The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton.
The Guardian
'Dinosaur trees': firefighters save endangered Wollemi pines from NSW bushfires
Firefighters have saved the only known natural stand of Wollemi pines, so-called “dinosaur trees” that fossil records show existed up to 200m years ago, from the bushfires that have devastated New South Wales.
The state’s environment minister, Matt Kean, said a specially deployed team of remote area firefighters helped save the critically endangered trees from the giant Gospers Mountain fire.
The pines are in an undisclosed sandstone grove in the Wollemi national park, in the Blue Mountains, about 200km north-west of Sydney. They were thought extinct until discovered 26 years ago.
Welcome to Hawaii's 'plastic beach', one of the world's dirtiest places
Kamilo Beach, located on the south-eastern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island, has been dubbed one of the most plastic-polluted spots on the planet. On a bright day last summer, [Mattie Mae] Larson and fellow members of the Hawaii Wildlife Fund (HWF), a team of conservation volunteers, collected 1,400lb of it.
Hawaii has long evoked images of a remote Pacific paradise, a land of pristine beaches and extraordinary biodiversity. But its unique location has forced the islands to reckon with an unwelcome guest: plastic debris washing up in vast quantities, sullying its waters and threatening its marine life. A 2019 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Hawaiian fish begin eating plastic particles just days after being born.
For Larson and other activists, Kamilo Beach has become ground zero of the crisis.
‘We are still here’: Native Americans fight to be counted in US census
It was the largest rollback of federal lands protections in US history.
When … Donald Trump signed a 2017 executive order that reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante national monuments by nearly 2m acres, he said the move was supported in the state of Utah and by the local county where the monuments were located.
On the ground, however, that opposition didn’t add up. San Juan county, Utah, is majority Native American and includes parts of the Navajo Nation’s and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s reservations – both tribes officially support the protection of Bears Ears. Through gerrymandering, the majority Native county maintained a majority white county commission, where Native views were outnumbered – until last year.
NBC News
Giuliani associate Parnas says Trump 'knew exactly what was going on'
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani who has been implicated in an alleged attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, says, "… Trump knew exactly what was going on."
"He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn't do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president. I have no intent, I have no reason to speak to any of these officials," Parnas, who faces campaign finance charges, told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in an interview that aired Wednesday night.
"I mean, they have no reason to speak to me. Why would President Zelenskiy's inner circle or Minister Avakov or all these people or President Poroshenko meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me. And that's the secret that they're trying to keep. I was on the ground doing their work," Parnas said.
Democrats to investigate 'profoundly alarming' texts that appear to show Yovanovitch surveillance
A House committee chairman said his panel will investigate what he says are "profoundly alarming" text messages that have raised questions about the possible surveillance of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch before she was ousted by the Trump administration last spring. […]
Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that the messages are “profoundly alarming" and “suggest a possible risk" to Yovanovitch’s security in Kyiv before she was recalled from her post.
The Washington Post
House delivers historic impeachment case against Trump to Senate
The House delivered two articles of impeachment to the Senate on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for … Trump’s trial as Republicans rallied behind the idea of parity between the two parties in possibly calling witnesses.
The impeachment managers’ brief ceremonial journey across the Capitol — a month after the House voted to impeach Trump — relinquished Democratic control over a process that is expected to end in the president’s election-year acquittal by the Republican-led Senate. The procession, which solemnly set in motion the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, capped a rancorous day of partisan conflict and heightened the pressure on Senate moderates, whose views on seeking additional evidence after unmitigated stonewalling by the White House will define the scope of Trump’s trial.
Warren-Sanders rift fuels a Democratic split and worries party leaders
An angry split among liberal Democrats broke into the open Wednesday as two prominent presidential candidates exchanged accusations of dishonesty, raising fears among party leaders of a repeat of the internecine bitterness that many Democrats say contributed to … Trump’s victory in 2016.
The dispute simmered all day between Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) over whether he had told her that a woman cannot win the presidency. Social media users identifying themselves as Sanders supporters used snake icons to symbolize Warren’s ostensible duplicity, played up her Republican roots and circulated a #NeverWarren hashtag.
Afghan war plagued by ‘mendacity’ and lies, inspector general tells Congress
The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction told Congress Wednesday that U.S. officials have routinely lied to the public during the 18-year war by exaggerating progress reports and inflating statistics to create a false appearance of success.
“There’s an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue . . . mendacity and hubris,” John F. Sopko said in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The problem is there is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie.”
As an example, Sopko said U.S. officials have lied in the past about the number of Afghan children enrolled in schools — a key marker of progress touted by the Obama administration — even though they “knew the data was bad.” He also said U.S. officials falsely claimed major gains in Afghan life expectancy that were statistically impossible to achieve.
Los Angeles Times
Scientists were stumped when seabirds started dying. Now they have answers
In the fall of 2015, two years into a heatwave in the Pacific Ocean colloquially known as “the Blob,” an unusually large influx of common murres, a small northern seabird, began to wash ashore.
They overwhelmed rehabilitation centers. They stopped laying as many eggs. Their starved carcasses littered the coasts from California to the Gulf of Alaska.
Scientists believe they now know what went wrong. The answer involves the Blob and how it rippled across multiple levels of the marine food web, and it comes amid more reports of rapidly warming oceans.
AP News
Hundreds of migrants advance to Guatemala from Honduras
Hundreds of mainly Honduran migrants started walking and hitching rides Wednesday from the city of San Pedro Sula and later crossed the Guatemala border in a bid to form the kind of migrant caravan that reached the U.S. border in 2018.
But the migrants quickly divided into smaller groups heading to at least two different border crossings. Several said they were unaware of any plan to reqroup later and would just try to make their own way while enjoying the safety of traveling with others.
They arrived in dribs and drabs at the border crossing in El Chinchado throughout the day. Those with documents were allowed to advance into Guatemala. They strung out along the rural highway in groups of about 20, and witnesses on the Guatemala side said the entries had been orderly.
Philippine volcano’s quakes, cracks send more people fleeing
A Philippine volcano belched smaller plumes of ash Thursday but shuddered continuously with earthquakes and cracked roads in nearby towns, which were blockaded by police due to fears of a bigger eruption.
Taal volcano’s crater lake and a nearby river have dried up in some of the signs of its continuing volcanic restiveness. That has prompted army troops and police to block villagers from sneaking back by boats to the volcanic island and nearby towns to retrieve belongings, poultry and cattle.
There have been no reports of deaths or serious injuries from the sudden eruption, which began Sunday, but many houses and farms have been damaged by volcanic ash. The volcano in Batangas province lies more than 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of the capital, Manila.
BBC News
Sir David Attenborough warns of climate 'crisis moment'
"The moment of crisis has come" in efforts to tackle climate change, Sir David Attenborough has warned. According to the renowned naturalist and broadcaster, "we have been putting things off for year after year".
"As I speak, south east Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing," he said. […]
He told me it was "palpable nonsense" for some politicians and commentators to suggest that the Australian fires were nothing to do with the world becoming warmer.
"We know perfectly well," he said, that human activity is behind the heating of the planet.
Epstein 'abuse' revealed in Virgin Islands lawsuit
Financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused girls as young as 12 on his private islands, the US Virgin Islands prosecutor has claimed.
Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial for abuse dating back to 2005, is alleged to have trafficked girls as recently as 2018.
The lawsuit against his estate says the girls were "lured and recruited" to his Caribbean home and forced into sex. This is the first lawsuit filed against Epstein in the US Virgin Islands.
Ars Technica
FBI arrests man suspected of orchestrating dozens of “swatting” calls
xThe US government has criminally charged a Virginia man for helping to organize dozens of "swatting" attacks and bomb threats made against a variety of targets in the United States and Canada. The man allegedly belonged to a group that coordinated via IRC and Tor hidden services to target prominent gamers, journalists, and government officials.
The group's online chats were often racist, with comments suggesting antipathy toward Jews and black people. In one case, the group made a fake bomb threat to the Alfred Street Baptist Church, a predominantly African American church in Alexandria, Virginia.
Security reporter Brian Krebs was one of the first to report on the arrest of defendant John William Kirby Kelley. Krebs was the target of a swatting call he believes was organized by the group.
This interview should serve as a warning to Republicans in the Senate:You don't even know yet what you're covering up.
— Kate Brannen (@K8brannen) January 16, 2020