Tuesday, January 7, 2025
It is Tuesday, January 7, 2025. Here are today’s top stories.
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2 people found dead in JetBlue landing gear
At the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, crews doing routine inspections on a JetBlue plane that had arrived from New York discovered two deceased people inside the plane’s landing gear.
Their identities have not been released and there is an investigation into how they got into the plane’s landing gear.
There was a similar incident two weeks ago when a body was found inside the wheel well of a United Airlines plane.
News reports said people who attempt to stow away on flights often sneak into aircraft through its exposed landing gear or wheels. Its is very risky to do this due to moving parts and the lack of oxygen and low temperatures when the planes are high in the sky.
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Person in Louisiana dies from bird flu
In Louisiana, a person died after contracting bird flu from being in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. AP News said this is the first U.S. bird flu death. The person was not identified by name but was older than 65 and had underlying medical problems. AP said since March, there have been 66 cases of bird flu in the U.S. but most illnesses are mild and affected farmworkers who were exposed to infected animals.
The World Health Organization said there have been more than 950 confirmed bird flu infections globally since 2003 and more than 460 of those people died.
The CDC said although the death in Louisiana is tragic, they do not believe that there is an increased risk to human health.
https://apnews.com/article/bird-flu-death-louisiana-82e4d00876e62cb2b13bb621826c84f9
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Deadly earthquake in Tibet
Reuters said a strong earthquake struck an area in Tibet and killed at least 95 people and collapsed hundreds of homes. It was a magnitude 6.8 earthquake and its epicenter was around 50 miles north of Mt. Everest. Reuters said there were not many climbers and hikers in the Everest region because winter is not a prime season. There are over a thousand first responders who are working to help those affected by the earthquake. Reuters explained that southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are often hit by strong earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.
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Meta/Facebook ending fact-checking program
Meta/Facebook will be dropping its fact-checking program and shift to a “Community Notes” model used by X (formerly Twitter).
Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to get back to “free expression” and said the current fact-checking system just had too many mistakes and too much censorship.
Zuckerberg admitted that a drawback is having more “bad stuff” on Facebook but it’s a tradeoff to have less innocent people’s posts being taken down.
The New York Times said Meta/Facebook’s move is likely to please the Trump administration, who has criticized Facebook for targeting conservatives unfairly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/business/meta-fact-checking-conservative-views.html
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Jimmy Carter to lie in state at Capitol
Former President Jimmy Carter’s body will be escorted from the Carter Presidential Center in Georgia to Washington, D.C. today, where he will lie in state at the Capitol until Thursday. There will be a ceremony today attended by members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and Biden administration officials. The public can visit the Capitol to pay their final respects to Carter from Tuesday evening to Thursday morning. There will be a state funeral on Thursday morning where President Joe Biden is expected to deliver a eulogy. After this, Carter’s body will return to his hometown of Plains, Georgia where he will be buried next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn.
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That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.