Wednesday, December 29 top stories
It is Wednesday, December 29. Here are today’s top stories.
John Madden passed away on Tuesday at the age of 85. It is not known what caused him to die, but his death was unexpected. He was a football coach for the Oakland Raiders for ten seasons and won the Super Bowl in 1977. He then became a color commentator for NFL games and helped to develop and promote the popular video game series Madden NFL. Madden was inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006 and won 16 Sports Emmy Awards.
Harry Reid, a former U.S. Senator from Nevada, passed away at the age of 82 on Tuesday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was in Congress for over thirty years and was a Senate Democratic leader for 12 years.
There was a viral video that showed a female passenger on a Delta flight punching, spitting, and clawing at a man’s face. The video was posted on Twitter account “ATL Uncensored.” Look at this video clip.
[Video clip]
This happened on December 23 and the plane was headed to Atlanta from Tampa. The woman, Patricia Cornwall, was arrested by the FBI and is charged with assault. She faces up to one year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine.
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A 13-year-old Florida teenager named Stanley Davis Jr. died on Sunday when he crashed his dirt bike after being chased by a police SUV. This happened in Boynton Beach. A video shows that the teen was at a gas station and pulled away when a police SUV approached. See this clip.
[Video clip]
There was a short car chase that ended when the teenager crashed. Police said the teenager lost control and hit the curb and that the SUV never touched the bike. The SUV did not have a dashcam.
Stanley’s grandmother said in a news interview that police officers “chased him right to his… grave.” The grandmother felt that the officers will do nothing about it because they would think he’s “just another Black boy.”
There was a group of protesters outside of the police headquarters building to call for the firing of the officer who drove the SUV.
The average number of daily Covid-19 cases in the U.S. is now at an all-time high with an average of 258,000 cases over the past seven days. The previous record was 250,000 cases on January 8 of this year. The omicron variant is estimated to make up almost 60% of the cases in the U.S.
In the U.K., omicron is blamed for over 90% of all community Covid-19 cases in England. Italy reported a new daily record of new Covid-19 cases with 98,000 cases.
The only positive in all of this is a remark from Dr. Anthony Fauci that said the omicron variant is less severe than the delta variant. He pointed to a study from Europe that showed omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization compared with delta.
There are multiple teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and college sports that are dealing with outbreaks of Covid-19 that have required players to isolate and miss playing time, and it’s affected many sports schedules. There is a record number of NFL players who are sidelined due to protocols with 106 players as of Monday. Two college football bowl games were cancelled. The Atlanta Hawks NBA team has 10 players out. The University of Michigan football team took Covid-19 booster shots as a team ahead of its national semifinal game against Georgia on December 31.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/12/28/john-madden-football-legend-dies-at-85/
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/harry-reid-former-senate-majority-leader-and-democratic-kingmaker-dies-at-82
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/27/us/delta-passenger-allegedly-punches-fellow-passenger/index.html
https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/4350910/patricia-cornwall-delta-flight/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boynton-beach-protesters-officer-firing-stanley-davis-jr-fatal-attempted-dirt-bike-traffic-stop/
https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/12/27/grandmother-outraged-boynton-beach-police-13-year-old-riding-dirt-bike-killed/
https://cbs12.com/news/local/video-shows-teen-on-dirt-bike-seconds-before-fatal-crash
http://news.trust.org/item/20211229144435-zui1m
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-york-s-daily-covid-positivity-rate-surges-to-almost-20/ar-AASdD2I
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/covid-19-hits-several-nfl-and-nba-teams-across-the-united-states
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/omicron-variant-coronavirus-news-12-29-21/index.html