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Tuesday's Mini-Report, 5.3.16

Today's edition of quick hits.
Today's edition of quick hits:
 
* Iraq: "An American serviceman died in an ISIS attack in northern Iraq, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the U.S. serviceman was advising and assisting Kurdish Peshmerga forces north of Mosul when ISIS fighters attacked."
 
* New York: "Sheldon Silver, who rose from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to become one of the state's most powerful and feared politicians as speaker of the New York Assembly, was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in prison in a case that came to symbolize Albany's culture of graft."
 
* Turkey: "Members of Turkey's governing AK party and pro-Kurdish politicians have traded blows in parliament over plans to strip MPs of their immunity from prosecution. The brawl erupted as a committee met to discuss the government-backed changes to the constitution. Some parliamentarians launched themselves into the melee from a table, others threw water or aimed punches."
 
* It'd be a good thing if Congress were able to govern responsibly: "Hours before Puerto Rico missed hundreds of millions of dollars of bond payments, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday issued a new and urgent call for Congress to pass legislation allowing the territory to restructure the $72 billion it owes to creditors."
 
* Climate crisis: "As India, the world's second-most populous country, reels from an intense drought, the World Bank has released a new report finding that perhaps the most severe impact of a changing climate could be the effect on water supplies."
 
* Alabama: "The Oxford City Council has scheduled a special meeting Wednesday 'to discuss potentially recalling' an ordinance making it a crime to use a public restroom different from the gender on a person's birth certificate."
 
* What could possibly go wrong? "Full-time employees at Tennessee's public colleges and universities can now carry handguns on campus under a bill that became law Monday, although without the governor's signature."
 
* Media consolidation can get tricky, but I'm glad to see this: "The Tampa Bay Times announced on Tuesday that it had purchased the Tampa Tribune and its related publications. The Tribune will no longer be printed. The Tampa Bay Times held a press conference Tuesday afternoon. Times CEO and chairman Paul Tash said the competition between the two papers was putting both 'in peril.'"
 
* Wouldn't it be fun to vote for Leslie Knope?
 
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.