President-elect

March 16, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

A new civilian president in Myanmar is a compromise choice.

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Belgian police on Tuesday killed a gunman in a raid on a Brussels apartment linked to Islamist militants involved in November's Paris attacks, and two others were on the run, state broadcaster RTBF reported. Belgium's federal prosecutor said earlier one or more suspects had barricaded themselves into an apartment after police had come under heavy weapon fire through a door when carrying out the raid. Belgian media said four police officers were wounded.

Former city and federal officials pointed fingers at one another for failing to protect the 100,000 citizens of Flint, Michigan, from lead-laced water at a congressional hearing Tuesday as Republicans targeted for blame an Environmental Protection Agency executive who resigned as the crisis worsened. Amid withering criticism, Susan Hedman sought to defend the EPA's actions to deal with the contamination in the predominantly African-American city.

After analyzing more than a decade worth of data, an environmental watchdog group reported Monday that it found levels of arsenic in drinking water in 65 rural Texas communities exceeding the actionable threshold, set by the US Environmental Protection Agency, at 10 parts per billion. But there's little agreement over what level of arsenic in water presents a health risk. State health officials advised communities that the water is safe to drink, says the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project in a report. EIP is urging state officials to be more direct about the dangers of arsenic. It points out that states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and Washington tell people not to drink water with more arsenic than 10 ppb.

Myanmar’s parliament elected Htin Kyaw as the country’s new president Tuesday in a watershed moment that ushers the longtime opposition party of Aung San Suu Kyi into government after 54 years of direct or indirect military rule. Htin Kyaw, a longtime confidant of Aung San Suu Kyi, will take office April 1 but questions remain about his position and power. “This is a victory for the people of this country,” Htin Kyaw said in a brief comment to reporters.

Donald Trump will not face charges for inciting a riot in North Carolina, the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, based in Fayetteville announced Monday, after investigating more than 100 incidents at a March 9 rally whose violence was caught on film. Numerous journalists and commentators have worried that Mr. Trump's bombastic style could inspire violence, and see violence at recent campaign events as evidence that their fears are confirmed. "People are responsible for what they do and what they say. Part of our investigation has been looking into those issues," Office attorney Ronnie Mitchell told reporters.

Engineers at MIT have produced a new type of battery that converts chemical energy to electrical energy without using the toxic and flammable chemical components of lithium-ion batteries or fuel cells. In the paper, chemical engineers reported that they have generated electricity by igniting a coiled wire made from heat-conducting carbon nanotubes and coated in combustible sugar to produce an electrical current that travels from one end to the other. The benefit of using this technique instead of current battery technologies is that it is safer, made of a renewable resource, unlike lithium-ion batteries, and has the potential to reduce battery sizes by 20 times, says Michael Strano, a chemical engineering professor and co-author on the paper.

Days of relentless rain storms in California over the weekend are being hailed a “miracle” for replenishing reservoirs and snowpack in a state that has been parched for four years. Knocked down trees, flooding, power outages, and landslides barely dampened the excitement over the influx of water that has restored California’s largest reservoirs and set it on the road to recovery from drought. The largest reservoirs, Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville in Northern California, haven’t been as full since 2013.

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