5: 

Deadly Istanbul blast ’caused by Isis suicide bomber’

A suicide bomber said by Turkey to be affiliated with Islamic State was responsible for a blast near Istanbul’s grandest tourist attractions that has killed 10 people, most of them German.

“We have determined that the perpetrator of the attack is a foreigner who is a member of Daesh,” prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said, using an Arabic acronym for Isis. “Turkey won’t backtrack in its struggle against Daesh by even one step … This terror organisation, the assailants and all of their connections will be found and they will receive the punishments they deserve.”

The Guardian

4: 

London: Former Prisoners Call for Closure of Guantánamo on 14th Anniversary

On Monday, former prisoners Ruhal Ahmed and Shaker Aamer were among those who rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in London to call for Guantánamo’s closure.

Shaker Aamer: “We want everybody to know that today we are here not as brothers from Guantánamo, no, as everybody, all of you, the media outlets, for one reason: It’s truly to bring justice back, to close Guantánamo once and for all.”

Ruhal Ahmed: “It’s been kept open by a country who claim to be the champions of democracy and champions of justice. It’s just a joke, to be honest. And it saddens me that it’s open, and I’m out, and I’ve moved on with life, and they haven’t, that they’re still stuck there.”

Democracy Now

3: 

Young People Are Poorer, Jobless, and Believe That the American Dream Is Dead

Young Americans are facing higher levels of poverty, unemployment, and student loan debt than the two generations before them, and their predicament is fueling the view that the American Dream is bankrupt, according to the authors of a new State of the Millennial Report.

Generation Opportunity, a conservative/libertarian grassroots network of people who are 18 to 34 years of age, issued its annual state report card for the millennial generation ahead of President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union speech on Tuesday, in which he is expected to tout his administration’s support of students and its record in helping to reduce education debt.

The president is also expected to highlight in his address two solid years of jobs growth under his administration, which has pushed unemployment down to 5 percent overall. But in comparison to the national average, people between the ages of 18 and 29 are experiencing unemployment at a rate of 8 percent, according to the Generation Opportunity report, while labor force participation for those in this age bracket is the lowest it’s ever been at 71 percent.

Vice News

2: 

Sunni mosques firebombed after Iraq attacks hit Shias

At least 10 people have been killed and Sunni mosques firebombed in suspected reprisal attacks following a series of ISIL attacks on Shias in Iraq left scores dead.

Attackers firebombed seven mosques in Diyala province on Tuesday in what a Sunni leader described as a “heinous criminal act”.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that Shia militia members were responsible for the attacks in the town of Muqdadiya, 110km north east of Baghdad.

The fighters sent out messages on loud speakers calling on Sunni civilians to leave the town within 24 hours or they would be killed.

A day earlier, a wave of attacks claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a Sunni group, targeted mainly Shia areas in Baghdad and Muqdadiya.

Aljazeera

1: 

ELECTION YEAR ANTI-CRIME POSTURING COULD DERAIL EVEN LIMITED SENTENCING REFORM

LAST MARCH, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley spoke on the Senate floor against a bill aimed largely at reducing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. He decried the “leniency industrial complex” that would see too many low-level offenders released.

Just a few months later, in a seeming about-turn, he co-sponsored an albeit more limited bill, but with the similar aim of sentencing reform and a higher likelihood of success. “We need this,” said the archetypal tough-on crime Republican. Either, criminal justice reform has become a bipartisan political sine qua non, or Grassley’s reform bill was fiercely limited. Or, a bit of both.

Such was the landscape of allegedly historic shifts and realpolitikal compromise on criminal justice reform in 2015. All Democratic presidential candidates and most Republicans called for it, specifically but ambiguously citing the need to end mass incarceration. In December, the general counsel of Koch Industries met for the fourth time with White House officials to discuss support for bipartisan reform bills advancing through the House and Senate.

The House bill, the Sentencing Reform Act, and the Senate bill, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, have passed their respective judiciary committees. Both reduce federal mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenses, lower the sentence for three-strike drug felons from life to 25 years and (importantly) would apply retroactively — so would be applicable to current prisoners to seek early release.

The bills’ passage would also make retroactive the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which undid a historically racist and classist disparity in sentencing severity between crack and powder cocaine.

That such legislation might reach the president’s desk does signal a shift in contemporary U.S. politics. Consensus support for any reform of this sort on Capitol Hill is significant in recent history, but that speaks mainly to decades of political intransigence on the issue. The legislation has limited reach, reducing harsh penalties for a select subset of drug offenders, and is also flawed; both bills introduce new mandatory minimums.

Credit for the modest progress the bills represent certainly belongs to a popular resistance movement powerfully asserting that U.S. criminal justice systematically decimates black life. In June, Politico published an article titled “Riots spur Senate look at sentencing reform.” It was a causal stretch for which I’ll blame the vagaries of clickbait, but it conveyed a kernel of truth. Riots have historically prompted placation-aimed reforms.

At the same time, decarceration efforts are now more palatable for tough-on-crime politicians, thanks to the existence of a vast nexus of technologies to surveil and control those deemed criminal, offering grim assurance that the carceral state is well-established beyond prison walls.

But as we head into 2016, an election year hinged on Trumpian racism and bombast could threaten to sideline even the most muted of criminal justice reform bills.

The Intercept