Vox Sentences: Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a cop. His killer was just charged with murder.

The video that has Chicago on edge tonight; Turkey shoots down a Russian warplane; and a terrorist bus bombing in Tunisia.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

A long-awaited video — and indictment — in Chicago

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• Over a year ago, Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times, killing him.

  [Vox / Michelle Garcia]

• Now — thanks to a lawsuit forcing them to release the footage of McDonald's death — the city of Chicago has finally released a video recording from a police-car dashboard camera, which shows Van Dyke continuing to fire after McDonald is on the ground. WARNING: This video is graphic.

  [DNAinfo Chicago via YouTube ]

• Not coincidentally, city prosecutors also decided that this morning was the right time to file murder charges against Van Dyke in McDonald's killing.

  [New York Times / Monica Davey and Mitch Smith]

• Officials claim the announcement of the murder charge was "moved up" because of the impending video release. The officials did not explain why it took over a year for the indictment to be filed to begin with.

  [Chicago Tribune / Jason Meisner, Jeremy Gorner and Steve Schmadeke]

• The city of Chicago is clearly extremely concerned that the dash cam footage will provoke riots. It's ordered most police officers into uniform, and warned that it's probably going to cancel days off this week,

  [Chicago Tribune / Peter Nickeas, Jeremy Gorner and Bill Ruthhart]

• The dash cam video shouldn't have been the only footage of McDonald's death. A Burger King security camera was also in a position to record his last minutes — but there was a mysterious hourlong gap in the security footage. A Burger King manager has outright accused Chicago police officers of deleting the relevant security footage after asking to see it.

  [NBC Chicago / Carol Marin and Don Moseley]

• So without the lawsuit to get the dashcam video released, it's hard to imagine Van Dyke would have been indicted. Incidents like this are evidence that public pressure and protests can turn DAs around in cases like this.

No, Turkey did not start World War 3 with Russia

Chris McGrath/Getty Images

• Turkey shot down a Russian warplane overnight near the Syrian border, claiming that the plane had entered Turkish airspace.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Vladimir Putin is extremely angry, raising concerns that the Turkey/Russia conflict will escalate — which is especially dangerous given that Turkey is a NATO member.

  [BBC]

• Putin claimed that the plane was flying within Syria when it was shot down (technically, the airspace in question is contested).

  [Reuters / Tulay Karadeniz and Maria Kiselyova]

• But this wasn't exactly unprovoked aggression by Turkey. The country has warned Russia repeatedly after incidents where Russia has nudged into Turkish airspace.

  [BuzzFeed / Borzou Daragahi]

• And Turkey has been displeased about Russia bombing Turkmen regions in Syria, as Turkey feels a protective duty to Syrian Turkmen on ethnic solidartiy grounds.

  [Middle East Eye ]

• But don't worry. This is not going to cause World War 3. Max Fisher explains why the Turkey/Russia conflict is unlikely to spiral into a military standoff between Russia and NATO.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• In fact, while NATO has been publicly supportive of Turkey, it's also telling the Turkish government to chill — and suggesting that maybe Turkey should have escorted the Russian plane out, rather than shooting it down.

  [Reuters / Robin Emmott]

Tunisia hit by terrorism, again

Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images

• 12 people were killed in a bombing on a passenger bus in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, today, in an attack that reportedly targeted the presidential guard.

  [Al Jazeera ]

• The Tunisian president has instituted a 30-day state of emergency, including a curfew.

  [USA Today / John Bacon]

• The attack comes after Tunisian police foiled a much bigger terrorist plot last week, which reportedly would have targeted civilians in multiple public locales.

  [Financial Times / Heba Saleh]

• But the bus attack — along with other terrorist attacks in Tunisia this year, many of which have targeted tourists — is raising fears that the tourism industry in Tunisia in particular, and in the Middle East in general, might not recover for years.

  [The Guardian / Kevin Rushby]

• The aversion to Middle East tourism certainly isn't helped by the State Department's new and maddeningly vague global travel advisory, which literally warns Americans to be careful traveling anywhere on earth between now and February 24 because they might be targeted by terrorists.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

MISCELLANEOUS

Meet the Khansaa Brigade, the all-female morality police of ISIS. [NYT / Azadeh Moaveni]

• Let us now praise Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan's only truly great film and perhaps the best superhero movie ever.

  [AV Club / Alexander Huls]

• Craig Anderson was accosted by a group of white youth, who beat him while yelling "white power" before running him over with a truck and killing him. This happened in 2011.

  [BuzzFeed / Albert Samaha]

• Hamtramck, MI is the first Muslim-majority city in the United States, with a Muslim-majority city council. It hasn't been free of tension — but now even some residents who were fearful of the influx at first are proud of the city's diversity.

  [Washington Post / Sarah Pulliam Bailey]

• Ever since a student at the University of Cape Town threw a bucket of shit on top of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, South Africa's seen its biggest student protests since the end of apartheid. And the older generation of ANC activists isn't on board.

  [The Guardian / Eve Fairbanks]

VERBATIM

"Enya, for her part, describes her genre of music as 'Enya.'" [BuzzFeed / Anne Helen Petersen]

• "In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period."

  [NYT / Alec MacGillis]

• "She asked Nacional to let her write under a pseudonym, but they wanted a doctor of sociology so their horoscopes would have credibility."

  [New Statesman / Damir Pilic]

• "At times, it seems Trump can’t help himself. Midway through a telephone interview about his treatment of women, he told a Washington Post reporter, 'You’re a very beautiful woman, as I understand it.'"

  [Washington Post / Frances Stead Sellers]

• "Outside Sony, it would eventually seem as if all the studio's info had been exposed for everyone to see. But inside the studio, nobody could access anything."

  [Slate / Amanda Hess]

WATCH THIS

A visual tour of the world's CO2 emissions [YouTube / Joss Fong and Joe Posner]

NASA

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