The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton and the fall of the Republic.
The Guardian
Death toll from Delhi's worst riots in decades rises to 38
The death toll from Delhi’s worst riots in decades has risen to 38, as a political row broke out over the transfer of a judge who criticised the police and government’s handling of the crisis. […]
Justice S. Muralidhar, a Delhi high court judge, sharply criticised the police and called on officers to investigate politicians from Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata party for inciting violence. […
The violence began over a disputed new citizenship law on Monday, which led to clashes between Muslims and Hindus in which hundreds were injured. Many suffered gunshot wounds, while arson, looting and stone-throwing also took place.
Dozens of Turkish soldiers killed in strike in Idlib in Syria
Dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed in an airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province, in a dramatic escalation in the battle for control of the country’s last opposition stronghold.
Turkish officials said at least 33 of its military personnel were killed in the attack on Thursday night. Military sources among moderate and jihadist rebel factions fighting in the northwestern province bordering Turkey said the deaths followed a precision strike on a two-storey building in the village of Balioun.
Biggest cosmic explosion ever detected left huge dent in space
The biggest cosmic explosion on record has been detected – an event so powerful that it punched a dent the size of 15 Milky Ways in the surrounding space.
The eruption is thought to have originated at a supermassive black hole in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which is about 390m light years from Earth.
Simona Giacintucci, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, the lead author of the study, described the blast as an astronomical version of the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980, which ripped off the top of the volcano. “A key difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas,” she said.
Reuters
A Delhi neighborhood divided by a highway and now hatred
The Hindu area of Bhajanpura and Muslim quarter of Chand Bagh face each other across a wide thoroughfare running through the northeastern part of India’s capital, New Delhi.
After days of deadly riots between members of the two communities, neighborhoods that lived happily together for years are now divided by far more than a road.
Mutual fear and suspicion have replaced generally cordial relations, a change that could make it harder to defuse tensions between India’s Hindu majority and its sizeable Muslim minority that have worsened during months of street protests.
Some residents are trying to understand how a peaceful part of the Indian capital became a battleground virtually overnight.
World prepares for coronavirus pandemic
Hopes the coronavirus would be contained to China vanished on Friday as infections spread rapidly around the world, countries started stockpiling medical equipment and investors took flight in expectation of a global recession. […]
With new infections reported around the world now surpassing those in China, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said even rich nations should prepare.
“No country should assume it won’t get cases, that would be a fatal mistake, quite literally,” Tedros said, pointing to Italy, where 17 people have died in Europe’s worst outbreak.
World stocks set for worst week since 2008 as virus fears grip markets
Global share markets were headed for the worst week since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis as investors ditched risky assets on fears the coronavirus would become a pandemic and derail economic growth.
Asian stocks tracked another overnight plunge in Wall Street’s benchmarks on Friday with the markets in China, Japan and South Korea all posting heavy losses. […]
The worsening global threat from the virus prompted investors to rapidly step up bets the U.S. Federal Reserve would need to cut interest rates as soon as next month to support economic growth.
The Washington Post
Trump says he can bring in coronavirus experts quickly. The experts say it is not that simple.
The White House official charged with leading the U.S. response to deadly pandemics left nearly two years ago as his global health security team was disbanded. Federal funding for preventing and mitigating the spread of infectious disease has been repeatedly threatened since … Trump’s election.
Despite the mounting threat of a coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Trump said he has no regrets about those actions and that expertise and resources can be quickly ramped up to meet the current needs.
Former federal officials and public-health experts argue that an effective response to a epidemiological crisis demands sustained planning and investment. While the administration’s response to coronavirus has been criticized in recent weeks as slow and disjointed, people in and outside the White House have warned for years that the nation is ill prepared for a dangerous pandemic.
A method used by fuel companies to avoid polar bear dens before they search for oil or gas works less than half the time, according to a study released Thursday. That failure could pose a grave risk to mothers and their cubs in the dens, which are hidden under ice, if the Trump administration finalizes its plan to expand drilling into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
According to the study published in the journal PLOS One, infrared technology mounted on airplanes missed 55 percent of dens that were known to exist west of the Alaskan refuge off Prudhoe Bay. Oil operators search for the dens to comply with a federal requirement to build roads and facilities at least a mile away from the hibernating bears, whose shrinking populations are designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Since the 1990s, mining operations have used surveillance technology known as FLIR — Forward Looking Infrared — to identify the heat signature of maternal bears that bore as deep as four meters under thick ice to give birth. But FLIR is often disrupted by bad weather that blinds it to dens in some surveys and causes it to falsely identify dens in others.
Boris Johnson threatens to walk away if Europe doesn’t meet his demands in trade talks
Just days before formal trade negotiations are to begin, Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday threatened that Britain would walk away from talks with the European Union in June if its demands for full control over its own rules and laws are not met.
Trade talks between two of the world’s top economies are set to start Monday in Brussels, with 10 teams and 200 negotiators huddling in conference rooms, trying to ink a deal on a vast range of topics, from the trade of goods and services to environmental protections, security, intellectual property, fisheries, workers’ rights and aviation safety.
Vox
America’s crisis of trust and the one candidate who gets it
The biggest problem facing US democracy did not come up at the Democratic debate in Charleston this week. It hasn’t really been discussed in the election at all. But it lurks behind all the more specific issues, an unwelcome presence no one quite wants to acknowledge.
It is simply this: The US is in a period of declining social and political trust. Americans increasingly think the system is rigged and that their fellow citizens don’t necessarily share their basic values and presumptions. This makes them strongly disinclined to invest their hopes in political promises of common good. […]
All the candidates sense the distrust and disengagement on some level. But the candidate most preoccupied with it, with the most developed plans to address it, is Elizabeth Warren.
Wisconsin rejected new gun control laws. Then a mass shooting happened.
Five people were killed Wednesday when a shooter opened fire at the Molson Coors beer company complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. […]
And just hours before the shooting, Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called on lawmakers to push forward legislation aimed at tightening the state’s gun laws.
In response to Evers, “Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, made it clear that Wisconsin’s gun laws would not change under a Republican-controlled Legislature,” USA Today reported, “reminding voters of the longstanding divide that all but ensures deadly incidents like Wednesday’s aren’t going to spur new gun policies anytime soon.”
Los Angeles Times
Lawmakers press health officials on coronavirus preparations
Fearful that more Americans may have coronavirus than is known, senior Trump administration officials told Congress on Thursday they are speeding distribution of testing kits to better assess the risk of a widespread outbreak in the United States.
But the assurances from Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, did not quell lawmakers’ criticism that the White House hasn’t adequately prepared for a potential public health crisis. […]
Further roiling Washington was a White House move to channel all public comments by federal health officials through the vice president’s office. It stoked new concerns that … Trump and his deputies are seeking to withhold crucial information for partisan purposes.
Inside Pete Buttigieg’s last-ditch effort to win black voters in South Carolina
Pete Buttigieg has a serious problem going into South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday: Black people account for about three-fifths of the party’s voters here, but many don’t know who he is, and a vocal share of those who do don’t like him. […]
For most black voters, Buttigieg largely remains a nonfactor among the Democrats on the ballot. All week, since Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, he’s been in a sprint of sorts to catch up — dashing to Columbia, Greenville and Charleston, and planning to be in Sumter and Fairfax on Friday.
South Korea is on the hunt for infections
In the weeks before she was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, South Korea’s Patient No. 31 busily went about her daily life.
The 61-year-old resident of Daegu traveled to Seoul’s bustling Gangnam district to visit her company headquarters. She commuted to her work selling mobile gift certificates, ate her fill at a hotel buffet and went to a traditional medicine clinic after getting into a minor car accident.
Twice, she attended Sunday services at the Daegu branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, where she prayed shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other followers.
Within hours of her positive COVID-19 test on Feb. 18, South Korean authorities released a detailed accounting of her whereabouts and addresses of each location she’d visited.
AP News
Regulators increase PG&E’s wildfire fine to $2.1 billion
California power regulators on Thursday slapped Pacific Gas & Electric with a $2.1 billion fine for igniting a series of deadly wildfires that landed the beleaguered utility in bankruptcy.
The record penalty imposed in an administrative law judge’s decision boosts a previously agreed upon $1.7 billion settlement announced in December. Several consumer groups had protested the settlement as too lenient in light of PG&E’s destruction, and the California Public Utilities Commission agreed after further review.
PG&E officials said they were disappointed by the increased fine after “working diligently over many months with multiple parties” to reach the previous deal.
A year after House vote, Dems challenge McConnell on guns
Frustrated Democrats again lambasted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell Thursday as they marked a year of Senate inaction since the House passed landmark gun control legislation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that Democrats have been here before — complaining about McConnell’s “legislative graveyard” — but she said Democrats were energized to “accelerate a drumbeat” on calls for McConnell to allow a Senate vote on a House-passed bill to expand background checks for gun purchases.
McConnell’s name came up repeatedly at a raucous House ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of the House bill. Speaking a day after a gunman killed five people at a Milwaukee brewery, Pelosi said McConnell was giving new meaning to his self-described nickname as the “grim reaper” of Democratic legislation.
Scars of violence haunt India’s capital after deadly riots
India’s hard-line Hindu nationalists watched anti-government protests centered in Muslim communities for months in anger that finally boiled over in the worst communal rioting in New Delhi in decades, leaving 32 people dead and the Indian capital shell-shocked.
Tensions had been building over a new citizenship law that critics see as a threat to India’s secular society and a way to further marginalize the country’s 200 million Muslims.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi feted … Donald Trump on his first state visit to India, a moment that was supposed to help cement the country’s place on the world stage instead became an embarrassment.
The Oregonian
Oregon House Democrats vote to subpoena missing Republicans
Democrats in the Oregon House took the first step Thursday to compel the return of Republicans who walked out to block a controversial climate change bill.
At a 4 p.m. meeting, Democrats on the House Committee on Rules voted to issue subpoenas to missing House Republicans that would require them to testify before the committee at the Capitol on March 5 regarding the reasons behind their boycott.
“This is unusual, it’s extraordinary action,” committee Chair Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, said in a briefing with reporters after the meeting. "But it’s because of the extraordinary lack of action of the House Republicans not to show up and fulfill their oath to this body ... This cannot become the new normal for the state of Oregon in the legislative branch.”
BBC News
US House passes anti-lynching law over 100 years after first attempt
The US House of Representatives has overwhelming voted to make lynching a federal hate crime in the country. The move comes over 100 years after lawmakers first attempted to criminalise lynching.
The bill - passed with a 410-4 majority - is named after a black teenager whose murder spurred the Civil Rights movement. The Senate passed it in 2018.
The two bills must now be combined before being signed into law by … Donald Trump.
Coronavirus: Outbreak at 'decisive point' as WHO urges action
The coronavirus outbreak has reached a "decisive point" and has "pandemic potential", World Health Organization head Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus says.
His comments come as countries around the world battle to prevent the virus spreading further. For a second day, more cases have been reported outside than inside China.
Iran and Italy have become major centres of infection, with people travelling from there spreading the virus further afield.
The Daily Beast
Trump Spends 45 Minutes With ‘Deep State’ Play Actors Amid Coronavirus Mayhem
One day after briefing the press in an attempt to calm nerves about the spread of the new coronavirus, … Donald Trump spent 45 minutes talking to the lead actors of a low-budget conservative play about the so-called Deep State.
Phelim McAleer, the playwright behind the play FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers, told The Daily Beast that the meeting with Trump had originally been scheduled for just 15 minutes but went 30 minutes longer than that. […]
Trump hasn’t seen the play, according to McAleer, but praised its concept…
ProPublica
The Real Story About Trump’s Latest Attack on the Press
Wednesday was an ominous day for freedom of the press in this country, and I want to tell you why.
You may have heard or seen that … Trump filed a libel suit against the New York Times. Perhaps you weren’t surprised: the president is known to frequently disparage the Times even as he reads it obsessively. Borrowing a page from what I’ve referred to before as a Mount Rushmore of totalitarians, Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, Trump loves to call the press the “enemy of the people.”
But Wednesday’s suit is an important step beyond bluster to try to silence the press using the legal system — and just days after the president announced that he considers himself the country’s “chief law enforcement officer.”
This new lawsuit is a joke under our current constitutional law of libel.
The Atlantic
Earth Has Had a Secret Second Moon for Months Now
This is going to sound preposterous, but I promise it’s true: Earth has another moon.
It is not the kind that will illuminate the night sky. It’s invisible to the naked eye and too tiny to do any classic moon moves, like tugging on the planet’s oceans. But it’s there, orbiting the Earth, accompanying us on our journey around the sun.
A pair of astronomers discovered the miniature moon on the night of February 15. It showed up in the nightly observations of the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded project in Arizona. The survey is designed to study asteroids and comets near Earth, the kind that could potentially menace the planet if they got too close. To Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne, the mystery object appeared as a few pixels of light moving quickly across a dusky, fixed background.
It was a rare admission of wrongdoing from Bernie Sanders. “I’ve cast thousands of votes, including bad votes. That was a bad vote,” Sanders said at the Democratic-primary debate in South Carolina Tuesday night, describing his support for legislation that gave legal immunity to gun manufacturers.
The senator from Vermont’s hallmark has been his consistency as an unbending progressive over four decades in elected office. Yet if Sanders has embodied left-wing purity more than any of the other potential Democratic nominees, gun policy is one area where his record has been far from pristine in the eyes of progressives. […]
Biden, who is fighting for his political life in South Carolina, has been the most aggressive in going after Sanders for his gun-rights votes. Twice Tuesday night, he came close to saying that the senator had blood on his hands. “I’m not saying he’s responsible for the nine deaths ...” Biden began at one point, referring to the 2015 massacre at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel church, across the street from where the candidates were debating.
ABC (Australia) News
The Stranger, Australia's answer to Doctor Who, premieres on ABC iview after decades in the vaults
Way back when Doctor Who's TARDIS was only just taking off, an Australian TV series was exploring the science fiction genre.
The Stranger was Australia's first locally-produced science fiction television show and one of the first Australian series to be sold overseas. It was immediately popular after it first aired on the ABC on April 5, 1964, but has since faded into obscurity.
While Doctor Who developed a cult following over the following decades, The Stranger sat untouched in the ABC's film archives. But thanks to a team of dedicated film archivists, the series will have a new life after being remastered for ABC iview.
Ars Technica
Clarence Thomas regrets ruling that Ajit Pai used to kill net neutrality
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wants a do-over on his 2005 decision in a case that had a major impact on the power of federal agencies and regulation of the broadband industry.
In National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, better known as Brand X, Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion that upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to classify cable broadband as an information service. But in a dissent on a new case, released Monday, Thomas wrote that he got Brand X wrong. Thomas regrets that Brand X gave federal agencies extensive power to interpret US law, a power generally reserved for judges.
"Regrettably, Brand X has taken this Court to the precipice of administrative absolutism," Thomas wrote. "Under its rule of deference, agencies are free to invent new (purported) interpretations of statutes and then require courts to reject their own prior interpretations."
New US coronavirus case from area with quarantined evacuees from cruise, Wuhan
A Northern California resident has contracted the new coronavirus despite having no known exposure through travel or obvious contact to an infected person—a first for the US.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the case late Wednesday, saying, “It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19,” meaning that the virus may be moving through members of the general US public undetected.
“It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected,” the agency said.
It�s official - first room in the Congress named after an African American! #RIPElijahpic.twitter.com/lhhmUZpGkw
— Kurt Bardella (@kurtbardella) February 27, 2020