curated news excerpts & citations
Tripti Lahiri, Krishna Pokharel and Emma Brown @ WSJ: How a Tsunami Was Unleashed at 17,000 Feet, Shattering Lives Below
RANGPO FOREST VILLAGE, India—Far from human eyes, nestled in the Himalayas at 17,000 feet, the South Lhonak Lake was growing. Late one night in October 2023, part of the shelf of rocks and ice that dammed the lake in northeast India collapsed.
What followed was part-tsunami, part-landslide.
The water that poured out of the lake picked up stones, sand and other sediment as it flowed through the rocky mountain channels, triggering a series of landslides along the way. In one town, the slurry knocked out a hydropower project, adding even more water to the deluge as it joined the Teesta, a Himalayan river known for its sinewy twists and turns.
Sometime after 2 a.m., Dharmendra Prasad, a 37-year-old taxi driver living far below the lake in the town of Rangpo Forest, awoke to a commotion, as townspeople desperately scrambled to get to higher ground.
Prasad bundled his 23-year-old wife, Priyanka Devi, who was due to deliver their second child, and his 5-year-old son, into his SUV. He then went to get his father, but couldn’t find him. He ran back to the car, but as he was about to jump in a wave of water hit him and he fell.
“When I looked around, neither my car nor my wife and child were there,” he said. “Somehow I managed to get out of the water and was shouting, ‘Save us, save us.’ But at the time, everyone was busy trying to save their own families.”
Shanti Rai, 45, runs a volunteer rescue group that helped save people stuck on rooftops and clinging to trees, and pulled bodies from the Teesta.
“I used to wonder where tears come from endlessly when we are sad,” said Rai, sitting at the riverside restaurant she built on the highway to Rangpo. “Looking at the river, I wondered: ‘Where is so much water coming from? Where in the mountains is there so much water?’”
As warmer global temperatures melt polar ice, ocean waters are rising, posing a threat to island nations and coastal communities. A parallel danger lurks in the Himalayas and other high mountain areas like the Andes, where melting glaciers have created thousands of new lakes.
(Tripti Lahiri, Krishna Pokharel and Emma Brown @ WSJ more…)
Dean Baker @ National Memo: Orange Man Goes Green? How Trump’s Attack On Iran Is Advancing Clean Energy
-
Paul Krugman: The biggest losers from the Iran War are buyers of diesel, jet fuel, chemicals and fertilizer
James Eagle: Why oil prices are no longer telling the full story
(James Eagle more…)Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby: The tale of the tape: Trump repeatedly pledged to cut gas prices by 50%
“Mark it down, and you can get very angry at me if we don’t do it.”
-
Scott Lincicome @ Dispatch: Trump’s Other Tariff
Like his tariffs on goods, Trump’s huge tax on overseas talent will harm the economy and fail its stated objective.
(Scott Lincicome @ Dispatch more…)\
-
Sumit Sharma @ Times Now World: Iran Parliament Approves Plan To Charge Tolls In Strait of Hormuz, Bans US And Israeli Vessels
The Iranian Parliament has approved a toll collection plan for merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, intensifying regional tensions. The proposal also blocked vessels linked to the US and its allies.
(Sumit Sharma @ Times Now World more…)Borowitz: Iran Agrees to End War Only if There is Regime Change in U.S.
-
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 1, 2026
Today, for the first time in U.S. history, a sitting president attended oral arguments at the United States Supreme Court. President Donald J. Trump broke precedent to take a seat in the front row of the Supreme Court’s public seating area, alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to observe arguments in the case of Trump v. Barbara, a case under which Trump hopes to end the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
…
Trump has called for ending birthright citizenship since his first term as part of his appeal to his racist supporters who want to end Black and Brown equality in the United States. But his argument would overturn the central idea of the United States articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that we are all created equal.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Kate Plummer @ Newsweek: Donald Trump Suffers Quadruple Legal Blow Within Hours
- Judge deals Trump setback in civil suits Over Capitol riot
- NPR and PBS Funding
- HHS Lawsuit
- Trump’s Ballroom
Jon Brodkin @ ARStechnica: Trump defunding of NPR and PBS blocked by judge, but damage is already done
Judge invalidates Trump executive order, but Congress also cut off all funding.
David Lat: 5 Observations On The Supreme Court Argument In The Birthright Citizenship Case
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
- January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
Leave a Reply