bo, the chief editor of a Hong Kong firm known for producing books on Chinese politics has become the company’s fifth employee to go missing

A Hong Kong employee of a publishing firm known for producing books critical of the Chinese government has gone missing, according to his wife, following the earlier apparent disappearance of four colleagues.

It is the latest incident to fuel growing unease in Hong Kong at the erosion of freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city, with fears that the five men may have been detained by Chinese authorities.

Lee Bo, the chief editor of the publisher, which produces books on Chinese politics, was a colleague of the four others.

A source said Lee, 65, was last seen in Hong Kong on Wednesday at the publisher’s warehouse, which he is in charge of.

Lee’s wife Sophie Choi also said he was in Hong Kong on Wednesday but went missing that night.

The last “cheery” article from The Guardian, this by Arthur Neslen:

Poachers using science papers to target newly discovered species

Journals begin withholding locations after warnings the data is helping smugglers drive lizards, snakes and frogs to ‘near-extinction’

Academic journals have begun withholding the geographical locations of newly discovered species after poachers used the information in peer-reviewed papers to collect previously unknown lizards, frogs and snakes from the wild, the Guardian has learned.

In an age of extinctions, scientists usually love to trumpet the discovery of new species, revealing biological and geographical data that sheds new light on the mysteries of evolution.

But earlier this year, an announcement in the Zootaxa academic journal that two new species of large gecko had been found in southern China contained a strange omission: the species’ whereabouts.

“Due to the popularity of this genus as novelty pets, and recurring cases of scientific descriptions driving herpetofauna to near-extinction by commercial collectors, we do not disclose the collecting localities of these restricted-range species in this publication,” the paper said.