10 things you need to know today: December 2, 2015
1.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday. The move came as the city faces heated criticism over newly released police videos showing a white officer, Jason Van Dyke, fatally shooting a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, last year. Emanuel said McCarthy's handling of the case had cost him the public's trust. "Now is the time for fresh eyes and new leadership to confront the challenges the department and our community and our city are facing as we go forward," Emanuel said.
2.
The U.S. is sending a specialized expeditionary targeting force to conduct raids on Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Tuesday. The team will include intelligence analysts and 100 to 150 members of the Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALs. The special forces will coordinate with Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga troops, conducting raids to free hostages, capture ISIS leaders, and gather intelligence, similar to an October raid in which commandos working with Kurdish fighters freed 70 ISIS prisoners.
3.
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, announced Tuesday that they would give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares "during our lives." The couple made the pledge in a letter to their newborn daughter, Max. Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive and co-founder, and Chan currently own a stake in the social network valued at $45 billion. The money will be managed by a new organization they have formed — the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — and spent on such projects as personalized learning and curing disease.
4.
NATO foreign ministers on Wednesday invited tiny Montenegro to join the 28-nation U.S.-led military alliance. The expansion, NATO's first since 2009, came despite Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's warning in September that it would be "a mistake, even a provocation." Montenegro's Foreign Minister Igor Luksic said the move was "the beginning of a very beautiful alliance." It could take two years for the former Yugoslav republic to obtain full NATO membership. Moscow threatened unspecified retaliation.
5.
Yahoo's board is meeting Wednesday to discuss selling the struggling company's core internet business. The board, at a regularly scheduled meeting, will also consider whether to move forward with the spin-off of its lucrative 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Yahoo's Alibaba stake is valued at $32 billion, and its Yahoo Japan stake at $8 billion. Yahoo's overall market capitalization is $31 billion, so its internet business on paper has no value, but its 210 million monthly visitors are expected to interest prospective buyers. Yahoo's stock surged on news of the potential sale.
6.
U.S. authorities have arrested 56 people this year for supporting the Islamic State, according to a George Washington University study released Tuesday. With a month to go, 2015 already has had the most terrorism-related arrests in any year since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Seventy-one people have been charged with helping ISIS since March 2014. The study found that American authorities are conducting 900 active investigations into suspected ISIS sympathizers, some of them voicing support for ISIS on Twitter.
7.
The two Cleveland police officers involved in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice said in a statement released Tuesday that the boy reached for the toy weapon tucked in his waistband before they opened fire. The statement marked the first the public has heard from the officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, since the November 2014 shooting. The shooting of Rice, who was black, came days before protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City broke out over the clearing of police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men there.
8.
Pakistan on Wednesday hanged four Taliban militants for a massacre last year at an army-run school in the northern city of Peshawar. Terrorists gunned down more than 150 people, most of them children, in the attack. Six militants were sentenced to death by a military court. The attack led Pakistan to lift a moratorium on the death penalty that had been in place since 2008. President Mamnoon Hussain rejected clemency petitions less than two weeks ago.
9.
The National Board of Review (NBR) on Tuesday named Mad Max: Fury Road the best film of 2015. The news was a surprise to many movie buffs who didn't think the group of 120 New York film fans would pick an action picture. The film, directed and produced by George Miller, stars Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy in the Mad Max series' fourth installment, which depicts a rebellion against a tyrannical ruler in post-apocalyptic Australia. NBR selected Ridley Scott as Best Director and Matt Damon as Best Actor for The Martian. Best Actress went to Brie Larson for Room.
10.
An anonymous couple put a $500,000 check into a Salvation Army kettle in Minnesota over the weekend, the charity organization said in a statement released Tuesday. The gift was the largest donation the Salvation had ever received in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The couple, who are known to the Salvation Army but did not want their names released publicly, said when they were young they sometimes lived off of discarded food from a grocery store. "You get to a point in life where it's time to take care of others, the way you were taken care of," they told the organization.