Friday, September 24 top stories
It is Friday, September 24. Here are today’s top stories.
There was a mass shooting on Thursday afternoon at a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, Tennessee, a city about 30 miles east of Memphis. A gunman killed a 70-year-old woman and wounded 12 others before turning the gun on himself and commiting suicide. USAToday reported that people ran away from the building, hid in freezers and offices, and that one employee went up to the roof of the building.
The woman who died was a widow named Olivia King. She leaves behind three sons, with two of them in the military. One of the sons posted on Facebook that Olivia was tragically shot directly in the chest and that EMTs attempted CPR on her but she passed away at the hospital.
Local news said the gunman was an employee at the store and that he was fired on Thursday, the same day of the shooting.
At the time of writing and signing this news, the gunman’s identity has not been released.
The shooting brought back bad memories of the King Soopers shooting in Colorado Springs in which 10 people died six months ago. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis tweeted that his heart is broken and that he is thinking of the family and friends and everyone impacted by the shooting. He said, “This must stop.”
Reuters reported that China’s central bank and other powerful banking officials announced that all cryptocurrency activity -- transactions and mining -- is now banned. China now considers cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, illegal. Reuters said this shows that China is committed to “suffocating the Chinese crypto market” and that China is developing its own digital yuan. The value of Bitcoin went down about 9% on this news.
A 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student named Jelani “JJ” Day was reported missing by his family on August 25. A body was found floating on the Illinois River on September 4 and it was just positively identified as Jelani. It is unknown what caused him to die and several tests are pending. Jelani was studying to get his master’s degree in speech pathology.
USAToday said Jelani’s family had been pleading for weeks for help to find him and has been critical of the extensive media attention on Gabby Petito’s case when compared with the effort to find him. Jelani was last seen on August 24. Two days later, police found his car in a wooded area and did a search of the area for several days with K-9 dogs and drones. Jelani's body was found in the river on September 4, and now it’s positively identified.
Jelani’s family said their hearts are broken and they do not know what happened and they won’t stop until they do.
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A woman named Shelley Ross wrote a guest essay in The New York Times to accuse CNN host Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing her in 2005 at a party when they both worked for ABC News. Ross said Cuomo hugged her and then squeezed her buttock and said, “I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss.” Ross said she pushed him away and that her husband saw everything because he was sitting close by. Ross said Cuomo emailed him shortly afterwards to apologize and showed proof of the email.
Ross said she is bringing this up now because she is wondering whether Cuomo is being truthful when he says on TV that he cares deeply about sexual harassment issues, since it was recently revealed that he helped his brother Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, to navigate his accusations of sexual harssment.
Ross said she doesn’t want to see Chris lose his job, but wants to see him and CNN show accountability in the MeToo era.
Chris said in a statement that he had already apologized to her 16 years ago and that he meant it.
On Thursday a CDC panel approved a Pfizer booster dose to be distributed to senior citizens and those with vulnerable health, but did not approve for it to be given to those who work in high-risk environments such as hospitals or prisons. But the CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, overruled the panel by going ahead and recommending that the booster shot be made available to those who work in high-risk environments. Walensky said she weighed the benefits versus risks and said that in a pandemic, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.
ABC News said as of today, booster shots will “now quickly become available for millions more Americans at pharmacies, doctors’ offices and other sites that offer the Pfizer vaccine.”
That is all the top stories for this week. Have a good and safe weekend. See you on Monday and stay with the light.
https://6abc.com/kroger-shooting-collierville-tennessee-mass-olivia-king/11043471/
https://nypost.com/2021/09/24/tennessee-kroger-attack-victim-described-as-thoughtful-widow/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hearts-broken-body-found-illinois-022449131.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/chris-cuomo-cnn.html?