10 things you need to know today: February 10, 2020

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1. Parasite makes history with Best Picture win at Oscars
2. Iowa Democratic Party says Buttigieg won most delegates
3. Report: Trump budget proposes tax-cut extension
4. Buddhist monks lead vigil for victims of Thailand mass shooting
5. New York mayor calls shooting of two officers attempted assassination
6. Coronavirus death toll rises above 900 in biggest daily jump yet
7. Buttigieg, Sanders trade barbs ahead of New Hampshire primary
8. Trump budget seeks to boost military, cut domestic programs
9. Hurricane-force winds slam U.K., disrupting travel
10. Birds of Prey leads weekend box office

published 10 February 2020

1. Parasite makes history with Best Picture win at Oscars

Parasite won Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards on Sunday, becoming the first foreign-language movie ever to win the top Oscar. The South Korean thriller upset World War I film 1917, which entered the ceremony as a heavy favorite. Parasite's Bong Joon-ho won Best Director. The film also took Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. In the acting categories, Brad Pitt won Best Supporting Actor for Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress for Marriage Story, Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for Joker, and Renée Zellweger won Best Actress for Judy. Jojo Rabbit won Best Adapted Screenplay, and Disney's Toy Story 4 took Best Animated Feature Film.

Pete Buttigieg held onto a narrow lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the crucial delegate equivalent count in Iowa's caucuses, the state's Democratic Party announced Sunday. After the party reviewed 95 precincts where campaigns complained of inaccuracies, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor was shown to have won 14 delegates, while Sanders got 12. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came in third with eight, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden with six and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) with one. Without a recount Buttigieg would be the official winner of the first contest in the Democrats' 2020 presidential primary season, but Sanders' campaign manager said to "expect us to be asking the Iowa Democratic party for a recanvass of the discrepancies that we have identified."

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The White House on Monday plans to release President Trump's election-year budget, which reportedly will include an extension of the tax cuts Republicans passed in 2017. The spending plan estimates that the U.S. economy will grow by 3 percent annually, on average, over the next 15 years, fueled by further tax cuts and low interest rates, a senior administration official said Sunday. Currently, cuts to individual tax rates are scheduled to expire in 2025. Extending them to 2035, as Trump's budget reportedly requests, would cost $1.4 trillion by some estimates. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects lower economic growth under current tax laws.

More than 1,000 people on Sunday attended a vigil led by Buddhist monks in Thailand to mourn the 26 people killed Saturday in the country's worst mass shooting by a single gunman. Another 58 people were wounded. Authorities identified the suspected attacker as Sgt. Maj. Jakrapanth Thomma, whom they said was angry over a financial dispute with his commanding officer. The suspect reportedly holed up in a mall and was killed by police and military personnel after most mall employees and shoppers were evacuated. "This incident was unprecedented in Thailand," Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday called the shooting of two police officers in separate weekend ambushes "an attempt to assassinate" them. "We need to use the word," he said. "It was a premeditated effort to kill." Both of the victims survived. Lt. Jose Gautreaux was in stable condition after being shot early Sunday at a Bronx precinct headquarters. Part of that attack, excluding the actual shooting, was caught on video. The other officer, Paul Stroffolino, was shot Saturday and released from a hospital Sunday as fellow officers saluted and cheered. The suspect, Robert Williams, was taken into custody at the scene of the second attack and charged with attempted murder in both cases.

China's toll from the coronavirus outbreak centered in the city of Wuhan continued to rise on Sunday. The country's National Health Commission reported that more than 90 people died Sunday, the largest one-day toll to date in the two-month epidemic. That pushed the global total to more than 900, with the vast majority of infections still in Wuhan and the rest of Hubei province. Chinese officials credited strict quarantine measures with a reduction in the number of new cases outside the region where the outbreak is centered. Authorities are rushing to build health facilities to treat infected people, including many locked down at home.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who leads New Hampshire polls ahead of the state's Tuesday presidential primary, clashed over the weekend with former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, who narrowly led in the Iowa caucuses. Sanders criticized Buttigieg for accepting donations from the extremely wealthy, saying someone who has "raised campaign contributions from over 40 billionaires" can't stand up to the "corporate elite." Buttigieg shot back: "Well, Bernie's pretty rich and I'd happily accept a contribution from him." Other candidates also tried to chip away at Buttigieg's momentum. Struggling national frontrunner Joe Biden said Buttigieg had failed to "unify the black community." Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has called for Democrats to unify against President Trump, also suggested Buttigieg was beholden to billionaires.

The fiscal 2021 budget President Trump will unveil on Monday will propose boosting military spending while sharply cutting domestic agencies, foreign aid, and social safety-net programs, according to summary tables and unidentified administration officials. The $4.8 trillion proposal leaves Medicare and Social Security benefits largely untouched, but takes $700 billion out of Medicaid over 10 years, cuts food stamps, farm subsidies, and student loan programs, and shaves down Social Security disability benefits and Medicare provider payments — all moves with little chance of passing Congress. The budget forecasts a drop in the federal budget deficit from $1.08 trillion this year to $966 billion in fiscal 2021 and $261 billion in 2030, but the numbers hinge on unlikely domestic cuts and rosy economic forecasts.

Storm Ciara slammed Britain and northern Europe with torrential rains and hurricane-force winds of up to 86 miles per hour, with even higher gusts. The violent weather forced the cancellation of soccer games and other events as authorities urged people to stay indoors. Flights and trains were suspended. Ports were forced to close due to high seas. A British Airways plane propelled by high winds made the 3,500-mile transatlantic trip from New York to London in 4 hours and 56 minutes, arriving 102 minutes early and beating the previous subsonic New York-to-London record of 5 hours and 13 minutes.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) fell short of expectations but still debuted at the top of the weekend domestic box office, bringing in $33.3 million. Margot Robbie stars in the DC Comics film about Harley Quinn, a girlfriend of Batman villain the Joker. Birds of Prey, which cost $84.5 million to make, made another $48 million in ticket sales overseas, the studio, Warner Bros., said. The film knocked Sony's Bad Boys for Life out of the top spot it had held for three weeks and into second place, at $12 million in North America. Universal's World War I film 1917 came in third with $9 million, followed by Dolittle with $6.7 million and Jumanji: The Next Level with $5.5 million on its ninth weekend.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.