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.
Sadly we have to begin tonight with more news about terrorism. From The Guardian:
Thailand police hunt network of suspects after resort bombings
Authorities say series of blasts that left four people dead was ‘an act of stirring up public disturbance’ rather than terrorism
Authorities in Thailand are searching for a network of suspects after a coordinated series of bomb attacks targeting beach towns and resorts left four people dead and 34 injured, in some of the country’s worst violence in years.
Ten foreign tourists were among the injured, and foreign embassies have warned visitors to Thailand to be vigilant.
Most of the casualties were in Hua Hin, where bombs hidden in plant pots in the resort town’s main nightlife district were remotely detonated on Thursday evening. Two more devices exploded by a clock tower on Friday morning.
Coverage from The New York Times:
Thai Leader Links Attacks on Tourist Sites to Constitution Change
By RICHARD C. PADDOCK
MANILA — The head of the Thai junta urged his countrymen on Friday to have patience while investigators determine who was behind a wave of deadly bombings in Thailand this week.
Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, the junta chief and prime minister, hinted that the perpetrators were “bad people” opposed to a new Constitution that was approved by voters on Sunday in a nationwide referendum.
Perhaps in the way of explanation, also from The New York Times Opinion Pages (credited to “The Editorial Board”):
Thailand’s Power-Hungry Generals
Voters in Thailand on Sunday approved a new Constitution that vests extraordinary powers in the military and treats electoral politics like a dangerous game that requires close supervision by the country’s generals. That outcome was hardly surprising. The Thai military, which took control of the country in 2014 in a coup, stifled debate about the Constitution by harassing journalists and charging critics with sedition.
The new charter mandates a voting system designed to leave the military firmly in charge by preventing any political party from winning a majority in the lower house of Parliament. A related ballot measure, which also passed, gives the armed forces the authority to appoint all 250 members of the Senate. This means that parliamentary elections scheduled for next year can only produce a weak and fragmented legislature, leaving Thailand’s increasingly repressive generals at the controls while creating the illusion that military rule has ended.
Also from Southeast Asia, via The Straits Times:
Indonesian sago plantation company gets record $107 million fine for fires that caused haze in 2015
JAKARTA - A Jakarta district court has ordered sago plantation company PT National Sago Prima to pay a record 1 trillion rupiah (S$107 million) for causing the fires that spread uncontrollably in 2015 and causing choking haze.
The court ruling, passed on Thursday (Aug 11), orders Sago Prima to pay a 319 billion rupiah fine and another 753 billion rupiah to cover the cost of rehabilitating the burnt 3,000 hectares of land in the Meranti islands in Riau province.
The total amount is the biggest fine ever imposed on a plantation company.
Again from The New York Times, news of the animal world:
Torrential Rains Strand Wayward Indian Elephant in Bangladesh
By HARI KUMAR
NEW DELHI — Plenty of back-and-forth intermingling happens along the 2,500-mile zigzag border shared by India and Bangladesh. But the Bangladeshis are having trouble returning a four-and-a-half-ton Indian visitor to its home.
A wayward wild elephant from northeast India was washed hundreds of miles down the Brahmaputra River into Bangladesh during torrential flooding earlier this summer, and is now marooned there, despite efforts by the Bangladeshis to repatriate it.
“For the last 45 days, we are dealing with this elephant,” Ashit Ranjan Paul, Bangladesh’s conservator of forests and wildlife, said after a three-member team of Indian experts visited the animal, untamed but weak and dehydrated, in a swampy area of the northern Jamalpur district where it has been confined.
Continuing with news from the Subconiinent, this from The Huffington Post:
A new ad says trash drives away the goddess, Lakshmi.
By Antonia Blumberg
India is in the middle of a five-year initiative to improve public hygiene, and a new ad campaign hopes a certain Hindu goddess can offer some divine intervention to move the project forward.
India-based production company Aur Dikhao released the advertisement, called “#DontLetHerGo,” on YouTube on Wednesday. The two-minute long video features Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut as the Hindu goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, with narration by Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan.
The video targets Hindu audiences, who make up roughly 80 percent of the Indian population, warning them to maintain cleanliness or risk the goddess abandoning them.
From Al-Monitor (Iran Pulse):
Will film on 2015 hajj disaster further tarnish Iran-Saudi relations?
By Zahra Alipour
Sept. 24, 2015, was a tragic day. More than 700 people were killed in a stampede during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. The disaster occurred on the first day of Eid al-Adha, when pilgrims perform the ritual known as "stoning the devil" in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca. In Iran, the event is remembered as the “Mina tragedy,” given that some 500 Iranian pilgrims lost their lives. Now, nearly one year later, an Iranian filmmaker is preparing to unveil “September 24”; probably the first cinematic depiction of the tragedy.
One of the film’s main characters is Mohsen Haji Hassani Kargar, an Iranian “qari” (reciter of the Quran) who was killed in the disaster. The 27-year-old, who was known as Haji Hassani, had won first prize at the 57th International Quran Competition in Malaysia in June 2015 and was performing the hajj with a delegation of Quran reciters. “September 24” revolves mostly around the story of Haji Hassani’s life — and death. It has already stirred controversy, with one Saudi website saying that it could become a “new source of tension in Tehran-Riyadh relations.”
In African News, this from The New York Times:
Polio Response in Africa to Be Fast, Difficult and Possibly Dangerous
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
The counterattack against resurgent polio in Africa will be rapid, logistically difficult and potentially dangerous, involving millions of doses of vaccine, thousands of vaccinators and the health ministries and militaries of five countries, experts from the World Health Organization and other groups say.
Stopping the disease in Africa is crucial to the high-stakes effort to eradicate it from the world, a campaign that has been pressed for almost 30 years and has consumed billions of dollars.
After two years with no cases in Africa, experts were elated at the imminent taste of victory on the continent, considered the toughest front in the fight against infectious diseases. Those hopes were dashed this week when two new cases were discovered. Now Nigeria rejoins Pakistan and Afghanistan on the list of countries where the disease has not been completely eliminated.
And from The Guardian, this story about a difference between the US and Mexico (at least under our current presidents):
Young, rich and entitled: Mexicans grow weary of their politicians' spoiled kids
In a country where being a politician is seen as equivalent to ‘winning the lottery’, observers are hitting back at the behavior of the children of elites
David Agren in Mexico City
When pictures emerged of Sasha Obama working a till at a seafood restaurant, they made news around the world. But the photographs had particular impact in neighbouring Mexico, where many commentators contrasted Obama’s choice of a relatively mundane summer job with the conspicuous consumption and entitled behaviour common among children of the country’s elite.
Twitter lit up with comments comparing Obama’s behaviour with the children of Mexican politicians such as the daughters of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who often appear on the cover of society magazines.
“From one pair of daughters to another: Sasha Obama works vacation days as a cashier; Paulina and Nicole Peña – daughters of President Enrique Peña Nieto – the cover of ¡Hola!” tweeted columnist Julio Astillero.
Because it is Friday night we will end with a couple of Arts stories.
The New York Times has this article about art in Rio:
JR’s Monumental Artworks Have an Olympic Moment in Rio
By MELENA RYZIK
Michael Phelps has nothing on her: The French triathlete
Léonie Periault, rising out of Guanabara Bay in Rio, is caught mid-lap, looming over the water, her wingspan stretching more than 98 feet.
Ms. Periault is not competing in the Olympics, but she is there, represented in black and white and surrounded by scaffolding, thanks to the
French artist JR. Her image is one of three giant sculptures JR installed around the city, as one of the Olympics’ first artists in residence. The
program, which began this year, was intended to “open up Olympism and its values to the widest possible audience,” according to a statement by the Olympic committee. (The other artists in residence are the German writer Tilman Spengler and
Gerald Andal, an American Vine star.)
And from The Guardian (follow this link for the wonderful pictures):
Inflated expectations: Masayoshi Matsumoto's balloon animals – in pictures
Japanese artist Masayoshi Matsumoto makes his amazingly detailed balloon animals with no glue or seals – then pops them when he’s done
And finally, from The Straits Times:
Live crabs and Lego sets: A look at 11 quirky vending machines from around the world
SINGAPORE - Singapore's first vending machine cafe officially opened in Sengkang West on Sunday (Aug 8), heralding the start of what could be more of such spaces popping up at offices and HDB estates in the coming months.
VendCafe, located on the void deck of Block 320C, Anchorvale Drive, consists of a cluster of stand-up dining tables and a cluster of six vending machines.
Besides an array of salads, sandwiches, snacks and drinks on offer, two Chef-In-Box machines dispense a rotating menu of 30 hot meals that include Western fare and local offerings such as seafood hor fun and nasi goreng istimewa.
(In Kanasas City’s airport they have a vending machine that sells works of art by Kansas City artists, something I think is a great idea)