Oil is the big story

December 08, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

From Russia to Venezuela, falling oil prices are beginning to have a political impact.

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The US Supreme Court handed gun control advocates a modest victory on Monday, deciding not to hear a challenge from gun rights activists to a Chicago suburb’s ordinance banning assault weapons. The ordinance from the city of Highland Park, Ill., passed in 2013, bans various semi-automatic weapons (it also bans some weapons by name, including AR-15s and AK-47s) as well as magazines holding more than 10 rounds of bullets. The Illinois State Rifle Association and Dr. Arie S. Friedman, a Highland Park resident, challenged the ordinance in the Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. A divided three-judge panel for the appeals court upheld the ordinance in an April ruling. The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court decision, but the high court declined.

The husband and wife who carried out the San Bernardino massacre had been radicalized and had taken part in target practice, one time within days of the attack that killed 14 people, the FBI said Monday. In another chilling twist, authorities disclosed that a year before the rampage, Syed Farook's co-workers at the county health department underwent "active-shooter" training in the very conference room where he and his wife opened fire on his colleagues.

The US Department of Justice is launching a broad civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department this week, as public outrage in the city builds over recent fatal police shootings of black men. The DOJ has undertaken similar reviews in other cities shaken by police shootings, including Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., with the aim of determining if there are larger systemic issues within police departments beyond single, high-profile incidents of misconduct. The civil rights probe into the Chicago Police Department comes after the release of a police dashboard camera video showing the October 2014 death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Despite the fear and grief that continues to shroud Paris following the November attacks, the annual Hanukkah lighting services proceeded as usual Sunday night. Facing doubts and lingering paranoia, Jewish communities were officially discouraged from any public activity in the French capital. But that didn't stop the annual Menorah lighting underneath the Eiffel Tower by Chabad-Lubavitch, a Jewish sect sect located throughout the world. An estimated 6,000 people watched as a 30-foot tall Menorah was lit, candle by candle.

The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the world's most fortified international divides. Starting Wednesday, it will also be one of the only that has an airport straddling two countries. An investor group that includes Chicago billionaire Sam Zell built a sleek terminal in San Diego with a bridge that crosses a razor-wire border fence to Tijuana's decades-old airport. Passengers pay $18 to walk to Tijuana A.L. Rodriguez International Airport, a springboard to about 30 Mexican destinations. Target customers are the estimated 60 percent of Tijuana airport passengers who come to the United States, nearly 3 million a year. Now they drive about 15 minutes to a congested land crossing, where they wait up to several hours to enter San Diego by car or on foot.

As more and more states are opting out of Common Core’s standardized testing, Roman Catholic schools around the country are reconsidering the rigorous learning goals as well – but for spiritual reasons. According to surveys by the National Catholic Educational Association, about half of the 195 US dioceses initially adopted the federally recommended Common Core standards. Emphasizing standardized testing and critical thinking development, Common Core is geared towards college preparation. Although it’s not yet clear how many dioceses have stopped using the standards or abstained from Common Core testing, national Catholic organizations are prompting educators to review their curriculum and purpose, posing the question, how could Catholic schools integrate religious tenets with the Common Core standards?

Twitter has taken an analytical look at the issues that united users from all across the globe this past year. The retrospective project #YearOnTwitter catalogues at the events that gained the most attention on the site as well as the single tweet that that gained the most traction for each issue or event. In Ireland and the US, #LoveWins and #HomeToVote celebrated the legalization of same-sex marriage. Commemorating another impactful event, #PrayForParis became trending in the wake of the Paris attacks Nov. 13. Twitter was perhaps the most powerful outlet for the proliferation of the Black Lives Matter movement as individuals are able to voice their collective frustration over the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of the police. This year alone, Black Lives Matter, either as a hashtag or a phrase, has been tweeted 9 million times.

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