1. According to NBC News, Protesters squared off with police in Ferguson, Missouri, on Wednesday night, following a critical Department of Justice report prompted by last August’s shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. A crowd of several dozen gathered outside the Ferguson Police Department after the report found evidence of racial bias within the force. Video shot at the scene appeared to show at least one detention, with a woman being dragged away by officers. The American flag was also trodden on and flown upside down by the protesters. The demonstrators also chanted anti-police slogans and filmed officers with their cellphones. Ferguson Police declined to comment when contacted by NBC News early Thursday.
2. According to the Baptist Press, Southern Baptist leaders are imploring President Obama to act against ISIS not only for global security, but to enable themselves to give a proper account before the Lord on Judgment Day, SBC President Ronnie Floyd said on CNN. Floyd said on the Carol Costello show, “We need to understand that each one of us…will one give an account of ourselves before God. And I along with other presidents do not want to say that we were silent, but we had simply the heartbeat and the goal to say, ‘Mr. President, we’re behind you. Let’s go and do whatever is necessary to bring an end to this crisis globally.'” Floyd spoke after he and 16 former SBC presidents signed a letter “humbly” urging President Obama “to take the necessary actions now in this urgent hour” to end the human atrocities the terrorists have committed, including the “abuse, brutalization, and murder of children, women, and men.”
3. According to the AP, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles says one police department employee was fired and two others are on administrative leave over racist emails uncovered in a Justice Department investigation into the city’s law enforcement practices. Knowles’ comments at a press conference Wednesday were the first response from city leaders to the federal investigation that found systemic racial bias in law enforcement in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Knowles read a brief statement but did not take questions. Police Chief Tom Jackson did not attend.
4. According to CNN, Publicly the U.S. and Israel have been clashing over Iran’s nuclear program, but quietly Israelis have been making another appeal: getting more U.S. funds for missile defense systems to defend against Iran’s growing ballistic missile program. A Republican congressional source told CNN that the Israelis are asking lawmakers to approve more than $300 million in additional U.S. funding for missile defense systems, above the $155 million the Pentagon is already requesting from Congress. For the first time, the source said, Israel is asking the U.S. for procurement funding for the Arrow 3 missile, designed to counter longer-range Iranian ballistic missiles, and the David’s Sling missile defense system, for shorter-range Iranian weapons.
5. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Russia’s Security Council accused the United States of plotting to oust President Vladimir Putin by financing the opposition and encouraging mass demonstrations, less than a week after a protest leader was murdered near the Kremlin. The US is funding Russian political groups under the guise of promoting civil society, just as in the “colour revolutions” in the former Soviet Union and the Arab world, council chief Nikolai Patrushev said on Wednesday. At the same time, he said, the US is using the sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine as a “pretext” to inflict economic pain and stoke discontent. The Russian-backed revolt in Ukraine has led to the worst standoff between the Kremlin and the US and its European allies since the end of the Cold War.
6. According to The New York Times, The Supreme Court on Wednesday took up the Affordable Care Act in one of the most anticipated arguments of the term, and it seemed closely divided over the fate of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. The court’s four liberal members voiced strong support for the administration’s position. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who cast the decisive vote to save the law in 2012, said almost nothing on Wednesday, and did not indicate his position. Wednesday’s arguments suggested that the coming months will be tense for the administration as it waits to hear whether about seven million low- and middle-income people in some three dozen states will continue to receive subsidies to help them buy health insurance. Should the court rule that subsidies were not authorized by the health law, most of those people would no longer be able to afford insurance. And insurance markets in those states could collapse.
7. According to Reuters, The U.S. Senate failed on Wednesday to override President Barack Obama’s veto of legislation approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, leaving the controversial project to await an administration decision on whether to permit or deny it. The Senate mustered just 62 votes in favor of overriding the veto, short of the two-thirds needed. Thirty-seven senators voted to sustain Obama’s veto. The Senate action means the House of Representatives will not vote on override. Republican Senator John Hoeven said pipeline backers will try again to force Obama’s hand, by attaching Keystone approval to another bill this year.
8. According to the AP, U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert was slashed on the face and wrist by a man wielding a knife with a 10-inch blade and screaming that the rival Koreas should be unified, South Korean police said Thursday. The U.S. State Department condemned the attack, which happened at a performing arts center in downtown Seoul as the ambassador was preparing for a lecture about prospects for peace on the divided Korean Peninsula, and said Lippert was being treated at a local hospital and his injuries weren’t life threatening.
9. According to USA Today, Airlines have already grounded nearly 1,200 flights for Thursday as a nightmare stretch of air travel pushed into a second week. That’s on top of the more than 1,350 flights that were canceled nationwide on Wednesday according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Another 2,000 flights had been delayed Wednesday. More broadly, more than 17,000 flights have been canceled and a whopping 52,600 delayed since the latest string of successive storms began to disrupt air travel last Saturday. This week will offer little relief as the latest storm was expected to snarl flights into Friday morning.
10. According to EFE, Communities near the Villarrica volcano in southern Chile on Wednesday are gradually getting back to normal after the eruption the day before, although authorities decided to keep the red alert in place in a radius of 6.2 mi. around the mountain. The Emergency Operations Committee decided to keep the area, located about 480 mi. south of Santiago, on maximum alert. Interior Minister Rodrigo Peñailillo said that the situation is being monitored on an ongoing basis and that new observation flights are scheduled near the crater of the volcano, which has shown reduced activity over the past 24 hours.
