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.
We begin this week with Africa, and an article from the Hamilton Spectator:
Bazookas full of bug sprayAs a globe-threatening yellow fever epidemic explodes in Congo, people are asking ‘where is the vaccine?’ One exists to prevent this killer that has no cure, but so far, it’s been slow to get to the people who need it
By Emily J. Baumgaertner Here in Kinshasa they're using bug spray to repel a pandemic.At first glance, it looks like a bloody ambush on civilians: dozens in uniform are storming into a bustling marketplace bearing on their shoulders what look like bazookas.
People are screaming, scrambling in every direction, their noses and mouths covered as they drag their children by their hands. Those in uniform chuckle, shaking their heads, smirking; they hiss into megaphones: "We told you we were coming!"
This is vector control in Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo.
NPR brings us news from Zimbabwe:
Police Break Up Zimbabwe 'Mega-Demonstration' In Defiance Of Court OrderIn Zimbabwe's capital city, police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration that the country's top court had ruled could proceed.
Opposition leaders termed Friday's march in Harare a "mega-demonstration." It marked "the first time that Zimbabwe's fractured opposition joined in a single action to confront President Robert Mugabe's government since 2007," as The Associated Press reports.
And from The Telegraph, a story from the UK, but also about Zimbabwe:
Zimbabwean doctor who 'forced a family of white farmers off their land' has UK surgery shut down Lexi FinniganA Zimbabwean GP who was given the farm of a family of white farmers forced off their land earlier this year has had his UK surgery shut down after inspectors found a healthcare assistant posing as a doctor.
Dr Sylvester Nyatsuro resigned on Wednesday, the day before an inspection report on his Nottingham surgery the Willows Medical Centre was published.
The report by the Care Quality Commission listed a number of failures at the “chaotic surgery”, where a healthcare assistant posed as a doctor.
Although not a qualified medical professional, the healthcare assistant, who was employed in March this year, took part in nearly 900 clinical procedures, including diagnoses, assessments of wounds and infections, and diabetes reviews.
Another health-related story from Africa, this one from the publication STAT:
Guinea worm, on the brink of eradication, puts up a surprisingly stubborn fightThe eradication of Guinea worm, thought to have been within grasp, is now at least several years away because of a major setback in the North African country of Chad, according to global health experts and others.
With human cases tumbling in recent years — only 11 so far in 2016, down from an estimated 3.5 million in 21 countries in 1986 — it had been assumed that the eradication effort was on the verge of consigning Guinea worm to the annals of history.
But the parasite, which can be over a yard long and burrows out of an infected person’s body, appears there to have found a niche in a new host: hundreds of dogs.
For more Africa news, check the end of the diary for the Arts section!
But to Europe, first, and a story about the earthquake, from the Huffington Post:
The First Long, Dark Night After The Earthquake In Central Italy“This is the end of our wonderful town. There’s nothing left now.”
AMATRICE, Italy ― A garage has been turned into a morgue. Outside the entrance to this underground space, a line of people has formed. Many of them are wrapped in quilts, calmly awaiting painful answers regarding their missing loved ones. “I’m looking for my brother. I don’t know if they’ve brought him here, or if maybe he’s still alive, though who knows where he is,” says Claudia. The 44 year-old escaped the quake unharmed but is still dirtied with rubble and dust. Another person speaks up: “I want to talk to the police. Where are the other dead bodies? I’m looking for my father.”
People here are facing an enormous sense of desperation after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck early Wednesday, causing untold damage. It’s a swarm of ceaseless unhappiness. The tremors continue throughout the night, one rumble after the next. Inside the garage-turned-morgue, the smell has grown overpowering, and at 2 a.m. the decision is made to evacuate the premises. One by one the coffins are loaded into ambulances and taken to another collection center. Only then does a lone man decide to leave the pallet where he’s curled up and taken refuge to cry alone. “They just took my wife away,” he laments.
A cheerier story from the UK, courtesy of The Guardian:
Turning the tables: the ping pong sanctuary for young refugeesLone children seeking refuge in the UK – many of whom have never seen a table tennis match before – find a topspin welcome on the south coast
On the wall of Brighton table tennis club is a large map of the world, covered in drawing pins to represent where each member comes from. The largest cluster falls, unsurprisingly, on southern England, with black and white pins piling on top of Brighton. The second most common place, with eight pins, is Afghanistan.
In May the sports club became the first in the country, of any type, to be given the title “club of sanctuary” – part of the city of sanctuary movement that recognises cities and schools that welcome refugees and asylum seekers.
Brighton is home to roughly 60 unaccompanied minors, almost all boys, who came to Britain seeking asylum. They are housed mostly with foster families, until they turn 18 and their asylum claims are processed. Of these 60, around half have come to the club.
From The Guardian:
GP found dead after being suspended over bipolar disorder blogDr Wendy Potts was suspended after patient complained about blog in which she wrote about having condition
A GP who kept a blog about living with bipolar disorder was found dead after being suspended from work when a patient read her online entries and complained, an inquest has heard. In the weeks leading up to her death, Dr Wendy Potts had written candidly about her condition and the effect it had on her life.
A patient at her surgery saw her online posts and contacted management, questioning whether she should be able to practise as a GP. The inquest heard that Potts later told her partner: “How can I have been so stupid?”
It seems that there are a lot of health stories in tonight’s digest. Another story from The Guardian, as we move east into Asia:
Indian man forced to carry dead wife home after hospital 'refuses' transportAnger after Dana Majhi walks 12km of a 60km trek home, claiming an Odisha hospital refused to transport her body
Michael Safi in Delhi
A villager in the east Indian state of Odisha carried his deceased wife 12km after the hospital where she died allegedly refused to transport her body back home.
Dana Majhi’s wife Amang died from tuberculosis on Tuesday at Bhawanipatna hospital, about 60km from their home in Melghara.
He was spotted by locals on Wednesday after trekking around 10km with his wife’s body wrapped in a sheet over his shoulder, walking beside his crying 12-year-old daughter Chaula.
Another story from India, courtesy of the Times of Oman:
Modi announces Task Force to prepare India for next OlympicsNew Delhi: With India getting only two medals in the Rio Olympics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced the decision to set up a Task Force to prepare a comprehensive action plan for effective participation in the next three Olympics. According to the announcement made by Modi at the meeting of Council of Ministers here, the Task Force comprising experts will be set up over the next few days.
There is a lot of news from Indonesia this evening, as well. First up, a story from Agence France Presse:
Hundreds of frozen pangolins seized by police in IndonesiaSURABAYA, Indonesia--Indonesian authorities have seized more than 650 critically endangered pangolins found hidden in freezers and arrested a man for allegedly breaking wildlife protection laws, police said Friday.
Police discovered the pangolins, known as "scaly anteaters," when they raided a house in Jombang district on the main island of Java after local residents became suspicious about the large number of freezers in the property.
A total of 657 pangolins, which are consumed as a luxury dish in China and used in traditional medicine, were found wrapped in plastic and stored in five large freezers, East Java province police spokesman Raden Prabowo Argo Yuwono told AFP.
Other environmental news from Today:
Indonesia arrests more people this year over forest firesJAKARTA — Indonesian police have arrested more than double the number of individuals in forest fire cases this year compared with 2015, when large parts of the region were blanketed in choking smog from fires, causing a national crisis.
According to police data released on Thursday, 454 individuals have been arrested in connection with forest fires so far this year, up from 196 arrests in 2015.
Home to the world’s third-largest area of tropical forests, Indonesia has been criticised over the haze by green activists and neighbouring South-east Asian nations, and despite a decline in hotspots this year, its authorities are under pressure to show they are taking action.
From the UK edition of The Sun:
‘I JUST WANT TO DIE’Indonesian man who claims to be world’s oldest person aged 145 says can no longer stand living… and even bought his own gravestone 20 years ago
Documents recognised by local officials say he was born New Year's Eve 1870
By KATHRYN CAINA MAN who claims to be 145-years-old says he’s so old now he is “ready to die” – and even bought his gravestone 20 YEARS AGO.
According to documents recognised by Indonesian officials, Mbah Gotho is 145 and was born on New Year’s Eve in 1870.
He has not surprisingly outlived all 10 of his siblings as well as his FOUR wives, the last of whom died in 1988.
All of his children have also died, and now he is survived by his grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren.
Let us end this evening’s digest with arts news, beginning with the promised stories from Africa, beginning with a story from Curbed:
Extremist found guilty for 'crime against architecture' in groundbreaking caseAhmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi admits to destroying historic mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali.
By Barbara EldredgeFor the first time in history, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has recognized the destruction of architecture as a war crime. In a groundbreaking case, prosecutors at the ICC put Islamic extremist Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi on trial for acts of cultural destruction: the demolition of historic mausoleums in Mali’s Timbuktu.
Al-Mahdi plead guilty to the charges on August 22, admitting that he lead a group of Islamic militants on a campaign to destroy the majority of Timbuktu’s medieval mausoleums. Only two of the city’s sixteen historic Sufi tombs remained intact. Al-Mahdi was a member of the al-Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar Dine, which imposed Islamic law on Timbuktu after capturing it in 2012. The group also destroyed the ancient Sidi Yahya mosque, built in 1440.
The mausoleums and mosque were a part of the UNESCO World Heritage site called the "city of 333 saints." In the last several years, UNESCO has helped to rebuild several of the lost structures.
From The Conversation, about a new staging of an opera standard:
Così Fan Tutte: racial and sexual abuse should shock audiences, not the titillationLecturer in Music, Edinburgh Napier University
The new production of Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte’s classic opera Così Fan Tutte has attracted no shortage of controversy. After its premiere in Aix-en-Provence in France in July, the organisers of the Edinburgh International Festival wrote to all ticket holders offering a refund “due to the adult nature of some of the scenes” and its unsuitability for younger audiences.
Christophe Honoré, better known as a novelist and auteur film director, also took the bold step of relocating the action from 18th-century Naples to 1930s Eritrea in the era of Italian rule.
We certainly need more gritty and relevant opera productions. Opera in the 18th century was often used as a way of commentating on issues of the day, especially the opera buffa style, which distinguishes comic operas like Così Fan Tutte from the tragedies. There is no reason why present-day productions should not reflect this.
Another article about the opera, from The Guardian:
Così fan Tutte review – Mozart's frothy opera turns nastyTransplanted to 1930s Eritrea, Christopher Honoré’s version skims off the froth and stirs in the darker themes of power play, violence and abuse
It’s the dregs of a war. Guglielmo and Ferrando are Italian fascist soldiers stationed in Asmara, bored and unsupervised, and their pent-up machismo turns sexually abusive. Dorabella and Fiordiligi are colonial daughters whose relationship to local men pivots between disgust and desire – which adds to the fun when their boyfriends play a trick on them by blacking up as Dubat mercenaries. Ha ha.After this production opened in Aix-en-Provence, letters were sent out to everyone who had bought tickets to see it in Edinburgh, warning of explicit adult themes. French film director Christophe Honoré transplants Mozart’s opera to 1930s Eritrea and the curtain raises on a black girl dancing to calypso then being raped by a fascist soldier. And so it goes on, though none of the violence is particularly explicit, not compared with a 15-certificate movie.
From The Pulse (of Nigeria) comes something about the art of living:
The best 10 African countries to get your favourite beverageCoffee is an important drink, and those who don't love it for the great smell and taste certainly do because of its health benefits.
Temitope AdeiyeEthiopia may be considered the birthplace of coffee, but this does not mean that the delicious drink is not produced in other places on the African continent.
In case you were wondering, here are 10 of the best places in Africa to get coffee:
Sort of Arts, sort of Media, all travel, with beautiful pictures (from The Guardian):
'Like nowhere else': Madagascar casts a spell over Simon ReeveThe country’s mix of cultures, bizarre food, taboos and unique wildlife leaves the TV presenter gobsmacked
Interview by Rachel Dixon
I was completely gobsmacked by Madagascar when I first arrived in 2006, as part of a televised tour around the Tropic of Capricorn. It’s like nowhere else on Earth. The only place I can compare it to is the Galápagos Islands, but on a much bigger scale; it’s the fourth biggest island in the world.
Everywhere you look in Antananarivo, or Tana, as it’s known, there is something surprising and different. It’s like a crazy mix of France, Nepal, Vietnam, Lima … There is an extraordinary mix of architecture: French colonialism and clay huts; old Renault 4s and rickshaws; paddy fields inside the city itself. I love that collision of cultures.