10 things you need to know today: November 7, 2016

Hillary Clinton campaigns in Ohio before the election

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Jump to category:

1. FBI finds no evidence of criminality in new Clinton emails
2. Former attorney general Janet Reno dies at 78
3. Clinton and Trump make final pitch to voters
4. Early voting shows historic turnout for Hispanics
5. 5.0-magnitude earthquake hits central Oklahoma
6. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega wins third consecutive term
7. Judge refuses bond for South Carolina kidnapping and murder suspect
8. ISIS claims responsibility for Iraq bombings that killed at least 21
9. Samsung to introduce its AI answer to Siri
10. Mary Keitany, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie win NYC Marathon

published 7 November 2016

1. FBI finds no evidence of criminality in new Clinton emails

FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Sunday that a review of new documents linked to Hillary Clinton's email server had not changed the agency's conclusion that there were no grounds for charges over Clinton's handling of sensitive material. The emails were personal, or duplicates of messages already reviewed. Comey told Congress in July that Clinton had been "extremely careless" with her emails as secretary of state, but there was no evidence she intentionally mishandled classified information. Comey alerted Congress 11 days before the Nov. 8 election that new emails possibly related to the server had been found, and the news stung Clinton's presidential campaign. In the days that followed, Clinton's polling lead over Republican rival Donald Trump narrowed.

Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney general, died early Monday from complications of Parkinson's disease, according to her goddaughter, Gabrielle D'Alemberte. She was 78. Reno was appointed by Bill Clinton and served from 1993 to 2001, the longest tenure of any attorney general in the 20th century and the second longest in U.S. history. Fiercely independent, the former Florida prosecutor shaped the government's response to legal crises through the '90s, authorizing the botched raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, as well as the investigation into Clinton's sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.

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.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are wrapping up their final appeals for votes on Monday, the last day before the presidential election. Clinton, with a cloud lifted after the FBI cleared her following a review of a new batch of emails, called for national unity as she campaigned Sunday. President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and former President Bill Clinton will all make appearances for her on Monday. Trump, the Republican nominee, on Sunday cast the election as a one-time chance to shake up politics, turn back the tide of globalism, and remake a "rigged" system in Washington. The last polls all showed Clinton maintaining a lead of several percentage points nationally.

Early voting reports suggest that Hispanics are casting ballots in record numbers in some places, giving Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton an apparent boost in several key states. Many Hispanic voters said they were making sure to get to the polls to back Clinton due to Republican nominee Donald Trump's harsh rhetoric against Mexican immigrants, including his vow to build a border wall to keep undocumented Mexican immigrants from entering the U.S. "Trump has built a wall, indeed," said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster who specializes in Latino voters. "And it is a new firewall for Democrats."

A 5.0-magnitude earthquake hit central Oklahoma on Sunday night. Authorities reported "significant damage" to buildings in Cushing, which has a population of 7,900, and is home to the largest commercial oil storage hub in the United States. Residents reported that the quake broke glass, and shook things off of walls. The quake was the fifth strongest to hit the state, which has experienced an increase in seismic activity that scientists have linked to fracking, the process of injecting fluid deep into the earth at high pressure to access the gas inside.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega appeared to have won a third consecutive term on Sunday. Election officials announced that he had 72 percent of the vote with two-thirds of ballots counted, an insurmountable lead. His closest opponent was center-right candidate Maximino Rodriguez with just 14.2 percent. Ortega, once a left-wing rebel, has enjoyed popularity both due to his social programs and the country's economic stability, which has boosted his image with business leaders.

A South Carolina judge on Sunday denied bond to Todd Kohlhepp, the 45-year-old suspect accused of holding a woman chained inside a storage container who confessed after his arrest to seven murders. After the brief hearing, Kohlhepp was escorted out of the courtroom and Magistrate Judge Jimmy Henson told the victims' families, "What you've gone through... is beyond what a lot of people would understand." Kohlhepp has been charged with kidnapping, and four counts of murder in connection with killings at a motorcycle shop in Chesnee, South Carolina in 2003. As of Sunday, investigators had found two bodies on the property where the chained woman was discovered.

Suicide bombers used two ambulances packed with explosives in two attacks that killed at least 21 people in the Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Samarra on Sunday. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for both bombings. The attack in the holy city of Samarra mostly hit Shiite Muslims, frequently targeted by the Sunni Islamist extremists of ISIS. The attacks occurred as ISIS fighters engaged in deadly street fighting in Mosul, ISIS' biggest remaining stronghold in Iraq.

Samsung Electronics shares rose by more than 1 percent on Monday after the South Korean electronics giant revealed that its next Galaxy S smartphones would include a digital assistant similar to Apple's Siri. Samsung last month acquired Viv Labs, a U.S.-based artificial intelligence software company. Samsung, looking to bounce back from the recall and scrapping of its Note 7 smartphone due to the potential for battery fires, said its artificial intelligence features would be "significantly" different from those offered by Apple and Google.

Kenyan Mary Keitany won her third straight New York City Marathon Sunday, finishing with a time of 2:24:26. She broke away from the rest of the elite women runners halfway through the race — an unusual move — and ran the final 13 miles alone. Ghirmay Ghebreslassie of Eritrea won the men's race in a speedy 2:07:51. At 20, he is the youngest NYC Marathon winner ever. Tatyana McFadden won the women's wheelchair marathon, her fourth straight victory, and the men's wheelchair race winner was Marcel Hug, who had won the race once before. More than 50,000 people from 120 countries competed in the marathon this year.

Explore More

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.