About the Show
Anchored by Jake Tapper, The Lead airs at 4 p.m. ET on CNN.
On the Next Episode of The Lead
We've moved! Come join us at our new show page.
national lead
Michael Brown shooting: What Darren Wilson told the Ferguson grand jury
Are protests taking place near you? Please share photos, videos and thoughts with CNN iReport if you can do so safely.
(CNN) - Grand jury proceedings are secret, and when no indictment is handed down - as was the case for Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson - the files remain locked up.
But in an unusual step after a grand jury deliberation, transcripts of testimony that jurors heard considering Michael Brown's death have been released to the public.
Late Monday night, officials made available 24 volumes of material, covering 23 meetings that the grand jury held between August 20 and November 21.
A CNN team is going through all of the court documents. Here's what has emerged so far from that review:
world lead
Third American executed by ISIS
(CNN) - American aid worker and former soldier Peter Kassig was beheaded by ISIS terrorists, the White House confirmed Sunday, hours after a video claiming to show the victim surfaced online.
ISIS held Kassig as a hostage and in previous communications had threatened his life.
The video shows the aftermath of a beheading in which the victim is not clearly recognizable.
President Barack Obama confirmed the 26-year-old's beheading, saying Kassig "was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity."
Kassig, who converted to Islam in captivity, also went by the name Abdul-Rahman Kassig.
world lead
Seven more monitored for Ebola in Spain
(CNN) – Fears of Ebola are growing in Europe. Seven more people have been hospitalized and are being monitored for the disease in Spain, where nurse's aide Teresa Romero, the first person to contract Ebola outside of West Africa in this current outbreak, is fighting for her life.
The World Health Organization updated the death toll from the frightening virus Friday, saying Ebola has now killed more than 4,000 people, with more than 8,000 confirmed cases.
CNN's Isa Soares reports.
national lead
Feds: American teen arrested, tried to join ISIS
(CNN) - Before authorities arrested him at O'Hare International Airport and accused him of attempting to provide aid to ISIS, a teen from the Chicago suburbs left behind a letter for his parents.
Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, wrote that he was leaving the United States and on the way to join ISIS, according to a criminal complaint. He invited his family to join him in the three-page letter, which authorities found in the bedroom he shared with a sibling in Bolingbrook, Illinois. But he warned them not to tell anyone about his travel plans, the complaint said.
"First and foremost, please make sure not to to tell the authorities," he wrote, according to the complaint. "For if this were to happen it will jeopardize not only the safety of us but our family as well."
world lead
U.N.: ISIS strands 40,000 Iraqis in Iraqi mountains
(CNN) - Iraq's largest Christian town has been overrun by the same militant Islamists who have gained a foothold in parts of eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq.
The latest advance by ISIS (or the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has caused thousands of Christians in the city to flee, just as other minority groups targeted by ISIS have done, as well as Shiite Muslims.
Recent Comments