Criminal Justice

• Topeka will hire a civilian to investigate police misconduct. [Link]
• An LA judge rules a new law makes police abuse records public. [Link]
• The Houston police chief says that his department will stop using no-knock raids in most cases. A recent no-knock raid killed two people. The chief said multiple officers from the raid are likely to face charges. [Link]
• The immigration court backlog is now 830,000 cases. [Link]

Latin America

• Five Americans arrested in Haiti have been returned to the US. The men were arrested carrying automatic rifles. They will not face charges in the US. Some Haitians are upset with the men seeming to avoid justice. [Link]
• Brazil sends aid to the Venezuelan border to be distributed by the Juan Guaido government. [Link]

Saudi Arabia

• A House oversight report says Trump is attempting to bypass getting Congressional approval to sell Saudi nuclear technology. [Link]
• The UK urges Germany to lift a ban on weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. Germany banned the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia because of the Saudi led war in Yemen. [Link]
• Pakistan and Saudi Arabia sign agreements worth $20 billion. [Link]

Afghanistan

• The UK deploys 400 troops to Afghanistan. [Link]
• The US ends its operation targeting opium production in Afghanistan. [Link]
• General Votel hypes the threat of ISIS-K in Afghanistan. [Link]

Syria

• The US will leave 200 troops in Syria on a ‘peacekeeping’ mission. The troops will be deployed to the northeast and al-Tanf. [Link]
• Syrian Kurds transfer 150 captured ISIS fighters to Iraq. [Link]
• A woman who was living in Alabama traveled to Syria and married IS fighters. She now wants to return to the US. [Link] The US says she is not a citizen and cannot return to the US. [Link]

Africa

• Ethiopians are migrating to Saudi Arabia through Yemen. Many of the travelers are unaware of the brutal war in Yemen. [Link]
• The US drone war in Somalia is ineffective in defeating al-Shabaab. [Link]
• Burundi begins withdrawing 1,000 troops from the African Union force in Somalia. [Link]
• AFRICOM sets up a logistics hub in West Africa. [Link]
• An ISIS affiliate group is growing in West Africa. The group has split factions off of Boko Haram. [Link]
• 100,000 people have been displaced by fighting in Burkina Faso in the past two months. [Link]
• The WHO believes over 900 children have died from Measles in Madagascar since September. [Link]