What's Going On Around The World Today

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Protesters and police clashed in Chicago after city officials released a dashcam video showing a white police officer fatally shooting a black teenager.

Yesterday, the officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with murder for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014, BuzzFeed News’ Tasneem Nashrulla reports.

A dashcam video of the fatal 2014 shooting was released on Tuesday after a judge ordered the Chicago Police Department to make it public.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez described the video as “graphic, violent, and chilling.” She also said Van Dyke fired all 16 rounds at McDonald in the span of 14 to 15 seconds, 13 seconds of which McDonald was lying on the ground, Nashrulla writes.

And a little extra.

It’s the first time in almost 35 years that a Chicago police officer has been charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty fatality. If convicted of first-degree murder, Van Dyke faces at least 20 years in prison, according the Chicago Tribune. As of yesterday, Van Dyke is no longer on the city’s payroll.

Russia won’t “wage war” against Turkey after the shooting down of a Russian warplane yesterday, its foreign minister said.

Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane near Turkey’s border with Syria yesterday. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the downing of its warplane of being a “planned provocation,” Russia’s Sputnik News reported. NATO and the United Nations also called for calm after the shooting down of the plane, The Guardian writes.

While Turkish officials say the Russian plane crossed over into Turkish airspace, Russia claims the plane never left Syrian territory. The U.S. as well as NATO agree with the Turkish version of events.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday the incident would have “serious consequences.” Today, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he didn’t want an “escalation” of the situation.

And a little extra.

The second Russian pilot who was ejected from the plane is alive and has been returned to base after a 12-hour rescue operation. The other pilot who flew the SU-24 plane died from ground fire, Russian officials said.

If you want the latest news and stories, download the BuzzFeed News app for iOS and Android.

WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON

Tunisia is in a state of emergency after terrorists killed 12 presidential guards in a bus bombing.

Tunisian officials determined the explosion that targeted a bus carrying Tunisian presidential guards in the country’s capital, Tunis, was a terrorist attack, BuzzFeed News’ Mary Ann Georgantopoulos writes. Seventeen people were injured.

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi wasn’t part of the convoy when it was hit. “We are at war and we are going to win,” Essebsi said in a televised speech.

And a little extra.

This marked the third major attack in Tunisia this year. In June, at least 39 people died after a gunman attacked a beach in the resort town of Sousse. In March, militants killed 21 people at the Bardo Museum in Tunis. ISIS claimed responsibility for both of those attacks.

Three people are in custody after five people were shot during a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis on Monday.

The shootings occurred about a block away from a police station. The five people shot suffered non–life-threatening injuries. Demonstrators had been protesting the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Jamar Clark, an unarmed black man who was shot by police on Nov. 15, BuzzFeed News writes.

A 23-year-old white man was arrested. A 32-year-old Hispanic man was also detained, but later released by police. Two other men in their twenties turned themselves in.

What’s next?

The protests continue. After Monday’s shooting — which a Black Lives Matter organizer called “an act of terrorism” — demonstrators went back to the street “with renewed vigor,” the New York Times writes.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

Here’s what’s happening in Burundi, the country where everyone is worrying about genocide.

International and local human rights groups are documenting an increase in disappearances, assassinations, and other abuses in Burundi, a tiny central African country. Arbitrary detentions are becoming common and some recent speeches by politicians have sounded to some observers both in and outside the country as “rhetorical groundwork for genocide,” BuzzFeed News’ Jina Moore writes from Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital.

Today’s problems started in April, when protests broke out against the Burundian president’s wish for a third term. A failed coup attempt followed in May. And in July, President Pierre Nkurunziza won an election that both the European Union and the U.S. called “neither free nor fair,” Moore writes. International pressure on Burundi has increased in recent weeks and the U.S. is imposing sanctions on some current and former Burundian officials.

An armed vigilante holds a Soviet-made hand grenade in the center of Bujumbura.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

Quick things to know:

• After a four-day security lockdown, Brussels reopened its schools and the Metro. The Belgian capital is still on its highest terror alert. (BBC News)

• Canada is delaying its plan to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2015. Its new deadline is two months later, the end of February 2016. (BuzzFeed News)

• Liberia saw its first Ebola death since the country was declared free of the disease in September. (Washington Post)

• At least 19 people across seven U.S. states have been infected with a strain of E. coli bacteria in an outbreak that is believed to be linked to rotisserie chicken at wholesaler Costco. (BuzzFeed News)

• One in four gay and bisexual men should be offered PrEP, the drug that prevents HIV, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends. (BuzzFeed News)

• The governor of Kentucky issued an executive order that could return voting rights for an estimated 180,000 people convicted of a felony after serving their sentence. (BuzzFeed News)

• Meet the cartoonist fighting for freedom of speech in Malaysia. (BuzzFeed News)

• A close look inside the Have Faith Haiti Mission, an orphanage in Port-au-Prince run by author Mitch Albom. (BuzzFeed News)

• Adele broke the one-week U.S. album sales record set by NSYNC in 2000. Her album “25” sold at least 2.43 million copies in about three days. (Billboard)

• Aca-awesome: Why the Acapella app is blowing up. (BuzzFeed News)

Happy Wednesday

It’s been exactly 100 years since Albert Einstein presented his Theory of General Relativity, or “the equation that rules the universe,” the New York Times writes. Einstein’s theory was a “simple, elegant set of equations that described space-time as a stretchy, flexible fabric, and gravity as deformations in space-time rather than a ‘force,’” CBC News writes. Now a new book reveals little-known pictures of the great physicist, and BuzzFeed UK’s Tom Chivers rounded up 14 of them. Here’s to the next 100 years!

This letter was edited and brought to you by Claire Moses and Brianne O’Brien. You can always reach us here.