Wednesday, February 17 top stories
It is Wednesday, February 17. Here are today’s top stories.
Rush Limbaugh passed away this morning after a battle with lung cancer. He was 70. He was a popular and controversial conservative radio host. He received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump at the State of the Union last year. His radio show lasted over 30 years and was syndicated in over 600 stations nationwide with 27 million listeners on a weekly basis. He was late-deafened and had bilateral cochlear implants.
CBS News reported that there are at least 90 positive cases of the U.K. Covid-19 variant at a prison in central Michigan. The variant is highly contagious. Testing started at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility after a staff member was found infected with the U.K. variant and now many inmates and some staff are infected.
Today the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City was demolished in a controlled explosion using 3,000 pieces of dynamite.
The hotel opened in 1984 when Trump was at his peak with his real estate businesses, but it later went bankrupt and went through various owners before being shut down for good in 2014. The building started to fall apart in recent years and now it’s in crumbles. The owner of the site is billionaire Carl Icahn and he has not announced what he plans to do with the site. There was a previous effort to auction off the right to press a button to blow up the building, but it was stopped by Icahn. He instead donated the value of the highest bid, $175,000, to the Boys & Girls Club.
Former presidential candidate and political rival Hillary Clinton tweeted a video of the implosion with a “hand wave” emoji.
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Actress Ashley Judd said she almost died when she fell and broke her leg while hiking in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo last week. She said her leg was broken in four places and was badly misshapen. She said it took her 55 hours to get from the forest to an operating table in South Africa. She posted on Instagram thanking her Congolese brothers and sisters for helping to carry her out of the forest and on a motorbike. She said she howled like an animal and passed out several times because the pain was unbearable. She said she was privileged to have insurance and is now talking about what happened to raise awareness about what it means to be a person in Congo with extreme poverty and no access to health care or medicine.
Apple announced a new slate of emojis that are aimed to provide more representation for interracial couples and individuals who identify on different areas of the gender spectrum.
Apple also swapped their vaccine emoji to remove drips of blood and make it a plain-looking vaccine.
There are also three new “smiley faces'' — one with spiral eyes, an exhaling face, and a face with fog in front of it. There are also two new heart emojis — one with a flaming fire and one with bandages.
In separate but related news, there is buzz online that young people in Generation Z are not using the crying laugh emoji because older generations (including me) are overusing it and it’s just not cool anymore. My response to that is… (points to crying laugh emoji).
That is all the top news briefs for today. Check out our other videos. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-covid-variant-michigan-prison-90-positive-95-tests/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/business/trump-plaza-atlantic-city-implosion/index.html
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/ashley-judd-opens-fatal-accident-congo/story?id=75944637&cid=clicksource_4380645_3_heads_hero_live_headlines_hed
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/13/entertainment/ashley-judd-accident-congo-trnd/index.html
https://www.foxnews.com/media/rush-limbaugh-dead-talk-radio-conservative-icon
https://www.engadget.com/apple-new-emoji-biracial-couples-syringe-140045206.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/14/tech/crying-laughing-emoji-gen-z/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/nyregion/atlantic-city-trump-plaza-implosion.html