From Trump to tattoos: The top national stories of 2018

Political scandals, tragic deaths and a girl's unique name topped headlines in 2018. As the year comes to a close, take a look at the most popular national stories on WRAL.com this year.

On Twitter, Trump said he and Sulzberger discussed "the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’"

The woman had signed her ticket after winning, but later learned that she could have protected her identify by writing the name of a trust. The woman's lawyer's argued her privacy interest outweighed the public's right to know who won the money.

The judge agreed that disclosing the woman's name would be an invasion of privacy, but that lottery officials could release her hometown.

A Marine combat veteran took his own life after killing 12 people at a country music bar in California in November.

Using a handgun with an illegal, extra-capacity magazine, gunman Ian David Long, 28, shot a security guard outside the bar before taking aim at employees and patrons.

Among those killed was a man who had survived the 2017 mass shooting at a Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas.

A former Playboy centerfold involved in a custody battle apparently jumped with her 7-year-old son from the 25th floor of a Manhattan hotel in May.

Stephanie Adams had checked into the hotel just hours after telling the New York Post that her husband and his lawyers were blocking her from taking her son on vacation.

Adams and her husband had been involved in a contentious custody and the couple typically handed off their son to each other at a local police precinct.

Adams had been Playboy's "Miss November" centerfold in 1992 and appeared in the magazine again in 2003.

"Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left," Sanders posted on Twitter following the incident.

Samba TV, which has placed software of certain models of more than a dozen TV brands, encourages users to enable the service but does not detail how much information is collected by the company.

Once enabled, Samba TV can track everything that appears on a TV screen, including video games, and can even offered advertisers the ability to base their targeting on whether people watched liberal or conservative media.

Companies such as Samba TV have come under scrutiny from regulators and privacy advocates about a lack of transparency.

Facebook said the accounts associated with SocialDataHub and its sister firm, Fubtech, violated the website's policies by scraping data from the social network.

The announcement from Facebook game on the same day the social media giant announced that it had carried out the biggest purge of American accounts disseminating disinformation.

When Ruth Reed made a resolution to help customers inside a New Jersey Wawa in August, she had no idea she would be lending a helping hand to one of the biggest names in country music.

Reed, a substitute teacher, noticed that the man in front of her in line was a few dollars short, she jumped into action.

When she commented that the man looked like Urban, he revealed his identity.

A mother in November said a Southwest Airlines agent posted a photo of her daughter's boarding pass on social media to make fun of her name.

Traci Redford's daughter is named Abcde, which is pronounced "aHB-sih-dee."

Redford said she notified the airline when she saw her daughter's boarding pass had been posted on social media and the airline issued a statement of apology to the family.

Once referred to as "job stoppers," face tattoos have become more popular as tattoos in general have become more ubiquitous.

As Americans have embraced body art, those who wanted to stand out began embracing tattoos above the neckline.