• Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Dairi asked the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to end an arms embargo so the Libyan government can combat terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS). Egypt supported the move to allow weapons into Libya, where militant groups have been fighting for control since a popular uprising in 2011.
• Russian punk band Pussy Riot, composed of multiple women, two of whom spent nearly two years in jail for a performance protesting the policies of President Vladimir Putin, released a new song in English on Wednesday titled “I Can’t Breathe.” The track is a tribute to Eric Garner, who was killed last summer in Staten Island after a police officer put him in a chokehold. “I can’t breathe” were his last words, caught on videotape by a bystander.
• At a three-day White House summit on extremism attended by representatives of 60 countries on Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama stressed that Western nations were not at war with Islam, but a perversion of Islam, and that associating leaders of al-Qaeda and IS with Islam would mean buying into those groups’ propaganda.
• Hundreds of friends, family and admirers of U.S. foreign aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was killed after being taken hostage by IS militants, gathered for a candlelit vigil in Prescott, Arizona to celebrate her life. Though IS militants said Mueller died in a Jordanian airstrike, the Pentagon said it did not know the exact circumstances of her death.
• Georgia will execute a woman for the first time since 1945 on Tuesday. The death row inmate, Kelly Gissendaner, conspired with a lover to murder her husband in 1998 and is set to die of lethal injection.
• Former Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran, who was fired in November for publishing a book on faith-based sexual ethics that called homosexuality a perversion, filed a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta on Wednesday. Cochran alleged that he was fired for his religious beliefs.
— Compiled by Asst. News Editor Lydia O’Neal
