10 things you need to know today: December 10, 2013

(Image credit: (AP Photo/Ben Curtis))

last updated 8 January 2015

1. Obama eulogizes Mandela at memorial service

President Obama joined 100 other world leaders at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela in a Johannesburg soccer stadium on Tuesday. Obama said the late South African leader was an inspiration to him, personally, and an example of the power of reconciliation. Former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter also attended in a high-profile show of American respect for Mandela, South Africa's first black president. [Reuters, CBS News]

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A winter storm is continuing to ravage the East Coast on Tuesday. Snow and icy conditions forced airlines to cancel 775 flights on Tuesday, down from 1,900 on Monday and 2,800 on Sunday. "I don't think it's going to warm up anytime soon," National Weather Service meteorologist Bruce Sullivan told Reuters. Authorities in Nevada are searching for two adults and four children who went out to play in the snow Sunday and didn't return. [Christian Science Monitor, CNN]

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong ordered an investigation on Monday into Singapore's first riot in four decades, which broke out in the Little India district after a foreign worker was struck and killed by a bus. Tensions had already been rising over the city-state's large population of foreign workers. Police commissioner Ng Joo Hee called the violence intolerable. "It is not the Singapore way," he said. [Bloomberg, BBC News]

The federal government sold its last shares of General Motors stock on Monday, officially ending the bailout of the troubled automaker. Taxpayers wound up losing $10.5 billion of the $49.5 billion invested five years ago. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said the money helped save a million jobs and keep the recession from becoming a depression. GM executives say losing the "Government Motors" label will be good for the company. [New York Times]

Eighteen current and former Los Angeles sheriff's deputies were indicted Monday on charges of abusing inmates and jail visitors. All of the defendants worked in jails in downtown L.A., part of the largest jail system in the country. Federal authorities have been looking into the county's jails for more than two years following several lawsuits accusing deputies of misconduct and abuse. [New York Times]

George Zimmerman's girlfriend is now saying she wants to drop all charges in a domestic violence incident that led to his arrest. The woman, Samantha Scheibe, said in her 911 call last month that Zimmerman had pointed a gun "at [her] freaking face," but now she says he didn't, according to an affidavit signed Friday and filed in a Florida court. Zimmerman, acquitted last summer in Trayvon Martin's killing, faces assault and other charges. [Los Angeles Times]

Angela Spaccia, a former assistant city manager from a Los Angeles suburb, was convicted Monday on corruption charges including misappropriating public funds and falsifying government records. Prosecutors said Spaccia was involved in approving huge salaries for government officials — she made more than $340,000 — in a city afflicted with "corruption on steroids." The case nearly drove the city, Bell, to bankruptcy. [Associated Press]

A Marseille court sentenced Jean-Claude Mas, founder of a French breast-implant company, to four years in prison on Tuesday four fraud. He was also fined $137,000. Mas' company, Poly Implant Prothese, sold implants made with substandard silicone and prone to rupture to 300,000 women in 65 countries. The French government urged women to have the implants removed. Several other former PIP executives have also been jailed and fined. [France24]

California police have accused two men with stealing a roof panel of the mangled Porsche sports car in which actor Paul Walker of the Fast & Furious movie franchise died. Los Angeles County prosecutors on Monday filed grand theft charges against Jameson Witty, 18, and Anthony Janow, 25, for allegedly taking the part from a tow truck that was taking the wreckage of the Porsche Carrera GT away from the crash site. [Los Angeles Times]

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.

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