10 things you need to know today: June 19, 2015

(Image credit: AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

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1. Charleston church massacre suspect arrested
2. House brings back fast-track trade bill, sends it to Senate
3. Obama mourns Charleston victims and laments lack of gun control
4. Spokane council removes Rachel Dolezal from volunteer police board
5. Supreme Court says states can decline to issue offensive license plates
6. Tentative reform deal reached for NYC's Rikers Island jail
7. Remnants of tropical storm drench the central U.S.
8. Al Qaeda denies leading jihadist killed in Libya strike
9. Thailand reports its first case of MERS
10. Lester Holt named NBC Nightly News anchor

published 19 June 2015

1. Charleston church massacre suspect arrested

Police arrested Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Roof in Shelby, North Carolina, on Thursday. According to police sources, Roof, 21, confessed to killing nine people at the end of a bible study meeting in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston Wednesday night. Before opening fire, the white gunman said he was there to "shoot black people," a survivor reportedly said. The church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, and eight others died.

House Republicans on Thursday revived a bill aiming to help President Obama push trade deals through Congress, approving it in a 218-208 vote. The measure would commit Congress to giving Obama an up-or-down vote with no amendments on a 12-nation Pacific trade pact now being negotiated. Democrats blocked the legislation last week by voting against a linked measure extending job retraining for workers displaced by global trade. The new, streamlined version now goes to the Senate, where passage is not assured.

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President Obama on Thursday called the murder of nine people in a Charleston "senseless," and blamed lax gun laws for the frequency of such mass killings in the U.S. "We don't have all the facts, but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun..." Obama said. "At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries."

The Spokane, Washington, City Council on Thursday voted unanimously to remove former local NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal from a volunteer police oversight commission. Dolezal stepped down from her NAACP post days after her parents last week claimed that she was "Caucasian by birth" and had been misrepresenting herself as black. A report on the Police Ombudsman Commission had accused Dolezal of revealing confidential information about people who have made complaints against police, but she had refused to resign.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states can refuse to issue controversial license plates. The justices ruled 5-4 that Texas did not violate the First Amendment guarantee of free speech when it declined the Sons of Confederate Veterans' request for tags featuring an image of the Confederate battle flag. Many African-Americans called the design offensive. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority that messages on plates do not amount to constitutionally protected private speech because they are issued by the government.

Officials in New York City have tentatively agreed to reforms for troubled Rikers Island, including a federal monitor to oversee the jail complex, installing 8,000 new surveillance cameras, and having corrections officers wear body cameras. The emerging deal, part of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit, also calls for the creation of a computerized system that will track the use of force by guards and a warning program that flags those who use force against inmates three or more times in six months, injuring at least one of them.

Tropical Depression Bill is being blamed for at least three deaths after dumping heavy rain and causing flooding in parts of the central U.S. The storm weakened after hitting Texas as a tropical storm. It dumped 11 inches of rain outside Houston and other areas still recovering from floods caused by record rainfall in May. Bill, the second named tropical storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, was heading northeast early Friday, on a path through Arkansas and Missouri into West Virginia.

Al Qaeda's branch in North Africa on Thursday denied reports that jihadist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar had been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Libya. Belmokhtar was the suspected mastermind of the 2013 terrorist seizure of an Algerian gas plant in which 38 foreign hostages died. The Libyan government reported Sunday that he had been killed. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said he was "still alive and kicking and wandering the land of God."

Thailand reported Friday that it had received its first patient with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The patient is a 75-year-old businessman from Oman who traveled to Bangkok to be treated for a heart condition at a high-end private hospital known for treating medical tourists. The news came as an outbreak in South Korea appeared to have peaked. Since early May, 24 people have died out of 166 people infected, but only one new case was reported on Friday.

NBC on Thursday named Lester Holt to be the next anchor of its Nightly News broadcast, starting Monday. Holt will be the first African-American newscaster to be the solo host of a major network news show. He replaces Brian Williams, who was suspended several months ago for falsely claiming that a helicopter he rode in during the Iraq war was took enemy fire. Williams will move to MSNBC as anchor of breaking news and special reports when his suspension ends in August.

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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.