Ecuador Disaster: Reports coming in from Ecuador describe collapsed buildings and destruction stretching for hundreds of miles after yesterday’s earthquake. Rescue teams and local residents are digging through the ruble for trapped victims.

At least 246 people were killed and 2,500 injured, mostly in the northwestern coastal area of Manabí. The cities of Portoviejo, and Pedernales, a resort town, sustained the most damage.

The Supremes: With immigration a big issue in the presidential campaign, the court is scheduled to hear a case today challenging President Obama’s executive order protecting millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. The case was brought by a coalition of 26 states with Texas in the lead.

Obama’s order shields about four million people who have children who are US citizens or are legal residents. The president acted out of frustration with the inaction of Congress on immigration reform, but Texas sued, claiming he had exceeded his constitutional authority.

Remember that the court is missing one member, which means the decision could end up a 4-4 liberal/conservative split that leaves in place a lower court decision throwing out the president’s order.

Oil Slick: A meeting of 16 oil-producing nations in Doha, Qatar failed to reach an agreement to limit oil production, thereby promising to continue the worldwide oil glut and painfully low prices for the oil companies. In particular, Saudi Arabia refused to cap production unless Iran agreed to do the same, but Iran is busy selling oil to recover from recently lifted economic sanctions.

Brazilian Blowout: The lower house of Brazil’s congress voted last night to impeach the country’ first woman president, Dilma Rousseff, whose administration has been embroiled in a messy corruption scandal while the economy hits the skids. The matter now goes to the senate, which could remove Rousseff with a two-thirds vote.

Although her management has been questioned, Rousseff has not been accused of a crime and some critics say impeachment is just a legalized coup.

Take Note: The glow of laptops and tablets has replaced the pen and paper in classroom note taking, but new research says lessons don’t sink in so well when a student takes notes electronically. There’s something about the slower pace of writing by hand that imprints the information, researchers say.

Pam Mueller of Princeton University told NPR, “When people type their notes they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can.” She said, “The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.”

There will be a quiz tomorrow.

The Demagogue Report: With the increasing possibility of a contested convention this summer, Republican candidate Donald Trump said over the weekend, “I hope it doesn’t involve violence. I don’t think it will, but I will say this. It’s a rigged system, it’s a crooked system.”

No one was talking about violence until Trump said he hopes there won’t be any, and then gave a reason why there should be.

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