Are you gearing up to travel for hours to be in the perfect location for the April 8 total solar eclipse in less than a week?
Are you gearing up to travel for hours to be in the perfect location for the April 8 total solar eclipse in less than a week?
Well, cloudy skies may hamper your view in some parts of America, The Washington Post reports, which is sending eclipse enthusiasts into fits of anxiety because the next total solar eclipse for the United States isn't slated until 2044.
"Sometimes the weather gods like to laugh at you," New York City real estate developer Adam Epstein told WaPo.
Epstein is planning to travel to Dallas with friends to be in the path of totality, where you can see the Moon completely block the Sun, casting a shadow that will be about 108 to 122 miles in width, arcing from Texas and all the way to Maine.
Yeah, I'm down in Texas for the eclipse, since I ascertained a long time ago that Upstate New York is notoriously dreary, but deep in the heart of Texas, the skies are not cloudy all day. Well... we'll see. Right now the forecast is for cloud cover, but at least the wife and I and our pint-sized science guy will have a stimulating couple of days along with The Planetary Society, hosted by Bill Nye himself.
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It's yet another milestone in America’s emergence as the world’s top petro state.
The United States sold more liquefied natural gas on the global market than any other country in 2023, surpassing yet another milestone in the nation’s transformation into a fossil fuel superpower.
Drillers across the U.S. broke records for production last year. By December, wells across the lower 48 states were generating nearly 106 billion cubic feet of gas per day.
...Installations of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries hit a record high last year. But so, too, did oil production. The U.S. now “produces more crude than any country, ever,” the EIA announced last month. U.S. exports of crude are soaring.
The judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s upcoming New York criminal trial denied his motion to delay its start until after the US Supreme Court rules on Trump’s presidential immunity claim.
Judge Juan Merchan denied the motion Wednesday calling it untimely and noting Trump’s lawyers had months to file a motion over the issue.
“This Court finds that Defendant had myriad opportunities to raise the claim of presidential immunity well before March 7, 2024,” the order says. “After all, Defendant had already briefed the same issue in federal court and he was in possession of, and aware that, the People intended to offer the relevant evidence at trial that entire time. The circumstances, viewed as a whole, test this Court’s credulity.”
...Former President Donald Trump and the state’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, are encouraging state lawmakers to move legislation that would repeal Nebraska’s 1991 law that divides electors based both on who wins the state and how each candidate performs in its three congressional districts. Republican activists have targeted the law precisely because in recent cycles, including 2020, the Democratic presidential candidate won the Omaha-based 2nd District, giving them an additional Electoral College vote.
Conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk — who sparked a viral online pressure campaign in favor of LB 764 — is expected to appear in Omaha on Tuesday to rally for the bill’s passage. Kirk has encouraged his supporters to contact legislators to move it through committee.
...In elections past, Nebraska’s Electoral College votes were largely immaterial. But this cycle, Biden’s simplest path to reelection has long been seen as winning the old Democratic Blue Wall — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and that Omaha-area district. Doing so would give Biden precisely the 270 electoral votes needed to win, even if he lost the remainder of the battleground states.
The Wall Street Journal poll appears to contain bad news for President Biden in the swing states, with Trump leading Biden on the economy, inflation, and immigration. The cable news talking heads went into overdrive about how this is all terrible news for the incumbent, and horserace, horserace, horserace, which is the only type of campaign coverage that our corporate media knows how to do. No one bothers to look under the hood at this poll.
Simon Rosenberg did, and he posted:
There have been 14 national polls released since late February showing Biden ahead. 14. Many have shown meaningful movement towards him. Even R leaning polls have shown Biden gaining.
Ireland’s agricultural sector faces significant challenges as extreme weather conditions continue to delay potato planting, a critical component of the national economy.
According to the latest weekly potato report from the Irish Farmers Association (IFA), persistent wet conditions have not only hindered this year’s planting efforts in North Dublin and other regions but have raised concerns about a potential market gap in the near future.
...This developing story underscores the intricate relationship between agriculture and climate, highlighting the challenges that unpredictable weather patterns can pose to food security and market stability.
The air tastes putrid. The traffic is terrible. The engines are loud, the oil-stained roadways ugly and antiquated.
This is Autopia, part of Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland, where kids from around the world come to dream about the future.
If anyone could get away with defending the toxic odor, it might be Bob Gurr. He designed the original Autopia cars in the mid-1950s, working closely with Walt himself. He’s proud of what they built together.
But today the 92-year-old Disney legend says the polluting motors need to go.
“Get rid of those God-awful gasoline fumes,” he told me.
Disney is finally preparing to do just that.
...“Showing small children these God-awful, loud, gas-burning cars in Tomorrowland — it tells them that burning gasoline is OK,” Scott said. “Going forward, we cannot have that. Those children need to grow up telling their parents to get an electric car.”
Vermont is on the verge of becoming the first state to try it.
Dozens of cities and states have tried to sue the oil industry for damages related to climate change over the past several years, and so far, none of these cases has been successful. In fact, not one has even made it to trial.
In the meantime, the price tag for climate-related impacts has climbed ever higher, and states are growing more desperate for help with the bill. Out of that desperation, a new legal strategy was born, one that may have a better chance of getting fossil fuel companies to pay up. And Vermonters may be the first to benefit.
It’s called a climate superfund bill, and versions of it are floating through legislative chambers in New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland, in addition to Vermont. Though each bill is slightly different, the general premise is the same: Similar to the way the federal Superfund law allows the Environmental Protection Agency to seek funds retroactively from polluters to clean up contaminated sites, states will seek to bill fossil fuel companies retroactively for the costs of addressing, avoiding, and adapting to the damages that the emissions from their products have caused.
The headline was pure David and Goliath: America's small businesses had finally triumphed in their 20-year litigation campaign against Visa and Mastercard over price-gouging on fees, and V/MC were going to cough up $30B as reparations.
But if you actually delve into that settlement, the victory gets very hollow indeed. Here's the figure that didn't make the headline: as a part of this settlement, the sky-high fees merchants pay to process your credit-card transaction are going up by 25%.
...In other words, the $30b settlement comes from $15b in guaranteed savings and $15b in possible savings, for just five years – while V/MC will continue to charge more than $100b/year in interchange fees.
...The "$30b win" for America's merchants is, in fact, a loss. 20 years of litigation over high fees, and the fees are now much higher. But that loss is surely unevenly distributed. Walmart and Amazon and other retail giants are going to be able to bargain for all kinds of off-the-books rebates, promotions, and other sweetheart deals, meaning that they'll have even more unfair advantages over smaller, more disorganized retailers. That means more of those mom-and-pops will vanish, leaving shoppers with less choice and higher prices – and workers with less choice and lower wages.
The lesson of 40 years of pro-monopoly policy couldn't be clearer: you can either have an economy that is regulated by lawmakers who are at least nominally transparent and democratically accountable, or you can have an economy regulated by totally unaccountable and opaque monopolists. Fail to do the former, and you will always end up with the latter.
The charming village of Lambourn is most associated with show-stopping cakes, its idyllic surrounds being the setting where the Great British Bake Off is filmed.
But residents of the quiet Berkshire village have had to endure a very different kind of show in recent months.
Since December, sewage, sanitary products and other waste materials have been spewing out of drains and flooding on to its streets
...A Thames Water spokesman previously blamed the situation on 'heavy rain' and said: 'We are working hard to keep sewers flowing.'
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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