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).
For our Friday night “News Elsewhere” edition, we begin with some agricultural/environmental news from CNBC. Even though the story itself is US news, it is news with a significant international component:
Saudi Arabia buying up farmland in US Southwest Jeff DanielsSaudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are scooping up farmland in drought-afflicted regions of the U.S. Southwest, and that has some people in California and Arizona seeing red.
Saudi Arabia grows alfalfa hay in both states for shipment back to its domestic dairy herds. In another real-life example of the world's interconnected economy, the Saudis increasingly look to produce animal feed overseas in order to save water in their own territory, most of which is desert.
Privately held Fondomonte California on Sunday announced that it bought 1,790 acres of farmland in Blythe, California — an agricultural town along the Colorado River — for nearly $32 million. Two years ago, Fondomont's parent company, Saudi food giant Almarai, purchased another 10,000 acres of farmland about 50 miles away in Vicksburg, Arizona, for around $48 million.
In other Middle Eastern news:From Haaretz:
In First, Lebanese Court Rules Transgender Man May Be Officially Recognized as Male Decision marks first time an appeals court in Lebanon ruled in support of transgender rights to treatment.A court in Lebanon has ruled that a transgender man can legally change his gender to male in the nation's civil registry, marking a landmark step in transgender rights in the Middle Eastern nation, advocates and his attorney said on Friday. In the ruling, the Court of Appeals of Beirut weighed the man's health and well-being as factors in allowing the change in official records to take place.
From The Globe and Mail:
Thousands of Syrian refugees left stranded near Jordanian borderSARA ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
AMMAN — Special to The Globe and Mail
he desolate fringe of northern Jordan is no place for a child. The winter sun beats down light, but little heat, and the wind burns hands and cheeks. A fine, gritty dust sticks to teeth and tongue. It is no place for pregnant women and nursing mothers, for the wounded and old and infirm, but they are here in their thousands, having hit a dead end on their flight from Syria’s war.
About 17,000 Syrian refugees are stranded at a handful of settlements in the demilitarized zone in the far-flung eastern desert where Jordan and Syria meet. Nearly 1,000 more arrive each week, many from northern and eastern Syria, places like Homs, Hama, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour – cities that have been hammered by Russian and coalition air strikes since late September.
From the Voice of America:
Egypt Clamps Down on Media Ahead of 'Arab Spring' Anniversary Cecily HillearyA joke being recycled in Egyptian media offers a glimpse into the state of press freedom five years after the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak: “In Egypt, there is freedom of speech,” goes the joke, “but no freedom after speech.”
January 25 will mark five years since the popular uprising that ousted President Mubarak and, after the brief presidency of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, ultimately brought former general Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to power.
From the Art Newspaper:
Five questions for the director of the Bardo MuseumMoncef Ben Moussa describes the museum's efforts to rebuild after a terrorist attack at the museum killed 23 people last year
by DAVID ROBERT Ten months after an attack allegedly carried out by Isil killed 23 people at the Bardo Museum in Tunisia, the institution’s director, Moncef Ben Moussa, spoke to our sister paper Le Journal des Arts about the leading African museum’s efforts to rebuild. The Art Newspaper: How has daily life changed since the attack on 18 March? Moncef Ben Moussa: At first, we were afraid that [Isil] would achieve their aim, which is to gloss over our cultural heritage. But the wave of solidarity that followed has given us hope. Visitor numbers remain problematic. There was a drop after the beginning of the Tunisian Spring in 2011, from 600,000 to 200,000 visitors a year. Today, the numbers are even lower, with barely 15,000 visitors a month.From Egyptian Streets:
Egypt Inaugurates Fossil Museum at Wadi El Hitan World Heritage SiteThe Egyptian Ministry of Environment inaugurated the Fossil and Climate Change Museum at the Wadi El Hitan world heritage site in cooperation with the Italian government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The ceremony took place on Thursday in the presence of various government officials to unveil the new museum, located in Fayoum’s Wadi El Rayan.
From newhistorian.com:
Remains of Massive Ancient Crocodile Found in Tunisia Posted By: David DeMarThe fossilized remains of a gigantic ancient crocodile that was more than 30 feet long in life have been uncovered by paleontologists working in Tunisia.
The gargantuan prehistoric crocodile, thought to have weighed in at around three tons, has been dubbed Machimosaurus rex by the research team that discovered it. According to Federico Fanti, lead author of the scientific paper accompanying the discovery, the only way to describe the beast is “massive”. Fanti, from the University of Bologna, said in an interview with National Geographic that the crocodile was nearly the size of a city bus and was easily the top of the food chain in its local region.
News from Europe:From The New York Times:
6 Hospitalized, One of Them Brain-Dead, After Drug Trial in FranceBy SEWELL CHAN
LONDON — Six men were hospitalized — and one of them was pronounced brain-dead — after a drug trial in northwestern France, the country’s health minister said on Friday.
Marisol Touraine, the minister for social affairs, health and women’s rights, said in a statement that her office was informed Thursday evening about a “serious accident” that resulted in the hospitalization of the six men, at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes, in eastern Brittany.
Calling the incident “unprecedented” at a news conference in Rennes, Ms. Touraine said: “I have no knowledge of a comparable event.”
From newhistorian.com:
Unknown Reservoir Stored Plague For 300 Years Posted By: Daryl WorthingtonA single, distinct genotype of the plague causing Y.pestis bacteria may have persisted in Europe from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth, a period which included the notorious ‘Black Death’, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Plos One, the new research has the potential to broaden our understanding of the two devastating plague pandemics that struck Europe, suggesting that the long term persistence of the disease was facilitated by an as yet unknown reservoir.
DNA from victims of the second plague pandemic were recovered and analysed by Lisa Seifert from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and her colleagues. The 30 victims were excavated from two different burial sites in Germany, with the sample covering a three hundred year period.
From The Guardian:
Shepton Mallet in shock with cider mill set to closeIn the heart of cider country, residents, mill workers and union officials react with dismay to C&C’s decision to switch cider production from Somerset to Ireland
The news that the Shepton Mallet cider mill is to stop producing a drink synonymous with this corner of south-west Britain has not gone down well with cider drinkers in the Somerset town.
Mike Taft, landlord of the Bell, was tucking into his first pint of the day. “They are throwing away our heritage,” he said. “It’s a crying shame for Somerset cider, a crying shame for everyone who works there, terrible for the town.”
The mill is owned by Irish drinks company C&C, which also owns Magners. It said that Somerset apples will still be pressed and pulped in Shepton Mallet but the concentrate will then be shipped to Ireland, where it will be turned into cider before being transported back to its key West Country market and the rest of the UK.
Also from The Guardian:
After the floods: how tourism in the Lakes and York hopes to recover Amid the recovery process, hoteliers, local businesses and regional tourist boards are trying to shape a positive future and are eager to manage misconceptions about travel to the affected areas.Rachael Oakden, Kevin Rushby, Will Coldwell
hen the Lady Dorothy set off from Glenridding pier on Thursday morning, gliding across Ullswater beneath a panorama of snow-topped fells, it marked another small triumph for an industry striving to recover from December’s floods. One of the best-known attractions in Lakeland, Ullswater Steamers’ fleet of vintage pleasure boats had been out of action since 5 December, when the burst Glenridding Beck engulfed its pier house and car park with boulder-strewn flood water. Thursday’s resumption of services was a sign that business in Glenridding – the tourist hub that made national headlines by being flooded twice in five days– was getting back to normal.
News from East Asia and the Pacific: From The Guardian: Game that rewards players for killing Indigenous Australians prompts outrage Survival Island 3 – Australia Story 3D removed from Apple and Google app stores after public outcry over gameplay showing an Aboriginal man being beaten to death with a stone axeA mobile game that purportedly rewarded players for bludgeoning Indigenous Australians to death has been removed from both Apple and Google app stores following public outcry.
Survival Island 3 – Australia Story 3D tasked players with surviving in the outback. A cached snapshot of the game taken by Google as it appeared in Apple’s iTunes store on 12 January shows its description: “Your goal is to survive.”
“Beware of angry animals, especially if you don’t have any weapon. At nights, there is really dangerous, (sic) try to hide somewhere … Hunt animals or grow plants – you have to eat something.”
From The Huffington Post—Australia:
Asylum Seeker Self-Harm 'Epidemic' Is Unacceptable, Greens Say By Sam McKeithThe Greens want Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to take urgent action to address a "growing epidemic" of self-harm in Australian immigration detention centres following reports of a self-harming crisis among asylum seekers.
There were 188 incidents of self-harm involving asylum seekers at Nauru in the year to July 2015, and 55 self-harm acts at Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, Fairfax Media reported on Saturday.
The acts of self harm reportedly included detainees swallowing insect repellent, stuffing tea bags down their throats and pouring boiling water over themselves.
From vietnamnews:
Bomb prevention campaign aims to educate youth, rural residents HA NOI (VNS) — A joint working programme on bomb accident prevention and control from 2016 to 2020 was enacted yesterday in Ha Noi.The programme was launched by the National Action Programme to Tackle the Impact of Post-War Bombs and Mines From 2010 to 2025 (Programme 504) with participation from the Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union.
The programme aims to inspire youth to help educate residents about the risk of bomb accidents and how to prevent them. It also calls upon international and domestic organisations and individuals to support the country in tackling the impact of post-war bombs and mines while also helping bomb victims re-integrate into their communities.