These are the top maybe-not headlines from the past 36-hours presented by The Conversation Project from raw engagement data from our social media to the headlines posted over the past day.
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The 8 topics that our followers ranked as the most conversational are:
HALLE, GERMANY ATTACK LEAVES AT LEAST 2 DEAD NEAR SYNAGOGUE TODAY ON JEWISH HOLIDAY OF YOM KIPPUR
A heavily armed assailant tried to force his way into a synagogue Wednesday in eastern Germany on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, and two people were killed as he fired shots outside the building and into a kebab shop, authorities and witnesses said. The attacker shot at the door of the synagogue in the city of Halle but did not get in as 70 to 80 people inside were observing the holy day, a local Jewish leader said. Video of the attack was livestreamed on streaming site Twitch, which said it had “worked with urgency” to remove it. Witnesses told German media they saw a man open fire wearing camouflage before fleeing in a car. Police in Halle later sent a tweet saying they had detained one person in connection to the attack. They did not say whether they were seeking any additional suspects. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Wednesday the shooting was anti-Semitic and said federal prosecutors who are investigating believe there it could be a right-wing extremist attack, Reuters reports
[SOURCE: cbsnews.com]
PG&E POWER SHUTOFF IN BAY AREA, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Pacific Gas & Electric has warned residents in the Bay Area and beyond that it plans to shut off power in certain neighborhoods starting early Wednesday. In all, nearly 800,000 people in 34 California counties may be affected by the outage, which could last for days in some cases. In the Bay Area, the notice affects the counties of San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Solano, Sonoma and Napa. Besides the Bay Area, the notice covers portions of the counties of Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Mariposa, Mendocino, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Joaquin, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, Yolo and Yuba.
[SOURCE: mercurynews.com]
COLEEN ROONEY CLAIMS REBEKAH VARDY LEAKED PRIVATE POSTS TO NEWSPAPER
Drama erupted between the wives of two English soccer stars on Wednesday when one blamed the other for sharing her private social media posts to the media. Coleen Rooney, the wife of soccer player Wayne Rooney, published a note to Twitter on Wednesday that claims Rebekah Vardy — the wife of former English soccer player Jamie Vardy — has leaked her private Instagram Stories and posts to the British newspaper, The Sun, for years. In order to sniff out who was tipping off the newspaper to her pictures, Rooney said she uploaded a series of fake photos to her Stories, then blocked all of her followers — except for one — from seeing them. She did this for five months, waiting patiently to see if any of the fake stories appeared in The Sun. Then, finally, someone took the bait. One by one, the newspaper published a series of stories based on her fictitious posts — one about her and Wayne picking the sex of their baby in Mexico, another about her being involved with a new television show, and a third – which was published in The Sun just yesterday – about flooding in her new mansion. The story’s publications were confirmed by The Telegraph.
[SOURCE: people.com]
BACHELOR PETER WEBER UNDERGOES EMERGENCY SURGERY, SPLITS FACE OPEN
During a game of golf on Monday, the ABC leading man split his head open after he fell and hit his head on multiple cocktail glasses, Radar Online reports. “He went to step on the cart but fell and and split his face open on two cocktail glasses he was carrying,” a source told the outlet. As a result of the nasty injury, Weber, 27, reportedly traveled two hours to a hospital for an operation in which he received 22 stitches in his face. The incident occurred one day before the women competing on his season were supposed to arrive in Costa Rica, according to Radar. During the season finale of Bachelor in Paradise in September, ABC announced that Weber — a.k.a. “Pilot Pete” — would be handing out the roses for the ABC series’ 24th season, which premieres in January 2020.
[SOURCE: people.com]
HENRY KYLE FRESE ACCUSED OF LEAKING DOCS TO AMANDA MACIAS
Henry Kyle Frese is the Petagon counter-terrorism analyst who is accused of leaking documents related to North Korea and China to CNBC’s Amanda Macias and another reporter. Macias was his girlfriend, according to court documents and social media posts. Matthew Keys was the first to identify Macias as “Journalist 1” in the complaint and MSNBCs’ Courtney Kube as the other. Keys also named North Korea as the country in question in the criminal complaint. A criminal complaint filed on October 9 in Eastern District of Virginia federal court stated Frese, 30, had been “caught red-handed disclosing sensitive national security information for personal gain.” The complaint adds that the disclosure of the information, “could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security of the United States.” Frese was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was hired in January 2017 as a contractor and then became a full-time employee with the highest possible security clearance.
[SOURCE: heavy.com]
PENN STATE FOOTBALL COACH JAMES FRANKLIN DEFENDS JONATHAN SUTHERLAND AFTER DB GETS LETTER CRITICIZING DREADLOCKS
Penn State coach James Franklin on Tuesday denounced a letter that was sent to one of his players that members of the team have interpreted as being racist. Safety Jonathan Sutherland received a letter from a Penn State alum that was critical of his appearance and said his “shoulder length dreadlocks look disgusting.” In the letter, written by Johnstown, Pennsylvania, resident Dave Petersen, Sutherland’s hair, appearance and demeanor are criticized. Petersen said in the letter that he and his wife “…miss the clean cut young men and women from those days. Watching the Idaho game on TV we couldn’t help but notice your — well — awful hair. Surely there must be mirrors in the locker room! Don’t you have parents or [a] girlfriend who’ve told you those shoulder length dreadlocks look disgusting and are certainly not attractive.” Petersen also wrote that while he believes Sutherland will be “playing ‘on Sunday'” someday, he and his wife “have stopped watching the NFL due to the disgusting tattoos, awful hair and immature antics in the end zone.” Sutherland’s teammates, including defensive lineman Antonio Shelton, made the letter public through social media, and it has since gone viral. Shelton’s tweet had over 13,700 retweets and 46,200 likes on Twitter as of Tuesday afternoon. In his own Twitter statement Tuesday, Sutherland called Petersen’s opinions “degrading,” but said that he has taken “no personal offense.”
[SOURCE: espn.com]
JENNIFER ANISTON RECALLS ‘CRINGING’ WHEN JUSTIN THEROUX MADE HER WATCH HERSELF IN LEPRECHAUN
Aniston, who next stars in Apple’s The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon, recently stopped by SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show where she looked back on her career, including her appearance in the 1993 slasher film Leprechaun. While the horror didn’t open to great reviews, it was Aniston’s first starring role in a movie and marked a huge turning point for the actress. But while most actors prefer to never watch their early work again, Aniston was forced to revisit the movie when her ex-husband made her sit through it early on in their relationship.“I watched it like, 8 years ago with our mutual friend Justin Theroux for s—and giggles,” she explained. “We were dating. It was one of those things when I tried to get that remote out of his hand and there was just no having it. He was like, ‘No, no, no, no, this is happening.’ I just kept walking in and out, cringing.” The former Friends actress calls it a “cult classic” — and is still proud of starring in it. Aniston, 50, and Theroux, 48, began dating in 2011 and married in 2015. The pair split in early 2018. They’ve since remained on good terms, with Theroux even wishing Aniston a happy birthday earlier this year. The actor shared a black-and-white photo of Aniston on Instagram carrying a horned statue above her head as she gazed down at the camera.
[SOURCE: people.com]
US DENIES UN REPORT OF CIVILIANS KILLED IN AIRSTRIKES ON ALLEGED TALIBAN METH LABS IN AFGHANISTAN
At least 30 civilians were killed when the US bombed several drug-making facilities in western Afghanistan in May, a UN agency said in a report Wednesday, though the US military immediately disputed the findings. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) conducted an investigation over four months looking into what happened May 5 when the US military bombed dozens of sites it had identified as Taliban methamphetamine labs. In a statement, UNAMA said it had “verified 39 civilian casualties (30 deaths, five injured and four undetermined), including 14 children and one woman, due to the 5 May airstrikes”. Afghan villagers carry a dead body on a stretcher outside a hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, following an airstrike, September 23, 2019. U.S. and Afghan officials were looking into reports that 40 civilians, including children, were killed in an airstrike that hit a wedding celebration in southern Helmand province. The agency went on to say that it had also received “credible information” about an additional 30 deaths — mostly women and children — and was working to further verify these claims.
[SOURCE: cbsnews.com]
Eight Things To Talk About uses the raw engagement data from the social media engagement from The Conversation Project to generate the top-ranking headlines over the course of a weekend.
A full weeks’ data (from Friday to Friday) is compiled, weighed, and sorted to produce the content for the Wrap-Up Show with J Cleveland Payne, published every Saturday as a podcast available at ThisIsTheConversation.com or wherever your favorite podcasts are found.
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