WORLD: Recently, nearly 400 people were killed and hundreds more injured after a powerful tsunami triggered by an active volcano suddenly struck the Indonesian coastline. The wave reportedly reached as high as ten feet. Dozens of people are missing, with more tsunamis potentially on the way. Stay tuned. In other news, it just came out that Israel will be holding its election in April - earlier than usual. This comes after Israeli police recommended indicting Prime Minister Netanyahu for some doing shady things. Think: promising to take down a newspaper’s competition in exchange for good coverage. Unclear how the earlier election will affect things.
POLITICS: The White House is all over the place. Yesterday, Prez Trump said ‘thanks for your thoughts - not’ and announced that Defense Sec James Mattis will be leaving two months earlier than expected. Quick refresher: last week, Mattis quit and wrote a not-so-complimentary letter of resignation. Trump didn’t take it well. Now, it looks like Patrick Shanahan will temporarily take Mattis’ place at the start of the new year. Speaking of which, Brett McGurk - the US envoy to the coalition against ISIS - just resigned over Prez Trump’s decision to pull the US out of Syria. And in other news, the UK says ditching Syria will lead to a “safe haven” for terrorism. Plus that al Qaeda is “resurgent” and looking to target European passenger planes.
USA: All eyes are on this referee. The other day, an African American high school wrestler was told by a white referee that he needed to cut his dreadlocks - or forfeit the match. The wrestler agreed to cut his hair and ended up winning the match, but the situation led to accusations of racism. Now, the New Jersey civil rights division is opening an investigation, while the referee - who reportedly used a racial slur against an African American referee back in 2016 - won’t be assigned to any new matches. Meanwhile, SpaceX just launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a GPS satellite for the US Air Force - marking the biz’s first national security mission. Out of this world.
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