Terror in Ankara and Berlin, Charges in Flint, An Immigrant’s View from Trump Tower

Coming up on today’s show:

• Andrey G. Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, was shot and killed in a gallery in Ankara on Monday. The assassination came a day before defense ministers from Iran, Russia, and Turkey were scheduled to meet in Moscow to discuss the Syrian civil war. Borzou Daragahi, Middle East correspondent for BuzzFeed, explains how this killing may impact relations between Russia and Turkey, and the crisis in Aleppo. 

• On Monday night, a truck plowed into a Christmas market outside of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens of others. A suspected driver was arrested near the scene, but a passenger in the truck died during the crash. Thalia Beaty, a freelance print and radio journalist in Berlin, has the details on the attack. 

• A failure of checks and balances within criminal justice system leaves Clifton Dewayne Harvin serving 60 years in prison. Andrew Cohen, the author of The Marshall Project’s Case in Point and Lillian Hardwick, an attorney and co-author of the “Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics,” discuss what went wrong. 

• A review released late last week found that a state agency in Michigan wrongly accused individuals in at least 20,000 cases of fraudulently seeking unemployment payments. Jennifer Lord, an attorney with the law firm Pitt, McGehee, Palmer & Rivers who is representing clients falsely accused of fraud in a class action suit, weighs in on the case.

• There have been major protests in Warsaw, Poland, recently following the populist right-wing government’s announcement that it intends to limit news media access to parliament. Adam Easton, BBC correspondent in Warsaw, says that critics are complaining that the proposed new rules are part of an ongoing effort by the ruling party to consolidate power.

• On Monday, Christine LaGarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty in French court for her misuse of public funds while in office as finance minister. Edwin Truman, a non-resident senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, explains what’s next. 

• Kunal Sood is an immigrant on an F1 visa from Uttar Pradesh, India. He has experienced this election through the unique vantage of being an immigrant in America, who happens to also live in Trump Tower. He says the 2016 campaign challenged his ideas of what America really is.