Among the COVID-19 crisis, one major volcano just erupted in Indonesia killing 14 so far and injuring dozens. Mount Semeru, one of Indonesia’s Volcanoes in East Java, violently erupted sending lava, ash, and pyroclastic flows across the region. Located along a subduction zone, Semeru is the highest mountain on the island of Java. Semeru being apart of the famous, ‘Ring of Fire’ also means that the seismic activity is increased also which means the region could face earthquakes as a side effect of the eruption. The region was hit with increased thunderstorm activity and increased rain activity that happened for a series of days. This surplus of water caused the lava dome atop the mountain to erode and collapse causing the eruption.

In terms of rescue operations, local Indonesian rescue crews have been doing everything they can to save as much people as possible, however, thick cold lava floods have halted rescuers from evacuating and searching for everyone in the affected area. Not only is the cooling lava an issue, but thick clouds of ash and smoke have plagued the nearby land and even sending some villages into darkness because the ash is too thick. The tents that rescuers have been setting up have also been halted by thick smoke and ash. The eruption also displaced nearly 3,000 families and also destroyed 38 schools. 27 individuals are also still missing since the eruption happened and the ash has affected the larger populace of around 60,000 people.

“At first, I thought it was a bomb explosion … suddenly it was all dark, like it was going to destroy the earth,” she said.

Local resident, Hosniya.

Recently, in the media, it has become apparent that there are going to be more and more variations of COVID-19 and it is unknown how mutated they shall be. Just last week, reports from news stations across the country showed how quickly this new mutation spreads and it also shows how urgent it is that we get this under control. It first started with President Biden restricting travel from five countries in Africa but even that precaution did not help as much as we thought. The one issue that some scientists recognize is that by the time we take precautions, the virus is already here. That is exactly what happened. Not even a week after the travel ban, we had our first confirmed case in California. Not even a week later, we had another report come in that someone in Minnesota tested positive as well. However, that one person in Minnesota recently attended the famous Anime Convention in New York and the people he traveled with just recently tested positive for Omicron as well.

Over the weekend we saw the Omicron variant come to Philadelphia as well. Especially in the northwest part of the city. There was also a woman who tested positive in New Jersey as well. So far almost 1/5 of our states have at least one confirmed case of the new variant. Cities and hospitals across the country are also dealing with the effects from Thanksgiving. If the mayors and governors do not take precautions we might see an increase in omicron on top of those who are already seeking medical help.

“It’ll be another week or so before we see the full effects of the Thanksgiving holiday on these numbers, but with the colder weather and the recent spikes with a new variant on the horizon, this is a time to be very careful.”

Philadelphia Health Commissioner, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole.

The media world was rumbled by the events that have happened over the past year. From COVID-19 misinformation all the way to election misinformation, there seemed to be an age where citizens couldn’t trust the information out on the internet. The 2020 election brought on the harshest onslaught of misinformation as certain states were in the sights. States like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan were all in the sights of the weapon that was misinformation. This past Thursday however, two election workers from Georgia were tired of the misinformation from particular media outlets and they are now suing the company responsible.

Gateway Pundit, classified by the New York Times as a, ‘right-wing conspiratorial website’, is on the receiving end of these two lawsuits. These latest suits follow right behind previous lawsuits against Fox News as well. Media outlets across the country seem to be divided on the previous election outcome and as a result, there are a lot of ‘media’ outlets, like Gateway Pundit, that claim that Donald J. Trump is still president of the United States.

“I want the defendants to know that my daughter and I are real people who deserve justice, and I never want them to do this to anyone else,”

Ms. Ruby Freeman, ballot worker from Atlanta who filed the suit, in a statement with the New York Times.

The examples of defamation provided were, ‘crooked Democrats’ and the outrageous claim that ‘election workers pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting them without election monitors in the room.’ These claims follow footage that Former President Trump and his lawyer showed to a Georgia Senate Committee that showed election officials handling suitcases with supposedly 18,000 ballots and feeding them into machines. These claims were later debunked by the county and state officials but the claims never stopped. The victim also claimed that since these lies were given a platform, she and her daughter suffered countless forms of death threats and harassment from Trump supporters. To read more on how Gateway Pundit had any form of credibility, check out this article here.

Buzzfeed has always been one of the private media companies that has always had a large reach at any given time. Buzzfeed blew up for their popular quizzes and their compelling stories. While Buzzfeed has always been working in the private sector, the founders of the company decided to move it and operate it in the public sector. The company voted on Thursday to make the company public, and co-founder, Jonah Peretti, stated that the larger goal is to be obtained by a acquisition company. The company went public today, Monday December 6th 2021. While going public, Buzzfeed also acquired the company, Complex Networks which is a sports and entertainment publisher for $300 million.

While so many good things are happening to the company, a lot of employees did not agree with the higher-ups decisions. Union employees under the news division at Buzzfeed, subsequently named Buzzfeed News, staged a mini protest in the form of stopping all work for the day. The protest was staged to speed up negotiations regarding contracts. The union claims that Buzzfeed refuses to alter or budge any contracts yet to come and the union is not backing down. The Union claims that Buzzfeed was proposing that there will be a, “1% guaranteed annual wage increase and a minimum salary of $50,000.” (Robertson et Eavis, 2021). This issues shows a greater issue that other companies are facing left and right. We are in the middle of what companies like to call a ‘labor shortage’, however, employees and unions are finally refusing to work for less than they deserve and they are making the companies realize that.

“We deserve a strong contract that protects us and ensures a fair and equitable workplace for everyone in our unit,”

Katie Notopoulos, senior tech reporter, in an interview with the New York Times.

Negotiations hope to continue tomorrow, Tuesday December 7th. Without the proper workforce, Buzzfeed’s growth that they have been experiencing, since purchasing the Huffington Post from Verizon, will slowly come to a stop. If Buzzfeed wants to keep the same momentum that people are giving them and be dubbed the ‘future of news media’ then they will have to focus on keeping the union and their employees happy.

After new information regarding his brother, Andrew, Chris Cuomo has been fired from the media company CNN. After being put on an indefinite leave by the company, reports just came in that state he has been fired from his position. This all started when former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo came under fire due to victims claiming that he has harassed them in a sexual manner.

We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review, and have terminated him, effective immediately. While in the process of that review, additional information has come to light. Despite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.

CNN, 2021.

The top rated anchor for the media channel had high respect among the journalism community however, that quickly eroded when new testimony and evidence came out, placing Chris as a more intimate and engaged character in his brother’s career. While some may be sympathetic towards Chris’ reasoning, colleagues like CNN anchor Jake Tapper, believe that the anchor placed the company in quote, “A bad spot.”

The company has stated that an internal affairs team is investigating the matter and conducting a review. While the company may not want to be held under any media pressure for holding onto Chris, nobody can dictate whether it affected his career or not. Chris, while being previously employed at ABC news, swooped into CNN and generated an increased amount of ratings that caused CNN to create a new morning show called “New Day” to compensate with his quote, “Bombastic, fast-talking on-air personality.” (Grynbaum et. Koblin, NYT, 2021.) While it is unknown what will happen to his career, this move will most likely affect the ratings of CNN’s prime time show and some drastic production changes are going to have to happen in order to reorganize and change the prime time show.

Michigan is currently grieving the losses of four Oxford High School students ages 14-17 who were unfortunate victims of gun violence. Yet again, this headline takes America by storm. At around 1 pm. on November 30, 15 year old Ethan Crumbley began to open fire toward his classmates, killing four and wounding several others. What had unfolded before the shooting began is chilling, and unfortunately was not taken in consideration. Ethan Crumbley’s father, James, purchased a 9mm Sig Sauer SP 2022 from ACME Shooting Goods in Oxford. Apparently his son was with him, and this was considered by the family members a black Friday gift.

The next day during class, Ethan Crumbley’s teacher noticed him searching images of ammunition on Google and was concerned for him. She proceeded to find a note written by Ethan, which had the words “Blood Everywhere.” Shocked and appalled, she reached out to the school’s faculty, and Ethan was evaluated by a school psychologist. Being that Ethan’s note had portended that something awful was in the works, admins of Oxford High attempted to get in contact with Ethan’s parents, James and Jennifer but received no response.

As per ABC News’s Emily Shapiro:

“A prosecutor filed involuntary manslaughter charges Friday against the parents of a teen accused of killing four students at a Michigan high school, saying they failed to intervene on the day of the tragedy despite being confronted with a drawing and chilling message — “blood everywhere” — that was found at the boy’s desk.

James and Jennifer Crumbley committed “egregious” acts, from buying a gun on Black Friday and making it available to Ethan Crumbley to resisting his removal from school when they were summoned a few hours before the shooting, Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said.”

I chose this article because it stood out to me, as I spent some time thinking about why this news story did not have as much coverage as others that we have heard of in previous years. Is there a secret or strategy to what makes the news? And is that strategy applied even in situations of tragedy? Additionally, here are some important things to know:

Ethan Crumbley is being charged as an adult.

James and Jennifer Crumbley have gone missing in action, are now considered fugitives, and there is a $10,000 reward for anyone that can provide information on their whereabouts.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/charging-decision-due-parents-oxford-high-shooting-81538316

Yesterday, Netflix announced that they will be releasing a movie version of the heartwarming encounter between Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench on a thanksgiving morning in 2016. Thanksgiving grandma Wanda and Jamal Hinton just celebrated the six year anniversary of befriending one another through a random text. The two exchanged texts suddenly after Wanda reached out with an invitation that was intended for family members. Jamal, 17 at the time, responded kindly informing her that she was mistaken. She then ended up inviting Jamal, who she had never met, to her thanksgiving dinner. Jamal, of course, then took to Twitter to tell the story. Upon hearing their “Thanksgiving Fairytale” the streaming service offered to produce an adaptation of it and release it to the public.

The two have remained friends and have continued the tradition of celebrating thanksgiving together every year. Netflix’s version of this story is to be called “Thanksgiving Text” and will describe how the friendship of the pair came to be. Hinton took to Twitter once again to make the big announcement:

““I am very excited to announce our new partnership with Netflix,” Hinton, 22, shared on Twitter. Speaking on behalf of Dench, 64, he added, “We thank every single one of you for your love and support in our journey the last 6 years. We can’t wait to tell our story on the big screen!””

I am very excited to announce our new partnership with Netflix. We thank every single one of you for your love and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Jamal Hinton (@Jamalhinton12) December 02, 2021

I am very excited to announce our new partnership with Netflix. We thank every single one of you for your love and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Jamal Hinton (@Jamalhinton12) December 02, 2021

I am very excited to announce our new partnership with Netflix. We thank every single one of you for your love and support in our journey the last 6 years. We can’t wait to tell our story on the big screen! 🎥🍾 pic.twitter.com/0heCmEWMDM

— Jamal Hinton (@Jamalhinton12) December 2, 2021

Though it is yet undecided how Netflix will go about executing this adaptation, certain crew members have been hired, including “Salt-N-Peppa” Abdul Williams, to write the script. I chose this article because it is a good example of what makes a story go viral. We have had several discussions about this and statistics of going viral in class, and we have always discussed the cuteness and relatable factor. i think that this very simple story has happened many times and is very relatable. It has themes of kindness and festivity which makes it a great story to publish.

Source: https://madamenoire.com/1302934/thanksgiving-story-becoming-netflix-movie/.

Due the modern landscape of food delivery applications such as UberEats, GrubHub, and Doordash, ordering food to ones house has never been as easy for the consumer, and as profitable for the business owners. The pandemic caused the industry to spike massively, but the quality and convenience of the operating systems laid the groundwork for this kind of boost to be possible.

Because of the uptick in people ordering in from their phones, there have been new niche apps hitting the market that specialize in a specific type of food item. “Slice” for example is strictly for pizza, and independent pizza shops can sign up and begin to sell their food to people who seek out pizza the most. “HungryPanda” does a similar thing but with Chinese food.

This industry has built growing pressure on the traditional restaurants on these applications, as so called “dark kitchens” (restaurants who only sell food online), are able to cut overhead costs massively, and as a result get featured higher on the suggestion tab.

Restaurants that choose to continue to sell food both online and in person are going to have increase their delivery costs, according to people such as Chipotle’s chief financial officer, Jack Hartung. “It’s no surprise that delivery comes with an added cost. Our belief has been that’s a premium experience from a convenience standpoint. We want to make sure that channel covers the cost.”

Former President Donald Trump set out to invest in a brand new Media Company called “Truth Social” that would allegedly be the most reliable news source for audiences. The novel social media company had planned to release an invitation-only Beta version which was intended to be a new version of Twitter. However, it seems that there has been no action taken for this matter since the late October announcement. No sightings or images of an operational platform have been released to the public despite the “Truth Social” app being available for pre-order. In addition, the company that planned to merge with Trump’s social media firm, called Digital World Acquisition Corp. has seen a significant drop in its stock price since the TMTG initiative went public. It started out selling high, at a heaping $175 per share, and dropped down to just $44 per share on Wednesday.

According to Reuters, Trump’s new social media company mains to raise one billion dollars through share sales to Hedge funds and family offices at higher prices. Although it is natural for some companies to not be successful in launching their products on the initial deadline, the awaited appearance of Truth social was intended to serve as a clear test to companies and investors that contributed to its development through the stock market. Both parties of representatives, Trump Media & Technology group and Digital World Acquisition Corp. have been reluctant to to comment on the recent absence and have yet to provide answers for the public, as reported by CNBC news. It is also currently unclear on who is building the network, as TMTG has not disclosed any companies or executives’ names.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/01/trump-spac-social-media-company-appears-to-miss-first-deadline.html