In Other News: Naming baby for TV show names; driver caught with ‘license plater flipper’

Published 2:22 pm Saturday, April 13, 2019

Editor’s note: “In Other News” is a list of state, national and global headlines compiled by the Daily Citizen-News staff. Click on the headline to read these stories. To suggest a story, email the appropriate link to inothernews@daltoncitizen.com. The deadline is 3 p.m. 

‘Game of Thrones’ baby names are reportedly trendier than ever

Name of thrones! The little Jacksons and Sophias of the world reportedly won’t be the only ones sharing their monikers with future classmates, as “Game of Thrones”-inspired names are apparently hotter than ever before, according to one report. In recent days, parenting website BabyCenter released data detailing that a few names from the long-running HBO series have jumped in popularity from last year through the first quarter of 2019 — perhaps ahead of the highly anticipated premiere of the show’s eighth and final season tonight. According to the study, two enemies of Cersei have trendier names than ever. Olenna is up 71 percent with a popularity ranking of 5,351, up from 18,292 in 2018, with Ellaria close behind and up 53 percent this year, rising from a ranking of 12,645 in 2018 to 5,994 this year. — Fox News

Motorist dodged paying nearly $5,500 in Houston tolls with ‘license plate flipper,’ police say

Houston cops have arrested a man they say avoided paying nearly $5,500 in tolls on Houston roads with an illegal “license plate flipper.” Preston Talbot, 27, of Houston, was stopped Thursday for avoiding a toll on the Sam Houston Expressway and charged with a misdemeanor, police said. “He would activate this device, putting a flipper down in front of his license plate, so the cameras at toll plazas couldn’t read his plate,” Harris County Constable Mark Herman told KHOU-TV Friday. The device Talbot is accused of installing in his car worked with the touch of a button, the station reported. — Fox News

Dutch doctor ‘fathered 49 children’ in IVF scandal

A Dutch doctor at the centre of an IVF scandal fathered at least 49 children, an organisation representing parents and children born through his now-closed clinic said Friday. Jan Karbaat, who died in 2017, is the father of 49 children born after women visited his Rotterdam clinic where he used his own sperm instead of sperm from a chosen donor to inseminate them, Defence for Children said. Results of DNA tests conducted Friday at a hospital in the southeastern city of Nijmegen “showed that 49 children in the case are direct descendants of the late Karbaat,” the organisation said in a statement. “The results confirm serious suspicions that Karbaat used his own sperm at his clinic,” Defence for Children added. — Yahoo! News

The weakening of Earth’s magnetic field has greatly accelerated

Earth’s magnetic field is getting significantly weaker, the magnetic north pole is shifting at an accelerating pace and scientists readily admit that a sudden pole shift could potentially cause “trillions of dollars” in damage.  Today, most of us take the protection provided by Earth’s magnetic field completely for granted.  It is essentially a colossal force field which surrounds our planet and makes life possible.  And even with such protection, a giant solar storm could still potentially hit our planet and completely fry our power grid.  But as our magnetic field continues to get weaker and weaker, even much smaller solar storms will have the potential to be cataclysmic.  And once the magnetic field gets weak enough, we will be facing much bigger problems. — ZeroHedge

Will National Enquirer survive? Media experts divided on ‘badly damaged’ tabloid’s future

Does the National Enquirer have a future? As American Media Inc. looks for a buyer for the troubled supermarket tabloid, media experts offered sharply divergent assessments of whether the supermarket staple would ultimate be able to weather its current legal, financial and public relations troubles — and indeed if a buyer would emerge at all. “I would rather pay money to someone to take it away from me, to save me from all the legal troubles,” Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism, told TheWrap. “I can list 100 reasons why nobody should buy the National Enquirer, but I cannot think of one reason why somebody should buy the National Enquirer.” — TheWrap