Tuesday, October 12 top stories
It is Tuesday, October 12. Here are today’s top stories.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order to ban all government and private organizations in the state from enforcing vaccine mandates. This is a direct challenge to President Joe Biden’s order to require all businesses with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccines or weekly testing. Abbott’s order said people can object against the vaccine for any reason of personal conscience. It is likely that there will be litigation to resolve the conflicting orders covering Texas.
The general manager of NBA team Brooklyn Nets said one of their star players, Kyrie Irving, can’t play or practice until he can be a “full participant.” Irving has not received the Covid-19 vaccine and it’s caused complications with the Nets, because New York City requires its professional athletes to be vaccinated. The team plays in Barclay Center, which requires all visitors to be vaccinated. So this means Irving would have only been able to only play away games and would have been barred from playing home games or practice with the team. But now he cannot play at all per the GM’s order. The NBA season is set to begin in a few days. The Nets’ GM said the team respects Irving’s individual right to choose, but that choice restricts his ability to be a full-time member of the team.
A 16-year-old high school student in Wyoming, Grace Smith, said she was arrested last week at her high school in Laramie because she refused to wear a mask on school grounds. A news report explained that she was initially ordered to leave school grounds because she refused to wear a mask, and when she refused to leave, she was accused of trespassing and handcuffed. The arrest was recorded on video. The student said she has been suspended three times and received $1,000 in trespassing fines. The student said she is a “straight A” student and is fighting for her rights. The school district has a mask mandate in place that requires most students to wear masks in all buildings and on buses.
A small Cessna plane crashed into a neighborhood in Santee, California — near the San Diego area — on Monday afternoon. Two people died. It seems like a doctor from Arizona was the pilot and owner of the plane. The plane crash caused a UPS delivery truck to burst in flames, killing the driver. Several homes were damaged and neighbors helped to pull out people who were trapped in their homes. It is not clear exactly what caused the crash, but the plane was trying to land at an airport in San Diego when it lost altitude and nose-dived into the neighborhood.
A married couple from Annapolis, Maryland was arrested on Saturday by the FBI and accused of trying to sell secrets of nuclear-powered submarines to foreign countries. The couple’s names are Jonathan and Diana Toebbe. Jonathan worked as a nuclear engineer for the U.S. Navy and his wife worked as a school teacher. The couple has two children. The FBI said the couple was in touch with an undercover FBI agent who acted as a representative for a foreign country. The couple was seen making dead drops of top-secret information in memory cards placed in peanut butter sandwiches or chewing gum packages in locations in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The FBI did not say which country the Toebbes hoped to work with, but the target country alerted U.S. authorities about the plot. The couple was paid with cryptocurrency for the information and had no idea they were under observation by the FBI until they were arrested on Saturday. They appeared separately in federal court in West Virginia today. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
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Jon Gruden, the head coach of the NFL team Las Vegas Raiders, resigned on Monday after a trove of his emails from 2011 to 2018 revealed that he frequently used racist, homophobic, or misogynistic language to criticize or mock other people. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2011, Gruden used an offensive remark about the lips of the NFL Players Association President DeMaurice Smith, who is Black. On Monday, the New York Times revealed more emails that showed Gruden used offensive terms to express his opposition to the idea of women working as referees and to criticize a NFL team for drafting a gay player in 2014. Gruden said on Monday night that he is sorry and that he never meant to hurt anyone.
DC Comics said there will be a new “Superman” comic series that will feature the new Superman, Jon Kent, who is the child of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, as a bisexual superhero who falls for a male reporter named Jay Nakamura. DC Comics revealed several images that showed the couple kissing. The writer of the series, Tom Taylor, said the new Superman reflects the experiences of many comic fans. The release date for the new comic is November 9.
In Colorado, wildlife officials were finally able to remove a tire that was stuck around an elk’s neck for about two years. The elk was spotted on various trail cameras over the past two years. Last weekend someone in Pine, Colorado sent in a tip that they spotted the elk and wildlife officials were able to tranquilize it. They had to cut the antlers to be able to slide the tire off. Officials said they couldn’t cut through the steel in the bead of the tire and that they were just trying to get the tire off in any way possible. The tire and debris in it totaled about 35 pounds. Wildlife officials said the elk looked healthy and that when they administered a “tranquilizer reversal,” the animal was back on its feet within a matter of minutes. I can imagine that the elk woke up confused, with its antlers and tire gone. Elks regularly grow and shed antlers every year, so it’ll have a new set soon enough.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/12/media/jon-gruden-raiders-reliable-sources/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/sports/football/what-did-jon-gruden-say.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/us/san-diego-area-plane-crash/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/entertainment/superman-comes-out-bisexual-jon-kent-cec/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/us/elk-tire-around-neck-removed-colorado-trnd/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/10/12/kyrie-irving-nets-vaccine-mandate-unavailable/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/us/politics/espionage-nuclear-submarine-fbi.html