10 things you need to know today: March 25, 2015

(Image credit: (AP Photo/Martin Meissner))

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1. Black box found at Germanwings crash site
2. Obama agrees to slow troop drawdown in Afghanistan
3. Kraft and Heinz to merge and form food and beverage powerhouse
4. Israel denies spying on U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations
5. Ted Cruz shops for health care through ObamaCare while vowing to repeal it
6. Houthis close in on Aden, forcing Yemen's president to flee
7. Middlebury police say student visited Durst's store before disappearing in 1971
8. Adam Lanza's house demolished to erase reminder of Sandy Hook school massacre
9. Italian high court takes up appeal of Amanda Knox conviction
10. Jon Hamm leaves rehab ahead of Mad Men final season premiere

published 25 March 2015

1. Black box found at Germanwings crash site

Search crews found the first of two black box recorders of an airliner run by Lufthansa's low-fare subsidiary, Germanwings, on a mountainside in the French Alps where the plane crashed Tuesday. All 144 passengers and six crew members are believed to have been killed. Investigators do not yet have a theory on why the Airbus A320 jet crashed with no distress call en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, but expect information from the cockpit voice recorder within hours. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said terrorism was "not a privileged hypothesis."

President Obama on Tuesday agreed to keep about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through the end of this year. The announcement came after Obama met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who requested the slower drawdown to help maintain stability as foreign forces leave. Obama said he would stick to plans for closing bases and consolidating U.S. troops in Kabul. "Afghanistan is still a dangerous place," Obama said. "The way it's going to become less dangerous is by Afghan security forces being capable of keeping law and order and security."

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Kraft Foods Group Inc. and ketchup giant H.J. Heinz announced Wednesday they had agreed to merge, creating the third largest food and beverage company in North America and the fifth largest in the world. The new company, Kraft Heinz Co., will boast many of America's most iconic brands, including Heinz, Kraft, Oscar Mayer, Ore-Ida, and Philadelphia. Heinz is owned by 3G Capital, a Brazilian private-equity firm, and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

Israel on Tuesday forcefully denied that it spied on U.S. nuclear talks with Iran described in a Wall Street Journal report. "There is no such thing as Israel spying on the Americans," Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said. Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said the allegations "are baseless and we reject them outright." The Journal reported that Israel leaked information from its snooping to Congress in an attempt to undercut the developing nuclear deal.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who this week declared he was running for president and vowed to repeal ObamaCare if elected — said Tuesday that he was enrolling for family health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Cruz told The Des Moines Register that his wife, Heidi Cruz, had lost workplace coverage when she took a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs to work on his campaign, so they are looking at plans on the federal marketplace. "I believe we should follow the text of every law, even [a] law I disagree with," he told CNN.

Yemen's president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, reportedly fled his home in Aden on Wednesday as Shiite Houthi rebels closed in. Aden is the southern port city where the embattled leader established a temporary capital. Hours earlier, Houthi representatives said on the rebel TV station that they had taken over an air base — just 35 miles from Aden — where U.S. and European advisers helped government forces in their fight against the local al Qaeda affiliate.

A Middlebury College student who disappeared in 1971 made a purchase — dried prunes — in millionaire murder suspect Robert Durst's Vermont health food store on the day she went missing, local police said Tuesday. Investigators said they were searching for a connection between Durst and the woman, Lynne Schulze, who was 18. Police said they searched Dursts's former property in the area last year but found nothing tying him to the case. Investigators do not know whether Durst was in the store that day.

Demolition crews in Newtown, Connecticut, tore down the house where 20-year-old Adam Lanza started a December 2012 killing spree that ended at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 20 children and six adults before fatally shooting himself. Investigators determined that Lanza shot his mother to death in the 3,100-square-foot colonial home before storming into the school. Town officials voted unanimously in January to demolish the home, which neighbors complained served as a constant reminder of the murders.

Italy's highest court on Wednesday began hearing the appeal of Amanda Knox's conviction in the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in the town of Perugia, where both were studying. Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, were found guilty, then innocent, then guilty again in the polarizing trial. The court now can confirm the 28.5-year sentence for Knox and 25-year sentence for Sollecito, throw them out, or order a third appeal trial. An attorney said Knox, who is awaiting the ruling in her hometown of Seattle, is "very worried."

Actor Jon Hamm has left a rehabilitation center where he underwent 30 days of treatment for alcohol addiction. Hamm's release from Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut, comes ahead of the final season premiere of Mad Men. Hamm, 44, struggled for years in Hollywood before he began appearing on the AMC show in 2007 as the alcoholic, womanizing advertising executive Don Draper. He won a 2008 Golden Globe for the role, and has been nominated for an Emmy seven times.

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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.