The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton and the fall of the Republic.
The Washington Post
The United States launched airstrikes against an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq early Friday, responding to a rocket attack on a military base that killed one British and two U.S. service members in a new round of escalating tensions.
The Pentagon said in a statement that U.S. forces hit facilities “across Iraq” linked to Kataib Hezbollah, including storage facilities that housed weapons used in attacks on American and coalition troops.
Alaska announces first coronavirus case; outbreak will soon reach all 50 states, officials say
Alaska, Maine and Wyoming announced their first positive tests for the novel coronavirus, as officials predict that the pandemic’s spread to all 50 U.S. states will come any day.
The latest case reported, a patient in Alaska, involves a foreign national who was traveling through Anchorage International Airport, state officials said. Authorities described the man as an “isolated case” who had contact with few people and sought treatment after noticing his symptoms. […]
As of late Thursday, only Alabama, Idaho and West Virginia had not reported cases.
Ten minutes at the teleprompter: Inside Trump’s failed attempt to calm coronavirus fears
In the most scripted of presidential settings, a prime-time televised address to the nation, … Trump decided to ad-lib — and his errors triggered a market meltdown, panicked travelers overseas and crystallized for his critics just how dangerously he has fumbled his management of the coronavirus.
Even Trump — a man practically allergic to admitting mistakes — knew he’d screwed up by declaring Wednesday night that his ban on travel from Europe would include cargo and trade, and acknowledged as much to aides in the Oval Office as soon as he’d finished speaking, according to one senior administration official and a second person, both with knowledge of the episode.
Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser who has seized control over some aspects of the government’s coronavirus response, reassured Trump that aides would correct his misstatement, four administration officials said, and they scrambled to do just that. The president also told staffers to make sure other countries did not believe trade would be affected, and even sent a cleanup tweet of his own: “The restriction stops people not goods,” he wrote.
Los Angeles Times
Coronavirus: House Democrats, White House close to deal on economic stimulus package
After a day of negotiations and partisan brinkmanship, House Democrats and Trump administration officials were close to reaching agreement Thursday evening on an economic stimulus package to address the widening impact of the coronavirus on American workers and businesses.
The deal — being forged by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin via frequent phone calls — is expected to eliminate insurance co-payments for COVID-19 testing and provide billions of dollars in aid to state and local governments for food programs and unemployment benefits. It is also likely to include assistance for workers dealing with coronavirus who don’t receive sick pay from their employers.
“It’s fair to say we’re close to an agreement, subject to the exchange of paper,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday evening, adding that a vote on the measure would take place Friday, with or without a deal with the White House.
Coronavirus brings stock market its worst day since 1987
Financial markets exercised their own form of social distancing Thursday as they ignored friendly intervention and plunged deeply into bear territory amid coronavirus fears, notching their worst day of trading since the 1987 crash.
Neither an automatic timeout in trading, nor a $1.5-trillion Federal Reserve pledge to sop up the bond market, nor a series of clarifications and reassurances from the Trump administration could stem a selling contagion. The market listened, then spun on its heels and sold. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2,352 points, down about 10%, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq trimming 9.5% and 9.4%, respectively.
ESPN
NCAA tournaments canceled over coronavirus
The NCAA canceled its men's and women's basketball tournaments on Thursday because of the spread of the coronavirus, putting an abrupt end to the season less than a month before champions were to be crowned.
The unprecedented move comes a day after the NCAA announced the games that were scheduled to start next week would go on but be played in mostly empty arenas. That plan was scrapped as every major American sports league from the NBA to MLB put the brakes on its season due to concerns about the pandemic.
MLB suspends spring training, delays Opening Day at least two weeks
Major League Baseball is delaying the start of the 2020 regular season by at least two weeks in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the league announced Thursday.
MLB also said in a statement that spring training games have been suspended, starting at 4 p.m. ET Thursday.
Bloomberg
Trump’s Stock Market Now Worst Since Double-Recession George W. Bush
The return on stocks since Donald Trump’s presidential election win in 2016 has slumped to 24% thanks to the historic rout the past three weeks, undercutting what had been a better-than-average gain for American leaders over the past half century.
That leaves him on course for the worst performance since George W. Bush’s second term, by the metric of total return on the S&P 500 Index. Equity investors saw more than double the returns under Jimmy Carter, who battled stagflation and foreign-policy crises in the late 1970s.
The lack of inflation nowadays means that in real terms, Trump still comes out ahead of Carter, who lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan. But by any measure he’s now well behind the 63% climb in Barack Obama’s second term.
Coronavirus Can Live in Patients for Five Weeks After Contagion
Patients with the new coronavirus keep the pathogen in their respiratory tract for as long as 37 days, a new study found, suggesting they could remain infectious for many weeks.
In yet another sign of how difficult the pandemic may be to contain, doctors in China detected the virus’s RNA in respiratory samples from survivors for a median of 20 days after they became infected, they wrote in an article published in the Lancet medical journal.
The new coronavirus has spread to 118 countries and infected about 125,000 people since first emerging in Wuhan, China, at the end of last year, evading drastic efforts by local authorities and subsequent containment attempts in other nations.
The Guardian
Anger grows at Trump administration's coronavirus testing failures
Anger is mounting in the US over the Trump administration’s failure to test for coronavirus on a scale that could contain the outbreak and mitigate its most devastating impacts.
On Thursday the lack of testing capacity for Covid-19 was recognised in blunt terms by one of the top US officials dealing with the crisis. Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described the current state of affairs as “a failing” at a hearing of the House oversight committee.
From Congress to state capitals across the country, politicians of both main parties have shown rare bipartisan agreement that the pace of federal testing is woefully inadequate. Congress members who were given private briefings by Trump administration officials on Thursday expressed shock and outrage that so far only 11,000 tests have been conducted in a country of 327 million people.
By contrast South Korea, which has been grappling with one of the most severe outbreaks of Covid-19 globally, tests roughly the same number, about 10,000 people, every day. In total, South Korea has tested 230,000 of its 51 million people – 130 times as many per capita as the US.
Revealed: Monsanto’s secret funding for weedkiller studies
Monsanto secretly funded academic studies indicating “very severe impacts” on farming and the environment if its controversial glyphosate weedkiller were banned, an investigation has found.
The research was used by the National Farmers’ Union and others to successfully lobby against a European ban in 2017. As a result of the revelations, the NFU has now amended its glyphosate information to declare the source of the research.
Monsanto was bought by the agri-chemical multinational Bayer in 2018 and Bayer said the studies’ failure to disclose their funding broke its principles. However, the authors of the studies said the funding did not influence their work and the editor of the journal in which they were published said the papers would not be retracted or amended.
Reuters
U.S. judge orders WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning released from prison
Former U.S. Army soldier and WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning was released from prison on Thursday on a judge’s order after being held since May for refusing to testify in an ongoing U.S. investigation of WikiLeaks.
U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered Manning released because the grand jury hearing the case had concluded.
U.S. pork export sales to China fall to lowest ever: USDA
U.S. export sales of pork to China hit their lowest on record in the week ended March 5 even as access to ports improved in the world’s top consumer of pork, the U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA)said on Thursday.
The USDA’s weekly report showed that Chinese buyer cancellations pushed down total export sales to China to negative 45,222 tonnes of pork, the lowest since record keeping began in 2013 and eclipsing the previous record of negative 17,614 tonnes of export sales in the week ended Jan. 2.
AP News
Impact of pandemic stretches from schools to world’s leaders
Schools shut down across much of Europe. Gatherings were canceled or banned from California to Germany. And the coronavirus reached directly into the world’s centers of power Thursday, with politicians in Canada, Brazil, Spain and elsewhere either testing positive for the new virus or putting themselves in quarantine as fallout from the pandemic further upended daily life.
The crisis has wreaked havoc on businesses and financial markets, sending U.S. stocks to their worst losses since the Black Monday crash of 1987. European markets closed with one of the worst days in history.
“We are in a global panic,” said Estelle Brack, an economist in Paris. “We are in the deep unknown.”
Americans adjust to new life, hunker down amid coronavirus
Workers lost their jobs, parents came up with impromptu home lesson plans for children kept home from shuttered schools. Families fretted over dwindling retirement accounts, the health of elderly parents, and every cough and sneeze in their midst.
Millions of people settled into new and disrupted routines Thursday as the coronavirus began to uproot almost every facet of American life. […]
And with the cascade of closures, a new reality set in for American households.
Iran asks for billions in loans as virus death toll climbs
Iran said Thursday it asked the International Monetary Fund for a $5 billion loan to fight the coronavirus, the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that it has sought such assistance, in a staggering admission of how fragile its economy has become amid the epidemic and punishing U.S. sanctions.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the Washington-based IMF should “stand on right side of history & act responsibly” by releasing the funds. He also said the fight against the virus, which has infected more than 10,000 people in Iran and killed hundreds, has been “stymied by vast shortages caused by restrictions,” a reference to the U.S. sanctions.
CNN
Russian election meddling is back -- via Ghana and Nigeria -- and in your feeds
The Russian trolls are back -- and once again trying to poison the political atmosphere in the United States ahead of this year's elections. But this time they are better disguised and more targeted, harder to identify and track. And they have found an unlikely home, far from Russia itself.
In 2016, much of the trolling aimed at the US election operated from an office block in St. Petersburg, Russia. A months-long CNN investigation has discovered that, in this election cycle, at least part of the campaign has been outsourced -- to trolls in the west African nations of Ghana and Nigeria.
They have focused almost exclusively on racial issues in the US, promoting black empowerment and often displaying anger towards white Americans. The goal, according to experts who follow Russian disinformation campaigns, is to inflame divisions among Americans and provoke social unrest.
The Globe and Mail
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau tests positive for coronavirus, Trudeau in self-isolation
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the wife of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has tested positive for the new coronavirus and the couple are isolating themselves for at least 14 days.
The Prime Minister’s Office said late Thursday that Ms. Grégoire Trudeau was feeling well and will remain in isolation for the time being. Mr. Trudeau will self-isolate for 14 days and his office said he would continue to fully assume his duties. He is exhibiting no symptoms, his office said.
Plenty of toilet paper to go around, Canada’s biggest producer says
It has been one of the enduring images of the COVID-19 pandemic: empty toilet paper shelves in stores around the world as fearful citizens stockpile staples for long home stays.
But the head of Canada’s largest producer of toilet tissue says that despite a jump in demand, there’s no shortage of product in Canada.
“We’ve got all the raw material, we’ve got all the assets running, we have all the production, our sites are at full capacity to recover from this spike," said Dino Bianco, chief executive officer of Mississauga-based Kruger Products LP, maker of Cashmere and Purex brand toilet paper, which has a 33-per-cent market share. (Kruger also makes Scotties facial tissues, the market leader in its category, and Sponge Towels paper towels.) “You’re going to see it catch up in days and weeks."
BBC News
Mount Everest: Nepal's government shuts off mountain amid virus outbreak
Mount Everest has shut down for the rest of the expedition season because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Nepal's government announced that it would cancel all climbing permits from 14 March until 30 April. China had already cancelled expeditions from the northern, Chinese-controlled, side of the mountain.
According to the Kathmandu Post, the Nepal earns $4m (£3.1m) by issuing Everest climbing permits every year, aside from wider tourism revenue.
Greenland and Antarctica ice loss accelerating
Earth's great ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica, are now losing mass six times faster than they were in the 1990s thanks to warming conditions.
A comprehensive review of satellite data acquired at both poles is unequivocal in its assessment of accelerating trends, say scientists.
Between them, Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tonnes of ice in the period from 1992 to 2017. This was sufficient to push up global sea-levels by 17.8mm.
The Atlantic
The Chaos Coming for the U.S. Election
Prepare for total chaos. This summer, the Supreme Court will decide whether to completely reshape how the American public elects the president of the United States, and the 2020 election—one of enormous consequence—will be the test run for the new rules.
The general rules for electing the president have been established for centuries: The candidate who receives the most votes in each state wins that state’s electoral votes, and the candidate who wins the most electoral votes becomes president.
But these rules could go out the window when the Supreme Court issues a decision, anticipated by June of this year, on lawsuits out of Colorado and Washington. These cases challenge the constitutionality of legal requirements that presidential electors—the people who physically cast their state’s electoral votes—must vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. The electors bringing these lawsuits argue that the Constitution gives them the right to vote for anyone for president, regardless of the will of the voters in the state they represent.
The Extraordinary Decisions Facing Italian Doctors
Two weeks ago, Italy had 322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could lavish significant attention on each stricken patient.
One week ago, Italy had 2,502 cases of the virus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could still perform the most lifesaving functions by artificially ventilating patients who experienced acute breathing difficulties.
Today, Italy has 10,149 cases of the coronavirus. There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care. Doctors and nurses are unable to tend to everybody. They lack machines to ventilate all those gasping for air.
Vox
The stunning contrast between Biden and Trump on coronavirus
Joe Biden’s speech Thursday afternoon on his plan for the coronavirus pandemic should not have been a remarkable speech. The delivery was adequate. The content was largely in line with what nonpartisan public health officials have been recommending: things like instructing Americans to stay away from large gatherings and proposing measures to surge the country’s testing capabilities.
The overall idea of the speech wasn’t to describe an initiative Biden would implement next January, if elected. It was to draw a contrast with … Trump by showing what he would be doing differently than the current administration if he were president right now.
And indeed, the comparison between Biden’s speech on coronavirus and Trump’s Wednesday night address could not be more revealing.
Gizmodo
Leak Exposes U.S. Navy Sailor as Once-Prolific Recruiter for Neo-Nazi Group
Hate forums and social media platforms have likely made it easier for atomized white supremacists and neo-Nazis to find like-minded individuals, laying the base for a resurgence in far-right organizing and violence. But that’s come with a price: a lengthy online trail that makes it difficult to stay anonymous. Leaks and loose tongues can let slip information that can be paired with open-source intelligence data from publicly available sources, like social media profiles and web accounts operated under real names, public records, and archived websites.
At the center of a recent leak is the neo-Nazi organization Atomwaffen Division, a violent group whose leader, John Cameron Denton, was arrested last month in Montgomery, Texas, for plotting to intimidate journalists by duping armed police into arriving at their homes, according to the U.S. Justice Department. […]
Years before Denton’s arrest, Gizmodo has learned, he appears to have been introduced to Atomwaffen by David Cole Tarkington, a prolific Atomwaffen recruiter who is now a sailor in the U.S. Navy.
CityLab
The New Age of Freeway Revolts
When it comes to the 180,100 lane-miles of paved interstate that ribbon Texas, bigger has always meant better. The North Houston Highway Improvement Project is no exception: It proposes to add 24 miles of freeway along I-45 as well as I-10 and I-610, which encircles downtown Houston, and pack on several additional lanes in the nation’s fourth-largest city.
With this rebuild, the Texas Department of Transportation is making a very familiar promise: These road improvements will ease congestion and shorten commute times. And, like so many gigantic urban highway projects of the past, I-45’s widening will also exact a toll. The construction will take out thousands of residential and commercial structures, thicken air pollution in an already smog-choked corridor, and tear up historic African-American communities. The estimated cost: $7 billion. After 15 years in the making, a final record of decision by TxDOT to break ground is expected this spring.
But Houston voices critical of the I-45 project have been growing louder in recent months. That’s because plans for the cement circus are coalescing at the very moment that this 640-square-mile city is taking a hard look in the mirror.
RVs and an Econolodge Become Makeshift Quarantine Zones
When coronavirus cases first emerged in Washington state in February, King County officials spent $4.5 million in emergency funds to buy an 85-room Econolodge in the greater Seattle area, throwing another $1.5 million on top for renovations.
As the epicenter of one of the largest outbreaks in the U.S., King County anticipated that its hospitals would likely become overwhelmed with a surge of patients. The county needed to make more space to put sick individuals who would need to be isolated but wouldn’t require hospitalization, and for people who don’t have a home to be isolated or quarantined in — like the homeless or those living in shelters.
Motherboard
Why the US Sucks at Building Public Transit
American cities are facing a transportation crisis. There’s terrible traffic. Public transit doesn’t work or go where people need it to. The cities are growing, but newcomers are faced with the prospects of paying high rents for reasonable commutes or lower rents for dreary, frustrating daily treks. Nearly all Americans, including those in cities, face a dire choice: spend thousands of dollars a year owning a car and sitting in traffic, or sacrifice hours every day on ramshackle public transit getting where they need to go. Things are so broken that, increasingly, they do both. Nationwide, three out of every four commuters drive alone. The rate in metro areas is not much different.
“Without an integrated system of transit in our metropolitan areas the great anticipated growth will become a dream that will fail,” predicted Ralph Merritt, general manager of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “because people cannot move freely, safely, rapidly, and economically from where they live to where they work.”
The Daily Beast
Fox News Hosts Downplay Coronavirus, but Network Brass Take It Very Seriously, Memo Shows
As the coronavirus continues to spread worldwide and throughout the U.S., some Fox News hosts have actively downplayed its severity, accusing Democrats and the media of pushing a hoax to undercut … Donald Trump. In stark contrast, Fox News brass is taking the outbreak very seriously.
In a Thursday memo to staff, obtained by The Daily Beast, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and network president Jay Wallace warned employees about the risks of COVID-19, and announced steps the network will take to combat its spread, including telecommuting, reduced in-studio guest bookings, and enhanced office cleanings. […]
While the memo called on employees to keep in mind that viewers trust the network to keep them informed in a time of a growing crisis, many of Fox’s most prominent personalities and hosts have repeatedly downplayed and minimized the risks posed by the virus that has already killed dozens of Americans and more than 4,000 people worldwide.
Could you imagine how screwed we�d be if the person handling all this had once used a private email server
— Ben Wexler (@mrbenwexler) March 12, 2020