World's largest 'water battery' is now fully operational as it reaches a historic milestone: 'It's inspiring'
The world's largest "water battery" is fully up and running.
The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station, located just north of Beijing, is fully operational as of the start of 2025. The station took more than 11 years and $2.6 billion to build, PV Magazine reported.
Pumped-storage hydropower stations are known as water batteries because they allow for long-term storage of energy from nearby sources that are renewable but not as constant or predictable. By storing this energy, the power grid is less stressed, resulting in fewer blackouts. The Fengning station supports a nearby wind and solar farm.
With a total capacity of 3.6 gigawatts, the Fengning station supplants one in Bath County, Virginia, as the world's largest, according to the International Hydropower Association.
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, JeremyBloom, and doomandgloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos since 2007, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
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MAGA Republican Harriet Hageman, the woman who defeated Liz Cheney for the Wyoming at-large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, was mercilessly booed and heckled at a Town Hall event Wednesday after she defended Elon Musk and DOGE.
— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) 2025-03-20T18:33:23.266Z
Big money, nuclear subsidies, and systemic corruption
The “largest bribery, money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people and the state of Ohio” came to light during an unexpected press conference in July 2020 in Columbus. Speaking haltingly and carefully, US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio David DeVillers announced “the arrest of Larry Householder, Speaker of the House of the state of Ohio and four other defendants for racketeering. The conspiracy was to pass and maintain a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money.”
Unravelling an intricate web of alleged illegal activities used to launder money, DeVillers broke down the complicated modus operandi of “Company A.” With a gentle smile on his face, he said, “everyone in this room knows who Company A is, but I will not be mentioning the name of Company A because of our regulations and rules. They have not, and no one from that company has as of yet, been charged”.
James Webb Space Telescope sees four giant alien planets circling nearby star (images)
Astronomers have announced that the James Webb Space Telescope has successfully captured its first direct images of carbon dioxide gas on a planet beyond our solar system. The findings are both a testament to the telescope's power in direct imaging and provide valuable insights into how planets form, both within our solar system and across the universe.
The latest James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations focused on the HR 8799 system, which consists of four planets orbiting their host star about 130 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Previous observations have shown four of them are more massive than Jupiter, and are in orbits with periods that range from decades to centuries.
This system has long intrigued astronomers studying planet formation, largely because of its youth — at just 30 million years old, these planets still radiate leftover heat from their births, which JWST was able to observe in wavelengths that tease out the specific gases and other atmospheric details.
I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped
There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.
I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon, a small town in the northernmost part of Canada. I always knew I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I left home early and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I built a career spanning multiple industries – acting in film and television, owning bars and restaurants, flipping condos and managing Airbnbs.
In my 30s, I found my true passion working in the health and wellness industry. I was given the opportunity to help launch an American brand of health tonics called Holy! Water – a job that would involve moving to the US
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🇨🇦🇪🇺 Canada is in advanced talks with the European Union to join the bloc’s new project to expand its military industry, a move that would allow Canada to be part of building European fighter jets and other military equipment at its own industrial facilities, - NYT
— MAKS 24 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T21:24:04.999Z
Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury
A jury in North Dakota has decided that the environmental group Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state nearly a decade ago.
Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based oil and gas company worth almost $70bn, had sued Greenpeace for $300m alleging defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, claiming the organization “incited” people to protest by using a “misinformation campaign”.
Greenpeace, which had denied the claims, said in a statement after the verdict that lawsuits like this were aimed at “destroying the right to peaceful protest”; constitutional rights experts had expressed fears that case could have a wider chilling effect on free speech.
Hubble Telescope spies star-forming cocoons in neighboring galaxy (photo)
Young stars enveloped in a transformative cocoon of gas shine brightly in a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The newborn stars belong to a cluster known as NGC 460, which is located in a region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. NGC 460 is surrounded by a number of other young stellar clusters and varying sized nebulae, which are clouds of gas and dust that fuel new star formation.
Within this region, also known as N83, there are a number of O-type stars, the brightest, hottest and most massive of main-sequence stars (like the sun), which burn hydrogen at their core. O-type stars are rare; there are thought to be just 20,000 of them in the Milky Way, according to a statement from NASA releasing the Hubble image on March 8.
Ex-Ravens and Michigan assistant charged with accessing thousands of college athletes' 'intimate digital photographs and videos'
Former Michigan co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss is facing over 20 federal charges for allegedly hacking into the accounts of thousands of college athletes and students across the country to access their “personal, intimate digital photographs and videos” while he was employed by the school.
Weiss was fired in January of 2023 for alleged computer access crimes and the FBI was confirmed to be involved in an investigation into the allegations in October of that year. Thursday, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced that Weiss had been charged with 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft.
Before working at Michigan under former coach Jim Harbaugh for two seasons, Weiss worked for the Baltimore Ravens under Harbaugh's brother, John. According to federal prosecutors, Weiss began illegally accessing accounts when he was with the Ravens.
