TODAY'S TALKING POINTS 10-19-15

TODAY'S TALKING POINTS

A U.S.-led airstrike killed the leading financier for al-Qaida. The Pentagon announced Sunday that a U.S.-led coalition air strike killed Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi citizen with a dark track record of funneling money and fighters to al-Qaida and its Khorasan Group offshoot. He’s the fifth senior Khorasan Group leader killed in the last four months.

Typhoon Koppu killed at least two and displaced thousands in the Philippines. The raging storm, which might not break until Wednesday, dumped twice the amount of rain that London sees in a year and left entire villages under water, forcing more than 20,000 from their homes.

Chinese hackers reportedly tried to breach U.S. companies. Seven tech and pharmaceutical companies detected attacks. It's been less than a month since the U.S. and China agreed to stop spying on one another.

The man who tried to stop the UCC shooter described the ordeal on Facebook. Christopher Mintz, the 30-year-old U.S. military combat veteran who was shot five times while attempting to stop a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, took to Facebook to describe the horrible experience of living through the mass murder of nine other people. “He was so nonchalant through it all, like he was playing a video game and showed no emotion," Mintz wrote.

Donald Trump claimed he would have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks as president. The Republican presidential front-runner said that his tough immigration policies would have deterred the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001. "Look, look, Jeb [Bush] said we were safe with my brother," Trump said on Fox News Sunday. "Well, the World Trade Center just fell down!” It is unclear which of Trump's policies would have caught the al-Qaida members involved in the attacks. Progressive site Media Matters noted in 2013 all hijackers entered the country legally.

In other news to read while packing for your move to Canada, Lindsay Lohan says she’s considering a presidential bid in 2020. She promises to “take care of all the children suffering,” so, there’s that.

Republican in-fighting over the Benghazi committee is reaching a fever pitch. Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House committee handling the probe targeting Hillary Clinton, told his Republican colleagues to “shut up talking about things that you don’t know anything about.” Democrats have long accused the Benghazi committee of drawing out a costly and politically motivated investigation, but recently Republicans have leveled similar accusations, with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggesting in an interview that the committee was specifically formed to harm Clinton’s status at the polls.