The meaning of Ash Wednesday, what to know about Netflix docuseries ‘Murdaugh Murders’, and more trending news

Here’s a look at top stories for today, Feb. 22.

Ash Wednesday

Are you ready to give up caffeine for 40 days? What about your social media accounts? While giving up those things may seem hard for you, Christians long ago used to give up a whole lot more.

Ash Wednesday is today. It marks the first day of Lent in Western churches. The ashes symbolize penance and the dust from which God made people.

When priests mark Christian’s forehead the ashes they often say, “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” or “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Lent, which lasts 40 days not including Sundays, is a season of prayer, penance and fasting in preparation for the Easter season.

Find out more about the holiday here:

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Alex Murdaugh, Morgan Doughty, Paul Murdaugh and Maggie Murdaugh in the Netflix docuseries “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.”

Netflix

“Murdaugh Murders”

Landing on Netflix as the trial of Alex Murdaugh continues, “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal” will certainly benefit from its timeliness, but this three-part production isn’t as compelling as its subject matter. Relying almost entirely on those involved to tell the story, the project has a slapdash feel from beginning to end, and finds the younger contingent, especially, to be poor narrators of what transpired.

Indeed, if ever a true-crime docuseries would have benefited from using a narrator, it’s this one; instead, the producers let the group of friends who were swept up in the tragic boat accident that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach drone on, augmenting their accounts with blurry reenactments that look like something out of a cheap horror movie.

Although the title “Murdaugh Murders” ostensibly references the killing of Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, which resulted in his father and her husband, Alex, being put on trial.

Read the rest of the review here:

Cathy Morgan-Mace cleans snow and ice off her family’s car during a snowstorm in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023. A brutal winter storm knocked out power in California, closed interstate highways from Arizona to Wyoming and prompted more than 1,200 flight cancellations Wednesday — and the worst won’t be over for several days. (Kristin Murphy/The Deseret News via AP)

Kristin Murphy

Winter storm

A powerful winter storm set record cold temperatures in the northern plains of the U.S., while a heat wave in the southeast set record highs for the month of February — leaving the U.S. with an unusually stark temperature difference of more than 100 degrees.

Much of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas currently have temperatures below zero, including minus 9 degrees in Cut Bank, Montana. At the same time, much of the South, from Texas to the Carolinas, has temperatures above 80 degrees, including a scorching 95 in McAllen, Texas.

The extreme cold in the north is just one aspect of the coast-to-coast storm bringing heavy snow, high winds and ice on Wednesday, putting parts of more than two dozen states under winter weather alerts as travel conditions begin to deteriorate in some areas.

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Here are some more of today’s hot topics:

Nipsey Hussle

Ohio derailment, Trump

Thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are being made available to Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson. It’s a stunning level of access granted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and it’s raising new questions about the Republican leader’s commitment to transparency, oversight and safety at the Capitol. A hard-right political commentator, Carlson says his team is spending the week at the Capitol poring through the video and preparing to reveal their findings. But granting such high-profile access to sensitive security details to such a deeply partisan figure is a highly unusual move that is raising alarms on Capitol Hill.

President Joe Biden has closed out his wartime visit to Europe by working to shore up partnerships with allies perched on NATO’s perilous eastern flank. At the same time, Russia’s Vladimir Putin is drawing closer to China as his invasion of Ukraine nears the one-year mark. Biden met with leaders of the Bucharest Nine nations in Warsaw on Wednesday at the conclusion of a whirlwind, four-day visit to Ukraine and Poland meant to reassure allies of U.S. support. In dramatic counterpoint, Putin met with the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official. The flexing of alliances was an indication that both sides are digging in for prolonged conflict in Ukraine with fighting expected to intensify as spring arrives.

A brutal winter storm has knocked out power in California and the Midwest, closed interstate highways from Arizona to Wyoming and prompted more than 1,500 U.S. flight cancellations. Few places were untouched by the wild weather, some at the opposite extreme. Long-standing record highs were broken in cities in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast. Powerful winds were the biggest problem in California, toppling trees and power lines. By late Wednesday afternoon, more than 64,000 customers in the state were without electricity. The potential ice storm has power company officials on edge. Nearly 1,500 line workers are ready to be deployed if the ice causes outages in the Detroit area.

The Supreme Court seems skeptical of a lawsuit trying to hold social media companies responsible for a terrorist attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people. During arguments at the high court several justices underscored that there was no evidence linking Twitter, Facebook and Google directly to the 2017 attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul. The family of a man killed in the attack says the companies aided and abetted the attack because they assisted in the growth of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack . A lower court let the lawsuit go forward.

Dancers, drummers and Namibia’s president and first lady welcomed Jill Biden to their country on Wednesday. Biden is opening a five-day, two-country visit to Africa. It’s aimed at highlighting the challenges facing women and young people and the food insecurity plaguing the Horn of Africa. The U.S. first lady was greeted by dancers representing Namibia’s different ethnic groups. Her visit is part of a commitment by President Joe Biden to deepen U.S. engagement with the countries of Africa. Kenya will be the second stop on Biden’s first tour of Africa as first lady. President Biden plans to visit Africa later this year.

The Seattle City Council has added caste to the city’s anti-discrimination laws, becoming the first U.S. city and the first in the world to pass such a law outside South Asia to specifically ban caste discrimination. Calls to outlaw discrimination based on caste, a division of people based on birth or descent, have grown louder among South Asian diaspora communities in the United States. The movement is getting pushback from some Hindu Americans who argue that such legislation maligns a specific community. Proponents of the ordinance approved Tuesday say caste discrimination crosses national and religious boundaries and that without such laws, those facing caste discrimination in the U.S. will have no protections.

Democrat Jennifer McClellan has defeated her Republican opponent to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she will be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress. McClellan is an attorney and veteran state legislator. She prevailed over pastor and Navy veteran Leon Benjamin in the race for the blue-leaning 4th District, which has its population center in the capital city and stretches south to the North Carolina border. The seat was open after the death of Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin in November. McEachin died weeks after being elected to a fourth term after a long fight with the secondary efforts of colorectal cancer.

Alex Murdaugh’s defense called his surviving son to the witness stand Tuesday to poke holes in evidence that prosecutors have presented in the double murder trial of the disgraced South Carolina attorney. Buster Murdaugh answered questions in a matter-of-fact tone. He explained points that prosecutors emphasized as potentially sinister, including Alex Murdaugh parking behind his mother’s home or not using his cellphone for an hour the night of the killings. The defense also called a forensic engineer who says his analysis of shooting angles in Maggie Murdaugh’s death and the locations of shell casings show the shooter was about 5-foot-2. Alex Murdaugh is 6-foot-4.

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