Unyielding

February 10, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Japan’s capital market jitters add to tail winds facing the world economy.

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Two commuter trains crashed head-on Tuesday in southern Germany, killing ten people and injuring around 90 as they slammed into each other on a curve after an automatic safety braking system apparently failed, the transport minister said. The regional trains collided before 7 a.m. on the single line that runs near Bad Aibling in the German state of Bavaria. Aerial footage shot by APTN showed that the impact tore the two engines apart, shredded metal train cars and flipped several of them on their sides off the rails. The first emergency units were on the scene within three minutes of receiving the call, but with a river on one side and a forest on the other, it took hours to reach some of the injured in the wreckage.

President Obama on Tuesday unveiled a record $4.1 trillion, election-year budget that finances Democratic priorities like education, health care and climate change with new taxes on crude oil, the wealthy and big banks. The progressive wish list, which comes as the nation's long-term fiscal outlook is deteriorating, underscores the initiatives pushed by Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who hope to succeed Obama. Republicans dismissed the proposal as a tax-and-spend exercise.

The chief executive of Australia’s main scientific research agency has announced deep staff cuts to its climate change programs, prompting intense criticism from scientists around the world who say that the new focus on "innovation" and corporate cooperation is a misguided move that will severely limit understanding of how global warming will impact the Southern Hemisphere. In a staff memo sent February 3, Larry Marshall, a former venture capitalist brought on to head CSIRO, wrote that "the question [of climate change] has been answered, and the new question is what do we do about it, and how can we find solutions for the climate we will be living with," according to ClimateWire.

Hong Kong's Lunar New Year celebration descended into chaotic scenes as protesters and police, who fired warning shots into the air, clashed over a street market selling fish balls and other local holiday delicacies, leaving dozens injured and arrested. The violence is the worst in Hong Kong since pro-democracy protests rocked the city in 2014, leaving a growing trust gap between the public and authorities. Activists angered over authorities' attempts to crack down on the food hawkers in a crowded Kowloon neighborhood held running battles with police into the early morning hours of Tuesday.

Parents in a Houston suburb were arrested Monday on suspicion of withholding their Nigerian nanny's pay for two years while she cared for their five children, a snapshot of a nationwide problem that ensnares many live-in domestic workers whose isolation and immigration status make them vulnerable to abuse. The couple from Katy, Texas, are charged with forced labor, withholding documents, visa fraud, and conspiracy to harbor an illegal immigrant. The nanny says that Chudy and Sandra Nsobundu physically and verbally abused her, seized her passport, and had not paid her for two years. She was initially promised $100 per month. The nanny escaped the home last October with help from an anti-trafficking group.

Woodrow Wilson: progressive visionary or unrepentant racist? If the 28th president of the United States were all one or the other, Princeton University would have decided long ago whether to change names and monuments on campus that honor a Princeton alumnus and the Ivy League school's 13th president. But the reality, historians and students agree, is that Wilson was both. So do Wilson's views on race and segregation warrant stripping his name from the campus? Some say it amounts to erasing history and overlooking the positive aspects of his legacy. The debate resonates far beyond the Princeton campus, as many US schools and communities grapple with the complicated legacies of prominent historical figures.

A international team of researchers have discovered two new species of ancient fish. The newly discovered fossils appear to belong to previously unseen varieties of the genus Rhinconichthys, believed to have inhabited the oceans of the Cretaceous Period, about 92 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Rhinconichthys are extremely rare, bony and large-mouthed fish, and previously known by a single species from England. But now the number of that species has tripled, thanks to a new skull discovered in Colorado (R. purgatoirensis) and a reexamined skull from Japan (R. uyenoi).

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