Your weekly news breakdown from the Talon Online News out of Colonial Forge High School. This weekly update is for April 23 through April 29, 2022.

Script:

Welcome back to your weekly news bite. I’m your host Arlie Munday and this is Eagle News Now.

Nagindrin Darmaligam, a Malaysian man who was caught trafficking 42.72 grams of heroin, which is around 3 tablespoons of heroin, was executed after the Singaporian court dismissed his plea of disability, despite having an IQ of 69.

 He spent almost a decade on death row after breaking drug laws in Singapore, which has some of the world’s toughest drug laws.

He  was executed, and his body is planned to be sent back to Malaysia. 

Many people protested against the actions that the Singapore government took. At Singapore Park on Monday, people gathered with candlelight vigils to protest the hanging.

Trevor Reed, a former United States Marine veteran, was sentenced in Russia in 2020 to a 9 year sentence after being accused of attacking a Moscow police officer. 

After 985 days in captivity he was released back to the US after taking part in a prisoner swap for the US jailed Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko.

 “Today we welcome him home and celebrate his return to the family that missed him dearly,” said President Biden.

On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on PBS’s “NewsHour” that the United States is now out of the COVID-19 pandemic phase.

Dr. Fauci said, quote, “Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are,” unquote.

According to Dr. Fauci, the United States is now in a more smooth transition phase of the pandemic, and actually headed back to normality without total disruption of society, businesses, and schools. At the same time, Dr. Fauci stated, “So what we need to do is continue to be vigilant, to follow the CDC guidelines, to do the kinds of things that protect you.”

The Fairfax County Freedom Hill Elementary School Principal, Nicholas Zapadka, traveled to a red cross refugee camp on April 25th in Cologne, Germany, to help out Ukrainian refugees. 

The school  students had written cards for their principal to pass out to the refugees. And instead of writing them in English, the kids wrote them in Ukrainian. 

Quote,“For our kids to know that had that kind of an impact was pretty cool,“, unquote, Zapadka said. 

This effort brought the school community together, as students made cards, school staff contributed what they could, and one student’s mother started knitting hats.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and CEO of Tesla, agreed to purchase the social media giant “Twitter” this week for $44 billion. 

Musk said, quote “I want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” unquote.

On Tuesday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, gave the order to take down the “People’s Friendship Arch” monument which is located in central Kyiv.  

This monument was gifted to Ukraine by the Soviet Union government in 1982 as a symbol of friendship between Russia and Ukraine.  

The monument is a large titanium arch with two male statues underneath, both statues hold a symbol which represents the Soviet Union’s friendship between the formerly joined countries.  

The statue of the men was taken down, but the arch will still remain.  The arch is planned to be renamed and then painted the colors of the Ukraine flag.

Opening night for SpongeBob the musical started Thursday going though Saturday night. There will be a toned down version of the show in the afternoon at 1 for small children or people with sensory issues, there will be another show, full blast, that night. All night shows will be starting at 7p.m. and tickets will be $10 per person.

That is your update for this week. This is your host Arlie Munday signing off, see you next week.