10 things you need to know today: January 5, 2015

Indonesian Marine Colonel explains the mission

(Image credit: (AP Images/Robertus Pudyanto))

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1. Tsarnaev goes on trial for the Boston Marathon bombing
2. Dive teams hunt for AirAsia plane's fuselage
3. Police officers turn their backs on de Blasio at second officer's funeral
4. Abbas prepares to resubmit statehood resolution at the U.N.
5. Conservatives challenge Boehner for House speaker's job
6. Rescuers suspend search for capsized ship's crew
7. California prepares to break ground on bullet train
8. China protests murders blamed on North Korean soldier
9. Cowboys and Colts win NFL wild-card games
10. ESPN's Stuart Scott dies of cancer at age 49

last updated 13 January 2015

1. Tsarnaev goes on trial for the Boston Marathon bombing

The trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is scheduled to begin on Monday with jury selection. Tsarnaev, 21, is charged with carrying out the April 2013 bombings with his brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police. Prosecutors say that in addition to the bombing, which killed three people and injured 260 others, the brothers killed MIT campus police officer Sean Collier. Tsarnaev could face the death penalty if convicted.

An Indonesian naval vessel found what authorities say could be the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501, authorities in the country said Monday. With weather improving, divers impeded Sunday by low visibility are making another attempt to a 59-foot object on the bottom of the Java Sea that is believed to be the fuselage of the plane, which crashed a week ago with 162 people on board. Indonesian search and rescue operations director Suryadi B. Supriyadi said officials expect to find victims' bodies inside.

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Thousands of police officers, city officials, and others attended a funeral Sunday for Wenjian Liu, one of two New York City police officers killed on Dec. 20 in an ambush by a gunman who had said he was out to avenge the deaths of unarmed black men killed by white police officers. In a eulogy, Mayor Bill de Blasio called for reconciliation. Despite calls for decorum from Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, hundreds of police officers turned their backs on de Blasio, whom many officers accuse of stirring up anti-police sentiment.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that was in talks with Jordan, a member of the United Nations Security Council, about resubmitting a resolution calling for establishing a Palestinian state by 2017. The measure also would demand that Israel withdraw from occupied Palestinian territories. The proposal failed to win enough votes last week. "We didn't fail," Abbas said. "The U.N. Security Council failed us. We'll go again to the Security Council, why not? Perhaps after a week."

At least two conservatives congressmen — Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) — have announced plans to challenge House Speaker John Boehner for his job as Republicans prepare to take full control of Congress on Tuesday. Some hard-line conservatives are angry at Boehner (R-Ohio) for pushing through a measure to fund the government for 10 months and avoid a government shutdown, instead of using the deadline as leverage to fight Obama's health reform law and executive actions on immigration.

Rescue teams called off their search for the crew of the cargo ship Cemfjord on Sunday night, a day after a passing ferry found the vessel floating upside down. The Cypriot-registered vessel had a crew of eight, seven Poles, and a Filipino. It was sailing from Denmark to the U.K. carrying 2,000 tons of cement. Experts have suggested several theories for what might have caused to Cemfjord to capsize, including that it could have been hit by a massive freak wave.

California is set to begin construction of a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Tuesday's groundbreaking will come after two years of delays as the agency won court challenges and got an exemption from state environmental laws. The start of the first 29-mile segment of the $68-billion project is not the final hurdle. Rail officials still have not secured funding to complete the train, which will travel at 220 miles per hour and whisk passengers to their destination in three hours.

China has lodged a protest with Pyongyang after a suspected North Korean army deserter allegedly killed four people in a late December robbery in a Chinese border city. South Korean media reported that China had detained the suspect just north of the Tumen River, which divides the two communist countries and is used as an exit route by many defectors leaving secretive North Korea. One South Korean newspaper reported North Korea had shifted its border troops after the murders.

The Dallas Cowboys and the Indianapolis Colts advanced in the NFL playoffs by winning their wild-card games. The Cowboys beat the Detroit Lions 24-20, led by quarterback Tony Romo's two touchdown passes to Terrance Williams — the second with just 2:32 left in the game. Indianapolis beat Cincinnati 26-10. In Saturday's wild-card games, Baltimore beat Pittsburgh 30-17, and Carolina defeated Arizona 27-16. Carolina faces the Seattle Seahawks, defending Super Bowl champions, next Saturday.

ESPN anchor Stuart Scott died Sunday after battling cancer for seven years. He was 49. Scott continued appearing on the cable sports channel whenever he could after he was diagnosed in 2007, when doctors found a malignancy in his abdomen while performing an emergency appendectomy. The iconic TV host kept fit with intense workouts, and delivered an inspiring speech when he accepted the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the ESPY's in July. "When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer," Scott said. "You beat cancer by how you live."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.