Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, 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.
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BBC
Aleppo battle: Hundreds leave Syria city as evacuations resume
Evacuations have resumed from east Aleppo, with buses and ambulances leaving rebel areas of the Syrian city, a UN official says.
At least 350 people have reportedly left rebel enclaves in convoys, heading west towards government territory.
Earlier, buses sent to take people out of government-controlled areas, besieged by rebels, were set alight, halting the latest evacuation deal.
Thousands are waiting to leave east Aleppo in desperate conditions.
The UN Security Council is said to have agreed a compromise to allow UN monitoring of the operation. Russia earlier rejected a French-drafted plan to send UN officials to east Aleppo as "a disaster".
BBC
IS suicide bomb kills 48 Yemen soldiers in payday queue
A suicide bomber has killed at least 48 soldiers and wounded another 84 in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden.
The soldiers were queuing up to receive salaries near al-Sawlaban military base when the attacker struck.
The bomber immersed himself in the crowd of soldiers at the base in al-Arish district, an official said.
So-called Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the attack, similar to one on the same base days ago that killed another 48 soldiers.
Washington Post
Why is the world so quiet?’ Yemen suffers its own cruel losses, far from Aleppo.
KAWKABAN, Yemen — The majestic fortress nestled atop a mountain here in northwestern Yemen survived the armies of the Islamic warrior Saladin in the 12th century. Four hundred years later, it survived invasions by Egyptians and Ottoman Turks. Through generations of rulers and wars, its walls remained intact.
Until last February.
Before dawn one morning, fighter jets from a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition fired four missiles at Kawkaban, killing seven residents of the town that lies inside the citadel and pulverizing its ancient gateway. Behind the shattered walls, 700-year-old houses known for their spectacular architecture are now mounds of rubble.
Across this war-torn country, factories, hospitals and power plants have been leveled, threatening Yemen’s future. In Kawkaban and elsewhere, the past lies in ruins, too.
“There were wars that happened, but nothing ever like this one,” resident Ahmed al-Ashwal said last month.
BBC
Thousands of workers set to strike in Christmas week in England
Thousands of workers will launch a wave of strikes this week, hitting postal services, rail companies and airlines in the run-up to Christmas.
About 3,000 staff at hundreds of Crown post offices will walk out on Monday, Tuesday and Friday.
The action marks a major escalation of their dispute over pension changes, job security and closures.
They will be joined on Wednesday and Thursday by workers who supply many sub-post offices with cash.
Kevin Gilliland, Post Office group network and sales director, said fewer than 300 branches would be affected, with "business as usual in almost all of our network".
There are fears the strikes could escalate if unofficial action is taken by Royal Mail workers who refuse to cross picket lines.
The Guardian
Poland is 'on road to autocracy', says constitutional court president
The outgoing president of Poland’s highest constitutional court has accused the ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) of a systematic attempt to destroy oversight of government activity, describing the country as “on the road to autocracy”.
The departure of Prof Andrzej Rzepliński, whose term expires on Monday, is expected to pave the way for PiS appointees to assume control of Poland’s most important institutional check on executive power.
The expiration of Rzepliński’s term comes amid signs of the most serious political crisis in Poland since PiS won presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015.
Protesters on Friday night attempted to barricade MPs in the parliament buildingafter the government sought to restrict media access to parliamentary proceedings. Opposition MPs accuse PiS deputies of holding illegal votes outside the parliamentary chamber after an opposition MP was expelled for protesting against the media restrictions and opposition leaders occupied the parliamentary podium in protest. Protests continued in Warsaw and other cities over the weekend.
The Guardian
Donald Trump has no idea how to run a superpower, says Chinese media
Donald Trump appears to have not a clue how to lead a superpower.
That was the conclusion of China’s Global Times newspaper on Monday morning as the country’s media weighed in on the president-elect’s latest social media assaults on Beijing.
“Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month,” the Communist party controlled newspaper wrote in an editorial. “He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower.”
The article came after the US president-elect again used Twitter, which has been blocked in China since 2009, to berate the leaders of the world’s second largest economy.
“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act,” Trump tweeted early on Saturday morning after it emerged the Chinese navy had seized a US naval drone that had been operating in the South China Sea.
The Guardian
Themes of 2016: across continents, autocrats take control
At the end of January, unless something very strange happens, all four major powers in the world will be ruled by authoritarian figures. Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Narendra Modi in India and Donald Trump in the US.
What explains the rise of the strongman, or woman? Why is liberal democracy being tested in so many countries by rightwing demagogues who seem to care very little for the liberal part. Hungary and Poland can no longer be called liberal democracies. Forthcoming elections in France and the Netherlands will show whether an autocratic one-man party (Geert Wilders’s Freedom party), or an illiberal far-right party (Marine Le Pen’s Front National), will cause upsets in western Europe.
The claim that people have the governments they deserve has always struck me as a little unfair. Russians didn’t choose Stalin. Chairman Mao was never elected. Opposition against Putin never had much chance.
Nonetheless, the number of people craving a strongman may be larger than nice liberals, such as myself, like to admit.
Raw Story
‘Hitler got elected, too’: Alarmed and wary Germans respond to Trump’s election
The Nov. 8 election victory of Republican President-elect Donald Trump is “on everyone’s mind” in parts of Germany, and most don’t see it as a positive development.
“For me, he incorporates everything that I hate,” said 41-year-old PR professional Ulrike Bretz to Shant Shahrigien of the New York Daily News. “He’s got a lot of money and he shows it.”
Bretz said that her country has come a long way since the Nazi era.
“We were the bad ones,” she said. “We were the ones who had to learn all about how to be liberal and democratic again. We learned our lesson and everyone else did and now it’s changing and we’re maybe the last ones.”
Many in Germany and throughout Europe greet the prospect of a Trump presidency with deep unease. The former reality TV star has expressed his disdain for traditional strategic alliances like NATO and seems to think Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive moves on the world stage show that he’s a strong leader.
N Y Times
When Donald Trump Partied With Richard Nixon
HOUSTON — They still talk about the Saturday night here 27 years ago when Donald J. Trump partied with former President Richard M. Nixon.
Dressed in tuxedos, they sang “Happy Birthday” to Texas royalty — former Gov. John B. Connally and his wife, Nellie, whose birthdays were a few days apart — as Nixon played the tune on a white baby grand piano. They dined at Tony’s, the “21” Club of Houston, and Nixon was so fond of the cannelloni pasta that he asked the owner, Tony Vallone, to write the recipe for him on a yellow legal pad. And when it was all over, Mr. Trump flew Nixon back to New York on his 727 private jet.
It happened one weekend in March 1989.
It was one of Nixon’s first public appearances since the Watergate scandalhad forced him to resign in 1974. And it was one of Mr. Trump’s first presidential experiences, as he socialized with and had the ear of a former president for two days in Houston at a gala event, an impromptu after-party at Tony’s, a Sunday brunch the next day at a River Oaks mansion and later aboard his plane.
“I think you can see a core of Trump in this,” said Barry Silverman, a Houston advertising and marketing consultant who helped coordinate the gala and was a longtime friend of the Connallys. “He obviously had a road map a lot bigger than any of us ever thought about.
Raw Story
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal more dangerous than previously thought
North Korea has long-range nuclear warheads which can reach Britain, continental Europe and the United States, a South Korean government official reportedly said Saturday. The statement came amid reports that the military of the Kim Jong Un-ruled country is now capable of attaching nuclear warheads to missiles which can travel a few thousand miles.
Lee Sang-haw, director general of North Korean nuclear affairs bureau in South Korea, told the Daily Star Online in Seoul that Kim's nuclear arsenal is more dangerous than previously thought, and that “Europe is also within range” along with other countries of the NATO alliance.
According to reports, North Korea's KN-08 missile — which is under development — will have a range of more than 7,500 miles.
“I am not able to share everything I know because much of the intelligence is classified and I don’t want to go into precise details," a senior South Korean ministry source reportedly said. “There are different assessments of North Korea’s ballistic missile capabilities, but what is for sure is as they repeat tests, they learn something important.”
N Y Times
How the Fed’s Interest Rate Increase Can Affect You
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday for just the second time since the 2008 financial crisis.
Economists talk a lot about the impact this will have on markets, but what about everyday consumers?
The Fed’s decision can affect the cost of housing, cars, student loans and even the interest on your credit card — though not all necessarily right away. And when the Fed raises rates, all sorts of other expenses eventually tick up.
The move is part of what will be a slow, upward climb for what’s known as the federal funds rate. Banks are ordered by law to have a certain amount of money in reserve, so they typically make overnight loans to each other to keep those balances up. The federal funds rate is the level of interest that applies to those short-term loans.
Because the rate has been close to zero since 2008, as part of the Fed’s strategy to bring the nation out of a recession, there’s hardly anywhere for it to go but up. As the economy improves and President-elect Donald J. Trump unveils his stimulus package, economists expect rates to rise steadily over a period of years.
C/Net (autoplay)
2016 wasn't so bad: 5 ways this year will shape the future
Recently there's been a lot of ink and pixels declaring 2016 the year of humanity's discontent. That's tough to deny in the realm of geopolitics, between awful conflicts in places like Syria, acts of terror worldwide and contentious elections in the UK and US.
But the world went on, and so did important work in science and innovation. If you sweep the ugly parts of 2016 under the rug and then check the place out, it's not too shabby. What really makes 2016, though, is the view. It overlooks a future which, believe it or not, is much more bright and exciting than it appeared 12 months ago.
Here are five areas where the events of 2016 will likely have a lasting positive impact 5, 10 and even 100 years into the future.