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Tuesday's Mini-Report, 2.10.15

Today's edition of quick hits.
Today's edition of quick hits:
 
* Kayla Mueller: "American ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller is dead, the aid worker's family and the White House said Tuesday. The announcement came four days after ISIS claimed the 26-year-old Arizona native had been killed by a coalition airstrike in Syria."
 
* Heartbreaking: "Mueller was kidnapped by ISIS in August 2013 and her family has released a copy of an unpublished letter she wrote to her loved ones in the spring of 2014 while in captivity."
 
* Ukraine: "Negotiators meeting in Minsk, Belarus, reached a tentative deal for a cease-fire in Ukraine on Tuesday night, setting the stage for a meeting of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France to sign the agreement on Wednesday, according to media reports."
 
* Nigeria: "Boko Haram Islamic extremists have abducted about 30 people including eight Cameroonian girls and killed seven hostages in two bus hijackings in Cameroon and Nigeria, Cameroon residents and a Nigerian intelligence officer said Tuesday."
 
* Iran nuclear deal: "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose recent public pronouncements have usually been skeptical about the talks, promised in a speech to Iranian air force officials that 'I would go along with the agreement in the making,' the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported."
 
* Indictment: "The police officer who fired the shot that killed an unarmed man in a Brooklyn housing project in November has been indicted, according to three people familiar with the grand jury proceedings."
 
* The new Senate's first confirmation: "The Senate on Monday confirmed 92-0 President Obama's nominee to serve as the administration's 'czar' overseeing drug control policy. Michael Botticelli has served as acting director of the U.S. National Drug Control Policy since March, after previously working as deputy director starting in November 2012."
 
* Unresolved issues at the Secret Service: "The Secret Service said Monday that its second-ranking official was resigning his post, a departure under pressure of one of the last remaining senior managers who had presided over a string of embarrassing security lapses in recent years."
 
* Really? "It's time to study and maybe even test the idea of cooling the Earth by injecting sulfur pollution high in the air to reflect the sun's heat, a first-of-its-kind federal science report said Tuesday. The idea was once considered fringe -- to purposely re-engineer the planet's climate as a last ditch effort to battle global warming with an artificial cloud. No longer."
 
* I don't mean to be overly flippant about this, but did anyone seriously believe Candidate Obama, circa 2008, genuinely opposed marriage equality in 2008? "It can now, apparently, be told: During his run for the presidency and his first years in the White House, President Barack Obama deceived the American public about his position on same-sex marriage."
 
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.