Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, JeremyBloom, and doomandgloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos since 2007, 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. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
The BBC brings us pictures of the week in Africa.
From the BBC:
Janhavee MooleA forgotten oil-on-canvas masterpiece by Indian painter MF Husain, rediscovered decades later, has rewritten the record books for Indian art.Husain's Untitled (Gram Yatra), a sprawling 14-foot-wide mural, sold for an unprecedented $13.8m (£10.6m) at a Christie's auction in New York last week. It shattered the previous Indian high of $7.4m (£5.7m) fetched by Amrita Sher-Gil's The Story Teller in 2023.
Another art story from the Beeb:
Paul GlynnTate Britain is set to return a 17th Century painting to the family of a Jewish Belgian art collector, after it was taken from his home by Nazis during World War Two.Painter Henry Gibbs' 1654 work, Aeneas And His Family Fleeing Burning Troy, was taken by the Nazis as "an act of racial persecution", said the Spoliation Advisory Panel, which which looks into cases of looted artworks.
From the New York Times:
Cambridge University researchers found a manuscript with rare Arthurian tales bound into a ledger more than 400 years old and used advanced technology to reveal its contents.
By Alan YuhasTorn, folded and stitched, rare tales of Merlin shapeshifting into King Arthur’s court and Sir Gawain gaining power from the sun were bound into a book of property records from the 1500s. They went unnoticed for centuries, stacked among the records of an English manor and then among the millions of volumes of a university library.
At least until an archivist took another look, setting off a yearslong project to identify and then reassemble the medieval manuscript, which someone in Tudor England had taken apart and used to help hold together a ledger.
Also from the NY Times:
A year after getting loose on Kangaroo Island, Valerie is still out there.
A dachshund lost in Australia is still alive after more than a year, and still apparently wearing her pink collar. But she has proved elusive to recapture.
The tale begins in November 2023 when a couple took their pet miniature dachshund, Valerie, to Kangaroo Island off the coast of Adelaide. But Valerie escaped from her pen and rushed off into the bush.
There are some stories that are odd, or amusing, in not such a happy way, below the fold and then we get to the more serious and depressing stuff. You could skip the last couple of stories if you like; I will let you know if you want to miss them because it is a Friday night and you might want to sleep more sweetly.