Thursday, February 11 top stories

It is Thursday, February 11. Here are today’s top news briefs.

Five people died in a massive, horrific series of pileup on an interstate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A news video showed dozens of cars, semi-trucks, large trailers hauling cars and military vehicles, all smashed together in a tight two-lane median on an interstate with concrete barriers on either side. The news video showed at least three different pileup areas along the length of a highway, with each individual pileup easily over 20 vehicles.

Local news said bridges and overpasses were icy or icing today and caused the roads to be slick. Over 30 people were hospitalized.

A British mathematics expert named Kit Yates provided an interesting perspective on how small the virus is that causes Covid-19. He said there are about two quintillion, which is two billion billion, particles of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the world at any one time, but they are so tiny that all of it can fit in a single can of coke.

Yates said it’s astonishing to think of all the loss of life and hardship the world has gone through could have come from something so small.

In Virginia, a man named Harry Rogers was sentenced to almost four years in prison for driving his pickup truck through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protests near Richmond last June. Rogers struck two people and then drove through a group of protesters who were on a roadway. Nobody was seriously injured. Rogers posted on Facebook Live that he drove through the protest and said it was funny because the protesters started scattering like (bleeping) cockroaches. Now he’ll have to serve time in prison.

[Sponsored Video from Sorenson: www.sorenson.com]

Gina Carano, a former MMA fighter and actress who plays on Star Wars’ “The Mandalorian” series, was fired from her role over controversial social media posts. She has conservative political views and shared a post on Instagram that compared Nazi Germany’s treatment towards Jewish people with how conservatives or Republicans were being treated by others. The post included an image of a young woman crying while trying to run away from little children who were holding sticks. I will show you the post, but not include the image.

Many fans of the Star Wars show called for her to be fired. Carano had made several controversial posts in the past. Last night Lucasfilm said Carano’s social media posts were unacceptable and said she won’t be working with them in the future.

There is a new social media app that is growing in popularity — Clubhouse. It is an audio-only app that has virtual “rooms” where users can drop into to listen to conversations on various topics, sometimes by famous people such as Oprah Winfrey or Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk just announced he would do a Clubhouse with Kanye West. You can download the app, but in order to get in, you have to be invited. The app does not allow transcriptions or recordings. Clearly it would be very difficult or impossible for deaf people to participate in the app.

A writer for “Forbes” said Clubhouse’s design excludes disabled people because there is zero support for live captioning and it’s interface makes it accessible only to those who can hear and see normally. We have no idea if Clubhouse will continue to rise in popularity and we’ll see if the app will add accessibility features.

That’s all the top news briefs for today. Check out our other videos. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.

https://www.facebook.com/kwtxnews10/videos/921723038368435

https://news.sky.com/story/all-the-covid-virus-in-the-world-could-fit-in-a-can-of-coke-says-mathematician-12214218?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/kkk-member-sentenced-driving-crowd-protesters-75827343?cid=clicksource_4380645_4_mobile_web_only_headlines_headlines_hed

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gina-carano-mandalorian-actress-dropped-by-lucasfilm-talent-agency-in-wake-of-controversial-tweets-2020-02-10/

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/11/966503986/clubhouse-may-be-social-medias-future-whats-all-the-hype-about

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenaquino/2021/02/08/clubhouse-is-a-club-so-exclusive-it-excludes-disabled-people-by-design/?sh=4271f6cc6008