TODAY'S TALKING POINTS 10-16-15

TODAY'S TALKING POINTS

European leaders hatched a plan to ease the flow of migrants. This year alone, about 600,000 migrants have reached Europe, and many of them came from Turkey. The European Union agreed to provide financial aid and make it easier for Turkish citizens to access visas if the nation does a better job with border control (read: try to keep the two million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey where they are so they don't go to Europe.) The deal isn't yet final.

U.S. analysts reportedly knew the bombed Afghanistan site was a hospital. Associated Press learned American analysts were collecting intelligence on the Doctors Without Borders hospital decimated by a U.S. airstrike in the northern Afghan city Kunduz earlier this month because they thought it could be a Taliban hub. Because of this — and the fact that air support forces typically have maps noting structures like hospitals — Doctors Without Borders officials said the hospital was “intentionally targeted” in a “premeditated massacre.” It’s still not clear whether or not the commanders firing the gunship knew the building was a hospital.

Nearly 85% of people killed by U.S. drones in recent strikes were unintended targets. The Intercept released an in-depth report Thursday revealing the nation’s Operation Haymaker campaign (meant to target Al Qaeda and Taliban higher ups) killed more than 200 people — but only 35 were enemy targets. It’s unclear how long the mission lasted, but by the end of 2013, the number of civilian casualties by drones in Afghanistan tripled from the prior year.

This raises an important question: Drone attacks, laser-guided bombs and“nonlethal weapons” were supposed to reduce civilian casualties and suffering. But are they actually making war more humane — or is killing just becoming easier?

Killings by police are missing from FBI records. You won’t find a file for Tamir Rice or Eric Garner in federal databases. In fact, only 224 of 18,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies reported a fatal shooting by police in 2014. The reason? The federal reporting program isn’t mandatory, so the feds have no way of knowing how many incidents actually occurred, which makes it tricky to track any increase in killings by police.

Scottish officials identified two new suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. Prosecutors are planning to interview two Libyans they think were involved in the 1988 bombing that killed 270 on Pan Am flight 103. Just one person, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, had been convicted for the attack. Last month, the brother of a victim told The New Yorker about his own investigation, and said he suspected other perpetrators still remained at large in Libya.

Dennis Hastert plans to plead guilty in his hush-money case. The ex-House Speaker, who reportedly agreed to pay an individual $3.5 million to stay quiet about sexual misconduct, intends to plead guilty to lying to federal investigators about it. The plea would allow him to avoid a trial.