TODAY'S TALKING POINTS 08-18-15

TODAY'S TALKING POINTS

The Boston bomber appealed his death sentence. Attorneys for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev argued that "publicity made it impossible for him to get a fair trial."

A bomb killed at least 22 and injured more than 100 in Bangkok. An explosion rocked the Hindu Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok around 7 p.m.Monday local time. While the cause was not immediately known, the location of the blast raised questions because it was near the scene of 2014 violent anti-government protests. Thailand’s Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said, “The people who did it targeted foreigners and [aimed] to damage tourism and the economy.” Authorities said Tuesday they were looking for a suspect seen on CCTV wearing a yellow shirt and a backpack.

Indonesian rescuers found the crashed plane, but no survivors. The plane that crashed Sunday with 54 people and $470,000 of village aid on board is the latest in a string of air disasters in Southeast Asia. The wreckage and the aircraft's black box were discovered Tuesday in Indonesia's Papua province.

If this is starting to sound familiar, it's because a lot of Southeast Asian planes have been going down recently, and here's why.

Northwestern football players were barred from forming a union. A surprising National Labor Relations Board ruling that could have changed the college sports landscape decided that it would create instability if one team was allowed to unionize and others in the NCAA weren’t.

This comes after a March 2014 decision that declared the college athletes employees, giving them the right to unionize. Monday's ruling left the door open for other teams to petition to unionize.

As protests rage in China, fears of cyanide pollution spread. Hundreds of residents displaced by massive explosions in China that killed at least 114, injured more than 700 and left 57 missing demanded compensation for their destroyed property. Meanwhile, sodium cyanide — a chemical that can be “rapidly fatal” — was detected in wastewater monitoring plants at up to 27 times the acceptable limit.