Rip-On Skate Park gets solar lights, extending evening hours

Rip-On Skate Park Extension

Rip-On Skate Park in Topeka has added four new solar-powered lights in an effort to extend the hours skaters can use the facility.

Shawnee County Parks and Recreation partnered with Fonroche Lighting America on the project, which aims to give skaters more time to enjoy the park while expanding opportunities for people to gather and participate in the sport.

According to Shawnee County Commissioner Bill Riphahn, the lighting has been a long time coming, with the skate park first opening in 2004. The new lights will allow skaters to use the facility later into the evening.

"The skaters wanted longer hours and we're delivering here today,"

Bill Riphahn, Shawnee County Commissioner, via Yahoo News

Riphahn also hopes the improvements will attract more visitors from surrounding communities, particularly skaters who may not have access to a lighted skate park in their own town.

Execution of Fort Hood Shooter

The Pentagon has announced that the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, will be livestreamed.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution will be carried out by firing squad on December 3, and that people will be able to watch it, as it will be a public event.

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."

Pete Hegseth, US Defense Secretary, via BBC News

Hasan was sentenced to death in 2013 for the 2009 shooting, and has been held at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas ever since. The execution will be the first US military execution in over 60 years.

According to John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death, the decision to livestream the execution is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain."

Eugene R Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, said that livestreaming an execution is "just so out of the Middle Ages" and that "in a way, we are so past that as a society, at least I thought so until today."

Background on Nidal Hasan

Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist from Virginia, admitted in court that he was the gunman in the deadliest ever non-combat attack on an American military base.

Hasan opened fire at a medical processing center on the Texas base on 5 November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more.

At his court martial, Hasan said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that he was on the wrong side of a war against Islam.

Reactions to the Execution

The decision to livestream the execution has been met with criticism from some, who argue that it is a form of "attention-seeking" by the Trump administration, as stated by John Mills.

Others have raised concerns about the potential impact on the public, particularly children, who may be able to watch the execution online.

Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University, said that a livestreamed execution would "force a level of transparency that we have probably never seen before in this country" and that it could make people realize "exactly what's happening in a way that many people ignore."