Here’s what I’m reading up on:

• Demonstrations continue nationwide to protest the death of black people at the hands of white police officers, including in Berkeley, Calif., where there have been confrontations between protestors and police. 

• Two Los Angeles freeways are shut down following an enormous fire in Downtown L.A.

• The United States says it didn’t know about plans to release a hostage from South Africa who was killed during a failed attempt to free a hostage from the U.S. in Yemen.

• Will the U.S. really end its war in Afghanistan?  

• Uruguay receives four men from GITMO–four from Syria, one from Tunisia and one from Palestine–who were imprisoned for more than a decade but never so much as faced trial.

• From Leavenworth Prison, Chelsea Manning writes about how trans women–and trans women of color in particular–are routinely denied their rights. 

• Delhi, India, bans Uber after a driver is accused of raping a customer. 

• McDonald’s numbers keeps slumping. 

• North Korea, whose Kim Jong Un is the butt of the joke in an upcoming film, says hacking Sony was a "righteous deed," but denies doing it. 

• Mark Wahlberg wants his criminal record wiped clean–including one of at least two times he beat people of color while yelling racial slurs at them–so that he can be a cop. 

• Everything you ever wanted to know about Albert Einstein, free and online.