Tuesday, March 28 top stories
It is Tuesday, March 28. Here are today’s top stories.
Updates on Nashville school shooting
Here are updates on the Nashville school shooting that killed three children and three adults on Monday. The school was a private Christian school called The Covenant School.
The three child victims were all nine years old. One of them is Hallie Scruggs, who was the daughter of the senior pastor at a Presbyterian church that is located at the school. The pastor, Chad Scruggs, said his daughter was such a gift and that they are heartbroken.
The second child’s name was Evelyn Dieckhaus. Her family said she was a “shining light.”
The third child’s name was William Kinney. His family said he was kind and gentle.
The three adult victims included Katherine Koone, the head of the school. She was 60. The second person is Mike Hill, a custodian. He was 61. The third victim is a substitute teacher named Cynthia Peak. She was also 61.
The shooter’s name is Audrey Hale (28). Police initially said Hale was a woman, but later said Hale was transgender that was assigned female at birth and then recently used male pronouns on a social media profile.
Hale used to be a student at the school. Police said they found that Hale had drawings of the school and staked out the building before carrying out the shooting. Police believe that the attack was planned.
Hale had two assault-type rifles that they legally purchased in the Nashville area. She had five other weapons that were all legally purchased from at least five different stores.
Police released several pieces of footage that showed Hale shooting out glass doors before entering the school and walking through the school’s hallways.
There is also body-camera footage showing how police officers responded and the moment that two officers shot and killed Hale on the school’s second floor.
A Nashville woman named Averianna Patton said she got a text from Hale about 15 minutes before the shooting started. Patton knew Hale from when they were teammates on a basketball team in middle school. Hale texted that she was “planning to die today” and that “you’ll probably hear about me on the news.”
Patton said she called a sheriff’s office to make them aware of the situation and that she was told that an officer would go to her home. Nobody came until the afternoon, after the shooting. Patton said she feels that there should have been more urgency from authorities and that she feels devastated by what happened.
Police said today that Hale was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder and was living with her parents.
40 people dead in fire at Mexican immigration facility
AP News reported that 40 people died from a fire inside a Mexican immigration facility near the U.S. Border on Monday night. This happened in Ciudad Juarez, which is across from El Paso, Texas.
Mexican President Obrador said the fire was started by migrants who set mattresses alight in protest after learning they would be deported. The fire happened in a dormitory.
Mexico’s immigration officials said there were 68 men from Central and South America held in the facility at the time of the fire.
AP News explained that in recent years, Mexico had increased its law enforcement presence around the border under pressure from the American government to try and reduce the flow of migration to the U.S. There is overcrowding in Mexican immigration facilities and AP said there have been protests and riots from time to time.
AP said the fire on Tuesday night is the deadliest incident inside a Mexican immigration facility in recent memory.
Water discovered inside glass beads on Moon
Scientists working in the UK said they have discovered that there is water inside tiny beads of glass on the moon. A scientist said they can see water molecules on the lunar surface when it is sunny. The beads are said to be formed after tiny meteorites hit the surface of the Moon. The heat of the impact melts the surface material and causes it to turn into tiny round glass beads that are as wide as a strand of hair. When solar winds from the Sun hit these beads, it completes a process that combines hydrogen and oxygen to make water present.
Scientists analyzed samples of the Moon’s surface from a Chinese space probe named Chang’e-5, which carried the materials from a mission in 2020.
This is a significant finding because if there is technology to extract water from the glass beads, then it could support astronauts who want to stay on the Moon for an extended period of time.
Scientists believe there could be trillions of pounds of water all around the Moon.
NASA plans to send missions to the Moon to explore the Moon’s poles because there may be ice there.
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Judge orders Pence to testify about Trump
ABC News reported that a federal judge in D.C. has ordered that former Vice President Mike Pence should provide answers to questions from special counsel Jack Smith about former president Donald Trump’s potentially illegal actions in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump’s team sought to prevent Pence from testifying on the basis of executive privilege, but the judge rejected that argument.
It is possible that Trump or Pence’s legal teams will appeal the rulings.
Great white shark swimming in Carolina waters
A great white shark named Breton, who has a tracker on its body that was installed by a nonprofit marine research group studying shark migration, was pinged off the coast of North Carolina. The shark is an adult male that is about 13 feet long and weighs over 1,400 pounds.
The research group, named OCEARCH, said it first tagged the shark in September 2020 near Nova Scotia, Canada. It has an electronic tracker that pings whenever the shark breaks the water’s surface.
OCEARCH said great white sharks usually go to the south during the winter and then move northwards during the summer off the coasts of the eastern US and Canada.
SBF charged with bribing Chinese officials $40M
The Washington Post reported that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was charged by federal prosecutors of conspiring to bribe one or more Chinese officials with at least $40 million.
Prosecutors said the purpose of the bribes was to get Chinese authorities to unfreeze accounts that he held in his second company, Alameda Research, that contained more than $1 billion.
Bankman-Fried is already facing very serious charges of fraud, money laundering and making illegal campaign contributions, and now he’s facing more charges.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nashville-school-shooting-victims/story?id=98161083
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-fire-migrant-facility-dead-eea0b6efafd77f9868ef27ed1cf572b3
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230327-scientists-find-water-inside-glass-beads-on-the-moon
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/world/water-moon-lunar-sample-chang-e-5-scn/index.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-rejects-trumps-privilege-claims-pence-testimony-jan/story
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/us/great-white-shark-breton-north-carolina-trnd/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/28/bankman-fried-ftx-bribery-charge/