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:
SAILOR AT PEARL HARBOR SHIPYARD FATALLY SHOOTS 2, INJURES 1 BEFORE KILLING HIMSELF
An active-duty Navy sailor fatally shot two civilians Wednesday and wounded another before killing himself at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii, according to the military base. The shipyard went on lockdown Wednesday while security forces responded to reports of a shooting that occurred about 2:30 p.m. local time. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam tweeted about 5 p.m. that the shooter had been identified as a United States sailor. The sailor shot at three male Defense Department civilian workers before fatally shooting himself, Rear Adm. Robert Chadwick said at a news conference. Two of the three workers later died, and one was listed in stable condition Wednesday night. Chadwick said officials don’t yet know whether the shooting was targeted or random. The base was put on lockdown for hours Wednesday afternoon after the shooting took place near the shipyard’s Dry Dock 2, the base reported when the lockdown was lifted. Honolulu police spokesperson Michelle Yu declined to issue a statement on the shooting, saying that the department was not handling the case except for directing traffic in the area.
[SOURCE: huffpost.com]
MAINLAND CHINESE STUDENTS BEST IN WORLD AS SINGAPORE, HONG KONG SLIP DOWN RANKINGS
Students from mainland China have edged out those from Singapore to take the top spot in a global benchmarking test, according to results announced on Tuesday. The latest edition of the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) survey, conducted last year, assessed the performance of 15-year-olds from 79 education systems around the world in science, mathematics and reading. Students from the four participating cities in mainland China – Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang – came first in all three categories, with 590 points in science, 591 points in mathematics, and 555 points in reading. The mean scores for all students that took part in the triennial assessment by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were 489 points in science, 489 in maths and 487 in reading. Between 4,000 and 8,000 students from each education system were assessed. In this year’s edition, Hong Kong – where 6,037 students from 152 schools were randomly selected for the assessment – was also nudged down in the charts, ranking fourth in mathematics and reading, and ninth in science. American students, meanwhile, placed 13th in reading, 37th in mathematics, and 18th in science.
[SOURCE: scmp.com]
LAPD UNION WILL NOT DEFEND OFFICER ACCUSED OF FONDLING FEMALE CORPSE
Leaders of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file cops, said it would not criminally defend an officer who allegedly fondled a dead woman’s breasts. The officer’s body-worn camera recorded the incident. Lt. Craig Lally, a 39-year officer and union president, said he has never heard of any similar incident in policing. He called the allegation “reprehensible, repugnant” and said, if true, the officer “has no place in law enforcement.” If the allegations are found to be true, Lally said “the Los Angeles Police Protective League will not defend this officer in a criminal proceeding.” Department officials initially thought the alleged act was discovered during a random inspection of the officer’s body camera footage, but officials now say a detective investigating the woman’s death found the video. The officer, who is assigned to downtown’s Central Division, was placed on leave and assigned to home as the department launched an internal investigation.
[SOURCE: latimes.com]
WILLIE NELSON SAYS HE STOPPED SMOKING POT TO ‘TAKE BETTER CARE’ OF HIMSELF
Willie Nelson, the country music luminary whose name is practically synonymous with lighting up, said in a recent interview that he has stopped smoking marijuana due to breathing issues. “I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past, so breathing is a little more difficult these days and I have to be careful,” Nelson, 86, told the San Antonio television station KSAT. “I don’t smoke anymore — take better care of myself,” said the Grammy-winning crooner of “On the Road Again.” Nelson is known for his braids, bandanas and fondness for buds. He is a prominent advocate for the legalization of weed, co-chairing the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He is also one of a slew of celebrities behind a cannabis-themed business venture. Willie’s Reserve, “a premium cannabis lifestyle brand,” was launched in 2016 in partnership with a New York-based private equity firm.
[SOURCE: nbcnews.com]
WORLD LEADERS APPEAR TO MOCK DONALD TRUMP BEHIND HIS BACK IN VIRAL NATO SUMMIT VIDEO
World leaders appear to have been caught on camera mocking President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in London on Tuesday night in a video that is going viral. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and a woman who appears to be Princess Anne all feature in the clip tweeted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that’s garnered more than 5 million views. “Is that why you were late?” Johnson is heard asking Macron. “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top,” Trudeau interjects. Trudeau can later be heard saying “you just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.” The footage is admittedly low on context and at times inaudible. But that did not stop high-profile Twitter users from suggesting the leaders of foreign countries were chuckling and gossiping about Trump behind his back.
[SOURCE: huffpost.com]
FBI NEVER COMPLETES HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GUN CHECKS
The FBI never completes hundreds of thousands of gun background checks each year because of a deadline that requires it to purge them from its computers, despite a report that raised alarms about the practice in 2015. The data obtained by CQ Roll Call, which has not been previously published, shows how the FBI still struggles to complete background checks four years after a breakdown in the system contributed to a shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, that left nine black churchgoers dead. A 2015 internal report on what went wrong in that case recommended ways to decrease the number of background checks that take longer than 88 days. After that point, the FBI must purge checks from its computers. That year, the bureau processed more than 8.9 million checks and never completed 200,360. That number rose in 2016 and 2017 before a slight dip last year, when the FBI processed 8.2 million checks but did not complete 201,323. All told, the FBI did not complete over 1.1 million background checks from 2014 through July 2019. Since the data is purged, it’s impossible to know how many of those people have purchased guns without a completed background check — or how many purchases would have been blocked if the background checks were complete.
[SOURCE: rollcall.com]
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN TO FILE $100 MILLION LAWSUIT AGAINST TRAYVON MARTIN’S PARENTS
George Zimmerman is set to file a $100 Million lawsuit against Trayvon Martin’s parents, their attorney, prosecutors, and the state of Florida, alleging that prosecution’s key witness in his 2013 murder trial was an imposter and fake witness. The suit, which was announced by Larry Klayman, a former federal prosecutor and founder of Judicial Watch, also alleges defamation by the Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump. The complaint alleges that in March of 2012, the Sanford Police Department thoroughly investigated the shooting of Trayvon Martin and closed the case as self-defense. The lawsuit claims that a week later, Crump produced a recorded audiotape of “Diamond Eugene,” whom he said was Martin’s 16-year-old girlfriend who was on the phone with Martin just before the altercation. However, two weeks later, 18-year-old Rachel Jeantel, the alleged imposter, appeared before the court claiming to be “Diamond Eugene” and provided false statements to incriminate Zimmerman based on coaching from others. According to the release, the new lawsuit is a result of shocking allegations being exposed in a book that claims that Trayvon Martin’s cell phone records show Rachel Jeantel was not on the phone with Trayvon before the altercation, and that she repeatedly lied to cause Zimmerman’s arrest and send him to prison.
[SOURCE: balleralert.com]
DEVIN NUNES SUES CNN FOR MORE THAN $435 MILLION OVER UKRAINE REPORT
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) passed up few opportunities to bash the media in the recent impeachment hearings, and now he’s suing what he calls the “mother of fake news” — CNN. Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, filed a lawsuit against the network Tuesday, seeking damages of more than $435 million. He’s suing over a November 22 report that Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, was prepared to tell Congress that Nunes met with Victor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor, in Vienna last year to discuss “digging up dirt” on Joe Biden. Nunes says he never has met Shokin. He also denies that he took a trip to Vienna in December 2018 or that he communicated with Parnas. The CNN story is sourced to Parnas’s attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, who outlined what his client was willing to reveal. Nunes denied the claims at the time, but CNN said that he did not respond to them for comment. Instead, he told Breitbart.com that the claims were “demonstrably false.” CNN declined to comment on the lawsuit.
[SOURCE: deadline.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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