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Friday's Mini-Report, 11.21.14

Today's edition of quick hits.
Today's edition of quick hits:
 
* POTUS hits the trail: "President Obama reaffirmed his plan to take executive action to reform the nation's immigration laws but said he will keep working with Congress to reach a legislative solution. 'I will never give up,' Obama said at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas."
 
* At least for now, the deadline is Monday: "Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, canceled plans to leave the nuclear negotiations [in Geneva] Friday following marathon talks that lasted into the night."
 
* Signs of hope in Liberia: "The international response to West Africa's Ebola epidemic, coupled with more effective action by local communities, has stopped the exponential spread of the disease in one of the hardest-hit countries, Liberia, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday."
 
* Terror divisions: "Escalating a war of words between terrorism's old and new schools, an Islamic scholar with al Qaeda's Yemen-based offshoot on Friday accused ISIS of 'planting ... disunity' among the various Islamic extremist factions fighting to topple the Syrian government and rejected the authority of the Iraq- and Syria-based group's self-declared caliphate."
 
* Ukraine: 'Vice President Biden abruptly canceled a wreath-laying ceremony Friday at a memorial marking Ukraine's pro-Western revolution after an angry crowd gathered to demand justice for those killed in the unrest."
 
* Ferguson: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has expressed concerns privately to Missouri officials this week about their recent actions in advance of a grand jury's decision in the Michael Brown case."
 
* Tunisia: "Less than a month after electing a new Parliament, Tunisians will vote Sunday in their first-ever open democratic presidential election, completing a tumultuous democratic transition begun with their revolution nearly four years ago."
 
* A not-so-lame duck: "The government transferred five low-level Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Eastern Europe on Thursday. Four of the men were Yemenis, and their resettlement was a significant policy change in the Obama administration's effort to close the prison at the naval base in Cuba."
 
Hossein Derakhshan: "A pioneering Iranian blogger convicted of crimes including blasphemy, obscenity and seditious propaganda has been freed from prison after six years, he said Thursday in posts on social networks widely reported in Iran's press."
 
* Climate crisis: "It has been the warmest January-October on record and last month was the hottest October on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported Thursday. And while you wouldn't know it from the cold temperatures in large parts of this country, NOAA's 'State of the Climate: Global Analysis,' projects that 2014 is almost certainly going to be the hottest year on record worldwide -- probably by far."
 
* Thomas Mann: "The crocodile tears in reaction to President Obama acting well beyond his constitutional authority and destroying prospects in Congress for bipartisan agreement on a range of pressing public problems, including immigration, are laughable."
 
* Oh my: "Peggy Noonan's 'wisdom': Build Keystone XL so American boys will become men."
 
* I just love this story: "The artist who created the enigmatic Kryptos, a puzzle-in-a-sculpture that has driven code breakers to distraction since it was installed 24 years ago in a courtyard at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., has decided that it is time for a new clue."
 
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.