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:
MADONNA CANCELS LONDON CONCERT DUE TO INJURIES, BUT PROMISES ‘I WILL KEEP GOING UNTIL I CANNOT’
The pop star released a statement on Saturday (Jan. 25), saying she’s “deeply sorry” to not be able to perform on Monday (Jan. 27) in London at the Palladium, just a week after canceling one of her shows in Lisbon. Ticketholders will be refunded, and Madonna’s next concert, scheduled for Wednesday (Jan. 29) at the same venue in London, is set to go on as planned. Madonna has had to call off a number of shows on her Madame X run, including earlier dates in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami and Lisbon.
[SOURCE: msn.com]
Death Toll Rises in Turkey Quake as Erdogan Slams Social Media
A total of 76 buildings were destroyed and 645 heavily damaged, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, or AFAD, said in a statement. As many as 20 of the 640 aftershocks since the first temblor had a magnitude greater than 4 on the Richter scale, according to the agency. Speaking on Sunday in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan targeted “provocative” social media posts about the earthquake. “Some messages are terrible, depraved,” he said, according to the Anadolu Agency. “For example, some question what the government has done about earthquakes in the past two decades.” The earthquake occurred at 8:55 p.m. local time on Friday at a depth of 6.75 kilometers (4.2 miles) on the East Anatolia Fault Line. Tremors were felt in many cities across the region.
[SOURCE: yahoo.com]
GOLDMAN WON’T TAKE COMPANIES WITHOUT ‘AT LEAST ONE DIVERSE BOARD MEMBER’
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the performance of public offerings of U.S. companies with at least one female director has been “significantly better” in the last four years than those without. About 60 companies in the U.S. and Europe have gone public recently with all white, male boards, he said. Part of the problem is that most board candidates are selected from people who have already served as corporate CEOs or CFOs or public company directors, which locked out women from being added to boards, Solomon said. He added that Goldman, with its far-reaching network of corporate executives, could help clients find female board candidates if needed. Goldman currently has four women on its 11-person board.
[SOURCE: cnbc.com]
ALABAMA FIRE CHIEF CONFIRMS DEATHS AS FIRE DESTROYS 35 BOATS
A massive fire that killed at least eight people and destroyed dozens of boats in an Alabama marina early Monday was spread so rapidly by the wind that “we didn’t have time to do nothing,” said one resident who survived but lost his brother in the cold water. Scottsboro Fire Chief Gene Necklaus said all eight people who were known to be missing have been confirmed dead, and “that number could go up, because we don’t know how many were on boats” that sank. The fire began just after midnight and quickly consumed the dock as people slept. The wooden dock and at least 35 vessels went up in flames and an aluminum roof that covered many of the boats melted and collapsed, cutting off escape routes and raining debris over the area as boaters leaped into the river.
[SOURCE: abcnews.go.com]
YOUTUBE SUGGESTS PREMIUM MEMBERS WILL GET FREE CHANNEL MEMBERSHIPS
YouTube appears to be taking on Twitch in a subtler way: by giving away subscriptions you’d otherwise have to pay for. Some Premium members have received prompts to choose a free channel membership (worth up to $5) each month, much like the free Twitch channel subscriptions that Amazon Prime users get. The perk is inconsistently available and doesn’t appear to work for at least some of those who see it, but it’s clear that YouTube has at least been thinking about a bonus like this. YouTube told Engadget in an update this was an internal test that inadvertently rolled out to external users. It’s not guaranteed an official launch, then, but it still wouldn’t be a shocking move.
[SOURCE: engadget.com]
FEDEX GROUND NOW DELIVERS ON SUNDAY AMID TENSION WITH AMAZON
The company had announced the move in May. FedEx has long provided residential Sunday delivery during the peak holiday season, but now the service will be available year-round for “the majority of the US population,” the company said previously. The move comes as e-commerce has upended the delivery market, flooding the United States with packages. Amazon’s in-house delivery network delivers about half of its own packages, according to an analysis published by Morgan Stanley in December. And UPS began its own Sunday delivery service as of Jan. 1. The report estimated that Amazon will deliver 6.5 billion packages per year by 2022, surpassing UPS at 5 billion packages and FedEx at 3.4 billion packages.
[SOURCE: cnn.com]
KOBE BRYANT FAN IN CHINA RETURNS RETIRED NBA STAR’S HIGH SCHOOL JERSEY — AFTER REALIZING IT HAD BEEN STOLEN
Last October, Liu Zhe, 28, a diehard Bryant fan in Harbin, China, bought the NBA star’s high school jersey, paying the equivalent of $2,000 to an online seller. But then he noticed that the item, hanging alongside his collection of Bryant jerseys, looked similar to the one he knew had been stolen from Lower Merion High School near Philadelphia in 2017, the Washington Post reported. At first, Liu intended to return the uniform to Bryant in person when the star visits Shenzhen on Saturday to announce the draw for the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup. But he ultimately he agreed to mail the uniform back to the Ardmore, Pa., school, ESPN reported.
[SOURCE: foxnews.com]
IN 5-4 RULING, SUPREME COURT ALLOWS TRUMP PLAN TO DENY GREEN CARDS TO THOSE WHO MAY NEED GOV’T AID
The court voted 5-4. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they would have left a lower court ruling in place that blocked enforcement while a legal challenge works its way through the courts. The Department of Homeland Security announced in August that it would expand the definition of “public charge,” to be applied to people whose immigration to the United States could be denied because of a concern that they would primarily depend on the government for their income. In the past, that was largely based on an assessment that an immigrant would be dependent upon cash benefits. But the Trump administration proposed to broaden the definition to include noncash benefits, such as Medicaid, supplemental nutrition and federal housing assistance.
[SOURCE: nbcnews.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 the past day.
A full weeks’ data (from Friday to Friday) is compiled, weighed, and sorted to produce the content for the Weekly Wrap-Up 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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