Thursday, February 18 top stories
It is Thursday, February 18. Here are today’s top stories.
NBC 5 in Dallas reported there will be a federal investigation in the Texas power outages. The agency is called FERC, short for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. NBC 5 said ERCOT, the agency that manages the state’s power grid, knew that a major winter storm was coming and thought they were prepared. However, there are no mandatory guidelines on protecting power plants from winter temperatures, only voluntary guidelines.
There was a major winter storm in 2011 that caused power outages. The FERC made several recommendations back then, but according to my interview with Otis Sizemore yesterday, the recommendations were not implemented. There is a lot of blame going around towards ERCOT, how Texas is set up to be energy independent and avoid federal regulations, and on the extreme weather.
CBS News said at least 24 people have died this week from the winter storm and over 2.5 million people are in the dark with no heat for a third day. A family with a grandmother and three children died in a house fire that may be linked with a fireplace accident. Many homes and businesses are flooded or have no water because of burst pipes. Some buildings have icicles inside. Many were hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning because people are using grills or allow their cars to run inside of garages, which is extremely dangerous because the gas is odorless.
Weather forecasts in the Austin area are showing that temperatures will remain freezing or near freezing today and tomorrow, but it’ll get warmer on Saturday with 54 F high and 36 F low. Look at this six-day forecast from weather.com.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) flew to Cancun, Mexico yesterday on a family vacation. People on social media posted pictures of him at the airport and criticism poured in because it was viewed as him bailing on Texas when it is dealing with the winter storm crisis. The New York Times said a person familiar with Cruz’s trip said he would cut his vacation short and return to Texas today.
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In Australia, Facebook is taking down and blocking all links or videos with news content. The reason why? Australian lawmakers had a proposal to require Facebook and Google pay news publishers for news content. The news publishers help drive traffic on Facebook and Google, but the news publishers don’t get any of the profits from advertising. Facebook is saying “no” to the idea of paying news publishers, arguing they willfully post news on Facebook to reach larger audiences. Check out this clip from Bloomberg.
Bloomberg reported that 17 million Facebook users in Australia now can’t share any news, from Australian or international publishers. There were also several government or nonprofit organizations that had their pages taken down by mistake. There is now a “wall” between Australian media sources and the world on Facebook. Bloomberg said this is a “warning” for the world. If you’re in Australia, you can keep up with “The Daily Moth” on www.dailymoth.com or on YouTube.
There is a federal investigation on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). NBC News reported that the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn and the FBI are now looking into allegations of his administration covering up information on the true amount of deaths among nursing home residents to avoid a Trump DOJ investigation. The number was thought to be 8,500 deaths, but that number went up to 15,000 in the past several weeks.
In separate but related news, a Democratic state lawmaker, Assemblyman Ron Kim, told CNN that Cuomo called him last week and threatened to “destroy him” if he didn’t stop criticizing his administration about the nursing home crisis. Kim said he was traumatized by the call. An aide for Cuomo said the allegation from Kim is false.
That’s all the top stories for today. Check out our other videos. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/federal-regulators-plan-to-investigate-massive-texas-power-outage/2555819/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/us/ted-cruz-cancun.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-power-winter-weather-death-toll-climbs/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-18/facebook-blocks-news-in-australia-in-warning-for-the-world
https://nypost.com/2021/02/18/australia-goes-ahead-with-news-content-law-despite-facebook-blackout/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-attorney-fbi-investigating-cuomo-s-handling-nursing-home-n1258207
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/politics/cuomo-ron-kim-nursing-home/index.html