10 things you need to know today: July 16, 2016

(Image credit: Gokhan Tan/Getty Images)

Jump to category:

1. After night of violence, Turkish coup unravels as organizers flee to Greece
2. France investigates ISIS claim of responsibility for Nice attack
3. Donald Trump officially taps Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for VP
4. Congress releases missing 9/11 report pages concerning Saudi Arabia
5. Clinton leads Trump by 12 points in new national poll
6. GOP chair: Republican rebellion against Trump is dead
7. Pakistani social media model strangled by her brother in suspected 'honor killing'
8. Herbalife to pay $200 million settlement in deceptive marketing lawsuit
9. Body-cam footage shows Georgia cops tased the wrong man within 38 seconds of meeting him
10. Record-breaking heat wave to strike U.S. this week

last updated 16 July 2016

1. After night of violence, Turkish coup unravels as organizers flee to Greece

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reasserted at least temporary control over his nation after an attempted coup by a military faction. Nearly 200 people have been killed and more than 1,500 arrested as Erdogan loyalists took to the streets and fought to regain their grasp on power. Erdogan flew into Istanbul early Saturday, declaring "what is being perpetrated is a rebellion and a treason. They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey." A helicopter carrying eight members of the Turkish military believed to have organized the coup landed in Greece seeking asylum Saturday morning. Turkey has demanded immediate extradition of the "eight traitors," but Greece has pledged to "proceed according to the international law."

French authorities are investigating the Islamic State's claim of responsibility for the Thursday night attack in Nice, France, which killed at least 84 Bastille Day revelers, including two Americans. The Nice suspect, Mohamed Bouhlel, who was killed by police during his rampage, "was one of the soldiers of Islamic State," ISIS announced in a statement Saturday. But Bouhlel, a French national of Tunisian descent, was not known to local or national intelligence agencies as having ties to radicalization, despite extensive French surveillance measures. His encounters with local law enforcement via a history of petty crime did not raise more serious red flags. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday any radicalization must have happened "very quickly."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

On Friday, Donald Trump announced via Twitter he has officially chosen Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) as his running mate. The announcement came just an hour before Pence's noon Friday deadline to remove himself from the Indiana gubernatorial race. Trump had said he would move his vice presidential announcement from Friday to Saturday after Thursday's attack in Nice, France, but instead suddenly confirmed the widely suspected choice with Friday's tweet. Trump will hold a press conference regarding his Pence pick Saturday at 11 a.m. in New Jersey.

On Friday, Congress released the 28 pages of previously classified information from the 9/11 report made by the Joint Congressional Inquiry in 2002; the pages concerned the Saudi Arabian government's potential ties to the terrorist attacks. While Saudi officials have long called for the pages' release in the hopes of dispelling any incriminating rumors of involvement, the documents list numerous possible links between Saudi nationals and al Qaeda operatives. One paragraph suggests that at least two individuals "in contact with" or assisting 9/11 hijackers were "alleged to be Saudi intelligence officers." The pages were previously marked as classified to protect intelligence sources and to avoid risking diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

This week's Reuters/Ipsos poll results see Democrat Hillary Clinton up 12 points nationally over Republican Donald Trump, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent. With the GOP nominating convention about to begin, other surveys show a far narrower gap, though Clinton generally maintains at least a slight lead. The Reuters data was primarily collected before news broke of Thursday night's attack in Nice, France; and a CBS News/New York Times poll released earlier that day found the two candidates are neck and neck for claiming voters' trust in dealing with terrorism.

In an interview with the Associated Press published early Saturday, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus said the GOP has come to accept Donald Trump as its leader. "There is no other candidate," Priebus said. "That was one of the problems that this 'Never Trump' issue had last night. Who is the other candidate? What VP nominees are you vetting? We're voting next week — on Tuesday or Wednesday. What money are you raising? Where is this person?" Any attempts at rebellion, he concluded, are "over."

A Pakistani model and social media star named Qandeel Baloch, 25, was strangled to death by her brother as she slept, officials said Saturday. Baloch had recently stirred controversy among her country's conservatives by a posting a video and several selfies of herself with Islamic cleric Mufti Qavi. After the photos attracted widespread attention, Qavi lost his position on an official committee, and Baloch's brothers asked her to quit modeling. Before she was murdered in what is believed to be an "honor killing," Baloch announced her plan instead was to move abroad for safety reasons.

Nutritional supplement maker Herbalife has agreed to pay $200 million and restructure its business practices to settle a suit in which the Federal Trade Commission accused the company of being a multi-level marketer — also known as a pyramid scheme. The complaint alleged that Herbalife engaged in deceptive marketing practices, falsely promising participants unrealistic riches, including mansions and luxury vehicles. In the settlement papers, Herbalife denies all wrongdoing and says many of the allegations against it were "factually incorrect."

Video made public of an interaction between several Savannah, Georgia, police and a 24-year-old African-American man Patrick Mumford shows just 38 seconds elapsed from the beginning of the encounter to when one officer says to another, "All right, tase him!" As the police soon realized, Mumford was not the man they were looking for, was not armed, and had no outstanding warrants for his arrest. Though a charge of misdemeanor obstruction against Mumford was dismissed, he is still scheduled for a hearing his attorney says could land him in jail.

A massive heat wave this coming week will affect most of the contiguous United States — but especially the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southeast regions — with highs in the 100s throughout the center of the country. The heat will be accompanied by high humidity and may top 110 degrees in states like Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. Record temperatures have already struck in America's northernmost state, Alaska, where a high of 88 degrees in Fairbanks on Wednesday was warmer than New York City.

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.