The death of a nonbinary teen who collapsed a day after an altercation at a high school in Owasso, Okla., has been ruled a suicide, according to a one-page summary report released Wednesday by the state’s chief medical examiner.
Nex Benedict’s death last month triggered vigils not only in that Tulsa suburb but across the country because the sophomore, who used they/them pronouns, had told family that other students were bullying them in school.
The fight happened Feb. 7. The 16-year-old collapsed at home the next morning and died within hours at a Tulsa hospital. The medical examiner’s report said the teen had antihistamine and antidepressant “combined toxicity” in their system. For manner of death, the box checked was “suicide.”
...The group pointed to reporting from The Washington Post, which showed “that in states with laws that target LGBTQ+ youth, hate crimes against those youth quadruple. … [A]nti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in the statehouse does not stop at those doors, but in fact has real and measurable consequences in the schoolhouse.”
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Whether it’s fewer snow days or disconcertingly hot temperatures, people across the US are experiencing an increasingly common phenomenon: a winter that doesn’t feel wintry.
That’s the result of warmer conditions in many places driven both by climate change and a particularly strong El Nino phenomenon this year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2023-2024 winter is the warmest one it’s seen in the 130 years it’s been tracking. And per the University of Arizona’s National Phenology Network, signs of spring in certain parts of the country — like the budding of the first lilac and honeysuckle leaves — have emerged the earliest they have since the organization began keeping records in 1981.
These developments are part and parcel with the Earth getting hotter overall: per the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2023 was the hottest year on record and the first time the globe surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius of average planetary warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
All this has led to winters getting shorter and appearing decidedly different than they have in years past. As Vox’s Anna North has explained, such changes are jarring emotionally, deeply consequential for the environment, and economically taxing for places that rely on cold-weather activities such as skiing and snowboarding. Shorter, warmer winters are poised to have a host of impacts including throwing off animals’ schedules for hibernation and reducing the size of snowpacks in different places, curbing their water supply.
Donald Trump still hasn’t posted bond in his New York civil fraud trial, but his lawyer Alina Habba wants you to know that it’s definitely not because they’re having trouble getting the massive amount together.
The former president was fined $354 million for committing real estate–related fraud in New York. In order to appeal the decision, Trump must post a bond of the full amount plus interest—which has already reached nearly $467 million, with interest adding $112,000 per day.
When asked Wednesday if Trump was any closer to posting bond, Habba had a very clear answer that raised no red flags.
“Yeah, no, unfortunately I can’t speak to that. That’s privileged, and I am the attorney, one of the attorneys on that case,” Habba told Fox News, stating the obvious.
She quickly pivoted to attacking the case altogether, calling the judgment “absurd” and expressing hope that an appeals court would overturn it.
Don Lemon's partnership with Elon Musk's social media network is over before it began.
X (formerly known as Twitter) ended its commercial partnership with the former CNN anchor shortly after he interviewed the billionaire, the company said Wednesday in a post on the platform. The interview was scheduled to run on the maiden broadcast of "The Don Lemon show" on X on March 18.
X in January announced that Lemon would bring his "unique and honest voice" to the service in three 30-minute episodes per week. The company at the time also unveiled two other news shows featuring former U.S. congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and sports radio host and former ESPN star Jim Rome.
But Musk on Wednesday derided Lemon's approach as "basically just 'CNN, but on social media.'"
X said Lemon is "welcome to publish its content on X, without censorship, as we believe in providing a platform for creators to scale their work and connect with new communities."
As Rep. Andy Kim and First Lady Tammy Murphy battle for coveted county endorsements in the Senate primary, a pattern is taking hold.
When it’s a fair fight, Kim wins. When it’s rigged by the bosses, he loses.
...As for who would be strongest in November, the answer to that is Kim without doubt. He’s better qualified, by a mile. He’s won three times in a district that Trump won twice. He’s a much better speaker, with a more compelling personal story of service. And after his three campaigns, we know that Republicans have already dug deep into his closet. What will they find when they dig into Murphy’s?
“If I’m the Democratic nominee, I could essentially guarantee a win,” Kim says. “I don’t think you can say the same about Tammy.”
...But Kim is leading a revolt against the machines, and he says he knew from the start that Murphy’s position as the wife of the governor would give her a huge advantage at this stage. Come June, he says, he’ll win on the strength of the grassroots voters who are packing his public meetings and giving him standing ovations. They are sick of these machines running the party, he says.
More than twice as many Democrats as Republicans voted early by mail in the race to represent the 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House, a Gothamist analysis of the voter data for the special election found. And about a third more Democrats than Republicans opted for in-person early voting ahead of Election Day.
The high early voting turnout was a key factor in Democrat Tom Suozzi’s victory in the 3rd Congressional District last month. Suozzi, who previously served in Congress, defeated Republican nominee Mazi Pilip by eight points, making the turnout ahead of that snowy Election Day a critical buffer that helped secure his victory.
New York state has seven competitive congressional races that could ultimately decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives, and Republicans in New York are acknowledging that they have an early voting problem that needs to be fixed ahead of November’s elections.
“We had President Trump basically in 2020 telling us not to do early voting, certainly downplaying it, and I think too many Republicans are still caught on that,” said Peter King, a former Republican congressmember from Long Island for three decades.
...The 3rd Congressional District, which stretches from eastern Queens through the northern part of Long Island, was an early bellwether test of early voting and the outweighed influence that casting a ballot ahead of Election Day may have. The district has more active registered Democrats than Republicans, according to state voter enrollment data, but even then, Democrats turned out in greater numbers than expected.
Democrats make up just under 40% of active registered voters but accounted for 44% of in-person early votes and a whopping 55% of early votes by mail, according to Gothamist’s analysis.
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The tech giant’s $650 million deal with Talen Energy has a lot to unpack.
When Talen Energy, which owns a 90% interest in the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Northeastern Pennsylvania, announced it was selling a data center site adjacent to its power plant to Amazon Web Services, it raised some eyebrows in the energy world. The surprise was not because a large tech company made a big deal with a carbon-free power provider, or even that a tech company made a deal to buy power generated by a nuclear power plant. It was because Amazon was making this deal.
Amazon is a massive buyer of renewable power — it claims to be the world’s largest and says it’s responsible for 28 gigawatts of clean energy capacity — signing contracts with new wind and solar projects all over the world.
But a divide has opened up among tech giants when it comes to energy, with Amazon on one side and Alphabet and Microsoft on the other. The difference hinges on how much it matters where and when the new carbon-free power a company buys in order to match its electricity use.
What’s odd about the Talen deal is that it fits awkwardly into either approach, especially Amazon’s. Amazon does not count nuclear towards its renewable power goals, and in any case, it’s not a “new” source of carbon-free power. Instead, it allows Amazon to siphon somewhere between 480 and 960 megawatts of capacity from the 2,500 megawatt plant.
Inside the conspiracy to take down wind and solar power
LAST JULY, a small group of rabble-rousers boarded a trio of powerboats, banners and bullhorns in hand. They were headed for the massive floating construction site of an offshore wind farm 35 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. As the boats motored through the swells, the self-styled activists broke into a chorus of pleas for the wind farm construction to cease—chants likely intended less for the still-faraway workers than for the camera there to capture footage. "Hear this message: We're here to save the whales!" called out a man in a black polo shirt. "If you were a fossil fuel project, you would have been shut down long ago."
That apparent conservation activist was, in fact, an infamous climate change disinformation artist: Marc Morano, who's done more than perhaps any other person to manufacture doubt about global warming. From his perch at Climate Depot, the blog he's run since 2009, Morano has elevated fake climate experts, encouraged the harassment of real climate scientists, and promoted the myth of "global cooling."
..."There is absolutely zero evidence that any of the offshore wind activity has been involved in any of those strandings," says Douglas Nowacek, a professor of marine conservation technology at Duke University. Claims that noise from offshore wind surveys are driving whales into harm's way don't hold water, according to Nowacek—and it bears noting that seismic surveys for oil and gas are far louder. Many of the dead whales have borne signs of ship strikes or entanglement in fishing gear.
A victory for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election could lead to an additional 4bn tonnes of US emissions by 2030 compared with Joe Biden’s plans, Carbon Brief analysis reveals.
This extra 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 would cause global climate damages worth more than $900bn, based on the latest US government valuations.
For context, 4GtCO2e is equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries.
Put another way, the extra 4GtCO2e from a second Trump term would negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years.
Biden is calling on Congress for an additional $8 billion in funding for the program.
The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively with Grist.
The program is modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, launched in 1933 to help the country make it through the Great Depression. The positions with the new corps could range across a number of fields including energy-efficiency installations, disaster response preparedness, recycling, and wildfire mitigation.
The White House plans to officially launch an online platform in April. At first, only a couple of hundred jobs will be posted, but eventually up to 20,000 young people are expected to be hired in the program’s first year. Interested candidates can apply to the positions through the portal, and the majority of the positions are not expected to require experience.
“The American Climate Corps is a story of hope and possibilities,” said Maggie Thomas, a special assistant to the president for climate change. “There’s an incredible demand signal from young people who we see as being put on a pathway to good-paying careers.”
Brilliant yellow flowers are bringing cheer throughout California's Death Valley after being "supercharged" by an atmospheric river that hit the region last month.
The flowers are reminiscent of the superbloom—a phenomenon that can occur in California during the spring months. The massive bloom of wildflowers produces such a stunning view that it draws spectators from around the nation. Last year was the first California superbloom since 2019.
But Patrick Donnelly, the Center for Biological Diversity's Great Basin director, said the yellow flowers currently blooming in the desert aren't part of the massive phenomenon sometimes experienced in the spring.
"This was mostly sun cups (Chylismia brevipes)," he posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday with a picture of the flowers. "They're absolutely enormous, up to 30" tall & around. Biggest I've ever seen. These aren't actually spring wildflowers, they're leftover from the strange post-Hilary bloom last fall & then supercharged by the atmospheric river.”
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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