Midday Roundup: ISIS frees Yazidi captives amid Iraqi offensive

Freed. Islamic State (ISIS) militants released 216 Yazidi prisoners today after holding them for about eight months. The captives, mostly children and elderly, are being cared for in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region. An official there said they show signs of abuse and neglect. ISIS gave no reason for releasing them. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled northern Iraq last year after ISIS fighters captured the town of Sinjar, killing many and taking others hostage. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces launched another offensive against the militant group, hoping to capitalize on last week’s victory in Tikrit. The new campaign pushes into the Sijariya area, east of Anbar province and its two major cities, Ramadi and Fallujah. ISIS is entrenched in Anbar, but Iraqi officials claim the fighters are retreating in Sijariya.

Friendly fire? One American and one Afghan soldier died this morning in a shootout at the compound of a provincial governor. Two other American soldiers were wounded. U.S. officials are still trying to figure out what happened, although initial reports said an Afghan soldier opened fire on the Americans. The shooting started shortly after a U.S. diplomat left the compound after meeting with the Afghan governor. If confirmed as an “insider attack,” it would be the first such incident since January, when an Afghan soldier killed three U.S. military contractors in Kabul.

Murder charge. South Carolina prosecutors have charged a police officer with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed African-American man. Officer Michael Slager claimed Walter Scott, 50, tried to grab his Taser stun gun after he stopped him early Saturday morning for a broken taillight. But a video taken by a bystander shows Slager shooting Scott in the back eight times as he ran away. The video also shows Slager approaching Scott's body after the shooting and dropping something next to it, although it’s not clear whether the object was the Taser he claimed Scott tried to take. It appears from the video that Slager and another officer who arrived on scene after the shooting did not try to provide first aid to Scott, a father of four.

Cross fight. A group of Christians in Grand Haven, Mich., is suing the city over a decision to remove a 48-foot-tall cross from a hill overlooking a nearby waterfront. According to the group’s attorney, Dewey Hill is a free-speech zone, and the city council was guilty of viewpoint discrimination when it voted to remove the cross but leave two secular displays in place. “Freedom of speech requires that you cannot take the religious speech down and keep the secular speech,” attorney Helen Brinkman told MLive.com. “That is, on its face, religious discrimination.” The cross was erected in 1964. Two activists with a long history of successfully fighting public religious displays spearheaded the effort to have it removed.

Plan to defect. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl planned to give himself up to the Taliban, according to a 2009 investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Retired Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer told Fox News he talked with two senior sources from that investigation who told him they had clear evidence Bergdahl planned to go “over to the other side.” Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban and held captive for five years before being freed in a prisoner swap orchestrated by the Obama administration last year. He now faces misconduct charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. According to Shaffer, Bergdahl planned to contact local Afghans, travel to Uzbekistan, and get in touch with Russian organized crime. “This came from the NCIS doing computer forensics on his computer, as well as going outside the wire, tracked down the Afghans he had contact with,” Shaffer said.

Judicial scrutiny. A federal judge in Ohio has ordered the IRS to produce the names of the 298 organizations targeted for special scrutiny when applying for tax-exempt status. A different federal court dismissed a similar lawsuit against the IRS by Texas-based True the Vote last year. “The continued revelation of new emails and more information that confirms that there was, in fact, a scandal and an intentional and orchestrated cover up will give new breath to our case,” said True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht, who accused the Obama administration of stonewalling. The Ohio plaintiffs hope to bring a class action suit against the IRS.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard contributed to this report.