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:
ARMED ROBBERS STEAL HUNDREDS OF TOILET ROLLS IN HONG KONG AMID CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK
Toilet rolls are currently in short supply in Hong Kong due to shortages caused by panic-buying during the coronavirus outbreak. Knife wielding men robbed a delivery man outside a supermarket in the Mong Kok district, police said. Police have arrested two men and recovered some of the stolen loo rolls, local media reports said. The armed robbery took place in Mong Kok, a district of Hong Kong with a history of “triad” crime gangs, early on Monday. According to local reports, the robbers had threatened a delivery worker who had unloaded rolls of toilet paper outside Wellcome Supermarket. An Apple Daily report said that 600 toilet paper rolls, valued at around HKD1,695 ($218; £167), had been stolen. Stores across the city have seen supplies massively depleted with long queues when new stock arrives.
[SOURCE: bbc.com]
14 AMERICANS TEST POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS AFTER EVACUATION FROM QUARANTINED CRUISE SHIP
More than 300 U.S. citizens and their immediate family members who had been passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were taken off the vessel and repatriated back to the United States on two chartered flights that landed at Travis Air Force Base, California, and Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, early Monday. In a statement, a State Department spokesperson said Monday that the American evacuees were all deemed asymptomatic and fit to fly before being processed for evacuation. But during the evacuation process, after passengers had left the ship and gone to the airport, U.S. officials received notice that 14 passengers, who had been tested two to three days earlier, had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
[SOURCE: nbcnews.com]
AMIE HARWICK, FAMED THERAPIST WHO APPEARED IN THE DOC ‘ADDICTED TO SEXTING,’ MURDERED IN HOLLYWOOD HILLS
“On Saturday, February 15, 2020, around 1:16 a.m. Hollywood patrol officers responded to a radio call of a ‘woman screaming’ in the 2000 block of Mound Street in Hollywood Hills,” the LAPD said in a statement this evening. When officers arrived, Harwick’s roommate met them in the street and informed officers that she was being assaulted. The roommate had escaped by jumping over a wall and going to a neighboring residence to call for help. Responding officers found Harwick gravely injured on the ground beneath a third-story balcony, police said. She suffered significant injuries consistent with a fall and was unresponsive. She was rushed to an area hospital, where she died from her injuries. The investigation revealed possible evidence of a struggle upstairs as well as forced entry into the residence, police said. Gareth Pursehouse, 41, was arrested around 4:30 PM Saturday by FBI-LAPD Fugitive Task Force members on suspicion of murder outside his residence in Playa del Rey.
[SOURCE: deadline.com]
GENERAL MOTORS IS KILLING OFF THE HOLDEN BRAND AND PULLING OUT OF AUSTRALIA
The company announced Sunday that it would retire the Holden brand, which has existed in Australia for more than 160 years, by 2021. It will also shutter its sales, design and engineering operations in Australia and New Zealand. General Motors added that it will pull back elsewhere in Asia Pacific. It will stop selling Chevrolet vehicles in Thailand by the end of this year, and it has agreed to sell a manufacturing plant there to Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors. The US carmaker expects to take a $1.1 billion financial hit from the retreat, roughly $300 million of which will be a cash loss.
[SOURCE: cnn.com]
CHARLES PORTIS, ELUSIVE AUTHOR OF ‘TRUE GRIT,’ DIES AT 86
His death was confirmed by his brother Jonathan, who said Mr. Portis had been in hospice care for two years and in an Alzheimer’s care facility for six years prior. Mr. Portis was in his early 30s and well established as a reporter at The New York Herald Tribune in 1964, when he decided to turn to fiction full time. The decision astonished his friends and colleagues at the paper, among them Jimmy Breslin, Tom Wolfe and Nora Ephron. He had covered the civil rights movement in the South: riots in Birmingham, Ala.; the jailing of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Ga.; Gov. George C. Wallace’s attempt to stop the desegregation of the University of Alabama. And he had been assigned to a coveted post, London bureau chief. His future in journalism was bright.
[SOURCE: nytimes.com]
JEFF BEZOS, THE WORLD’S RICHEST MAN, PLEDGES $10 BILLION TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE
In an Instagram post, the 56-year-old billionaire said he was launching the Bezos Earth Fund, an initiative to fund scientists, activists, and non-governmental organizations researching and fighting climate change. Bezos did not specify which groups he’d be funding, but he noted that the $10 billion fund would begin issuing grants this summer. Bezos’ announcement comes as Amazon has taken steps to address its role in contributing to global warming and as it faces internal pressure from its own employees. In September, the company unveiled the Climate Pledge, a commitment to meet the international Paris Agreement’s goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2040, 10 years earlier than what most countries had previously agreed to. The online retailer’s plan to achieve that goal included an order for 100,000 new electric delivery vehicles and a $100 million investment in global reforestation projects.
[SOURCE: buzzfeednews.com]
DAIRY FARMERS OF AMERICA AGREES TO BUY DEAN FOODS FOR $425 MILLION
The dairy co-operative will also assume Dean’s liabilities as part of the deal to acquire 44 of the company’s facilities, as well as other assets. Dean filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November as the business struggled to attract consumers who have instead turned to nondairy milk or private-label products. At the time it filed for bankruptcy, Dean had reported a net loss in seven of its last eight quarters. The transaction makes the Dairy Farmers of America the stalking horse bidder, meaning that the transaction would be subject to receiving higher or better offers while the company is in bankruptcy. The deal would also need approval from the Department of Justice, which has reportedly begun probing the merger, according to the Wall Street Journal.
[SOURCE: msn.com]
AUSTRALIAN MAN, 20, DIES AFTER 98-FOOT FALL INTO SINKHOLE AFTER ALLEGEDLY ATTEMPTING HANDSTAND
The man — identified as Bradley Streeter — was on a viewing platform at the Cave Gardens sinkhole in Mount Gambier on Feb. 8 when he fell into the cave, 9 News reported. Emergency personnel were called to the area just before midnight, South Australia Police said, and his body was reportedly retrieved after 3 a.m. the next morning. Limestone Coast LSA inspector Campbell Hill told Australia’s ABC News that a roping set-up was used to recover Streeter from the popular tourist spot. While police did not publicly reveal details about the moments leading up to the accident, Streeter was allegedly performing a handstand on the viewing platform’s railing just before falling in, a family friend told The Advertiser, citing police. The tragedy comes two years after the death of Streeter’s father, Country Road Funerals, the family’s local funeral home, said in a post to social media.
[SOURCE: people.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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