Tuesday, December 13 top stories
It is Tuesday, December 13. Here are today’s top stories.
Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in Bahamas
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday night. FTX is a cryptocurrency trading company that collapsed after it was discovered that managers improperly took clients’ money out and put it into other investment opportunities that failed. As a result, many clients lost their money.
Federal prosecutors in New York City indicted Sam with eight counts of fraud. Separately the SEC filed a civil complaint against Sam saying he schemed to defraud equity investors and that he was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud.
Sam will be extradited to the U.S. where he faces severe punishment — life in prison. Some have compared him with Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi schemer who was sentenced to 150 years in prison.
Nuclear fusion technology
Scientists at the Department of Energy announced that they have achieved a breakthrough in creating a fusion energy reactor that can produce more energy than required to start the reaction in the first place.
In a lab at the National Ignition Facility in California, 192 high-energy lasers were trained on a polished diamond spherical capsule to try and simulate the conditions inside a star. Scientists were able to create more energy than what they put in.
The idea is to have limitless clean energy like we have with the Sun. Axios said it is one thing to ignite nuclear fusion but “turning it into a commercial power supply would require clearing additional scientific, technical, and financial hurdles.”
Football coach Mike Leach dies
Mike Leach, a long-time college football coach who was the Mississippi State head football coach, passed away on Monday night after suffering complications from a heart condition. He was 61.
Leach was hospitalized on Sunday and was in critical condition throughout Monday until he died. The Leach family said he donated his organs as a final act of charity.
Leach used to be the coach at Texas Tech and Washington State.
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Identical twins wins defamation case after cheating accusations
CBS News reported that identical twins Kayla and Kellie Bingham, who were in medical school together at the Medical University of South Carolina, were accused of cheating on an exam because their right and wrong answers were very similar.
This happened in 2016. The twins denied the accusations and filed a defamation lawsuit against the university. The twins said they had a history of scoring within a point of one another on various exams. They argued that it is common for identical twins to perform similarly on tests.
After a four-day trial in November, a jury decided the school had defamed the sisters and awarded them a total of $1.5 million in damages.
Zelenskyy: When Putin dies, the war will be over
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said in an interview with David Letterman that the war in Ukraine would be over when Putin dies. Letterman asked what would happen with the war if Putin gets a cold and dies or accidentally falls out of the window and dies.
Zelenskyy said he believes that if Putin is gone, all the institutions of Russia’s authoritarian regime would stop and the new leaders would just focus on issues within Russia rather than looking at other countries.
Los Angeles mountain lion captured
A well-known mountain lion who lived in Los Angeles was captured by wildlife officials after it killed a small dog that was being walked in the Hollywood Hills in November. The animal is suspected of attacking another small dog this month.
The lion is called P-22. It wears a GPS tracking collar and it has been spotted walking through residential areas near a large park in Los Angeles.
The cougar was tranquilized and captured in a backyard of the Los Feliz neighborhood. The animal is estimated to be about 12 years old, which is very old for mountain lions who live in the wild. Officials said the cougar usually feeds on deer and coyotes but its health may be deteriorating because of the unusual attacks on small dogs.
It is not known what may happen to the cougar. People on social media are hopeful that it will be relocated to an animal rescue center.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/13/nuclear-fusion-energy-technology-milestone
https://news.yahoo.com/putin-dies-war-over-zelenskyy-142042134.html