The nation reels from the killings of two journalists. Hillary Clinton drops email jokes. And Wall Street bounces back in a big way.
It’s Thursday, and here are five things to know for your new day.
JOURNALISTS KILLED
The day after: Shocking. Tragic. Unbelievable. Those are just some of the words used to describe yesterday’s killing of two Virginia reporters on live TV. As reporter Allison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are mourned, authorities will delve deeper into the life of their killer, Vester Lee Flanagan II, who went by Bryce Williams when he worked in television. Investigators will have a lot of material to plow through, including his social media accounts and a 23-page fax he sent to ABC News. Flanagan also wounded Vicki Gardner, head of a local chamber of commerce, whom Parker was interviewing.
COLORADO MOVIE THEATER SHOOTING
Stiff sentence: No one’s going to hear from James Holmes for a long, long time. The Colorado movie theater shooter got 12 life terms — one for each person he killed — plus 3,318 years for those he wounded. And he’s not eligible for parole. The judge’s disdain for Holmes was palpable: “If there was ever a case that warranted a maximum sentence, this is the case. The defendant does not deserve any sympathy.” And with that Judge Carlos A. Samor Jr. ordered Holmes be removed from the courtroom. A smattering of applause echoed through the room.
HILLARY CLINTON
No joke: The Democratic frontrunner used to brush off questions about her private email server with a mixture of combative asides and ill-fated jokes — Has your server been wiped clean? “What? Like with a cloth or something?” — but yesterday she ditched that strategy amid falling poll numbers. Clinton sound much more contrite and said she made a mistake, saying that using private email during her time at the State Department “clearly wasn’t the best choice.”
KHOBAR TOWERS BOMBING
Better late than never: Almost 20 years after the bombing, a suspect in the Khobar Towers attack is in custody. Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil was arrested yesterday in Lebanon. He was indicted by a U.S. court in the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia that left 19 airman dead. Mughassil, 48, was picked up in Beirut, “bundled into a plane” and taken to Saudi Arabia.
STOCK MARKET
‘Pop after the drop’: That’s how an investment strategist described yesterday’s 619-point gain on Wall Street, the third largest in the Dow’s history. The huge rally represents a rebound following six days of dramatic selling that was driven by serious concerns about how China’s slowing economy will impact the rest of the world. Tech stocks — like Netflix, Amazon and Google — powered the rebound.
