Midday Roundup: Sun sets on Confederate flag in South Carolina

Coming down. A spokesman for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said the Confederate flag flying on the state Capitol grounds will be removed during a ceremony Friday morning. Haley will sign a bill ordering the flag’s removal this afternoon. The measure, which was approved by the state Senate earlier this week, passed the state House with a 94-20 vote at about 1 a.m. EDT today. Opponents of the flag, who see it as an enduring symbol of racism, renewed calls for its removal from state government property after a shooter killed nine people gathered last month for a Bible study at the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. “This was a tough, lengthy debate, but we agreed to put our differences aside in order to reach the swift resolution we promised the people of South Carolina,” House Speaker Jay Lucas, a Republican, said after the debate. “I am proud of our membership and the decision we made to move our state forward.”

Discussing death. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced yesterday it plans to pay physicians to have “advance care planning” discussions with their elderly patients. A similar proposal included in the initial version of the Affordable Care Act sparked fears of so-called “death panels” that would decide which patients deserved treatment and which did not. The pushback was so intense Democrats dropped that provision from the bill. So far, the Medicare announcement hasn’t sparked the same level of anxiety. Because it’s part of the agency’s annual physician payment rule, the measure doesn’t need approval from Congress. Discussions between doctor and patient would be voluntarily, according to the agency.

Technical glitches. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stopped trading late Wednesday morning because of an unspecified technical glitch. The outage sparked immediate fears of a hack attack, especially after another glitch at United Continental just hours earlier caused the airline to ground stop all flights for about two hours. Officials immediately notified President Barack Obama, according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest. And a statement from the FBI said the agency offered assistance to NYSE officials. But the two technical problems appear to be unrelated and not the result of a coordinated cyber-attack. Still, the technical failure, combined with the ongoing debt problems in Greece and a dramatic fall in Chinese shares in the past few days, caused the U.S. markets to fall between 1 and 2 percent most of the day. Trading on the NYSE resumed by mid-afternoon.

Discharged. The U.S. Army is moving ahead with big troop cuts, slashing its active-duty force from 490,000 soldiers to 450,000 over the next two years. In addition to the troop cuts, the Army is planning to eliminate 17,000 civilian employees. White House spokesman Josh Earnest chalked the cuts up to regular decision-making and called them a positive sign, even though the United States is engaged in a war against ISIS that the Obama administration now admits will last many years. “It’s a testament to the president following through at the beginning of his presidency to responsibly withdraw troops from Iraq and to make some responsible decisions about Afghanistan,” Earnest said. The troop reduction could grow even larger if Congress and the White House can’t find a way to stop further across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect this fall.

No surrender. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has vowed to keep the Ten Commandments monument at the state Capitol, despite a ruling from the state’s Supreme Court last week ordering its removal. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the monument’s placement, arguing it violates the state constitution’s ban on using public money or property for the benefit of any religious purpose. Republican state Rep. Mike Ritze privately funded the monument. Fallin and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt have asked Oklahoma’s high court to reconsider its decision.

WORLD Radio’s Kent Covington and Warren Cole Smith contributed to this report.