The Roar keeps you updated with local news, recent events and interesting stories ― everything you need to know for this week.
1. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become the hotspot of marine waste. Around eight million tons of plastic enter the marine environment each year, and the figure is set to rise. Marine biologists wants to see greater responsibilities placed on plastic producers, such as strict recycling quotas that force companies to use less plastic. Similar quotas will soon be introduced across the European Union.
2. Thomas Mair is charged guilty of murdering British politician, Jo Cox. Cox campaigned to keep the UK in EU, celebrated diversity, championed the rights of immigrants and was an advocate of women’s and children’s rights.
3. Disney has announced that tickets for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” go on sale today. The film is both a spinoff of “Star Wars” and a prequel. The plot revolves around a group of rebels seeking to steal the plans for the Death Star.
4. François Fillon will lead France’s Republican party after winning a runoff Sunday in the party’s first-ever US-style primary election. He has also spoken of cutting public spending, abolishing the wealth tax, reducing immigration and investing billions in security, defense and justice.
5. Miami’s Cuban Exiles celebrated and rejoiced in the streets when the news of Fidel Castro’s death was announced. Castro was a man who had divided the peoples’ families, taking their property, imprisoning and sometimes shooting their friends and relatives, and wrenching them from their homes and their country. With Castro’s death, some hard-liners are hoping that President-elect Donald J. Trump will crack down now that the Cuban government has lost its father figure.
6. Nico Rosberg takes Formula One 2016 world driver’s championship despite Lewis Hamilton’s win at Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Rosberg has lost the title to Hamilton, his teammate at Mercedes, in the past two seasons. However, now with his win, Rosberg has proved that he deserved that title, and that it is still possible to win with the style and grace of a gentleman.
7. Texas A&M football team lost against LSU on Thanksgiving day, 54-39. This drops the Aggies from being ranked 22 in college football to off the ranking charts.
8. “Moana” was released on November 23 and is already one of the best-reviewed wide releases of the year. It collected about $81.1 million at domestic theaters over the five-day holiday weekend, enough to rank as the second-best Thanksgiving opening on record.
9. The escalating American military engagement in Somalia has led the Obama administration to expand the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda. This move will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump’s authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters. The administration has decided to deem the Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia, to be part of the armed conflict that Congress authorized against the perpetrators of terrorist attacks, according to senior American officials.
10. Three weeks after Election Day, Hillary Clinton’s campaign said on Saturday that it would participate in a recount process in Wisconsin incited by a third-party candidate and would join any potential recounts in two other closely contested states, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The Clinton campaign said it had seen no “actionable evidence” of vote hacking that might taint the results or otherwise provide new grounds for challenging Donald J. Trump’s victory.
