OND Editors OND is a 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.
OND Editors Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, Doctor RJ and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
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BBC:Ivory Coast boy smuggled to Spain inside suitcase
Ivory Coast boy smuggled to Spain inside suitcase
An eight-year-old boy has been smuggled into Spain from Morocco inside a suitcase, Spanish police say.
The boy, Abou, was found inside the case being carried by a 19-year-old woman into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave next to Morocco, on Thursday.
When police opened the case, they found the boy in a "terrible state", a spokesman for the Guardia Civil told AFP.
The boy, from Ivory Coast, is now in the care of authorities in Ceuta.
BBC:China 'expanding island building' in South China Sea
China 'expanding island building' in South China Sea
The US says that China has expanded its programme of land reclamation in the South China Sea.
US officials say China has reclaimed 810 hectares (2,000 acres) since the beginning of 2014.
China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with its neighbours.
Other countries accuse China of illegally taking land to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use.
BBC:Yemen conflict: Saudis warn border civilians to leave
Yemen conflict: Saudis warn border civilians to leave
Saudi-led coalition aircraft have dropped leaflets warning residents in a Yemeni border district to leave, as air strikes against Houthi rebels continue.
Leaflets were dropped in Old Saada in Saada province, the rebels' stronghold.
Houthi rebels have fired shells from Saada into Saudi Arabia in recent days, killing 10 people.
But the NGO Medecins sans Frontieres, which has a team in Saada, warned people would not be able to leave the city quickly because of fuel shortages.
BBC:Egypt seizes 'pro-Muslim Brotherhood' ex-footballer's assets
Egypt seizes 'pro-Muslim Brotherhood' ex-footballer's assets
The Egyptian authorities have seized assets of former national football star Mohamed Aboutrika, amid allegations that he helped fund banned Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood.
The authorities said a court was expected to decide on the issue soon.
A defiant Mr Aboutrika said he would stay in Egypt to work for prosperity.
Mr Aboutrika publicly endorsed the successful 2012 presidential bid by Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood member. Mr Morsi was ousted by the army in 2013.
BBC:Pakistan helicopter crash kills foreign envoys
Pakistan helicopter crash kills foreign envoys
An army helicopter has crashed in a mountainous part of northern Pakistan, killing seven people, including the Philippine and Norwegian ambassadors.
It crashed during an emergency landing in the Gilgit-Baltistan territory.
The wives of the Indonesian and Malaysian envoys, two pilots and a crew member also died. They were to attend the opening of a tourism project.
Two senior Pakistani ministers said the crash was down to a technical fault.
BBC:India agrees Bangladesh land enclaves swap
India agrees Bangladesh land enclaves swap
India's parliament has approved a key agreement with Bangladesh which will enable the two countries to exchange control of areas of land on each other's territory.
Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis live in 51 enclaves in India, while Indians live in 100 areas within Bangladesh.
The residents are in effect stateless and lack access to public services.
These enclaves are a legacy of colonial times and have been a contentious issue between the two nations for decades..
Reuters:Troubled air bag maker Takata says to return to profit in 2015/16
Troubled air bag maker Takata says to return to profit in 2015/16
Japan's Takata Corp (7312.T) said it expects to return to profit this financial year on higher Asian and U.S. sales, but the troubled company made few provisions for possible costs related to a massive global recall of its exploding air bags.
Around 25 million cars have been recalled worldwide since 2008 over Takata air bag inflators that have erupted with too much force, spraying shrapnel inside the car.
Takata forecast a net profit of 20 billion yen ($167 million) for the year through next March, on a 9 percent increase in global sales to 700 billion yen. The profit compares with a loss of 29.6 billion yen in the just-ended financial year, when the company booked a special loss of 58.7 billion yen mostly to cover recall costs.
Takata's forecast factors in a 7 billion yen expense to cover legal and consulting fees, but does not include other costs related to recalls.
Reuters:Japan, Philippines to hold first naval drill in South China Sea: sources
Japan, Philippines to hold first naval drill in South China Sea: sources
Japan and the Philippines will hold their first joint naval drill this month in the South China Sea near a disputed shoal claimed by Beijing, sources in Tokyo and the Philippines said.
The May 12 maritime safety exercise, which will practice the code for unplanned encounters at sea, known as CUES, is part of an agreement signed by Japan and the Philippines in January aimed at tightening security cooperation.
The nature of the training is unlikely to worry China unduly, as it has conducted similar exercises with the United States in the past.
But the presence of Japanese naval vessels in the South China Sea signals Japan's growing interest in the region, and may irritate Beijing as criticism of its land reclamation projects there mounts.
Reuters:Former U.S. government employee attempted to steal nuclear weapons secrets: Justice Department
Former U.S. government employee attempted to steal nuclear weapons secrets: Justice Department
The U.S. Justice Department has charged a former employee of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allegedly attempting an email attack on government employees to extract sensitive information on nuclear weapons.
According to an indictment unsealed on Friday, Charles Eccleston allegedly attempted the "spear-phishing" attack in January targeting dozens of email accounts, where he believed he was unleashing a virus to collect the information.
Eccleston, who has lived in the Philippines since 2011 after he was fired from the NRC in 2010, was caught in a sting by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after he approached a foreign embassy about providing classified U.S. information. Undercover FBI employees then posed as foreigners and promised to pay for the spear-fishing attack, according to the Justice Department.
Eccleston drew on his past career to draw up email lists and compose the text of an innocuous-seeming invitation to a conference that he sent to 80 Energy Department employees, according to the indictment.
Reuters:GE wins deal worth up to $2 billion for engines for Taiwan, others
GE wins deal worth up to $2 billion for engines for Taiwan, others
General Electric Co (GE.N) has won a five-year contract valued at up to $2 billion to supply helicopter engines to the government of Taiwan and support a number of U.S. military services, the Defense Department said on Friday.
The contract, which runs through Dec. 31, 2020, covers work on the company's T700 701D and T700 401C engines used to power the popular Black Hawk helicopters built by Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Corp (UTX.N), the Pentagon said.
Reuters:Exclusive: Weapons inspectors find undeclared sarin and VX traces in Syria - diplomats
Exclusive: Weapons inspectors find undeclared sarin and VX traces in Syria - diplomats
International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
Samples taken by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition and Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in December and January tested positive for chemical precursors needed to make the toxic agents, the sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity because the information is confidential.
"This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin," one diplomatic source said. "They have so far been unable to give a satisfactory explanation about this finding."
In 2013, the United States threatened military intervention against Syria's government after sarin gas attacks in August of that year killed hundreds of residents in Ghouta, a rebel-controlled suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.
Reuters:Ukraine remembers WW2 with Europe rather than Russia
Ukraine remembers WW2 with Europe rather than Russia
For the first time in 70 years, Ukraine on Friday joined most of Europe in marking the end of the World War Two a day ahead of Russia, which it accused of exploiting the anniversary to display its military might.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had wanted to make May 8 a day of reconciliation to try not only to unite Ukrainians with different views of the war but also set them apart from Russia, which Kiev accuses of stoking a year-old pro-Russian rebellion in its eastern regions.
The issue is fraught in Ukraine, where a minority of men joined a militia that was prepared to ally itself with the Nazi invaders to fight Soviet Communist rule, leaving Ukrainian nationalism forever vulnerable to accusations of fascist sympathies.
Poroshenko has ditched the title of "Great Patriotic War", favored in Russia, in favor of "World War Two", the name used in most of Europe, as part of a reinforcement of Ukrainian national identity by the pro-Western government following the ousting of the Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich last year.
LA Times:What Facebook’s ‘It’s Not Our Fault’ Study Really Means
What Facebook’s ‘It’s Not Our Fault’ Study Really Means
Yesterday in the journal Science, members of the Facebook data science team released a provocative study about adult Facebook users in the US “who volunteer their ideological affiliation in their profile.” The study “quantified the extent to which individuals encounter comparatively more or less diverse” hard news “while interacting via Facebook’s algorithmically ranked News Feed.”
The research found that the user’s click rate on hard news is affected by the positioning of the content on the page by the filtering algorithm. The same link placed at the top of the feed is about 10-15 percent more likely to get a click than a link at position #40 (figure S5).
The Facebook news feed curation algorithm, “based on many factors,” removes hard news from diverse sources that you are less likely to agree with but it does not remove the hard news that you are likely to agree with (S7). They call news from a source you are less likely to agree with “cross-cutting.”
The study then found that the algorithm filters out 1 in 20 cross-cutting hard news stories that a self-identified conservative sees (or 5 percent) and 1 in 13 cross-cutting hard news stories that a self-identified liberal sees (8 percent).
Finally, the research then showed that “individuals’ choices about what to consume” further limits their “exposure to cross-cutting content.” Conservatives will click on only 17 percent of cross-cutting hard news, while liberals will click 7 percent.