May 18 top stories
Montana governor bans TikTok
Montana Gov. Gianforte signed a bill on Wednesday to ban TikTok across the entire state, beginning in January 2024. This applies to all residents and all devices, not just government employees and government devices.
The governor said he wanted to protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party. The law includes potential fines of $10,000 per day for violators.
News reports said the ban is likely to be challenged in court. TikTok said the law infringes on residents’ First Amendment rights.
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance. Many politicians in the U.S. have raised concerns that the Chinese government could access Americans’ phone data through ByteDance, but there has been no evidence so far that this is actually happening.
Four Colombian children found alive 2 weeks after plane crash
Colombia’s President Petro announced that four children from an Indigenous community were found alive in a jungle more than two weeks after they were in a plane crash.
The plane was a Cessna 206 that was carrying seven people. It had engine failure and crashed on May 1. The pilot and two other adults were killed in the crash with their bodies found in the plane.
Members of Colombia’s military were involved in the successful search effort for the children. The four children’s ages are 13, 9, 4, and 11 months old.
The announcement said search crews found discarded fruit that the children ate and small shelters made with jungle vegetation.
Reuters: Florida Gov. DeSantis to enter presidential race
Reuters reported that Florida Gov. DeSantis will officially enter the 2024 presidential race next week. He is expected to be the biggest challenger to Donald Trump’s bid to win the Republican nomination. Yesterday I reported that former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to join the race. Former South Carolina Gov. Haley is also running.
In separate news related to the Florida governor, DeSantis signed several bills into law targeting members of the LGBTQ community. One of them would expand the Parental Rights in Education law, as known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, that bans classroom discussion on LGBTQ topics from kindergarten through the third grade. Now it’s expanded through eighth grade. Other bills he signed prohibit transgender children from getting gender-affirming treatments, bar children from attending drag shows, and bar students and teachers from using their preferred pronouns.
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Suspect in University of Idaho killings is indicted
Bryan Kohberger, the suspect in the murders of four University of Idaho students last year, was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.
Kohberger is 28 years old and was a Ph.D. student at Washington State University’s department of criminal justice and criminology.
The four victims were either 20 or 21 years old. They were stabbed to death in an off-campus house last November.
ABC News said he will appear for his arraignment in Moscow, Idaho on Monday and enter a plea.
Hawk who lived above NYC’s Fifth Avenue for 30 years dies
A red-tailed hawk who became famous for living in a nest above Fifth Avenue in New York City for thirty years has passed away. He had the name of Pale Male. He would eat rats and pigeons.
A wildlife worker said he found the hawk ill and grounded in Central Park before he died. He was about 33 years old.
AP News said bird lovers would crowd inside the park to watch Pale Male and his succession of mates hatch and raise their young each spring.
Underwater scanning of Titanic shipwreck
A team of scientists conducted an underwater scanning project around the shipwreck of Titanic to provide very detailed images of the ship.
The ship sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. More than 1,500 people died.
During the summer of 2022, scientists scanned and mapped the wrecked ship and its three-mile debris field. They said they’ve created a 3D model and now can understand more about the disaster.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/17/tech/montana-governor-tiktok/index.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/children-survivors-rescue-colombia-plane-crash-jungle-1.6847113
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/17/politics/desantis-signs-anti-trans-bill/index.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/grand-jury-indicts-bryan-kohberger-connection-murder-4/story
https://apnews.com/article/pale-male-hawk-new-york-city-c8b4816e885aee9ad5d0ad9522109099
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/titanic-digital-twin-underwater-scanning-intl-scli-scn/index.html