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Thursday's Mini-Report, 10.22.15

Today’s edition of quick hits.
Today’s edition of quick hits:
 
* Iraq: "Acting on a tip that dozens of ISIS-held hostages were about to be slaughtered, U.S. and Kurdish commandos stormed a prison in northeastern Iraq before dawn Thursday, rescuing the captives in a firefight that ended with an American soldier shot to death, officials said."
 
* More on this tomorrow: "President Barack Obama has vetoed a sweeping $612 billion defense policy bill in a rebuke to congressional Republicans. Obama says the bill does a number of good things, but falls woefully short in other areas. He says it 'resorts to gimmicks.'"
 
* A verdict in a story we've been watching: "An aide to Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign was convicted Thursday of one of five charges he faced related to secret payments to an Iowa lawmaker, and jurors acquitted a second aide of making false statements to the FBI."
 
* I've actually lost count of all the various Secret Service controversies: "A federal watchdog plans to send the U.S. Secret Service a formal warning Thursday about the security risks of overworking its employees -- after discovering two Secret Service officers asleep at their posts, according to three government officials familiar with the findings."
 
* VW: "Volkswagen said Thursday that more engines than previously disclosed might be in violation of European pollution rules, but that the number was relatively small."
 
* The more action on this, the better: "Faced with a nationwide epidemic of heroin and prescription drug abuse, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that it will take steps to increase access to drug treatment and expand the training of doctors who prescribe opiate painkillers."
 
* Climate crisis, Part I: "Global temperatures are running far above last year’s record-setting level, all but guaranteeing that 2015 will be the hottest year in the historical record -- and undermining political claims that global warming had somehow stopped."
 
* Climate crisis, Part II: "With each upward degree, global warming will singe the economies of three-quarters of the world's nations and widen the north-south gap between rich and poor countries, according to a new economic and science study."
 
* SEC: "President Obama on Tuesday nominated Lisa M. Fairfax, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, and Hester Peirce, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and critic of financial reform, to serve as members of the Securities and Exchange Commission."
 
* Arkansas: "Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Gov. Asa Hutchinson's chief of staff received $120,000 in consulting fees from a group largely funded by lobbyists and their clients while he led the Arkansas Senate. The Arkansas Faith and Freedom Coalition paid the money in 2013 to a law firm where then-Senate President Michael Lamoureux was the only attorney on staff."
 
* Gallup: "A majority of Americans continue to say marijuana use should be legal in the United States, with 58% holding that view, tying the high point in Gallup's 46-year trend."
 
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.