10 things you need to know today: November 27, 2015

President of France Francois Hollande attends The National Tribute to The Victims of The Paris Terrorist Attacks

(Image credit: Pascal le Segretain/Getty Images)

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1. Erdogan seeks meeting with Putin to defuse tensions over downing of jet
2. France mourns 130 who died in Paris terror attacks
3. Black Friday kick-off "good but not great" at stores, while online sales surge
4. Man jumps White House fence prompting Thanksgiving lockdown
5. Trump denies mocking reporter with disability
6. Pope visits Kenya shantytown and slams treatment of the world's poor
7. E. coli traced to diced vegetable mix used in Costco chicken salad
8. Mali arrests two suspects linked to deadly hotel attack
9. Chicago protests move to shopping district for Black Friday
10. Poland drops effort to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski

published 27 November 2015

1. Erdogan seeks meeting with Putin to defuse tensions over downing of jet

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that he hoped to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease rising tensions over Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane. Turkey says the bomber violated its airspace, but Putin says the aircraft was in Syrian skies. Erdogan said he and Putin will attend a summit in Paris next week, and, "We could sit and talk there." Since the plane was shot down Tuesday, Russia has deployed long-range air defense missiles to its base in Syria, and threatened economic retaliation.

France on Friday honored the 130 people killed in the Nov. 13 Paris terror attacks. President Francois Hollande led mourners in a ceremony at the Invalides national monument in Paris, where survivors of the attacks and grieving relatives were guests of honor. The ceremony included the reading of the names of all the victims. Hollande called on the French people across the country to fly the nation's blue, white, and red flag from buildings, and unite in mourning.

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Black Friday sales got an early start on Thanksgiving evening, with traffic at brick-and-mortar stores being outdone by spiking sales online. "It's still early, and from what we are seeing so far the crowds are good but not great," said Craig Johnson, president of retail consultant Customer Growth Partners. Despite the continuing shift online, many Americans lined up at stores on Thanksgiving to get the best deals. "There's a TV, a 50-inch TV [for] $150. It's hard to pass up," said a shopper at an Albuquerque Best Buy store.

The White House was locked down on Thanksgiving after a man draped in an American flag jumped the fence and ran onto the lawn. The man was immediately detained and will face criminal charges. President Obama and his wife and daughters were celebrating Thanksgiving inside. A witness said the man was standing in a crowd when he rushed the fence. "I just heard him take a big, deep breath and whisper to himself, 'All right, let's do this' and he took off," she said.

Business mogul and GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Thursday denied mocking a reporter with a physical disability, and accused the journalist — Serge Kovaleski of The New York Times — of "using his disability to grandstand." Trump has cited an article Kovaleski wrote in 2001 to defend his claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Kovaleski says he doesn't recall "anyone saying there were thousands, or even hundreds, of people celebrating."

Pope Francis visited a Kenyan shantytown Friday and described injustices imposed on the poor as "new forms of colonialism." "Our world has a grave social debt toward the poor who lack access to drinking water because they are denied a life consistent with their inalienable dignity," Francis said. After three days in Kenya, the pope will head to Uganda on Friday. The last stop in a six-day Africa tour will be the Central African Republic, which is divided by a violent conflict between Christians and Muslims.

Health officials have linked a celery-and-onion mix used in rotisserie chicken salad at Costco to a seven-state E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 19 people who ate the product. The California maker of the product recalled it as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted a notice Thursday on its website saying samples of it tested positive for the same E. coli strain. There have been no deaths, but five of the infected people have been hospitalized.

Malian special forces have arrested two men in connection with an attack that killed 19 people last week at a luxury hotel, according to a statement released Friday. Two gunmen fired wildly into the lobby and a dining area before storming upper floors at the Radisson Blu hotel on Nov. 20. The gunmen were killed at the scene. The Al-Mourabitoun extremist group claimed responsibility, saying it collaborated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Demonstrators protesting the fatal shooting of a black teenager in Chicago by a white police officer have scheduled a Friday march in the city's best-known retail district to disrupt Black Friday shopping. The city this week released dashcam videos showing Officer Jason Van Dyke, who was charged Tuesday with murder, repeatedly shooting the teen, Laquan McDonald. The videos touched off two nights of mostly peaceful demonstrations calling for an independent investigation.

Polish prosecutors said Friday that they would not fight a court's refusal to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the U.S. over 1977 sex charges. Prosecutors in Krakow sought extradition on behalf of the U.S., but said the court's decision was "right" and they saw no grounds for appeal. Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. He served a month in prison under a deal with the judge, but fled the U.S. fearing a longer sentence.

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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.