The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series dedicated to chronicling the eschaton. Please add news or other items in the comments.
CBS News
New York Democrats say new effort is needed for Trump's state tax returns after White House "stonewalling"
Citing the White House's "stonewalling" of a request by congressional Democrats to obtain … Trump's tax returns, Democratic lawmakers in New York's state legislature are spearheading a new effort to try to release the president's state tax information to Congress.
"Here you have a president who is stonewalling the U.S. Congress, a co-equal branch of government undertaking its important oversight responsibilities," New York state senator Brad Hoylman told CBSN Thursday. "Lo and behold, we have Donald Trump's tax returns here in the state of New York and we can provide them to Congress if the IRS, if the Treasury Department won't."
Hoylman, who represents a Manhattan district, introduced legislation that would allow the New York Department of Taxation and Finance to send Congress state tax returns requested by three Congressional committees for a "specific and legitimate legislative purpose." He said Mr. Trump's tax returns in New York will have some of the same information found in the president's federal tax returns.
Vox
Some Democrats are wary of going to war with Trump over his tax returns
Donald Trump and House Democrats appear to be headed for a standoff over tax returns that could go on for months — something not every Democrat in the caucus is necessarily on board with.
Some newer moderate members are wary of spending too much energy fighting the White House, adding that they think voters in their districts care more about health care and infrastructure than investigating the president’s finances.
“I think it’s fine for Congress to try to do the job of oversight; that’s part of the job. ... But I personally wouldn’t make it a top priority,” said first-term Rep. Jared Golden, who represents a swing district in Maine.
Los Angeles Times
Supreme Court revisits wedding cakes and same-sex marriages
Wedding cakes and same-sex marriages are back before the Supreme Court, and this time the justices are being asked to rule broadly that the 1st Amendment’s protection of the “free exercise” of religion shields conservative Christians from state civil rights laws. […]
For nearly three decades, the court has followed a rule set down in a 1990 decision written by a conservative hero, the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Rejecting a claim brought by Native Americans who smoked peyote as part of a religious ceremony, Scalia said that the Constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion did not provide a shield against a “neutral and generally applicable law.” In the peyote case, two men had been fired for using an illegal drug.
But with conservative Christians now claiming their religious rights are under assault, the court’s conservatives have shown a renewed interest in the free-exercise clause.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange faces U.S. hacking charge after dramatic arrest in London
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested at Ecuador’s embassy in London early Thursday at the request of the United States, and the Justice Department later said he had been indicted in connection with a computer hacking conspiracy, a dramatic development in the nearly decade-long global saga.
Prosecutors accused Assange of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010, to crack a Defense Department computer password for accessing a vast trove of classified U.S. military and diplomatic material that subsequently was disclosed through WikiLeaks.
It was one of the largest unauthorized releases of classified materials in U.S. history, involving some 250,000 State Department cables, 400,000 reports from the Iraq war and an additional 90,000 reports involving fighting in Afghanistan, according to the indictment
Kamala Harris and other Democrats point to racial gap in care of pregnant black women
[…] Now it has hit the 2020 presidential campaign, with multiple Democrats touting plans to expand healthcare access and address the racism that leads to disparate treatment of white and black patients. […]
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey put forth a measure last year to expand Medicaid coverage for pregnant women. Two other presidential hopefuls, Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, signed on as co-sponsors.
In another bill, Harris proposed providing federal dollars to train medical providers about how racial prejudice affects care. Recent research indicates that it does: One 2015 study surveyed a group of white medical students about physiological differences between white and black people. About half held factually inaccurate beliefs, such as black people having thicker skin, which swayed treatment decisions.
Bloomberg
Ocasio-Cortez Says Conservatives Are Inciting Violence Against the Left
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused conservative activists and a newspaper of inciting violence against a fellow progressive House member, Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar. […]
“We are getting to the point where this is incitement of violence against progressive women of color,” Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, told reporters. “If they can’t figure out how to get it back to policy, we need to call it out for what it is. This is not normal, this is not a normal level of political debate or rhetoric.”
On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that an email by Ohio College Republicans calling her a “domestic terrorist” put her in danger.
Ecuador Says Cops Were Called After Assange Refused to Leave Embassy
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was dragged from his hideout in Ecuador’s London embassy after refusing a request to leave, according to the Andean nation’s government.
Assange was summoned to the office of the ambassador, who notified him that Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno had removed his asylum status, Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Valencia told reporters in Quito.
After Assange refused, the ambassador asked diplomatic police to enter the embassy and escort him out, where he was then arrested by London’s Metropolitan Police, Valencia added.
Trump’s Trade War Is Hurting Farmers, But They Still Think He Can Win It
[…] Spring is supposed to be a time of optimism in rural communities across America. It’s when farmers sow the seeds of prosperity into neat, GPS-calibrated rows and when they pray for just the right amount of rain and sun and for prices to hold up so that when fall approaches, there’s a crop worth harvesting. This year is different. In Washington apple orchards, North Carolina hog farms, and soybean fields along the Mississippi River Basin, the season is filled with doubt. After taking a hit to their bottom line in 2018 of the sort that some say they haven’t seen since the 1980s, farmers in much of the U.S. are hoping for a return to normalcy.
Trump’s determination to upend the global trading system comes at an inconvenient time for one of the nation’s premier export industries. No country has mastered the science of the ever-increasing yield quite like the U.S. has. It’s the world’s leading producer of commodity crops such as soybeans and corn and a major source of apples, beef, pork, and wheat. Agriculture has also been an important backer of successive administrations’ push to seal trade agreements around the world. Pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have spurred agricultural exports, which have grown 170 percent over the past 20 years. […]
Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa
[...] The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon’s Bucharest office, which takes up the top three floors of the Globalworth building in the Romanian capital’s up-and-coming Pipera district. The modern facility stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure and bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon’s presence.
The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as “Taylor Swift” and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording.
Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasn’t Amazon’s job to interfere.
Star Tribune
Wrenching video from Minnesota dairy farmer highlights desperation on the farm
With tempers short, struggling to find ways to save their dairy, Tom Berg and his son Mark had an argument Monday that spilled over from the milking parlor to the barn. There, Tom told his son that, after 40 years in the business, he has less than when he started.
Sitting in a skidloader after the fight, Mark Berg, 26, pulled out his phone, opened up a video app and began to vent. […]
Dairy farming is collapsing a way of life around the country. The median income at a dairy farm in Minnesota dropped by nearly two-thirds last year, from $43,000 to less than $15,000. And one out of 10 Minnesota dairy farmers ceased operations.
Smaller operations, such as the Bergs’, struggle to survive with milk prices hovering around break-even for years. Large-scale operations have emerged with lower costs and high output.
Berg said his parents have been frugal and work hard every day, but it doesn’t matter.
Omaha World-Herald
Interstate 29 route to Kansas City is targeted to reopen in June
Interstate 29 is targeted to reopen in June between Council Bluffs and the Missouri state line, Iowa transportation officials said Thursday.
Officials updated a sometimes-tenuous state of recovery from the March floods. In some cases, the threat of renewed flooding is still present because the earlier floodwaters damaged levees that were in place near Iowa highways, said Mark Lowe, director of the Iowa Department of Transportation.
On I-29, some 4.3 miles of highway and 7 miles of highway shoulders sustained severe damage along a stretch from near Glenwood, Iowa, to Missouri.
Associated Press
Susan Rice says she won’t challenge Republican Sen. Collins in 2020
Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser under President Barack Obama, won’t be challenging Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in 2020.
Rice told former Obama administration official Alyssa Mastromonaco at the 10th annual Women in the World Summit on Thursday in New York that she loves Maine and that her family has deep roots in the state. But she said she decided with her family “that the timing really isn’t right for us.”
Rice tantalized Democrats in October when she expressed interest in Collins’ seat during the contentious confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She said Collins supporting Kavanaugh “felt like betrayal.”
2020 hopeful Kamala Harris says she owns gun for protection
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she owns a gun and called it a “false choice” that the only two gun control options are complete, unrestricted access or a desire to seize everyone’s guns.
The senator from California told reporters after a campaign event in Iowa that she is a gun owner. She says, “I own a gun for probably the reason that a lot of people do: for personal safety.”
The 2020 White House hopeful says that Americans “are being offered a false choice, which suggests you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.”
The Times-Picayune
‘These were evil acts,’ governor says after arrest in burnings of 3 Opelousas black churches
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was joined by federal and state officials Thursday to announce the arrest of a 21-year-old man — the son of a St. Landry Parish sheriff’s deputy — accused of setting fire to three St. Landry Parish churches with predominantly black congregations.
Holden Matthews, of Opelousas, was booked Wednesday (April 10) with three counts of simple arson on religious buildings, which occurred in the Opelousas area within 10 days of each other, from March 26 to April 4. […]
“I don’t know what this young man’s motive was, I don’t know what was in his heart,” Edwards said. "Let’s pray for Mr. Matthews and his family, that God will create... a clean heart.”
Dallas Morning News
UBS hires Jeb Hensarling, the Dallas Republican who chaired U.S. House panel that oversees banking sector
Swiss banking giant UBS has hired Jeb Hensarling, the Dallas Republican who spent his final six years in Congress chairing the committee that oversees the financial sector.
Hensarling will serve as executive vice chairman of the Americas region, based in UBS's Dallas office, the company announced Thursday…
He crusaded for years to defang Dodd-Frank, the 2010 Obama-era rules imposed on Wall Street after the 2008 financial meltdown. He tried unsuccessfully to end the federal role in housing finance, tangling for years with Fannie Mae, and also to defund the Export-Import Bank, which provides financing to U.S. exporters and their customers.
Property tax vote delayed by Texas lawmakers as Senate scrambles to find votes
Whether Texas drastically overhauls its property tax system could come down to one lawmaker -- Sen. Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican.
On Thursday morning, lawmakers in the House and the Senate appeared ready to vote on bills to slow property tax growth for home and business owners by limiting revenue collections from local governments and school districts.
But the plans were scrapped when it became clear that the Senate lacked the votes to bring the bill up for consideration, ostensibly because Seliger, who previously served as a city mayor, would not sign on. […]
The property tax legislation is the priority of top Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who have promised to slow skyrocketing tax bills. But local officials have strongly opposed the plans, saying they would rob city and county budgets of dollars to provide critical services like police and fire protection.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As other Dems wait, Senate’s top brass still seeking to woo Abrams for 2020 run
The Senate’s top Democrat still has his heart set on Stacey Abrams challenging U.S. Sen. David Perdue in 2020. [...]
“I think she’d be a great, great senator and I’ve told her I think she could play a major role in the Senate the minute she got here and how important it was to the country,” Schumer told reporters Thursday.
His comments came as other potential Democratic candidates, including former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, have inched closer to announcing bids of their own.
Georgia’s timber industry makes a power play for state’s energy future
Georgia’s more than 24 million acres of forest produce a bumper crop of branches and other woody scraps. Now, timber industry players want those leftovers to power air conditioning and lights for more of Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers.
Chicago Tribune
Majoring in marijuana: Colleges ramp up training for weed industry jobs as demand for pot grows
Marijuana companies in Illinois are on the prowl for new employees, but experience growing weed in the basement likely won’t fly on a resume.
The bar for entry-level positions is moving higher as marijuana companies grow so fast it is no longer practical to train workers new to the industry. Growers and dispensaries increasingly want employees with academic training. The result: More colleges are starting to offer, for lack of a better term, a degree in growing marijuana.
“You’re going to need somebody who’s got some knowledge (that can) then adapt that to the facility,” said Paul Chialdikas, vice president of sales and marketing at Bedford Grow, which has a cultivation facility in Bedford Park. “Timing is going to be critical for us to grab an employee that has experience. ... We need them now.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker's proposed graduated income tax passes first legislative test
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s effort to shift Illinois from a constitutionally mandated flat-rate income tax to a structure where higher incomes are taxed at higher rates cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday.
The state Senate’s Executive Committee voted 12-5 along party lines to approve a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would allow for a federal-style graduated-rate income tax. It’s the first of many steps necessary before voters can have their say on the issue, which can’t happen until the November 2020 election at the earliest.
Wednesday’s debate showcased the talking points that are already becoming familiar as the state moves toward what likely will be the most expensive ballot measure fight in Illinois history. Pritzker’s Democratic allies argued that the so-called fair tax is the best way to address the state’s many financial challenges without increasing the burden on middle- and working-class taxpayers. Republican opponents countered that they’re the ones trying to protect the middle class from future tax increases.
Detroit Free Press
Chaldeans ask US to block deportation of Iraqis, seek help from VP Pence
Chaldeans and elected officials in metro Detroit are asking the U.S. government to block the deportations of up to 1,000 Iraqi nationals.
After a federal appeals court last week ruled against the Iraqis in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Iraqi-American Christians and their supporters in Congress and the Michigan Legislature are mobilizing to lobby the Department of Homeland Security to halt the removal of the Iraqis with criminal records.
The decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals went into effect on Tuesday, which means many Iraqis could be deported at any time.
USA Today
Former White House counsel Gregory Craig charged with false statements, concealing information
Gregory Craig, who served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, was charged with lying and concealing information from federal authorities in the first case against a prominent Democrat stemming from Russia special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
The charges center on work Craig performed in 2012 on behalf of a pro-Russian political faction in Ukraine, part of an illicit lobbying effort by Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. […]
Craig, 74, is accused of making false statements and concealing information from the Justice Department's Foreign Agents Registration Unit regarding his work for the Ukrainian government. People who lobby on behalf of foreign governments in the USA are required to register with the department. Craig was also charged with repeating those lies to Mueller's investigators in 2017.
'Embarrassingly wrong': Benedict blasted for blaming homosexuality, sexual revolution for church abuse crisis
An open letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict that blames the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis on homosexuality and the sexual revolution of the 1960s is drawing deep criticism from Catholic theologians in the U.S. who call it divisive and "embarrassingly wrong."
"Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms," Benedict writes in a lengthy treatise released Wednesday in his native Germany. "Pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate."
James Bretzke, a theology professor at Marquette University, calls the pedophilia claim puzzling, saying pedophilia has never been accepted by "anyone anywhere close to the cultural mainstream."
The Washington Post
Four Senate Republicans signal opposition to Trump’s plan to put Herman Cain on Federal Reserve Board, all but sinking nomination
A swift defection of at least four Senate Republicans has all but doomed Herman Cain’s chances of winning a seat on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, a striking rebuke to … Trump in his drive to remake the powerful U.S. central bank. [...]
Republicans control 53 votes in the 100-seat Senate, and losing the support of four members means Cain would need help from Democrats, which appears unlikely.
The rapid rejection of Cain — a 2012 GOP presidential candidate — pauses Trump’s effort to remold the central bank into a more political body with outspoken individuals who share his views. It also reflects a growing unease among Senate Republicans with the way Trump has tried to bend the institution to his will in the past six months.
Trump, who once said he ‘loved’ WikiLeaks, claims to know nothing about the group.
Years before his [WTF!] Justice Department charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with conspiracy, Donald Trump praised the website for disclosing damaging information about his political opponents and encouraged his millions of supporters to read the organization’s latest document dumps.
But on Thursday, after the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging Assange for actions stemming from WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of classified diplomatic and military documents, Trump acted as if he’d never heard of the anti-secrecy group.
“I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange.”
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin endorses Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s reelection
Sen. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat who represents a conservative state, offered his support Thursday to Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from a state that tilts left, in her expected 2020 bid for reelection. […]
Democrats consider flipping her seat key to winning the Senate majority. But Manchin, of West Virginia, defended his support for Collins.
“For America to lose someone like Susan Collins would be an absolute shame,” Manchin said during in an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, which airs Friday night. “I feel that strongly about this lady.”
The Guardian
'A walking conflict of interest': ex-oil lobbyist confirmed to lead US interior department
The Senate has voted to confirm David Bernhardt, a former a former oil and gas and water lobbyist, as secretary of the embattled interior department.
Senators voted 56-41 to approve Bernhardt’s nomination to oversee more than 500m acres of public lands and other resources, including national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges. […]
Three Democrats, Senators Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, voted for Bernhardt, as did independent senator Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats.
UK stands down 6,000 no-deal Brexit staff - after spending £1.5bn
The government has stood down an army of 6,000 civil servants who had been preparing for a no-deal Brexit, at an estimated cost of £1.5bn.
The civil servants who had been seconded from elsewhere will now return to their normal duties, but there is no clear role for an estimated 4,500 new recruits after article 50 was extended until Halloween.
More than 16,000 civil servants in total have been working on Brexit.
Katie Bouman: the 29-year-old whose work led to first black hole photo
This week, the world laid eyes on an image that previously it was thought was unseeable.
The first visualisation of a black hole looks set to revolutionise our understanding of one of the great mysteries of the universe. And the woman whose crucial algorithm helped make it possible is just 29 years old.
Katie Bouman was a PhD student in computer science and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when, three years ago, she led the creation of an algorithm that would eventually lead to an image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, some 55m light years from Earth, being captured for the first time.
NBC News
Comey on Barr's 'spying' claim: 'I don't know what the heck he's talking about'
Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he had "no idea" what Attorney General William Barr meant when he testified that he believed the government spied on … Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
"I have no idea what he’s talking about, so it's hard for me to comment," Comey said in response to a question at the Hewlett Foundation's conference. "Maybe the only thing I can say generally is — I think that his career has earned him the presumption that he will be one of the rare Cabinet members who will stand up for things like truth and facts, and institutional values."
He added, "So I still think he’s entitled to that presumption. Language like this makes it harder, but I still think he’s entitled to that presumption. And because I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about, that’s all I can say."
Warren targets big business with $1 trillion 'profits' tax
Companies with profits over $100 million would face new corporate taxes under a proposal released Thursday by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
The 2020 presidential hopeful said her "real corporate profits tax" is aimed at companies that report large annual gains but pay little in taxes thanks to a variety of tax credits and deductions that are available to lower their overall bill.
An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, that was released on Thursday found that the number of publicly held corporations that pay no federal taxes more than doubled last year to 60, thanks in part to the $1.9 trillion tax cut … Donald Trump signed into law…
The senator pointed to Amazon as an example. The company paid no federal taxes on $11.2 billion in income last year, according to ITEP.
Twice as many companies paying zero taxes under Trump tax plan
Taxpayers are scrambling to make last-minute payments due to the Internal Revenue Service in just four days, but many of the country's largest publicly-held corporations are doing better: They've reported they owe absolutely nothing on the billions of dollars in profits they earned last year.
At least 60 companies reported that their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero, or even less than zero, on income earned on U.S. operations, according to an analysis released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The number is more than twice as many as ITEP found roughly, per year, on average in an earlier, multi-year analysis before the new tax law went into effect.
Among them are household names like technology giant Amazon.com Inc. and entertainment streaming service Netflix Inc., in addition to global oil giant Chevron Corp., pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co., and farming and commercial equipment manufacturer Deere & Co.
Deutsche Welle
Brexit delayed until October 31, EU and UK agree
The Brexit deadline was extended to October 31 after British Prime Minister Theresa May accepted an offer from the leaders of the European Union on Thursday.
European Council President Donald Tusk said the extension would allow the UK to "find the best possible solution."
"Tonight the European Council decided to grant the UK a flexible extension of the Article 50 period until the 31st of October. This means an additional six months for the UK," Tusk said in a live press conference following the decision.
You can actually train your "humor muscle"
Our bodies and minds are closely linked. How we think affects how we feel.
That's the central tenet of an American meta study, in which scientists confirm what some of us may have already guessed: people with a smile on their face are happier. They found that our facial expressions — smiling and laughing, for example — can change the way we feel for the better, even if we don't think we have anything to laugh about.
Sometimes this is easier said than done. Personally, when I first encounter the swollen, crumpled version of myself in the mirror in the morning on my way to work, when I get stuck in what feels like the longest traffic jam in the world, and when I come home and realize that I've locked myself out, I usually struggle to find something to laugh about.
Kareen Seidler, research assistant at the German Institute for Humor (it really exists), says it's about our mindset. "If you look for humor, you'll find it," she told DW.
Reuters
Sudan's Bashir ousted by military; protesters demand civilian government
President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan in autocratic style for 30 years, was overthrown and arrested in a coup by the armed forces on Thursday, but protesters took to the streets demanding the military hand over power to civilians.
The ouster of Bashir, 75, followed months of demonstrations against his rule.
In an address on state television, Defence Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, announced a two-year period of military rule to be followed by presidential elections.
He said Bashir was being detained in a “safe place” and a military council would now run the country. He did not say who would head it.
U.S. EPA chief defends big energy projects, says climate not top priority
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a proposal to speed state-level permitting decisions for energy infrastructure projects soon, the agency’s chief told Reuters on Thursday, blasting states that have blocked coal terminals and gas pipelines on environmental grounds. [...]
“We started working on it in advance, so we hope to have something out soon,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview. He was unable to provide a precise timeline.
IMF warns bigger-than-expected China slowdown among risks to global economy
A bigger-than-expected slowdown in China’s economy is among key risks to global growth, International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director Mitsuhiro Furusawa warned, as G20 finance leaders gather to discuss a darkening world economic outlook.
Furusawa said China’s slowdown so far has been moderate and Beijing has the necessary tools to underpin growth, helping keep Asia a key driver of the global economy.
But he warned that uncertainty over China’s growth outlook was among risks to the global economy, as well as the chance of an abrupt tightening of market conditions if Sino-U.S. trade talks take an unexpected turn for the worse.
Slate
New Zealand Parliament Passes Ban on Semi-Automatic Weapons by 119-1 Vote
Less than a month after a deadly mosque shooting by a white nationalist, New Zealand passed a law Wednesday banning the most types of semiautomatic weapons. Parliament voted 119-1 to make permanent what were temporary restrictions imposed in the aftermath of the shooting that killed 50 people in the city of Christchurch. The law covers military-style semiautomatic weapons, like the AR-15, which used in the Christchurch attack as well as in a number of mass shootings in the U.S., including the Parkland school shooting last year.
The rapid legislative change came not just in response to the tragic shooting, but the fact that the weapons used were bought legally and then modified. “I can recall very vividly the moment I knew that we would need to be here, doing what we are doing right now,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country.”
Ars Technica
Limiting climate change could save the US a ton of money
Despite what the world’s least-interesting talking gecko would have you believe, no one likes handing over payments for car insurance. But there’s one thing everyone likes even less: suddenly paying for expensive repairs not covered by your insurance.
Similarly, opponents of action on climate change like to complain about the costs of eliminating fossil fuel emissions. Typically, this implies that the alternative—ignoring climate change—is free. It is not.
A new study by Jeremy Martinich and Allison Crimmins of the US Environmental Protection Agency provides the most detailed estimate yet of the economic costs of climate change in the United States. They found that taking action to reduce emissions could save us at least $200 billion per year by the end of the century.