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Overnight News Digest: Joy as bird feared extinct sighted in Madagascar [1]
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Date: 2023-03-02
The Overnight News Digest is a nightly, community series chronicling the day’s news and the American dystopia since 2007.
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Politico
President Joe Biden told Senate Democrats on Thursday that he would not veto a GOP-backed bid to repeal changes to the D.C. criminal code, raising the stakes of an upcoming Senate vote on the proposal. Biden’s plans not to veto, relayed by three attendees at the party meeting, leave Republicans on track to roll back the new D.C. law when the Senate takes up the House-passed measure as soon as next week. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) had already said he will support the disapproval bid, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) backed it on Thursday and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is on an extended leave for health issues, eliminating the margin for error in the 51-49 Senate.
The FBI Desperately Wants to Let Trump Off the Hook
The Atlantic
The way conservatives tell it, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a hive of anti-Trump villainy, filled with agents looking for any excuse to hound the former president with investigative witch hunts. But the thing to understand about Donald Trump’s legal troubles is that they exist not because federal agents are out to get him, but despite the fact that the FBI is full of Trump supporters who would really like to leave him alone. This morning, The Washington Post reported that FBI investigators clashed with federal prosecutors over the decision to search the former president’s residence, where highly classified documents were found despite Trump’s insistence that he had none. “Some of those field agents wanted to shutter the criminal investigation altogether in early June,” the Post reported, adding that FBI agents were “simply afraid” and “worried taking aggressive steps investigating Trump could blemish or even end their careers.” The FBI did not exhibit this worry in 2016, when it publicly announced that it was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified documents, an announcement that, even with all the other mistakes her campaign made, likely cost Clinton the election. That decision was made in part because then-Director James Comey feared that pro-Trump FBI agents would leak the details if he did not announce them publicly. The federal investigation into the Trump campaign, by contrast, was properly kept confidential until after the election. As one agent told the reporter Spencer Ackerman in 2016, “The FBI is Trumpland.”
Trump can be sued over Jan. 6 insurrection, Justice Department says
CBS News
Donald Trump can be sued in civil lawsuits alleging he was responsible for damages incurred during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, the Justice Department said Monday, rejecting Trump's claims that he has absolute immunity from civil action. The legal brief — filed by prosecutors at the request of judges on Washington, D.C.'s federal appeals court — explicitly states that the Justice Department has not determined that Trump should be held liable, either criminally or civilly, for the Capitol breach. Instead, the court documents urge the court to rule that the former president cannot be completely shielded from every action he took as president.
In the Donbas, Russia's vast numbers of troops weigh heavily on Ukraine's defenders
NPR News
[…] Andriy, the team leader, lays out the contents of the dead men's green backpacks on the ground, outside the Ukrainian team's safe house in the country's eastern Donbas region. […] "They were really young, really, really young," says Andriy, referring to the dead soldiers, "none older than 25 years old. They have been provided with nothing." The Russian and Ukrainian armies have burned through many of their best soldiers in the past year of war. Both sides now rely heavily on conscripts. Andriy says the problem is that Russia has far more troops than Ukraine, and even young, inexperienced men like the ones killed last night pose a challenge simply by virtue of their numbers. "The Russian mobilizational reserve is pretty much infinite," says Andriy, "which means that they have the luxury to make mistakes. They can lose a brigade or they can lose a platoon, and some of those people are going to survive and they can share experience with the new conscripts."
Bakhmut on the brink as Ukraine signals retreat
The Hill
Ukrainian officials are signaling a potential retreat from the embattled town of Bakhmut, which would give Russia a symbolic victory and deliver Moscow its largest advance in months but wouldn’t significantly change the dynamic of the wider war, experts told The Hill. A top Ukrainian presidential adviser hinted at a potential withdrawal on Tuesday, telling CNN that Kyiv was weighing the costs and benefits of holding the city. “So far they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back because we’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing,” said Alexander Rodnyansky.
Kyiv denies invading Russia's border and accuses Putin of 'war provocation' Access to the comments
EuroNews & AP
Ukraine has dismissed the Kremlin's claims of attacks by Ukrainian forces on border villages inside Russia on Thursday and says that these are aimed at justifying the Russian invasion just a year after the first anniversary of the war. Russia's Federal Security Service was quoted as saying local forces were tackling Ukrainian saboteurs in the Bryansk region with the Russian state-owned Tass news agency reporting that the Ukrainian saboteurs were holding up to six people hostage. The local governor of the region said the group had fired on a vehicle there, killing one man and wounding a 10-year-old. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the events "acts of terrorism" and has accused Kyiv of opening fire on civilians. But, in a tweet, Mykhaïlo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rejected the claims as a "classic deliberate provocation".
Tycoon Deripaska Warns Russia May Run Out of Money in 2024
Bloomberg via Yahoo!
Billionaire Oleg Deripaska said Russia could find its coffers empty already next year and needs investment from “friendly” countries to break the hold of sanctions on the economy. “There will be no money already next year,” Deripaska said Thursday at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum in Siberia. “We will need foreign investors.” Funds are now running low and “that’s why they’ve already begun to shake us down,” said Deripaska, founder of United Co, Rusal International PJSC, the biggest aluminum producer outside China.
Blinken and Lavrov exchange words at G20
Deutsche Welle
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov spoke briefly on Thursday, in their first face-to-face contact since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The brief encounter occurred during the G20 Foreign Ministers meeting in the Indian capital, New Delhi. "Blinken has asked for contact with Lavrov," Lavrov's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, according to Russia's state news agency TASS. [...] Zakharova downplayed the significance of the talk… and [said] that it had been very brief.
Explainer: China’s increasing role in Russia’s war against Ukraine
The Kyiv Independent
Just days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, China’s leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “friendship without limits,” agreeing there would be no “forbidden areas of cooperation.” Unsurprisingly then, Beijing did not condemn Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, 2022, nor did it join the West in sanctioning Moscow to punish it for its full-scale aggression. Instead, increased trade between the two countries has eased the impact of the Kremlin's banishment from the global financial system — China and Russia hit a new record high in total trade in 2022, reaching $190 billion, according to Chinese customs data.
Lawmakers offer contrasting views on how to compete with China in science
Science
Is investing in research the best way for the United States to compete with China, or would imposing additional sanctions to prevent the rival superpower from stealing U.S. technology be a better strategy? This week, two committees of the U.S. House of Representatives debated those two approaches to dealing with the increasingly tense U.S.-Chinese relationship. Speaking hours apart during hearings on 28 February, Representative Frank Lucas (R–OK), the new chair of the House science committee, and Representative Mike Gallagher (R–WI), who leads the new House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), agreed that the United States can’t afford to lose the technology race with its chief economic and military rival. But Lucas and most Democrats on both panels think the best way for the United States to prevail is to run faster, by providing more funding for research and for training the skilled workforce needed to turn that research into new technologies. In contrast, Gallagher and his Republican colleagues on both panels generally oppose investing more in research and favor hobbling China through trade and other sanctions designed to hinder its access to U.S.-made technology.
Ted Cruz tells CPAC that Fauci should be jailed over COVID-19 ‘lies’ and mandates
The Dallas Morning News
Sen. Ted Cruz demanded prosecution for Dr. Anthony Fauci, telling conservative activists Thursday that the nation’s most prominent public health expert lied about COVID-19′s origin and “destroyed” lives by encouraging closure of schools and businesses and prodding Americans to wear masks and get vaccinated. “He led policies that destroyed peoples’ lives, that hurt tens of millions of kids across this country and destroyed businesses,” Cruz said at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “He elevated politics over science and medicine. … He told millions of Americans lies — willingly, knowingly, glibly.” Cruz has long denounced Fauci as a “despot” who committed perjury at a Senate hearing in May 2021 when he denied that the National Institutes of Health had ever funded “gain-of-function research” at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Georgia Senate squashes Buckhead City rebellion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia Senate put down a pro-Buckhead City rebellion, rejecting legislation Thursday that would have allowed a vote on whether the north Atlanta neighborhood could secede from the rest of the city. It was a disappointment for the supporters of the breakaway movement, which won an incremental victory earlier this week when a tandem of proposals setting up a potential 2024 cityhood referendum cleared a Senate committee for the first time. But those votes also galvanized city and state political leaders, corporate executives and community activists who say it would have irrevocably weakened the region and defied Atlanta’s image as a vibrant, diverse community. The measure failed by a 33-23 vote, with all Democrats in the chamber opposing it along with 10 GOP senators who helped cement its defeat. A vote on a separate cityhood proposal was tabled, but the loss on the first vote was enough to stymie the breakaway effort.
Winter storms ease drought conditions in California, report shows
Los Angeles Times
California’s remarkably wet winter has helped ease drought conditions considerably, with large swaths of the state — including the coast of Humboldt County, much of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada and the Santa Monica Mountains north of Malibu — no longer considered to be in drought, according to federal officials. The latest estimate from the U.S. Drought Monitor, released Thursday, shows almost 17% of the Golden State has exited drought conditions completely, with another 34% now classified as “abnormally dry.” That means less than half of the state remains under drought conditions, which range from moderate to exceptional drought, according to the monitor.
Antarctic sea ice has reached a record low for the year, researchers say
ABC News
Scientists are keeping a close eye on the Antarctic ice shelf as recent activity could soon cause rapid melting and rising sea levels. The sea ice in Antarctica has likely met its minimum extent for 2023, furthering expectations from researchers that continued melting will occur at a record-fast pace, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. On Feb. 21, at the peak of the region's summer, the Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent of 1.79 million square kilometers, or 691,000 square miles -- the lowest sea ice extent on record for the second year in a row, according to the center. This year's minimum extent was about 52,000 square miles lower than in 2022, the researchers said.
Death toll from rail disaster rises to 57 as anger boils in Greece
CNN
Anger in Greece over poor railway safety grew on Thursday as the death toll from one of the country’s worst train crashes in recent years reached 57. Demonstrators poured onto the streets after the head-on collision between a passenger train carrying more than 350 people and a freight train on Tuesday evening in Tempi, near the city of Larissa. Protesters clashed with police in the Greek capital Athens, the Greek transport minister resigned in the wake of the tragedy and a rail workers union is going on strike, accusing the government of “disrespect” in the sector.
The Ohio derailment is spurring Congress to actually do something about train safety
Vox
In the wake of the train derailment and toxic spill in East Palestine, Ohio, last month, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to provide more oversight over railroad carriers and improve industry safety regulations with the aim of preventing future accidents. […] Though both parties have been pointing fingers at each other over the accident, the bill is a compromise among Republican Sens. J.D. Vance (Ohio), Marco Rubio (Florida), and Josh Hawley (Missouri), and Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and Bob Casey and John Fetterman (both of Pennsylvania). The bill has earned praise from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but it’s not clear whether it will get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate or pass the GOP-controlled House.
‘Forever chemicals’ about to get their first US limits
AP News
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose restrictions on harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water after finding they are dangerous in amounts so small as to be undetectable. But experts say removing them will cost billions, a burden that will fall hardest on small communities with few resources. Concerned about the chemicals’ ability to weaken children’s immune systems, the EPA said last year that PFAS could cause harm at levels “much lower than previously understood.” “We as a community of scientists and policymakers and regulators really missed the boat early on,” said Susan Pinney, director of the Center for Environmental Genetics at the University of Cincinnati.
Indigenous community accuses Imperial Oil, Alberta government of covering up industrial leak
The Globe and Mail
For almost a year, water tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, dissolved metals and hydrocarbons has been seeping from tailings at the Kearl oil sands project in Alberta’s north, soaking into muskeg, public lands and waterways that are home to wildlife and fish. Then, last month, a drainage pond at the site overflowed, spilling an estimated 5.3 million litres of industrial wastewater laced with pollutants into the environment. But a local Indigenous community downstream from the site says it was kept in the dark until then. Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam told The Globe and Mail that neither the oil company responsible for the leak nor Alberta’s energy regulator notified him or his council of the extent of the problem, until after the pond overflowed in February onto Crown lands in the remote area about 70 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.
Scientists prove clear link between deforestation and local drop in rainfall
The Guardian
For the first time researchers have proven a clear correlation between deforestation and regional precipitation. Scientists hope it may encourage agricultural companies and governments in the Amazon and Congo basin regions and south-east Asia to invest more in protecting trees and other vegetation. The study found that the more rainforests are cleared in tropical countries, the less local farmers will be able to depend on rain for their crops and pastures. The paper, published in the journal Nature, adds to fears that the degradation of the Amazon is approaching a tipping point after which the rainforest will no longer be able to generate its own rainfall and the vegetation will dry up.
Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’ spark conservation row
Nature
Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad has triggered fear among researchers that she will protect, rather than reduce, a growing population of invasive hippos that threaten the country’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Although she did not directly mention the hippos — a contentious issue in Colombia — Muhamad said during a speech in late January that her ministry would create policies that prioritize animal well-being, including the creation of a new division of animal protection. The hippos escaped from drug-cartel leader Pablo Escobar’s estate after he died in 1993. Left alone, the male and three females that Escobar had illegally imported from a US zoo established themselves in Colombia’s Magdalena River and some small lakes nearby — part of the country’s main watershed. After years of breeding, the ‘cocaine hippos’ have multiplied to about 150 individuals, scientists estimate. […] Researchers have called for a strict management plan that would eventually reduce the wild population to zero, through a combination of culling some animals and capturing others, then relocating them to facilities such as zoos. But the subject of what to do with the hippos has polarized the country, with some enamoured by the animals’ charisma and value as a tourist attraction and others concerned about the threat they pose to the environment and local fishing communities.
‘South Africa’s Eskom Crippled by Corruption’: Experts
Agence France-Presse via Voice of America
Experts report that several South African power stations that are operating under Eskom are at least 45-years old and break down frequently. Experts add that the nation is experiencing record power cuts due to the utility having to cater for over 90 % of the population. […] Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana … admitted Eskom’s woes by highlighting “the debt situation, which is making it difficult to move with speed, in particular upgrading their plants.”
Quake Will Not Delay Elections in Turkey, President Says
The New York Times
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made clear on Wednesday that he does not intend to delay crucial elections in Turkey because of last month’s devastating earthquake, saying they would go ahead as previously announced on May 14. It was the first time the Turkish leader has publicly mentioned a polling date since the catastrophic quake on Feb. 6, which raised questions over whether he would seek to delay the presidential and parliamentary vote. The quake ravaged a large area of southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 51,000 people so far. The number is rising daily.
Toothed whales turned their vocal fry into a hunting superpower
Popular Science
Big news: new genetic evidence shows that the grapevine was domesticated in two locations, and 3000 years earlier than previously thought
Wineanorak
Hold the press: Georgia turns out not to be the origin of the wine grapes widely used today. A significant, large study involving 89 researchers from 23 different institutions, has changed the story of the origin of grapevines. Published in the leading journal Science, the paper from Yang Dong and colleagues show that rather than the grapevine having one domestication centre – previously thought to be the south Caucasus (modern day Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan) some 8000 years ago – there were two contemporaneous domestication events 11 000 years ago, with one in the near east (the Levant; modern day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan) and the other in the Caucasus. But this is the really interesting bit: the domesticated vines from the Levant made their way westwards with human populations and through a series of introgressions (accidental cross-breeding with wild vines) in Europe they gave rise to the Vitis vinifera varieties widely grown today. The domesticated vines from the Caucasus, until now thought to be the progenitors of wine grapes worldwide, gave rise to the varieties currently grown in Georgia and Armenia, and are quite different in origin, although similar selective pressures accompanying domestication have given both groups of wine grapes shared features.
Dusky tetraka: Joy as bird feared extinct spotted in Madagascar
BBC News
Bird lovers are celebrating after a species some feared extinct was spotted alive by scientists for the first time in 24 years. The dusky tetraka is a songbird with a distinctive yellow throat that is native to Madagascar. Three of them have been sighted in a rainforest in the island's north-east, but in an unexpected habitat. The ground-dwelling birds were in thick vegetation near a rocky river - perhaps a good spot to find grubs and insects. "If dusky tetraka always prefer areas close to rivers, this might help to explain why the species has been overlooked for so long," says ornithologist John Mittermeier who managed to take a photo of the rare bird.
Scientists have mapped a secret hidden corridor in Great Pyramid of Giza
Ars Technica
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