The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series dedicated to chronicling the eschaton. Please recommend and add stories or items of import or interest.
Reuters
Nineteen U.S. states have introduced bills that would curb freedom of expression and the right to protest since Donald Trump's election as president, an "alarming and undemocratic" trend, U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday.
Concerns for free speech in the United States have risen in part because of the Republican Trump's antagonistic relations with prominent U.S. media, which he has branded "the enemy of the American people" as it has reported on policy missteps and dysfunction in his administration. […]
Maina Kiai and David Kaye, independent U.N. experts on freedom of peaceful assembly and expression respectively, said in a statement that the state bills were incompatible with international human rights law.
"The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech," they said in a statement, calling for action to reverse such legislation.
President Donald Trump declared war on members of his own party on Thursday by threatening the political careers of conservative Republicans who helped torpedo healthcare legislation he backed, but was quickly told the lawmakers will not bow to "bullying." […]
Because Trump faces unified opposition by Democratic lawmakers, he cannot afford to lose many Republicans as he tries to get his legislative agenda through Congress, including healthcare, tax cuts and infrastructure spending. But keeping Freedom Caucus members happy without losing the votes of Republican moderates has proven tough.
A federal court sentenced Brazil's former speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, to more than 15 years in prison on Thursday for corruption, making him the highest-profile political conviction yet in the "Operation Car Wash" scandal.
The former politician's defense team said they would appeal the decision but Cunha will remain imprisoned pending appeal.
Cunha, who drove the successful impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff, was forced from his position as speaker in July and arrested in October on accusations he received millions in bribes from the purchase of an oil field in Benin by state-run oil company Petrobras.
Venezuelan opposition leaders accused President Nicolas Maduro of being a "dictator" and perpetrating a "coup" on Thursday after the pro-government Supreme Court took over the functions of Congress.
Amid international anxiety, Peru's conservative government withdrew its ambassador from Caracas after what it termed a rupture of democracy in the socialist-ruled OPEC nation.
Washington Post
Congressional Republicans are working aggressively to craft an agreement intended to keep the government open past April 28, but their bid to avert a shutdown hinges on courting Democrats wary of President Trump and skirting the wrath of hard-line conservatives and Trump himself.
The murky path forward on government funding sparked unease Wednesday within the business community and at the Capitol, where Republicans speculated that Trump’s request for money to build a wall along the border with Mexico and $30 billion in new defense spending may need to be delayed to avoid a shutdown.
[…]
The decision that burdened Desmond Spencer was one that millions of Americans have faced over the past two decades as the number of people on disability has surged. Between 1996 and 2015, the number of working-age adults receiving disability climbed from 7.7 million to 13 million. The federal government this year will spend an estimated $192 billion on disability payments, more than the combined total for food stamps, welfare, housing subsidies and unemployment assistance.
The rise in disability has emerged as yet another indicator of a widening political, cultural and economic chasm between urban and rural America.
In his carefully calibrated testimony before House appropriators, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price made one thing clear Wednesday: The administration is still intent on dismantling parts of the Affordable Care Act even if Republicans lack the votes to rewrite it. […]
… under intense questioning from Democrats, Price outlined how his department could make insurance plans cheaper by scaling back several federal mandates, including what the ACA currently defines as “essential benefits” in coverage. And he refused to say whether the administration will keep providing cost-sharing subsidies for insurers participating in the federal marketplace. The multibillion-dollar infusion is critical to maintaining the system’s stability, insurers say.
In June, a Belarusan American businessman who goes by the name Sergei Millian shared some tantalizing claims about Donald Trump.
Trump had a long-standing relationship with Russian officials, Millian told an associate, and those officials were now feeding Trump damaging information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Millian said that the information provided to Trump had been “very helpful.”
Unbeknownst to Millian, however, his conversation was not confidential. His associate passed on what he had heard to a former British intelligence officer who had been hired by Trump’s political opponents to gather information about the Republican’s ties to Russia.
BBC News
David Cameron has defended his decision to call a referendum on the EU…
Commenting on the Brexit vote, he said: “I believe and still believe that the fact that we hadn't had a referendum on this issue for 40 years, despite the fact that the European Union was changing ... was actually beginning to poison British politics - it was certainly poisoning politics in my own party.”
Russia tried to hijack the US election through "propaganda on steroids", says a Democratic senator investigating alleged Kremlin political meddling. […]
In the committee's opening remarks, ranking Democrat Mark Warner said "Russia sought to hijack our democratic process" by employing a disinformation campaign on social media.
He described it as "Russian propaganda on steroids... designed to poison the national conversation in America".
Ousted South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been arrested over a corruption scandal that led to her dismissal, officials say.
The former president is accused of allowing her close friend Choi Soon-sil to extort money from companies in return for political favours. Ms Park, who was removed from office earlier this month, denies the claims.
She is the third former president of South Korea to be arrested over criminal allegations, Yonhap reports.
The Guardian
Pastor Jerry Morrell was not playing to his audience. “I was asked if Donald Trump is a man of God,” the evangelical preacher told the congregation of The Way of Holiness church on the outskirts of Buckhannon, West Virginia. “I said: ‘No, I don’t see him as a man of God. Or, at this point, a godly man. I think he’s a man whose heart can be touched by God. I think he may be open to that’.” […]
“Y’all got real quiet when I said that but I have to tell it like it is,” Morrell pressed on. “I’m praying for our president. Let him have the wisdom not to say some things and not to put some things out on Twitter,” he said. “We ask you to set a guard over Mr Trump’s mouth and Twitter”.
On that, there was agreement. Eighty percent of white evangelicals backed Trump for president, but worshippers at The Way of Holiness church were not without their doubts.
Global warming is reshuffling the ranges of animals and plants around the world with profound consequences for humanity, according to a major new analysis.
Rising temperatures on land and sea are increasingly forcing species to migrate to cooler climes, pushing disease-carrying insects into new areas, moving the pests that attack crops and shifting the pollinators that fertilise many of them, an international team of scientists has said. […]
“Human survival, for urban and rural communities, depends on other life on Earth,” the experts write in their analysis published in the journal Science. “Climate change is impelling a universal redistribution of life on Earth.”
After months of behind-the-scenes preparations, Paraguay’s president, Horacio Cartes, has moved to amend the constitution to allow him to be re-elected in 2018, prompting warnings that the country where Alfredo Stroessner ruled for more than 30 years is once again sliding towards dictatorship.
Members of the governing rightwing Colorado party – which has held power for all but four of the past 70 years – joined with several opposition legislators to propose changes to the senate’s procedural rules, a precursor to introducing a re-election bill after a similar attempt was narrowly defeated in August.
“Paraguayans have to go out on to the streets to defend democracy, which is under attack,” Rafael Filizzola, a senator with the leftwing Democratic Progressive Party, told reporters.
Chinese state media has lambasted Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back many Obama-era environmental regulations, with a state-run tabloid saying that: “No matter how hard Beijing tries, it won’t be able to take on all the responsibilities that Washington refuses to take.”
In an editorial highly critical of Trump’s retreat on environmental regulation, the Global Times made it clear Beijing was uncomfortable taking over leadership of the fight against climate change and could not fill the vacuum left by the US.
It made its name by terrorising Earth at the end of the Late Cretaceous, but Tyrannosaurus rex had a sensitive side too, researchers have found.
The fearsome carnivore, which stood 20 feet tall and ripped its prey to shreds with dagger-like teeth, had a snout as sensitive to touch as human fingertips, say scientists.
T rex and other tyrannosaurs would have used their tactile noses to explore their surroundings, build nests, and carefully pick up fragile eggs and baby offspring.
But the snout is thought to have served another purpose. Experts believe that males and females rubbed their sensitive faces together in a prehistoric form of foreplay.
The Sydney Morning Herald
A young Filipino fisherman has returned home after getting lost at sea in a storm and drifting for nearly two months, during which he said his uncle starved to death, before he was rescued by a passing ship near Papua New Guinea.
A smiling Rolando Omongos, 21, told reporters at Manila's airport that he survived on rainwater, raw fish and prayers during his ordeal, which started after he and his uncle set off from southern General Santos city to fish and became separated from fellow fishermen in a storm.
Cyclone Debbie appears to have added another blow to the Great Barrier Reef, hammering a region that had escaped the worst of the coral bleaching over the past 15 months, a senior researcher says.
The slow-moving category four tropical storm, which crossed the north Queensland coast on Tuesday afternoon, is likely to have left a trail of extensive damage to reefs in its path, much like Cyclone Yasi in 2011, said David Wachenfeld, director of reef recovery at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
National Public Radio
Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit President Trump in Palm Beach, Fla., next week, for talks that will likely range from economic to security issues. The first meeting between the two leaders will stretch from April 6-7…
From Beijing, NPR's Rob Schmitz reports:
"China's leadership has become increasingly irritated at being repeatedly told by Washington to rein in North Korea's nuclear and missile programs and by the US decision to install an advanced missile defense system in South Korea.
"Beijing is also suspicious of U.S. intentions in Taiwan, which China claims as its own. Trump angered Beijing in December by taking a phone call from the Taiwanese president and calling into question the one-china policy. He later agreed to honor the policy."
While the political world continues to focus on the machinations of congressional investigations about Russia (which won't have conclusions drawn for months, if not longer) and where health care goes from here, there's another, arguably more important story going on — ramped-up military engagement. […]
Now, it appears Trump is giving the generals more room to run. While some of the tactics are similar to what Obama was doing, there is clearly a ramped-up effort. NPR's Tom Bowman reports that the Trump administration has been more aggressive with increased bombing — some 7,000 allied strikes in the past two months, more than any two-month period since the campaign against ISIS began in 2014. There are more troops fighting now and possibly more to come. Trump promised as many as 30,000 more during the presidential race.
The stepped-up use of American military muscle in multiple conflicts in the Middle East is a risky move by Trump because it is being undertaken without apparent accompanying diplomatic and political strategies for when the conflicts come to an end.
A Mexican state's top law enforcement official has been accused of conspiring to smuggle and sell heroin, cocaine and other drugs, after he was arrested by U.S. agents this week in San Diego. According to an arrest warrant, Nayarit state Attorney General Edgar Veytia used the name "Diablo" and other aliases.
U.S. prosecutors say they'll seek to compel Veytia to forfeit some $250 million if he's convicted.
The New York Times
A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies. […]
Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that he would approve the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank for the first time in more than two decades, despite a request from President Trump last month to hold off on settlement activity.
More than 130,000 people have amassed along this desert highway outside Diffa, Niger — National Route 1. They now call its barren, sandy shoulders home.
All of them have been chased from their villages by Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that kidnaps and kills indiscriminately in a campaign of violence that has lasted eight years. The New York Times spent weeks documenting the stories of people living along this road, interviewing more than 100 residents… clinging to its edges to survive.
The Globe and Mail
The booming medical marijuana business is desperate to expand, so Canada’s cannabis growers are moving into spaces deserted by shrinking industries such as oil and gas and manufacturing.
Bloomberg
Traditional active management is dying, but perhaps not for the reason you might think.
The evidence has piled up in recent years that the vast majority of active managers fail to beat the market net of their fees…
Stock picking isn’t dying because it’s too hard but because it’s too easy.
It’s not just the average stock picker who will be displaced by computers. Even the best pickers will struggle to keep up with the bots. In fact, had smart beta existed 30 years ago, it most likely would have kept pace with -- or even beaten -- the most revered stock pickers.
Australia is close to seizing the global crown for the longest streak of economic growth thanks to a mixture of policy guile and outrageous fortune. But the nation is creaking under the weight of its own success.
While growth is being underpinned by population gains and resource exports to China, failure to spur productivity has meant stagnant living standards and electoral discontent; a property bubble fueled by record-low interest rates has driven household debt to levels that threaten financial stability; and a timid government facing political gridlock could lose the nation’s prized AAA rating as early as May because of spiraling budget deficits.
It’s pretty clear what former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and ex-U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey aren’t doing as part of a defense team hired by a Turkish-Iranian businessman charged with helping Iran evade financial sanctions.
What’s not clear is what they are doing.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ordered lawyers for Reza Zarrab to file a written explanation of Giuliani’s and Mukasey’s roles. Their letter on Thursday didn’t provide much clarity.
As more fans cut the cord and go mobile, the network is busy protecting its cable-TV money machine…
As subscribers leave the network, and often cable altogether, ESPN is stuck with rising costs for the rights to broadcast games. Programming costs will top $8 billion in 2017, according to media researcher Kagan. Most of that money goes to rights fees through deals that extend into the next decade. Last year profits from Disney’s cable networks, of which ESPN is the largest, fell for the first time in 14 years. The dip was small, about half a percent, but nonetheless alarming…
ESPN still towers over its rivals in cable programming. Short of criminal enterprise, few business models in the world have been as lucrative. A typical cable (or satellite) bundle costs about $100 per household. In simplified form, when a customer sends in a monthly payment, the cable company sends a cut to each channel included in this bundle. Some channels get paid more than others, and ESPN gets the most. Carriers pay an average of $7.21 per month for every customer who gets ESPN as part of a bundle, according to Kagan. Fox News, by comparison, gets $1.41; Bravo, 30¢.
Deutsche Welle
The UN refugee agency UNHCR has said that more than 5 million people have fled Syria during its six-year conflict. It called on the international community to do more to help them.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR on Thursday called on countries outside the Middle East to take in more Syrians under long-term resettlement programs, as it announced that the number of Syrian refugees had now passed the 5 million mark. About 20 million people lived in Syria before the outbreak of the war.
Top US officials say that Washington is no longer prioritizing the ouster of Syrian President Assad. The news came as Secretary of State Tillerson was unable to resolve disputes with the US ally Turkey while in Istanbul.
The United States and Turkey were unable to make any headway in their dispute over the role of Kurdish forces in the fight against "Islamic State" (IS) on Thursday during Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's first visit to Ankara.
"Let me be frank: These are not easy decisions," Tillerson said at a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Ordinary Danes should inform the authorities if they suspect food vendors are employing illegal immigrants, Danish Integration Minister Inger Stoejberg has said. The police cannot be everywhere at once, she added. […]
The minister said she "actually would encourage" ordinary Danes to contact the authorities if they notice something strange in their local pizzerias, such as many employees "not speaking Danish at all."