Midday Roundup: Ferguson police chief apologizes publicly

Showing remorse. The chief of police in Ferguson, Mo., apologized today to the family of slain teenager Michael Brown and to protesters who demonstrated against police after Brown’s shooting. “I’m truly sorry for the loss of your son. I’m also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street,” Chief Thomas Jackson said, referencing the hours Brown’s body lay in the street while investigators worked the scene. In a video statement, he defended the public’s right to peacefully protest, saying a violent few had “a different agenda” during the demonstrations. “If anyone who was peacefully exercising that right is upset and angry, I feel responsible and I’m sorry,” he said.

Finally caught. Police have arrested a man suspected of abducting a University of Virginia student who went missing 12 days ago. Jesse L. “LJ” Matthew Jr., 32, is charged with abducting 18-year-old Hannah Graham in Charlottesville, Va., the night of Sept. 13. Graham has not been found, but police tracked down Matthew in Galveston, Texas. Prior to this, Matthew worked as an operating room technician at a Charlottesville hospital, was known to go to church, and volunteered as a coach for a local high-school football team. He played defensive lineman for Liberty University from 2000-2002, according to The Washington Post.

War on Terror. The United States and its Arab partners struck 12 oil refineries under ISIS control in Syria on Wednesday. The airstrikes aimed to limit the money the terror group can make selling oil on the black market. Meanwhile, an Islamist terror group in Algeria released a video of the beheading of a French tourist Wednesday. The group says it has broken away from al-Qaeda and sworn allegiance to ISIS. The crime has the French and other allies wondering whether they will eventually need to expand the fight against ISIS to other fronts outside the Middle East.

Bills to pay. A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the government does not have to pay the legal bills of people who challenged the Defense of Marriage Act in court and won. The case against DOMA led to the landmark Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to recognize same-sex marriages for the purposes of federal law, including assigning Social Security benefits. Federal law allows litigants to recoup legal costs from the government if the government did not have a “substantially justifiable” position in the lawsuit. The DOMA plaintiffs argue they deserved to recoup legal fees because the Obama administration had ordered the Justice Department not to defend DOMA in court, passively acknowledging the law’s indefensibility. But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled otherwise because the government was still enforcing the law in practice, just not defending it from lawsuits.

Missing in action. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has been conspicuously absent from the public eye during the past month, fueling speculation the 31-year-old is in poor health. After attending every parliament meeting during his three-year tenure, he skipped the assembly today. He is known to have gained quite a bit of weight recently, which some experts attribute to his excessive consumption of the Emmental cheese he has imported from Switzerland. Some Kim-watchers think he might be deliberately gaining weight to look more like his grandfather, Kim Il-Sung, who holds the title “Eternal President of the Republic” though he died 20 years ago.