Wednesday, January 26 top stories
It is Wednesday, January 26. Here are today’s top stories.
Justice Breyer to retire
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is one of the court’s three liberal justices, announced he would retire and make a formal announcement with President Biden tomorrow.
This means that President Biden will be able to nominate a Supreme Court justice.
Breyer will stay on the court until there is a replacement. He is 83 years old and is healthy. CNN reported that Breyer wants to retire now because there could be a change in the majority in the U.S. Senate after the midterm elections. He wants to take advantage of this time window to have Senate Democrats confirm whoever President Biden nominates. It only requires 50 votes in the Senate to confirm a justice, which Democrats currently have, and they have Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.
President Biden has previously said in 2020 that he wants to nominate the first Black woman to the court because their representation is long overdue.
Breyer became a Supreme Court justice in 1994 at the nomination of former president Bill Clinton.
California city requires gun liability insurance
In California, the San Jose City Council voted to require gun owners to carry liability insurance and pay an annual fee of $25 for each weapon they have. The law is expected to go into effect in August and would make San Jose the first city in the U.S. to require gun owners to have insurance coverage for their firearms. The mayor said the fees would go towards programs to reduce gun harm.
The insurance would cover losses resulting from damages from accidental use of the firearms that cause death, injury, or property damage.
The city council started this process last year as a result of a mass shooting at a transit station that left nine people dead. The mayor admitted that the law won’t stop mass shootings and keep bad people from committing violent crime, but said most gun deaths nationally are from suicide, accidental shootings, or other causes.
Gun rights groups said this new ordinance is a violation of their Second Amendment rights and would challenge the law in court.
Kennedy Jr. apologizes for Anne Frank references
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late U.S. senator Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, who is well-known for being outspoken against vaccines, said at an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Washington D.C. on Sunday that Anne Frank had more freedom from Hitler’s Nazi Germany compared with people today who live under vaccination mandates. It caused a stir.
Kennedy’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines, criticized him on Twitter, saying it was reprehensible and insensitive.
The Auschwitz Memorial in Germany said on Twitter that Kennedy had “moral & intellectual decay.”
On Tuesday Kennedy apologized for his remarks. He said his intention was to “show the perils from new technologies of control.”
Kennedy was banned by Instagram last year for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 or vaccines. Other members of the Kennedy family have criticized him over his views.
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WHO on “next Covid-19 variant”
An official with the World Health Organization said she wants to give caution to theories out there that the Covid-19 virus would mutate into milder strains. The official said the next major Covid-19 variant would be more contagious than Omicron but the real question that scientists need to answer is whether it would be more deadly.
Another WHO official said the virus would continue to evolve before it settles into a pattern and hopefully settle in a low level of transmission with occasional epidemics. WHO said the problem is that Covid-19 is unpredictable.
Updates on tensions with Russia
U.S. Sec. of State Blinken said he has delivered written responses to a list of demands from Russia. The list from Russia was issued in December and asked the NATO to promise to not admit Ukraine as a member and for troops to be withdrawn from the Ukrainian region. Blinken said he is keeping the written responses private and hopes that Russia will choose a diplomatic path forward and de-escalates its aggression towards Ukraine. Russia currently has about 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border and the U.S. has warned they could invade at any time.
Coast Guard searching for 39 people
The U.S. Coast Guard said they are searching for 39 people who are missing after a vessel they were in capsized off Florida’s eastern coast. They have recovered one body so far. The Coast Guard started the search after they got a report from a boater who said they rescued a man hanging on a capsized vessel. That person who was rescued said he left the Bahamas on Saturday night in a boat with 39 others but encountered severe weather that caused the boat to capsize. Nobody on the vessel was wearing a life jacket. The Coast Guard said they suspect it is a human smuggling venture. The search is ongoing.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/scotus-stephen-breyer-retirement/index.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-jose-gun-law-insurance-annual-fee/?s=09
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-hands-russia-written-response-to-demands