Welcome to Overnight News Digest, where the usual crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, side pocket, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, jlms qkw, and ScottyUrb, guest editors annetteboardman and Doctor RJ, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with tonight's news. OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, 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 12:00AM Eastern Time.
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From NBC News: From Outsider to Left Out: How Ben Carson's Candidacy Flopped
Just hours after vowing to stay in the race until there was a clear nominee, Dr. Ben Carson all but waved the white flag.
"I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results," the retired pediatric neurosurgeon said in an email to supporters on Wednesday afternoon. Carson said he would skip a Republican presidential debate scheduled for Thursday in Detroit. Carson said he would discuss his plans at greater length Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Just hours after vowing to stay in the race until there was a clear nominee, Dr. Ben Carson all but waved the white flag.
"I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results," the retired pediatric neurosurgeon said in an email to supporters on Wednesday afternoon. Carson said he would skip a Republican presidential debate scheduled for Thursday in Detroit. Carson said he would discuss his plans at greater length Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Carson's acknowledgment of the political reality of his presidential bid —in which he's earned just eight delegates after the results of 15 Republican contests — comes after weeks of arguing until the final hours that despite the slim odds there was still a place for him in the 2016 race for the White House.
From The New York Times: White House Said to Vet Appellate Judge for Supreme Court
President Obama is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a federal appellate judge in Iowa, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, weighing a selection that could pose an awkward dilemma for her home-state senator Charles E. Grassley, who has pledged to block the president from filling the vacancy.
The F.B.I. has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obama’s search to fill the opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The president is expected to make his selection in the next couple of weeks, a decision that could reshape the court for decades but faces heated opposition from Republicans in Congress.
From the Washington Post: The cosmic hunt for Fast Radio Bursts just got a surprising new twist
Last week, scientists reported a huge step in the hunt for mysterious cosmic phenomena known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). But now their results are being called into question by others in the field. Amid that controversy, a new paper has just hit the presses: For the first time ever, they've found an FRB that keeps repeating. Published Wednesday in Nature, the study provides evidence that FRBs come from a source other than the massive star collision suggested by last week's researchers.
FRBs are bright radio flashes that last just a few milliseconds, and until now have never been known to repeat. Scientists believe they might occur thousands of times a day, but to date less than 20 events have been detected. Last week's study – also published in Nature – claimed to have pinpointed the exact origin point of an FRB for the first time ever.
Now some scientists are questioning whether the signal used to track down the galaxy associated with the FRB was actually related to the radio burst at all. And this new study adds another possible point of contention: Based on the apparent age of the galaxy pinpointed in the first study and the strength of the radio burst, researchers had suggested a collision of massive stars as the cause of the mysterious signal.
But massive collisions don't repeat – and now it seems apparent that FRBs can and do.
From the Los Angeles Times: Plane debris found in Mozambique resembles missing Malaysia Airlines jet, U.S. says
Debris that washed up in Mozambique has been tentatively identified as a part from the same type of aircraft as the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a U.S. official said Wednesday.
Photos of the debris discovered over the weekend appear to show the fixed leading edge of the right-hand tail section of a Boeing 777, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. Flight 370, which disappeared two years ago with 239 people aboard, is the only known missing 777.
People who have handled the part, called a horizontal stabilizer, say it appears to be made of fiberglass composite on the outside with aluminum honeycombing on the inside, the official said.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search for the plane in remote waters off Australia's west coast, said the part was expected to be transported to Australia for examination.
From Reuters: U.N. imposes harsh new sanctions on N.Korea over its nuclear programme
North Korea faces harsh new U.N. sanctions to starve it of money for its nuclear weapons programme following a unanimous Security Council vote on Wednesday on a resolution drafted by the United States and Pyongyang's ally China.
The resolution, which dramatically expands existing sanctions, follows North Korea's latest nuclear test on Jan. 6 and a Feb. 7 rocket launch that Washington and its allies said used banned ballistic missile technology. Pyongyang said it was a peaceful satellite launch.
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the sanctions go further than any U.N. sanctions regime in two decades and aim to cut off funds for North Korea's nuclear and other banned weapons programs.
Two council diplomats said on condition of anonymity that the new resolution makes the North Korean sanctions regime even tougher than the Iran sanctions regime that they say led to a decision on Tehran's part to agree to an historic nuclear deal last year that led to most restrictions being lifted in January.
From CBC News: Ex-Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon dies in crash 1 day after indictment
Aubrey McClendon, a natural gas industry titan, was killed when police say he drove his sport utility vehicle "straight into a wall" in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, a day after he was indicted on a charge of conspiring to rig bids to buy oil and natural gas leases in northwest Oklahoma.
Police Sgt. Ashley Peters said 56-year-old McClendon, also a part-owner of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, was the only occupant in the sport utility vehicle when it slammed into a concrete bridge pillar shortly after 9 a.m.
"He pretty much drove straight into the wall," Balderrama said. "The information out there at the scene is that he went left of center, went through a grassy area right before colliding into the embankment. There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct and get back on the roadway and that didn't occur."
McClendon's death follows an announcement Tuesday that he had been indicted by a federal grand jury.
From CNN: Ted Cruz would have dropped out if he lost Texas
Ted Cruz would have seriously considered dropping out of the Republican presidential race had he lost his home state of Texas on Super Tuesday, his campaign's chief strategist told donors Wednesday, and is asking Marco Rubio to do the same should he lose his.
Cruz fell well short of the expectations he himself set for Super Tuesday. But his chief rival in the anti-Donald Trump contest, Rubio, is not faring much better. Now, heading into a critical two-week stretch before the primary in Rubio's home state of Florida, Cruz is aiming to change the narrative, working to sell his own donors and backers on his own viability, which is more in question than ever before given Trump's command of the race.
And in a detailed 30-minute call with several dozen donors, the Cruz strategist, Jason Johnson said that Cruz himself was comfortable stepping aside if he had lost Texas. Cruz won the state handily, although some polls showed a tighter race headed into Election Day. Cruz went into the year anticipating a strong showing in the Southern states on Super Tuesday, but only came away with wins in Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska, and trails Trump by more than 100 delegates.