A crisis recedes

November 24, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

A year ago, Ukraine was embattled and worried about its future – which makes Ukraine's progress in recent months worth noting.

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An object believed to be an explosive belt was found on Monday in a town south of Paris, near where a phone used by suspected assailant Salah Abdeslam was detected on the night of the attacks, a source close to the investigation said. Abdeslam, whose brother blew himself up in the Paris attacks, has been on the run since the assault that killed 130 people in the French capital on Nov. 13 and is the focus of a massive manhunt.

Two men were charged Monday with murder in the fatal shooting of a pastor's pregnant wife during an apparent break in of their Indianapolis home, court records show. Murder and several other charges have been against 21-year-old Jalen E. Watson of Indianapolis and 18-year-old Larry Jo Taylor Jr., and Marion County (Ind.) court records state they are co-defendants.

A gun battle at a New Orleans block party over the weekend has marred what could be another year of record-low homicides in the city. No one was killed in the shooting – 16 people were wounded – when the two groups opened fire on each other in a crowd of hundreds gathered in a park for a block party. New Orleans police have responded quickly, using many of the same strategies they have employed to oversee almost four consecutive years of a decline in murders in the city. There were 150 murders in New Orleans in 2014, the lowest number since 1971.

Reminiscent of the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the recent wave of political opposition to accepting Syrian refugees is not sitting well with the relatives of those had lived through internment camps. Minoru Yasui was a civil rights attorney who will be honored posthumously this week with a Presidential Medal of Freedom for challenging how Japanese Americans were treated after Pearl Harbor. His daughter, Laurie Yasui, said he would be upset over how politicians are reacting to the series of terrorist attacks in Paris. He would be "up on his soap box, stomping his feet and shaking his fist,” she told the Associated Press. Since the Nov. 13 attacks, more than half of US governors and many other lawmakers have said they oppose letting Syrian refugees in their state, citing concerns that possible terrorists will be among them.

Pfizer Inc, the maker of Viagra and Lipitor, has struck a deal to buy Botox-maker Allergan Plc in a transaction valued at about $160 billion. The complex deal, the biggest ever in the healthcare sector, will allow Pfizer to shift its legal base to Ireland in a so-called "inversion" that would reduce its tax rate. Pfizer Chief Executive Ian Read will be CEO of the combined company, while Allergan CEO Brent Saunders will be Chief Operating Officer, the companies said on Monday. New York-based Pfizer and Allergan, headquartered in Ireland, said Allergan shareholders will receive 11.3 shares in the combined company for each share held.

When it comes to climate science, two of the three Democratic presidential candidates are 'A' students, while most of the Republican contenders are flunking, according to a panel of scientists who reviewed candidates' comments. At the request of The Associated Press, eight climate and biological scientists graded for scientific accuracy what a dozen top candidates said in debates, interviews and tweets, using a 0 to 100 scale. To try to eliminate possible bias, the candidates' comments were stripped of names and given randomly generated numbers, so the professors would not know who made each statement they were grading. Also, the scientists who did the grading were chosen by professional scientific societies. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had the highest average score at 94. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had the lowest score, an average of 6. All eight put Cruz at the bottom of the class.

The American public is generally as distrustful and dissatisfied with the federal government as ever. But the tone changes when asked about specific problems. The majority of Americans say the government has an important role to play in solving specific issues and, in some cases, even says the government is doing a good job, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. The survey, based on over 6,000 interviews conducted between Aug. 27 and Oct. 4, finds that public attitude towards the government is far more ambiguous than the narrative of the political "year of the outsider" – the theory that a growing dissatisfaction with the political establishment has propelled outsiders like Donald Trump and Ben Carson to the lead in the 2016 presidential campaign – would suggest.

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