Evening Edition: European leaders reach Ukraine cease-fire deal with Putin

The most important stories of the day  •  Thu., Feb. 12, 2015 View in your Web browser

FBI director acknowledges ‘hard truths’ about racial bias in policing In an unusually frank, personal speech, FBI Director James B. Comey on Thursday acknowledged “hard truths” about racial bias in policing, saying there’s a desperate need for law enforcement to understand the steep challenges facing minority communities and for American communities to understand the challenges facing police.  Read full article »

Senate confirms Ashton B. Carter as secretary of defense

Ashton B. Carter, a physicist with long experience in national security circles, handily won Senate confirmation Thursday as secretary of defense, becoming President Obama’s fourth pick in six years to lead the Pentagon.  Read full article »

European leaders reach Ukraine cease-fire deal with Putin

MOSCOW — First he annexed Crimea. Then he backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Now Russian President Vladi­mir Putin is being praised as a peacemaker for endorsing a cease-fire in Ukraine’s grinding conflict — all while neatly short-circuiting Western discussions of new economic and military costs for his role in fueling the war.  Read full article »

Alleged Chapel Hill killer described as neighborhood troublemaker, obsessed with parking and noise

Craig Stephen Hicks was feared by his neighbors. He obsessed over parking spaces and always appeared angry. He used to watch a movie about a man who goes on a shooting rampage over and over again. His ex-wife said he found the film hilarious.  Read full article »

‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ movie: A better adaptation than the book deserves

The movie adaptation of E.L. James’s best-selling book “Fifty Shades of Grey” was always destined to be a blockbuster; the quality of the film was beside the point.After all, the erotic romance novel, based on saucy “Twilight” fan-fiction, did great business, despite being a 500-page lesson in how not to use a thesaurus. Millions of readers paid their dues, skimming countless boring scenes with a narrator who says nothing more profound than “holy cow!” and “double crap!” so they could get to the good stuff: bondage-laced sex scenes between the story’s innocent protagonist and her impossibly hot, impossibly rich damaged-goods love interest.  Read full article »

Which image of Obama mugging for BuzzFeed’s cameras diminishes the presidency the most, ranked

The #Millennial-friendly Web site BuzzFeed has taken over for Zach Galifianakis as the White House's preferred video venue for encouraging young people to sign up for health insurance. You remember the Galifianakis video, of course; Obama's self-deprecating appearance on the fake interview show last year was credited with a big boost in traffic (however short-lived) to HealthCare.gov.  Read full article »

Within NBC, an intense debate over whether to fire Brian Williams

Senior NBC officials seriously considered firing anchor Brian Williams because he lied to his viewers about riding in a military helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the Iraq war, according to a top network official.  Read full article »

Marco Rubio on Jeb Bush: ‘I never worked for him’

On the night in 2010 that Marco Rubio was elected to the Senate, Jeb Bush stood before a room of jubilant Florida Republicans to introduce a man many saw as the former governor’s protege. Bush, repeatedly expressing pride in Rubio, was moved nearly to tears. “Marco Rubio makes me cry for joy,” Bush said.  Read full article »