10 things you need to know today: July 23, 2015

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1. Charleston church shooting suspect indicted on hate crime charges
2. Greek lawmakers back reforms demanded by creditors
3. New York panel recommends hiking fast-food worker wages to $15 an hour
4. Texas officials say Sandra Bland arrest video was not edited
5. Financial Times publisher in 'advanced talks' about selling
6. Republicans go after Planned Parenthood's funding
7. Rick Perry calls Donald Trump's campaign "a cancer"
8. Glacier park fire grows explosively
9. Pages of one of oldest Koran's in existence found in British university library
10. Jamaica stuns U.S. to advance to men's Gold Cup soccer final

published 23 July 2015

1. Charleston church shooting suspect indicted on hate crime charges

A federal grand jury has indicted Dylan Roof, 21, on hate-crime charges for allegedly killing nine people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17. Roof, who is white, already faces the possibility of the death penalty on state murder charges. The new, federal charges include using a weapon in a racially motivated hate crime, and committing murder to keep people from freely exercising their religious beliefs, which also is punishable with the death penalty.

Greece's parliament overwhelmingly backed new reforms demanded by creditors to clear the way for talks on a third bailout to save the country from financial collapse. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faced a revolt within his anti-austerity, radical left Syriza party, but pushed through the measure 230-63 thanks to support from pro-European opposition lawmakers. Tsipras said the reforms "in which we do not believe" were necessary because the alternative — no bailout — was worse.

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New York's Fast Food Wage Board recommended Wednesday that the minimum wage at fast-food chains in New York City be raised to $15 an hour by December 2018, with hikes in the rest of the state by mid-2021. State officials are expected to put the recommendations into effect. New York fast-food workers, some now making the current state minimum of $8.75 an hour, began protests demanding higher wages three years ago. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said the move could spread. "When New York acts, the rest of the states follow," he said.

Texas authorities said Wednesday that loops in the dash-cam video of Sandra Bland's arrest were due to technical glitches, not deliberate editing. They released a corrected version. Bland, who was black, was arrested by a white state trooper after refusing to put out a cigarette during a routine traffic stop. She died in her jail cell three days later. A coroner concluded she committed suicide by strangling herself with a trash bag. Bland reportedly told jailers she had attempted suicide last year. Relatives denied she was ever suicidal.

London-based publisher Pearson confirmed Thursday that it is in "advanced talks" about selling the Financial Times newspaper. While Pearson didn't identify the potential buyer, a source told Reuters that the group was planning to sell the business journal and website to an unspecified "global, digital news company." A potential sale has previously been linked to Axel Springer, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg, and could fetch up to $1 billion.

Sen. Rand Paul, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, on Wednesday proposed an highway-bill amendment proposing to eliminate Planned Parenthood's $500 million in annual federal funding. The move came following the release of two videos that anti-abortion activists say show that the reproductive-health group illegally profits from sales of aborted fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood says it legally covers costs from fetal tissue donation but makes no profit. Its supporters call the videos part of a smear campaign.

Donald Trump, already feuding with Sen. Lindsey Graham, came under fire from another fellow Republican presidential candidate on Wednesday, when former Texas governor Rick Perry called the real-estate mogul's campaign "a cancer on conservatism." Perry called Trump's message "a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense." Trump, who has made illegal immigration a campaign focus, accuses Perry of bungling enforcement along his state's Mexican border.

A wildfire in Glacier National Park doubled in size Wednesday to at least 4,000 acres, just a day after it was reported. On Tuesday, the fast-moving blaze forced tourists at the Montana park to abandon their vehicles, one of which was burned. Elsewhere in the Montana park, officials evacuated a hotel and campgrounds at the height of the summer tourist season. Rangers searched for straggling hikers in the backcountry. Wind gusts and low humidity threatened "explosive fire growth potential," park spokeswoman Denise Germann said.

Fragments of a Koran estimated to be 1,370 years old — nearly as old as Islam itself — have been found by the University of Birmingham in the U.K. The pages appear to be one of the earliest versions of the Muslim holy book ever found. The manuscript, written on sheep or goat skin, languished unrecognized in the university library for nearly 100 years, until a PhD researcher spotted the pages and decided to do a radiocarbon dating test. Nobody expected "in our wildest dreams" it would be so old, a library official said.

Jamaica upset the U.S. men's soccer team 2-1 in Atlanta on Wednesday to earn a spot in the finals of the Gold Cup, the biennial championship soccer tournament of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. The U.S., which has won three of the last five championships, will be sitting out its first final since 2003. Jamaica, ranked 76th in the world, will play Mexico, which beat Panama in the other Wednesday semifinal, in the Sunday final.

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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.