Overnight News Digest: Trump Triggered by Truth

The Guardian

Hanau attack reveals 'poison' of racism in Germany, says Merkel

Angela Merkel has said the murder of nine people in a shooting rampage by a suspected rightwing extremist has revealed the “poison” of racism and hate in Germany.

The man, identified as Tobias Rathjen, 43, carried out attacks at two shisha bars in Hanau, a commuter town near Frankfurt, before killing his mother, bringing the death toll to 10, and then himself, police said.

Investigators said he a “deeply racist mindset”, citing a video and a lengthy manifesto he had posted on social media. Authorities said they were treating the attacks as an act of domestic terrorism.

Colorado River flow shrinks from climate crisis, risking ‘severe water shortages’

The flow of the Colorado River is dwindling due to the impacts of global heating, risking “severe water shortages” for the millions of people who rely upon one of America’s most storied waterways, researchers have found.

Increasing periods of drought and rising temperatures have been shrinking the flow of the Colorado in recent years and scientists have now developed a model to better understand how the climate crisis is fundamentally changing the 1,450-mile waterway.

The loss of snow in the Colorado River basin due to human-induced global heating has resulted in the river absorbing more of sun’s energy, thereby increasing the amount of water lost in evaporation, the US Geological Survey scientists found.

The mystery sickness bringing death and dismay to eastern Ethiopia

At first, 23-year-old Khadar Abdi Abdullahi’s eyes began turning yellow. Then the palms of his hands did the same. Soon he was bleeding from his nose, and from his mouth, and his body was swelling all over. Eventually he collapsed with fever. He later died.

A deadly sickness is spreading through villages near a Chinese natural gas project in Ethiopia’s Somali region, according to locals and officials who spoke to the Guardian. Many of Khadar’s neighbours have suffered the same symptoms. Like him, some died.

It is not clear what is causing the sickness, and officials in the federal government in Addis Ababa firmly denied allegations both of a health and environmental crisis in the Somali region, or of any problems relating to large-scale energy projects there.

Mother Jones

Jeff Sessions Hopes You’ve Forgotten What His “Zero Tolerance” Policy Actually Did

In a new ad for his Alabama Senate campaign released last week, Jeff Sessions brags about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy he oversaw as attorney general. The ad touts the policy as proof of Sessions’ ability to “take action” on immigration and includes clips of the May 2018 speech in which he rolled out the policy. It conveniently leaves out the part where Sessions explains that “zero tolerance” meant family separation—that is, separating the children of migrants from their families. […]

In practice, this policy led to the separation of more than 2,700 migrant families at the US southern border, contributing to the massive number of migrant children—nearly 70,000 in all, in 2019—being held in detention centers. As Mother Jones has reported since the crisis began in 2018, many were held in deplorable conditions without access to basic necessities or medical care. Six migrant children have died in federal custody since 2018.

Elizabeth Warren Has No Intention of Letting Up on Michael Bloomberg

If you thought Elizabeth Warren was going to take a deep breath and change the subject after last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas…well, no. Before a packed room of volunteers at her North Las Vegas field office on Thursday, she picked up where she left off by ripping into the billionaire opponent who has given her campaign new life and a sense of urgency. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, she said, had “gagged” the women in his company, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“Last night was a lot of fun and I’ll tell you why,” she said, after an introduction from Reps. Joaquin Castro of Texas and Andy Levin of Michigan. “Because for me it’s about accountability. I have really had it with billionaires—regardless of party—who think that the rules don’t apply to them. Billionaires who think their money buys them something special. So, you know, they can call women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians and when somebody complains, [they] throw a little money at it and then put a gag in the woman’s mouth.”

CNN

Warren reads contract she wrote that would release people from Bloomberg's NDAs

Sen. Elizabeth Warren opened her town hall tonight in Las Vegas addressing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and how he would not release women who signed nondisclosure agreements.

Bloomberg, who faces allegations of sexist and misogynistic behavior, was front and center Wednesday evening at the Democratic debate. In an effort to get these women to come forward, Warren drafted up a release document she shared tonight.

"So I used to teach contract law. And I thought I would make this easy. I wrote up a release and covenant not to sue. And all that Mayor Bloomberg has to do is download it. I'll text it. Sign it. And then the women, or men, will be free to speak and tell their own stories," Warren said tonight.

Warren then read, verbatim, what the document said…

What drives Amy Klobuchar's disdain for Pete Buttigieg

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar first publicly vented her chief frustration with Pete Buttigieg nine months ago in a parking lot in Cresco, Iowa.

He is benefiting from male privilege and wouldn't be treated the same if he were a woman, she said.

"Could we be running with less experience," Klobuchar asked rhetorically of women in an interview. "I don't think so. I don't think people would take us seriously."

The then-South Bend, Indiana, mayor had barely risen to national attention at that point in the Democratic primary fight, but that sentiment -- that Buttigieg had not paid his dues and would be dismissed if he were a woman -- has gnawed at the Minnesota senator ever since.

Politico

Bloomberg quietly plotting brokered convention strategy

Mike Bloomberg is privately lobbying Democratic Party officials and donors allied with his moderate opponents to flip their allegiance to him — and block Bernie Sanders — in the event of a brokered national convention.

The effort, largely executed by Bloomberg’s senior state-level advisers in recent weeks, attempts to prime Bloomberg for a second-ballot contest at the Democratic National Convention in July by poaching supporters of Joe Biden and other moderate Democrats, according to two Democratic strategists familiar with the talks and unaffiliated with Bloomberg.

The outreach has involved meetings and telephone calls with supporters of Biden and Pete Buttigieg — as well as uncommitted DNC members — in Virginia, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and North Carolina, according to one of the strategists who participated in meetings and calls.

Sheldon Adelson to host major Trump fundraiser

Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is throwing his financial might behind President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Adelson, a multi-billionaire who is the Republican Party’s most prominent giver, is slated to host a March 12 fundraiser for Trump at his palatial Las Vegas home, according to two people familiar with the plans. The event is expected to draw large sums for the president’s reelection campaign: Attendees are being asked to give $100,000 to get into the dinner and $250,000 per person in order to sit for a roundtable discussion.

NPR News

Coronavirus: South Korea Says COVID-19 Cases Doubled In 24 Hours

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Korea has doubled in just 24 hours, to 104 from 51, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Many of the new cases of coronavirus are linked to a Christian sect in Daegu, a city in southern South Korea.

Korea's CDC says a woman who became the country's 31st confirmed patient on Feb. 18 had attended services held by a religious group called the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, The Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.

The woman, who was born in 1959, had visited Wuhan, China — where the novel coronavirus was first discovered in December — the KCDC says. It adds that she was reported to have 1,160 contacts – by far the most of anyone on its list of patients.

Israel Is Eager To Annex West Bank Lands, But U.S. Says To Wait for After Election

President Trump's Mideast peace plan was expected to help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instantly fulfill a campaign promise to annex occupied land that Israelis and Palestinians have fought over for more than half a century.

But it didn't go as Netanyahu had hoped.

Trump's plan, announced on Jan. 28, would eventually give major swaths of the West Bank to Israel, but the administration offered a mixed message about the timing. Trump seemed to suggest annexation could happen immediately, while U.S. officials later advised Israel not to annex any land before Israeli elections on March 2.

Ars Technica

Former congressman confirms he offered to broker pardon for Assange

A former California congressman confirmed in an interview with Yahoo News' Michael Isikoff that he did offer to broker a pardon for Julian Assange in exchange for information that would exonerate Russia from the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign organization. Republican Dana Rohrabacher was seeking to prove that the emails were leaked by DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered in July 2016—and were not the product of a hacking campaign by Russian intelligence organizations.

Rohrabacher, who lost his seat in 2018, was a long-time cheerleader in Washington for Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. Using information provided to him directly by the Kremlin, Rohrabacher personally promoted an effort to remove the name of Sergei Magnitsky from the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, an anti-corruption law intended to sanction and punish officials involved in Magnitsky's imprisonment and death. (Magnitsky was a Russian tax lawyer murdered after he decided to testify against Russian Interior Ministry officials who had taken over the investment companies of his client and embezzled 5.4 billion rubles (about $230 million) from the Russian government himself.)

Human activities responsible for more methane emissions than thought

It’s called the “bomb curve”—a drastic spike in the amount of radioactive (but harmless) carbon-14 in the atmosphere, ushered in by the nuclear age. Scientists can sometimes utilize it as a marker in time when it’s captured by something like tree rings, for example. But the bomb curve can also obscure answers by muddying the waters. That includes the question of just how much methane emissions human activities have released.

Different sources of methane emissions, ranging from plant decay in wetlands to bubbling seeps around mud volcanoes, come with different signatures of carbon isotopes. Geological sources of methane are quite old, giving any carbon-14 plenty of time to radioactively decay and disappear. Carbon in methane from recently alive plant material, on the other hand, will still have about the same amount of carbon-14 we find in the atmosphere (where it is continually produced).

Gizmodo

Floods Have Devastated Mississippi, and More Rain Is on the Way

This week, the Pearl River in Jackson, Mississippi crested at 36.67 feet, the river’s third highest crest on record. The deluge devastated the area, flooding the streets and thousands of homes. Entire neighborhoods went underwater, and residents canoed down avenues.

Rainfall soared 400 percent above normal levels for the month so far, driving the flood. According to the Washington Post, Jackson has already seen 19.9 inches of rain this year, the greatest year-to-date rainfall recorded in at least half a century of record-keeping. More than 2,400 homes have already been flooded. It could be weeks until officials know the full effects of the floods, and by then, more floods may be underway.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency on Saturday, and though the evacuation order has since been lifted, worries still remain.

Study Suggests Early Humans Had Even More Interspecies Sex

Before we became the only remaining humans on the planet, Homo sapiens mated with Neanderthals and the closely related Denisovans. New research is now revealing that the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with its own predecessor, a population of “superarchaic” hominids.

This new model suggests a rewritten history of human evolution, and, if it holds, demonstrates that early human species interbred a lot more than scientists initially thought.

“I’m just excited about being able to see this far back in the past,” Alan Rogers, the study’s first author, told Gizmodo. “When I first started working on this stuff... I thought I’d be working on the origin of modern humans. It was a surprise to me that the interesting part of the story is what happened in the middle Pleistocene.”