It was dark as the car sped along a small road on the outskirts of the embattled Iraqi city of Mosul. The car was driving fast, but not so fast as to draw attention. That was essential. The lives of the two men in the front seat depended on their ability to keep a low profile and pass through undetected.
In the passenger seat, Khaleel Al-Dhaki was focused on the secret mission he was leading to rescue a Yazidi woman and her child, both of whom were taken by ISIS and dragged into Mosul.
“This kind of operation can’t be done during daytime,” he later told NBC News. “We are basically going in there to kidnap them back from ISIS.”
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The night of her rescue from ISIS Leila reunited with some of her and her husband’s relatives who had also been previously rescued from ISIS captivity. Marc Smith / NBC News
Who killed Walter Scott? Apparently, we’re not really sure.
That’s according to a jury in Charleston, South Carolina, which was unable to reach a reach a verdict Monday in the murder trial of Michael Slager, who shot Scott and whose actions were captured by a witness in a video that went viral.
Of course, the jury has its reasons — apparently one juror, identified only as a 50-year-old male in press reports, said he “cannot in good conscience consider a guilty verdict.” Slager may still wind up being put on trial again.
But the takeaway for black people whose daily encounters with police end in harassment, violence or death, is simple: Our lives don’t matter, even when they’re being taken in front of millions of viewers.
Ben Carson, the former neurosurgeon turned conservative presidential candidate, received a formal pick as secretary of housing and urban development from Republican President-elect Donald Trump this week. Despite his near-total lack of formal qualifications for the role, some Carson supporters touted his rough-and-tumble upbringing as a young black child in Detroit as evidence he understands urban policy — specifically the fact he himself grew up in public housing.
Notable backers of this theory included former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Armstrong Williams, Carson’s close friend and spokesman.
Except the part about public housing isn’t true. In a correction posted to a New York Times article Monday, the Times wrote Williams told the paper the neurosurgeon grew up in subsidized housing, but later changed his story.
A Republican member of the Electoral College from Texas has promised to vote against Donald Trump during the college’s meeting Dec. 19, saying the president-elect “shows daily he is not qualified for office.”
In an op-ed published Monday in The New York Times, Christopher Suprun, a paramedic and first responder to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, laid out a lengthy list of concerns about Trump. He called on fellow electors to “do their job” and unify around an “honorable and qualified” alternative such as Ohio. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
The Federalist Papers, Suprun wrote, argue that the Electoral College is tasked with ensuring candidates are “qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence.” Trump, he said, does not meet these standards, and should therefore be rejected from the White House.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican electoral college member Christopher Suprun, pictured here before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Texas Rangers baseball game, has promised not to vote for Donald Trump Dec. 19.
President-elect Donald Trump will nominate “tough” former Republican primary rival Ben Carson as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the transition team announced Monday.
A statement described Carson as a “distinguished national leader who overcame his troubled youth in the inner city of Detroit to become a renowned neurosurgeon.”
In the announcement, Trump said he was “thrilled” to nominate Carson, who dropped out of the campaign race in March after a string of disappointing primary finishes on Super Tuesday.
The secretary of the Army Corps of Engineers has turned down a permit for a controversial pipeline project running through North Dakota, in a victory for Native Americans and climate activists.
A celebration erupted following the Sunday announcement at the main protest camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others have been protesting against the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline for months.
However it may prove to be a short-lived victory because President-elect Donald Trump has said he supports the project and policy experts believe he could reverse the decision if he wanted to.
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Dakota Access Pipeline to be rerouted, in victory for protesters
A jarring incident at a restaurant that has faced violent threats because of an unfounded and preposterous conspiracy theory raises concerns about the real-world consequences of spreading fake news stories.
Washington, D.C., police on Sunday afternoon detained a man armed with an assault rifle at Comet Ping Pong, a popular pizza restaurant in a busy neighborhood of the city.
According to police, the man, later identified as Edgar Maddison Welch, from Salisbury, North Carolina, entered the restaurant with what police described as “an assault rifle”; there were conflicting reports of gunshots. There were no injuries, but police locked down the surrounding block, which includes other restaurants and shops, including a popular bookstore, Politics and Prose.
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The Washington Post via Getty Images
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A Georgia father convicted of murder after leaving his toddler son in a hot car two summers ago was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Monday.
Jurors last month convicted Justin Ross Harris of malice murder and other charges in the June 18, 2014, death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper, who was left in a Hyundai Tucson for seven hours in sweltering heat. Jurors believed Harris left the little boy to die on purpose.
Harris, 35, was also convicted of eight counts of malice murder, felony murder, cruelty to children in the first and second degree, sexual exploitation of and dissemination of harmful material to minors.
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Justin Ross Harris and his son Cooper. Facebook via WXIA
Anxious families were awaiting word Saturday on whether their loved ones had escaped a raging inferno in Oakland, California, after at least nine people were killed during a late-night party at a converted warehouse.
At least two dozen people remained unaccounted for, officials said. “We expect the number of deceased to go up,” said Alameda County sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly. “This is a very, very sensitive time.”
Emergency responders have had to delicately trudge through the rubble in the search for more victims, Kelly said. He described a twisted mass of beams, wires, and wood that he called a “maze.”
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Feral Pines is among those missing after a warehouse fire in Oakland, California. Courtesy of family
An unexpected dissenting voice came out Friday against a Trump administration brokered deal to keep a Carrier plant in Indiana and save around 1,000 jobs.
Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in an op-ed for the Young Conservatives website called the deal, which was reportedly negotiated by Vice President-elect Mike Pence, an example of government intervention that could lead to “crony capitalism.”
Palin said in the op-ed “I am ecstatic for Carrier employees!” But she wrote that while she didn’t yet know the full terms of the deal, the negotiation could signal an abandonment of fiscal conservatism and stimulus packages that, if pursued, would mean the country is “doomed.”
Carrier Corp. had planned to move a factory in Indianapolis to Mexico, taking 1,400 jobs with it.
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Sarah Palin speaks during a panel discussion before a preview of the film “Climate Hustle” on Capitol Hill April 14, 2016, in Washington. AP
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
The night of her rescue from ISIS Leila reunited with some of her and her husband’s relatives who had also been previously rescued from ISIS captivity. Marc Smith / NBC News
James' World 2 