Overnight News Digest: Overseas Edition

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, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man with guest editor Chitown Kev and Magnifico. 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 12:00 AM Eastern Time (or if it is Friday night and the editor is me, a bit later).

Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.

Tonight we begin with news from Africa (a region I have largely missed the past couple of weeks). This first one (with nice pictures) come from PBS:

A portrait of turmoil in South Sudan, from behind the lens

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, first: The world’s newest country, South Sudan, established in 2011, again stands on the brink of civil war. A peace deal signed last year between rival governing factions is in tatters. More than one-sixth of the country’s 12 million citizens have been displaced, and the humanitarian crisis there is worsening by the day.

John Yang has the story.

He joins us now via Skype from Juba, the capital.

And an article from eturbonews:

Kwita Izina Festival benefits tourism and communities

PROF. DR. WOLFGANG H. THOME, ETN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT  AUG 19, 2016

Ahead of the annual festival of naming young born gorillas in Rwanda, the communities near the Volcanoes National Park have again seen real benefits percolate down to the grassroots level, when the RDB, Rwanda Development Board, under which the tourism and conservation public sector falls, launched 7 new classrooms, paid for with tourism revenue funds.

This project at Nyabihu was funded by the tourism revenue sharing scheme adopted by the Government of Rwanda since 2005. Through this mechanism, RDB is at the forefront of community development by supporting projects that benefit the people living around the national parks and involving them in conservation activities, including the park rangers and guides of the park.

From takepart.com comes another reminder why the welcome cases at the airport are sometimes filled with endangered species:

Aid workers’ bravery should inspire us to do more for the world’s 60m refugees

As the people of Burundi join the swell of refugees from Syria, governments and individuals have to do more to ease their plight

Marguerite Barankitse

y heart sank earlier this month at the news that Burundi’s government had rejected a decision to deploy a UN police force in an effort to end more than a year of terrible violence since President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term in office.

More than 500 people have been killed in unrest since April last year and a vast amount of people have fled their homes. The situation looks far from being resolved any time soon.

Memories of the horrors that I endured in Burundi are still raw. In October 1993, two days after my Tutsi family were murdered by Hutus, I stood in front of a house of Hutus to stop a mob of Tutsis taking revenge. They took no notice, called me a traitor, tied me to a chair, and burnt down the house. As a punishment to me the Tutsis killed 72 people.

And from Malaysia to Australia, to the coast of Africa and its islands, here is news of MH280.  

Experts searching for missing Malaysian MH370 use new drift model to redefine search zone

Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia — Experts hunting for the missing Malaysian airliner are attempting to define a new search area by studying where in the Indian Ocean the first piece of wreckage recovered from the lost Boeing 777 — a wing flap — most likely drifted from after the disaster that claimed 239 lives, the new leader of the search said.

Officials are planning the next phase of the deep-sea sonar search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in case the current two-year search of 120,000 square kilometres turns up nothing, said Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood, who took over leadership of the bureau last month.

However, a new search would require a new funding commitment, with Malaysia, Australia and China agreeing in July that the $160 million search will be suspended once the current stretch of ocean southwest of Australia is exhausted unless new evidence emerges that would pinpoint a specific location of the aircraft.

And moving north and east, we move to news from Asia:

From Inquire.net this story about life quality in the Philippines:

Manila fails to improve in liveability index EIU: ROAD NETWORK ‘LEAVES MUCH TO BE DESIRED’ By: Amy R. Remo

Poor infrastructure, healthcare and education systems continued to stunt the growth of Manila in terms of providing decent living for its inhabitants, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said.

The capital of the Philippines remained in the 104th spot based on the EIU’s 2016 Global Liveability Survey, which ranks 140 cities around the world. The EIU, which assesses the cities yearly, is the research arm of the London-based media company The Economist Group.

In an e-mail to the Inquirer, EIU lead analyst for the Asean region Miguel Chanco said Manila also ranked fifth in Southeast Asia behind Singapore, Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur, Brunei’s Bandar Seri Begawan and Thailand’s Bangkok.

A couple of news stories from Nepal.  

The first is from Phys.org:

Himalayan migration northward found to be result of tectonic lift Bob Yirka

A trio of researchers has found evidence to suggest that a very large gorge in an eastern part of the Himalayas is moving slowly northward due to pressure from tectonic lift. In their paper published in the journal Science, Georgina King and Frédéric Herman with the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and Benny Guralnik with Wageningen University in The Netherlands describe how they used a new type of technology to measure the age of minerals beneath the surface in the area to determine how rapidly rock has been moving toward the surface.

But now it appears the opposite may be true as new technology has allowed for more precise measurements of rock movement speed, an indication of tectonic shifting.

And the second from themalaynewsonline:

Body of missing French tourist found in Nepal

“We have been informed by Nepalese authorities that the body of Ms Guerin, who went missing in Nepal on August 13, has been found,” the foreign ministry said, confirming Melanie Guerin’s death.

“An investigation is under way in Nepal,” the statement said, adding that Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was in touch with Guerin’s family.

Guerin, from the western city of Nantes, had been in Nepal for a month before being reported missing.

From The Guardian  as well, here is a story about a Bangladeshi soap opera:

Argument over TV show sparks mass brawl in Bangladesh village

Police use rubber bullets to disperse ‘angry mob’ that had been watching Indian fantasy series at restaurant in Habiganj district

At least 100 people have been injured in a brawl between villagers in easternBangladesh sparked by arguments over the plot of an Indian TV serial.

Police said the dispute erupted at a restaurant in Habiganj district on Wednesday night where people had gathered to watch Kiranmala, a popular Bengali-language drama about a warrior princess who saves mankind from evil.

From Southwest Asia, specifically Syria, comes this story in The Guardian:

Aleppo's underground orphanage offers haven for children bereaved by war Children from ages two to 14 sleep, eat and study in subterranean refuge while the bombing continues overhead

Emma Graham-Harrison

Two floors underground, Aleppo’s luckier orphans sleep as safely as anyone can in a city at war, though they are jolted awake regularly by bombs ripping apart the streets above them.

Watching over them are Asmar Halabi and his wife, who knows in intimate, painful detail the damage explosives can do, because she still carries injuries picked up in an airstrike on a school two years ago.

The suffering of the Syrian city’s children, who have lived through years of bombing, was thrust back into the headlines this week by a photograph of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, bereft and bloodied in the back of an ambulance.

And to the bridge from Asia to Europe runs through Russia, as does this story from The New York Times:

Russia Marks 25 Years Since Failed Soviet Coup

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

MOSCOW — Several dozen Russians gathered on Friday for a protest reunion to mark the 25th anniversary of a coup attempt which heralded the demise of the Soviet Union, a holiday ignored in official circles because of its revolutionary, anti-establishment nature.

On Aug. 19, 1991, eight hard-line Communist leaders seized power from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, declaring him ill. In fact, Gorbachev was under arrest. Thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest against the coup and the clout of the powerful security services.

The defeat of the coup several days later set in motion the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and is widely regarded as a triumph of democracy and civil liberties in Russia.

Those who opposed the coup 25 years ago gathered on a rainy Friday evening outside the Russian White House — a massive government building where Boris Yeltsin, at the time the president of the Russian constituent republic within the Soviet Union, famously climbed atop a tank to defy the coup in possibly the most cinematic moment of the August resistance.

An interesting take on the independence movements in eastern Europe, or at least on its commemoration, comes from Hungary Today:

SCANDAL ERUPTS OVER “RECYCLED” 1956 MEMORIAL YEAR ANTHEM WRITTEN BY CELEBRITY SONGWRITER DESMOND CHILD

The official anthem of the government-funded  memorial year to mark the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution has found itself at the centre of public ridicule due to an unfortunate line in its lyrics and allegations suggesting that the song’s author, renowned Hungarian-American songwriter Desmond Child, “recycled” the melody, entitled “Egy szabad országért” or “Land of the Free”.

The Florida-born singer, composer and songwriter, who has Hungarian heritage on his father’s side and is a dual citizen of Hungary and the United States, was forced to issue a lengthy explanation on Facebook today after the liberal news website 444.hu reported yesterday that the anthem is actually a “recycled” remake of Mr. Child’s original anthem “In the Steps of Champions”, written in celebration of the successes of his native Miami’s sports team nine years ago, in 2007.

From The Hollywood Reporter, via Yahoo:

Why an Oscar Winner Took In an Afghan Teen Refugee

As the refugee crisis continues to create waves throughout Europe, Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky (who won the foreign film Oscar for The Counterfeiters in 2008) has for nearly a year been hosting an Afghan refugee named Masud in his home near Vienna. Masud's family escaped from Afghanistan to Iran when he was 2 years old; as a teen, when Iran attempted to force Afghan refugees to fight in Syria, he made a dangerous journey to Europe alone in the hope of finding asylum. In Austria, Masud, now 18, has the opportunity to attend high school and build a future for himself. Ruzowitzky, 54, who directed the upcoming Screen Gems project Patient Zero, spoke to THR about welcoming Masud into his family as the crisis in Austria continues.

Finally… One Art item from  The Guardian and the far north, your art news of the evening:

The lonely island: abandoned houses of the Hebrides – in pictures

Ex-Buzzcocks drummer John Maher photographs abandoned crofts in the Outer Hebrides – complete with sheep skeletons, tin walls and Technicolor interiors