C/NET
Last year, we experienced both the hottest summer and the hottest year on record, and 2024 isn't showing any chill either. According to a report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, February 2024 was the warmest February ever recorded, as well as the ninth consecutive month to break its own heat record.
Europe saw the brunt of warming in February, with temperatures 3.3 degrees Celsius above the average between 1991-2020.
"February joins the long stream of records of the last few months," C3S director Carlo Buontempo said in the report. "It is not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes. The climate responds to the actual concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so unless we manage to stabilise those, we will inevitably face new global temperature records and their consequences."
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BBC
Ukraine has summoned the Vatican's envoy after the Pope said the country should "have the courage to raise the white flag" against Russia.
Apostolic Nuncio Visvaldas Kulbokas was told Kyiv was "disappointed" by the remarks, the foreign ministry said.
Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine's position on the battlefield was "stabilising" following recent setbacks.
That was despite aid from its allies remaining "significantly limited".
The Pope caused anger in Ukraine when a transcript of an interview with Swiss broadcaster RSI, which is due to be broadcast next week, was released.
BBC
Over the weekend, the violence in the capital Port-au-Prince ramped up once again. Heavily armed gangs attacked the National Palace and set part of the Interior Ministry on fire with petrol bombs.
It comes after a sustained attack on the international airport, which remains closed to all flights - including one carrying Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
He tried to fly back to Haiti from the United States last week, but his plane was refused permission to land. He was then turned away from the neighbouring Dominican Republic too.
Mr Henry is now stuck in Puerto Rico, unable to set foot in the nation he ostensibly leads.
NPR
Scott Elder has a pretty typical morning routine. He wakes up at 7 a.m., drinks coffee and feeds the dogs, Bella (a rat terrier) and Spencer (a Chihuahua). But on Jan. 12, 2022, Elder's routine was interrupted by a concerning phone call.
Elder is the superintendent of Albuquerque Public Schools in New Mexico, and the call came from his district's IT department, saying they had found some sort of computer virus.
He recalls thinking, "Oh, we've got a bug in the system and they found it so they'll just kill it and we'll be done, right?"
The bug was in the student records system. So Elder's IT staff shut that network down. But that meant teachers wouldn't have access to basic information about the almost 70,000 students enrolled in New Mexico's largest school district. Educators couldn't take attendance, wouldn't know children's bus routes and were locked out of grading systems.
NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government on Monday announced rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law that excludes Muslims, weeks before the Hindu nationalist leader seeks a third term in office.
The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to naturalization for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec. 31, 2014. The law excludes Muslims, who are a majority in all three nations.
The law was approved by Indian Parliament in 2019, but Modi's government had held off with its implementation after deadly protests broke out in capital New Delhi and elsewhere. Scores were killed during days of clashes.
Reuters
WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President
Joe Biden sketched his policy vision for a potential second four-year term on Monday, unveiling a $7.3 trillion
election-year budget aimed at convincing skeptical Americans that he can run the economy better than
Donald Trump.
Biden wants to raise taxes by trillions on corporations and high earners, his budget wish-list showed, to help cut the deficit and pay for new programs assisting those who make less cope with high housing and childcare costs.
Congress is unlikely to adopt the measures as proposed.Biden's budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which starts this October, includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28% from 21%, forcing those with wealth of $100 million to pay at least 25% of their income in taxes, and letting the government negotiate to bring more drug costs down.
Reuters
MOSCOW, March 11 (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers have submitted a draft bill to the State Duma that would rewrite a chapter of history by nullifying the Soviet decision in 1954 to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine.
The move appears aimed at establishing a legal basis for Russia to argue that Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which it claims to have annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was never really part of Ukraine to begin with.
The draft, submitted by a lawmaker from each of Russia's two houses of parliament, describes the 1954 handover as arbitrary and illegal because no referendum was held and Soviet authorities had no right to transfer territory from one constituent republic to another without consent.
Al Jazeera
Celebrities, including musicians Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, Poor Things star Mark Ruffalo, and comedian Ramy Youssef, wore red pins at the 96th Academy Awards to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But what is the symbolism behind the pin? Here is what we know about it.
The red pins were distributed by Artists4Ceasefire, a group of celebrities and entertainment industry members who collectively signed a letter late in October asking United States President Joe Biden to demand a ceasefire as well as the safe release of captives in Gaza. The pin design shows a red glossy circle with a hand and a black heart.
“The pin symbolises collective support for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all of the hostages and for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” Artists4Ceasefire said in a press release.
Al Jazeera
Washington, DC – Prominent progressive organisations in the United States are joining together to push back against the political and electoral influence of the country’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
More than 20 advocacy groups launched on Monday a formal coalition dubbed “Reject AIPAC” to organise against what they called AIPAC’s campaign to silence the “growing dissent in Congress” against Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Rejecting AIPAC is a crucial step in putting voters back at the center of our democracy,” the coalition said in a statement.
While individual candidates and organisations have previously criticised AIPAC’s involvement in US election campaigns, the coalition marks a collective and focused effort against the pro-Israel group.
Deutsche Welle
Sweden’s national flag was raised on Monday for the first time at NATO headquarters marking the country's place as the alliance's 32nd member.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Crown Princess Victoria, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg looked on as two soldiers raised the flag among the official circle of national flags at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
"Sweden has taken its rightful place at NATO's table," said Secretary-General Stoltenberg in a statement alongside Prime Minister Kristersson.
Why Sweden joining NATO is significant
Sweden's entry into NATO ends decades of post-World War II neutrality and came after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 upended European security. Its accession was made official last Thursday.
Sweden and neighboring Finland, which had also maintained a policy of military nonalignment, both handed in application letters to join the alliance in May 2022.
Deutsche Welle
For years now, the political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), have been meeting in court on a regular basis. At issue is whether the BfV can legally investigate the party on suspicion of anti-constitutional activities.
Their next face-off will take place at the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Münster on March 12th and 13th.
The AfD is challenging a 2021 ruling that placed it under investigation as a suspected right-wing extremist party. That designation came after the BfV, which previously deemed the AfD a so-called "case of interest," found the party had become increasingly radicalized. The prior label had meant that only publicly available information could be evaluated in determining the AfD's potential threat to democracy.
At that time, the domestic intelligence service could do no more than anyone else: read articles in newspapers and online portals, watch TV reports and videos on the Internet, and listen to speeches by AfD members in front of parliament and at party congresses. But what the BfV observed was enough for it to reclassify the AfD as a "suspected case."
The Guardian, Us
Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “don’t say gay”.
The settlement clarifies what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of the law prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identity themselves LGBTQ+ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms.
Other states used the Florida law as a template to pass prohibitions on classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina are among the states with versions of the law.
The Guardian
Ireland used to take pride in begrudgery – a venerable tradition of belittling success – but Cillian Murphy’s win at the Oscars has ruined that legacy by uniting the country in delight.
The actor’s triumph in Los Angeles prompted a wave of tributes from Michael D Higgins, the president of Ireland, as well as the government, artists, academics, commentators and childhood friends, with no dissenter.
The
Oppenheimer star was lauded for his talent, grace and humility after becoming the first Irish-born actor to win a best actor Academy award – and doing so without acquiring delusions of grandeur.
It helped that before the ceremony Murphy declared that the footballer Roy Keane would always be the most famous Corkman.
The Guardian UK
The Conservative party’s biggest donor told colleagues that looking at Diane Abbott makes you “want to hate all black women” and said the MP “should be shot”, the Guardian can reveal.
Frank Hester, who has given £10m to the Tories in the past year, said in the meeting that he did not hate all black women. But he said that seeing Abbott, who is Britain’s longest-serving black MP, on TV meant “you just want to hate all black women because she’s there”.
He also called all his “foreign” workers together to defend himself against online claims that he had made racist remarks. During this meeting, he said he abhorred racism and told his team their progress would not be “based on the colour of your skin, your ethnicity, where your parents are from”.
However, he also said “we take the piss out of the fact that all our Chinese girls sit together in Asian corner”.
The Guardian, Australia
Older Australians with more wealth should have to pay more for the cost of their aged care, a government-appointed expert panel has recommended, potentially from their superannuation balances.
But the government will not pursue a new levy or tax to pay for rising care costs, including ruling out changes to tax treatment of the family home, after the report of the aged care taskforce urged against such reforms.
In a bid to keep the system sustainable as the proportion of elderly people increases, the group of aged care experts recommended a set of changes in various parts of the system – including phasing out the accommodation deposit that residents are expected to pay and incentives to accept less-wealthy residents – to keep the industry afloat.
New York Times
House Republican leaders are moving this week to pass legislation that would force the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the platform or face being barred in the United States, even after former President Donald J. Trump came out against targeting the popular social media app he once vowed to ban.
Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and the majority leader, said on Monday that the House would try to speed the bill to passage under special procedures reserved for noncontroversial legislation, which require a two-thirds majority for passage. The approach reflected the bill’s growing momentum on Capitol Hill during an election year in which members of both political parties are eager to demonstrate a willingness to be tough on China.
“We must ensure the Chinese government cannot weaponize TikTok against American users and our government through data collection and propaganda,” Mr. Scalise said in his weekly preview of legislation to be considered on the House floor.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.