A family holiday party in Tores, Brazil on December 23, 2024, turned fatal, resulting in the deaths of three members, and the hospitalization of three others, from arsenic poisoning. Dead are sisters Maida da Silva, 58, and Neuza Silva Dos Anjos, 65; and Neuza’s daughter Tatiana, 43; a third sister, Zeli Silva, 60, Maida’s husband Jefferson, and Tatiana’s son Matheus, 10, were hospitalized with severe injuries but survived.
Inevitably, it happens. Stories, small and large, are encountered, researched and prepped, and then something – a “bigger” event or a life circumstance – intervenes, and the story never sees the light of day. Until now. Join AAA for a wrap-up of some of those missed stories, as we close out the old year and ring in the new!
On Monday, 16 December 2024, shooting suspect Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, 15, discharged a 9mm handgun in a study hall at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two and wounding six others, before turning the gun on herself. The incident, sadly, is hardly isolated, but it is unusual. The vast number of mass shootings are perpetrated by males, using assault-style rifles; women constitute only 5% of mass shooters, and with both victims also female, this becomes an “all-female” cast of characters.
On Sunday, 8 December 2024, Syrian rebels occupied the capital of Damascus, effectively overthrowing the government and ending half a century of rule over Syria by the Assad family. Dictator Bashar al-Assad, in power since 2000, hot-footed it to exile and asylum in Russia, under the protection of bestie Vladimir Putin. His overthrow also represents the end of a civil war that began in 2011 with a pro-democracy uprising against Assad’s entrenched rule, and cost the lives of half a million Syrians, with 12 million more displaced from their homeland.
Donald Trump’s post-electoral Retribution Tour hit a snag on November 21st, when Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz suddenly withdrew from consideration in the wake of some GOP-generated heat in defiance of his candidacy. Withdrawal is something Gaetz knows a bit about, with the primary scandal in which he’s embroiled involving his attendance at drug-fueled sex parties with underage partners.
Trump nominated Gaetz, himself a subject of a years-long federal criminal investigation and a House Ethics Committee report, on November 13th, along with a spate of controversial nominees, such as Fox & Friends weekend anchor Pete Hegseth for Defense; Bashar Al-Assad and Vladimir Putin apologist Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence; and vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head Health and Human Services. If these choices seem “out-of-the-box,” consider that asteroid Troemper 2813 at 11 Leo (our celestial referent for The Donald) is currently travelling arm-in-arm with asteroid Pandora 55 at 10 Leo, noted mythically as the hapless naif who, against good advice, opened a box containing all the evils of the world, thus releasing them. Archetypally, there are no cosmic accidents.
On 12 November, 2024 Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the 85-million souls in the global Anglican Communion, resigned after a Church of England investigation report was released, which found that he failed in his duty to tell police about serial physical, psychological and sexual abuse by a staff member at the Iwerne Christian summer camps, as soon as he was made aware of it. The scandal had been building for nearly a week after the report’s release, with calls for accountability from Welby increasing daily.
