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Overnight News Digest April 20, 2025 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-20
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame,and jck,. 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, JeremyBloom, 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.
BBC
El Salvador offers Venezuela prisoner swap involving US deportees
El Salvador's president has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported by the US and imprisoned in his country - if Venezuela releases the same number of political prisoners. Nayib Bukele appealed directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a post on social media. He said many of the Venezuelan deportees had committed "rape and murder", while Venezuelan political prisoners were jailed only because they opposed Maduro, whose re-election last year is widely disputed. The Venezuelan government argues that it has no political prisoners - a claim rejected by rights groups. In a post on X, Bukele wrote: "I want to propose you [Maduro] a humanitarian agreement calling for the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release... of the identical number from among the thousands of political prisoners that you hold". He also mentioned nearly 50 prisoners of other nationalities, including US citizens, as part of the proposed swap.
AP News
Tornado-producing storm deals deadly weather to Oklahoma and Texas
A slow-moving, active storm system brought heavy rain, large hail and tornadoes to parts of Texas and Oklahoma and left three people dead as severe weather warnings Sunday continue to threaten parts of the south-central and Midwest U.S. On Easter Sunday, communities in Texas and Oklahoma were beginning to assess the damage wreaked by tornadoes. There were 17 reported events Saturday, according to Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. Five were confirmed in south-central Oklahoma, including one that inflicted substantial damage on a small town that was still recovering from a March tornado. The storm also brought heavy rain to a broad swath of north-central Texas across central-eastern Oklahoma, much of which saw 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) accumulate Saturday into Sunday.
AP News
US to withdraw 600 troops from Syria, leaving fewer than 1,000 to help counter IS militants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will withdraw about 600 troops from Syria, leaving fewer than 1,000 to work with Kurdish allies to counter the Islamic State group, a U.S. official said Thursday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet announced publicly. The U.S. troops have been critical not only in the operations against the Islamic State but as a buffer for the Kurdish forces against Turkey, which considers them to be aligned with terror groups. President Donald trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria during his first term, but he met opposition from the Pentagon because it was seen as abandoning allies and led to the resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Al Jazeera
Syria’s first wheat shipment since al-Assad ouster points to recovery
A ship carrying wheat has arrived in Syria’s Latakia port, the first such delivery since former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December, the government said, as it pushes to boost an economy ravaged by nearly 14 years of ruinous civil war. Traders say Syria has this year been largely relying on overland imports from neighbours. Officials of the new government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa say that while imports of wheat and other basics are not subject to sanctions from the United States or United Nations, challenges in securing financing for trade deals have deterred global suppliers from selling to Syria. The Syrian General Authority for Land and Sea Borders said in a statement that the ship carried 6,600 tonnes of wheat. It did not identify the nationality or destination of the boat, but one regional commodity trader told the Reuters news agency it was from Russia.
The Guardian
New figures shed light on US abortion travel as Trump cuts tracking research
For the second year in a row, abortion providers performed more than 1m abortions in the United States in 2024. About 155,000 people crossed state lines for abortions – roughly double the number of patients who did so in 2020, before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for more than a dozen state-level abortion bans to take effect. These numbers, released earlier this week by the abortion rights-supporting Guttmacher Institute, have not changed much since 2023, when the US also performed more than 1m abortions and 169,000 people traveled for the procedure. This lack of change masks a deep geographical divide in the US, as a handful of states have now become major hubs for people seeking abortions. It also suggested that the CDC collect statistics on miscarriages, stillbirths and “treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy)”. These proposals alarmed researchers and raised concerns about patients’ data privacy, especially given the fact that abortion remains a deeply controversial procedure. But given the turbulence of the Trump administration, experts are not sure whether another agency will ultimately take up Project 2025’s recommendations.
NPR
The Justice Department is about to make its case for a Google breakup. Here's what to know
Google is back in court on Monday for the final phase of a landmark antitrust case that may result in its breakup, a decision that would send shockwaves through the tech world and shake up internet search. In 2020, the Justice Department, joined by a group of states, accused Google of illegally stifling competition by paying the makers of web browsers and phones to set Google as their default search engine. Last summer, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta agreed, ruling after a 10-week trial that "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly." he nearly $2 trillion company has said it will appeal — but it can't until this phase of the trial is over. "People don't use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to," Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's Vice President for Regulatory Affairs, said in a statement in December.
Reuters
Dollar tumbles as Fed independence under threat from Trump
SINGAPORE, April 21 (Reuters) - The dollar dived on Monday as investor confidence in the U.S. economy took another hit over President Donald Trump's plans to shake up the Federal Reserve, which would throw into question the independence of the central bank. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Friday that the president and his team were continuing to study whether they could fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, just a day after Trump said Powell's termination "cannot come fast enough" as he called for the Fed to cut interest rates. "Powell does not report directly to Trump, so (Trump) cannot actually fire him. He can only be removed from office under certain procedures which one would think have a higher barrier... but can the president move the cogs and wheels to undermine the perceived independence of the Fed? Sure, he could," said Vishnu Varathan, head of macro research for Asia ex-Japan at Mizuho.
Reuters
Kyiv, half of Ukraine under air raid alerts hours after one-day Russia ceasefire ends
Kyiv and eastern Ukraine under air raid alerts
Warnings come hours after one-day Easter truce ends
Blasts hit city of Mykolaiv, mayor says
Russia and Ukraine had accused each other of violating truce April 21 (Reuters) - Ukraine issued air raid alerts for Kyiv and the country's eastern half as blasts shook the city of Mykolaiv early on Monday, authorities said, hours after the one-day Easter ceasefire declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin came to an end. Both Kyiv and Moscow had accused each other of thousands of attacks that violated the truce that the Kremlin indicated on Sunday would not be extended. Some regions in eastern Ukraine were under air raid alerts starting minutes after midnight on Monday, according to data from the Ukrainian air force, with the alerts gradually extending towards the central regions of the country.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Four Wisconsin residents die in small plane crash in central Illinois
A small plane crash in central Illinois claimed the lives of four people from Wisconsin, multiple agencies said Sunday. On Saturday April 19, around 10:16 a.m., a Cessna C180G airplane struck power lines and crashed in a field in Trilla, not far from the Coles County Memorial Airport, the National Transportation Safety Board said. Four people from Wisconsin — two men and two women — died in the crash, the Coles County coroner's office said. The victims were from Menomonie, Illinois State Police said. The plane was returning from Nashville, Tennessee, when the crash occurred, the coroner's office said.
Washington Post
Travel to the U.S. from almost everywhere is falling under Trump
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