The top high schools in the country. The school coming under fire on how it handled prestigious national merit awards. ABC's M win says parents gave administrators a piece of their minds, and there are other schools embroiled in this. State officials in Virginia expanding their investigation into at least ten Northern Virginia public high schools that allegedly failed to notify their students of their national merit commended scholar status in a timely manner. Our preliminary ports is over a thousand students were not notified of the situation. Virginia's attorney general's office, claiming school officials allegedly withheld telling students they were commended scholars to avoid upsetting others who were not. We're trying to understand whether they were treating students denying them certainly their recognition or admission based on their ethnic background. The commended student status in extremely competitive honor goes to at least 3% of PSAT test takers nationally. One of the schools at the center of the controversy, the elite Thomas Jefferson high school for signs of technology, where there are more than 65% Asians, and about 20% whites. Blocks and Latinos make up less than 10% of the population according to the fairfax county public school system. The school eventually notified students of their status, but not in time for the start of the college application season, creating what students and parents say was a missed opportunity. Stop the sabotage. Some outraged parents demanding accountability at a recent school board meeting. If you just put it as from the perspective of what a competent and diligent administration should do is a serious failure and miserable failure. That delay potentially causing students like Shana yasha's son to miss deadlines for adding, the commended student honor to their early decision applications. Some schools had already made their decisions. There are schools that offer scholarships up to $35,000 a year. So yeah, do the math. It's a lot of money. A fairfax county public school spokesperson says they've initiated a third party independent investigation, and that are preliminary understanding is that the delay was due to human error. ABC's M win. The bloody battle for solidar in eastern Ukraine, who has control. These are your world headlines from ABC News. The bloodiest battle in the Ukrainian award so far, the battle to win the salt mine town of solidar, Russia claiming victory for Ukrainian officials saying the fight to capture the town is still going on. There was a big explosion on a pipeline carrying gas to the north of Lithuania and neighboring Latvia. Images of the blast showed flames as high as a 160 feet in the air. Latvia's defense minister said an investigation has been launched and sabotage could not be ruled out. A British Iranian national has been executed in Iran, Ali Reza ackford was convicted in 2019 for spying for the UK and accusation he denied. The British prime minister Rishi sunak called the execution a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime. In Brazil, the country's Supreme Court will investigate former president jair Bolsonaro on whether he incited crowds when they storm government buildings in Brasília last weekend. I'm Lama has under the ABC News forum dusk in London You're a stock charts dot com money update on news radio 1000 FM 97 7. From ABC News, Wall Street weekend more signs this week that the worst of inflation may be behind us. The consumer price index shows inflation continues to slow down to 6 and a half percent in December, but that is still much higher than the fed's 2% target and it likely means more interest rate hikes. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress list week that the U.S. could reach its debt limit on January 19th. That's this coming Thursday, and it would mean extraordinary measures would be required, including delaying some payments in order to avoid default. She says unless lawmakers vote to raise the debt ceiling, the treasury could run out of cash by June. The IRS says it's beginning to see a slowdown in its customer service struggles thanks to billions of dollars in funding from the Democrats climate and health law, which included the authority to hire more people, however that optimism may be tempered to say the least by a new House Republican majority, which plans to take that money back. Before