Amna Nawaz:
Mr. Trump has long been a champion of coal. In particular, he’s proposed using coal to meet the growing demand for electricity to power massive data centers required for artificial intelligence.
At least 58 people were killed in the Dominican Republic when a nightclub roof collapsed early this morning; 160 others were injured. Rescue workers drilled through concrete, hoping to find more survivors under the debris. Officials said they presumed many people could still be alive. Politicians, professional athletes and celebrities were attending a merengue concert at the jet-set club when the roof fell in.
One regional governor is among the dead. The cause of the collapse is under investigation.
Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight into today killed some 25 more people, including eight children. Gaza’s Health Ministry says nearly 60 Palestinians are dead from those strikes and others in the past 24 hours. All of this comes as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said today that the U.N.’s capacity to deliver aid in Gaza has been — quote — “strangled.” No aid has been delivered to the Strip since March 2.
And the U.N.’s World Food Program this week received word that the U.S. ended funding to its emergency programs. WFP called that move a death sentence for its efforts to feed many impoverished countries.
The African nation of Congo has repatriated three Americans who were convicted for participating in a failed coup last year. The State Department said they’re back in U.S. custody. Marcel Malanga, the American-born son of the opposition leader who led the coup, Benjamin Zalman-Polun, and Tyler Thompson were sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted last week to life in prison.
Congo’s presidency said they will serve their time in the U.S. The repatriation comes as Congo tries to make a minerals deal with the U.S. in exchange for security support to fight rebel groups.
Instagram will soon roll out more safety measures for its teenage users. The app’s owner, social media giant Meta, announced that Instagram users under 16 won’t be able to livestream or unblur potential nudity in their messages without a parent’s permission. Meta launched a teen accounts program for Instagram with more parental controls back in September amid growing concern over the effects of social media on underage users.
Meta says that teen accounts safeguards will also be extended to Facebook and to its messenger apps.
And scientists believe they have genetically engineered an ancient, extinct species of wolf back into existence, or at least something very close to it. Those adorable snow white pups closely resemble the dire wolf, an animal that’s been extinct for more than 10,000 years. Research scientists from Colossal Biosciences examined the dire wolf genome from ancient fossils.
They rewrote the genetic code of the animal from its closest relative, the gray wolf, to match it, and then bred the pups with domestic dogs as surrogate mothers. They hope their work can pave the way to bring back close copies of other extinct species.
Still to come on the “News Hour”: Republican Senator James Lankford gives his take on the president’s tariffs and the turnaround opportunities he sees in the country; and a man whose blood was used to develop the measles vaccine weighs in on the recent outbreak.
