The Overnight News Digest is nightly series dedicated to chronicling the day’s news of import or interest. Everyone is welcome to add their own news items in the comments. Tonight’s ad hoc OND collects news from around the world.
AP - California condor flies free for first time in 30 years
🇺🇸 Banking into the wind and then gliding out of sight, a male California condor flew back into the wild after a captive breeding program that helped save North America's largest species of land bird. The 35-year-old bird named AC-4 soared out of his open pen earlier this week at a canyon rim inside the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, in Central California's Kern County. He had been one of just 23 condors left in the world in the 1980s. It was the bird's first free flight since 1985, when a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service team captured him near the same spot. It was part of a last-ditch attempt to stop the extinction of the California condor, which has a wingspan of more than 9 feet. |
.
USA Today - Top U.S. general may seek more troops for Afghanistan
🇺🇸 🇦🇫 Afghanistan's security situation is so tenuous that the top U.S. commander there wants to keep as many U.S. troops there as possible through 2016 to boost beleaguered Afghan soldiers and may seek additional American forces to assist them. Army Gen. John Campbell said in an interview with USA TODAY that maintaining the current force of 9,800 U.S. troops to train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorism raids is vital, and that the scheduled reduction to 5,500 by Jan. 1, 2017, should be put off as long as possible. "My intent would be to keep as much as I could for as long as I could," Campbell said by telephone from Kabul. "At some point it becomes physics. I'm going to have to get them out." |
.