As the investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Sandra Bland's death in a Texas jail cell continues, a Department of Justice report (PDF) on jail deaths in America provides shocking broader context: Some 73 percent (698 out of 958 total deaths in 2012) of prisoners who die in jail have not been convicted of anything.

Exorbitant bail rates for relatively minor crimes, an issue brought into sharp relief by the 2015 suicide of Kalief Browder, is a primary reason for often lengthy pre-trial detentions during which these deaths occurred. Deaths were most common among older inmates, particularly in the 45-54 age group, and 29 percent of people who died in jail were black, more than twice the national population ratio of African-Americans.

For more on this topic, read The Week's Ryan Cooper on "the national horror of jail suicides," which accounted for 31.3 percent of jail deaths in 2012. Bonnie Kristian

Following a Russian-brokered ceasefire that includes territorial concessions which will go into effect Sunday, Armenians are leaving villages in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and some are setting fire to their homes, The Associated Press and Reuters report. It's unclear when and how many Azeris, many of whom were displaced from the same land in 1994, will return to the villages.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory, which is officially recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for decades, flared up in recent months. The fighting resulted in Azerbaijan seizing the key city of Shusha, leading to the ceasefire, which Russia — generally considered a staunch ally and protector of Armenia — plans to enforce with 2,000 peacekeepers.

The Armenians who are leaving their homes cast doubt on the idea that they could live peacefully beside the returning Azeris, per AP and Reuters, and many remain uncertain of where their next destination will be. "We are homeless now, do not know where to go and where to live," one woman leaving her home told AP. Read more at The Associated Press and Reuters. Tim O'Donnell

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday claimed that "more than one million" people came out to march in support of President Trump in Washington, D.C. as he continues to challenge the results of the presidential election, but several critics quickly dispelled that figure. The Washington Post, for instance, described the "falsehood" as "ludicrous."

It's not that the crowd was completely sparse — there's no official estimate, but reports indicate the actual numbers are in the thousands — but it does not appear to be close to the image conjured up by McEnany.

As some folks pointed out, Trump's time in office similarly began with a dispute over the size of his inauguration crowd, with the White House exaggerating the number of attendees, which appeared to pale in comparison to previous inaugurations. Tim O'Donnell

Former President Barack Obama's chiefs of staff want President-elect Joe Biden to embrace his executive authority once he's in office, NPR reports.

Denis McDonough who served in the role during Obama's second term told NPR that President Trump "has demonstrated ... an enormous amount of leeway for the president to institute executive action on things like immigration and energy and climate policy" and "there's no reason" the president-elect "should not use the authority that's available to him."

Meanwhile, Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, argued Biden, despite his fondness for working across the aisle in Congress, should fit as much of his agenda as he can into his executive orders because "the fewer things you have to clog up the legislative pipeline with allows you to concentrate your political capital in that legislative front."

Should Biden heed this advice, which seems likely at least when it comes to certain issues, it would dash the already tenuous hopes of those who want the president-elect to initiate a scaling back of the office. Read more at NPR. Tim O'Donnell

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the Pentagon general counsel has selected Michael Ellis, a White House official and former chief counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), to serve as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency, and Susan Hennessey writes at Lawfare that "there is a lot that stinks" about the choice.

In a breakdown of the complex situation, Hennessey explains that the NSA general counsel is a career position that doesn't require Senate confirmation, although the selection process is supposed to remain free from political interference and is supposedly based purely on the candidate's qualifications. But, in this case, there is speculation that the White House pushed for Ellis' appointment, especially because Ellis' resume appears lacking compared to other top candidates for the job including the agency's acting General Counsel Teisha Anthony, Hennessey argues.

Further, Hennessey notes, Ellis "isn't simply a neutral official who happened to occupy a political role," but rather "an overtly political actor involved in some of the famously disturbing episodes of the Trump administration." In short, Hennessey thinks the selection demands more scrutiny and may be an example of the Trump administration attempting to "'burrow,' or improperly convert a political appointee into a career position" that would theoretically last beyond President Trump's upcoming White House exit.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified during Trump's impeachment trial that Ellis was the individual who first proposed moving a memo of the president's phone call with Ukrainian President Alexander Vindman to a highly classified server, agrees with his new colleague, Hennessey. Read more at Lawfare. Tim O'Donnell

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) set up a visit to the White House for newly-elected Republican lawmakers Friday evening, but they didn't get a chance to meet President Trump in person, Politico reports.

The president did reportedly send his regards to the newcomers, but the fact that he stayed out of the spotlight raised some eyebrows.

As it turns out, further reporting revealed Trump probably wasn't standing anyone up, but, in a bit of twist, likely stayed away because the group hadn't been tested for COVID-19 prior to their arrival. Tim O'Donnell

Intelligence officials have confirmed that Israeli operatives, at the behest of the United States, assassinated Abu Muhammad al-Masri, al Qaeda's second-highest leader, in Iran in August, The New York Times reports.

Al Qaeda has not announced al-Masri's death, and Iran, which considers al Qaeda a bitter enemy, denies the claims he was killed in Tehran, warning media outlets not to fall for the "Hollywood script." It's unclear why Iran would have been harboring al-Masri, but the Times reports some terrorism experts have suggested keeping al Qaeda leaders in the country would provide some insurance that the group would not conduct operations within its borders, while American counterterrorism officials have theorized Iran may have allowed them to stay to carry out operations against the U.S, a common adversary. Regardless, the Shiite Muslim nation has been "willing to overlook the Sunni-Shia divide" before "when it suits Iranian interests," Colin Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Center, told the Times.

Per the Times, al-Masri was driving his car with his 27-year-old daughter and Hamza bin Laden's widow, Miriam, when two gunmen drew up beside him on a motorcycle and fired five shots. At the time, Iran identified the victims as Habib Daoud, a Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese history professor, and his daughter, Maryam, but intelligence officials told the Times those were aliases provided by the Iranian government, and an education researcher with access to lists of all history professors in Iran told the Times there was no record of anyone by that name. One of al Qaeda's founding members, al-Masri was a mastermind behind the 1998 attacks on American embassies in multiple African countries and considered the likely successor to the groups's current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri; experts believe his death, if true, "further cuts links between old-school al Qaeda and the modern Jihad." Read more at The New York Times and Al Jazeera. Tim O'Donnell