Tuesday, December 16, 2024
It is Tuesday, December 16, 2024. Here are today’s top stories.
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15-year-old girl named as Wisconsin school shooter
Police in Madison, Wisconsin said the school shooter at the Abundant Life Christian School was a 15-year-old girl named Natalie Rupnow. She died after she shot herself.
It was reported yesterday that four people were killed, but that’s been updated to two people. A substitute teacher and a student were killed. Six people were injured.
The girl shooter used a handgun. Police said she planned the shooting in advance and according to writings attributed to her, she had been dealing with “problems.”
Police said a second grade student called 911 to report the shooting. Police are investigating how the girl had access to the gun.
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/madison-wisconsin-school-shooting-12-17-24/index.html
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TikTok asks Supreme Court to block ban
TikTok asked the Supreme Court to block a law that would ban the app in the U.S. in a few weeks. About 170 million Americans use TikTok.
Lawmakers who moved to ban the app, which was a bipartisan effort, said they were concerned about U.S. security because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company and in theory China could track the data of millions of Americans.
TikTok told the Supreme Court that a ban is a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
A potential solution is if TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sells itself to a non-Chinese entity. But that doesn’t seem acceptable to China.
The CEO of TikTok, Shou Chew, met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago yesterday afternoon in an apparent effort to keep TikTok alive in the U.S.
We’ll see what the Supreme Court says.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/us/politics/tiktok-ban-supreme-court-first-amendment.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/16/tech/tiktok-ceo-trump-supreme-court/index.html
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Ukraine kills Russian military official with bomb
The Ukrainian military said it killed a Russian general with a bomb that was strapped on a scooter outside of his apartment in Moscow.
A news image showed a body lying on a sidewalk and a damaged exterior wall and window of an apartment. A report from Russian media said the bomb was triggered remotely. A second person was killed, an aide to the general.
The general’s name was Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces.
A Ukrainian military official told CBS News that Kirillow was a “war criminal” who gave orders to use prohibited chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/russian-general-killed-moscow-blast-russian-media-reports/story
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Woman admits to lying about 2006 Duke rape case
Crystal Magnum, a woman who accused Duke University lacrosse players of raping her in 2006, admitted in public for the first time that she lied and made up the whole story.
Magnum was hired to be a stripper at a house party attended by Duke students in 2006. It brought massive news coverage and a local district attorney charged three Duke players with first-degree forcible rape. The investigation later fell apart due to bad evidence and conflicting statements and all charges were dropped. The district attorney was condemned and the N.C. governor declared the three players innocent.
Magnum made the admission from a prison because she is serving time for stabbing her boyfriend to death in 2011. She said she made up the story because she “wanted validation from people and not from God.”
Magnum said what she did was wrong and she hopes the three former Duke students can forgive her.
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ABC News pays Trump $15M to settle defamation lawsuit
ABC News agreed to pay Donald Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit after its news host George Stephanopoulos incorrectly said on air that Trump was found liable for rape. In fact, a New York jury determined that Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll. It’s a key difference that brought this legal action. The $15 million payment will go towards Trump’s future presidential museum.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/business/media/trump-abc-settlement.html
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That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.