Nation: Tens of thousands of people, including police officers from across the country, are gathered in Brooklyn for the funeral today of New York police officer Wenjian Liu who was murdered with his partner Dec. 20th. Liu, the only child of Chinese immigrants, will be honored with a Buddhist ceremony followed by police honors. So far the political demonstrations against Mayor bill de Blasio appear to be minimal.

World: North Korea has reiterated its denial of responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony Pictures and says new US sanctions are an act of “hostility.” A North Korean statement accused the US of “inveterate repugnance and hostility toward the D.P.R.K.” Inveterate repugnance. Strong words.

Permawar: At least six Uzbek militants are reported dead in A US drone strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan.

>Two people have been killed in an exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani border guards. India says Pakistani soldiers fired machine guns and mortar rounds at 15 Indian border posts all night long. India and Pakistan are in perpetual conflict over Kashmir, which is claimed by both countries.

>Boko Haram militants have seized a town and a military base in northeastern Nigeria. Troops abandoned the base when it came under attack and the town was reported burned and sacked with many deaths.

AirAsia: Bad weather continues to hamper the recovery of bodies and wreckage from AirAsia flight 8501 in the Java Sea. They have not yet detected the signal from the jet’s black box flight recorder. Sonar has located five large objects believed to be parts of the fuselage.

Politics: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has resigned from Fox News in preparation for another possible run at the presidency. Huckabee said on his show, “I’m not going to make a decision about running until late in the spring of 2015, but the continued chatter has put Fox News in a position that just isn’t fair to them.”

The Obit Page: Republican Edward Brooke, the first black politician elected to the US Senate by popular vote, has died at age 95. Brooke was elected to represent Massachusetts in 1966, the middle of the turbulent civil rights era in America. Two black senators who served after the Civil War were elected by their state legislatures so Brooke’s election was considered a major milestone. He served from 1967 to 1979 as a moderate at a time when Republicans still had moderates.

>ESPN announced this morning that its popular longtime anchor Stuart Scott has died after a seven-year fight with cancer. Scott went public with his disease only in the past year. Accepting the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance he said in a stirring speech, “When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.”

Hollywood History: Historians are arguing with the portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson in the soon to be released movie “Selma” about the 1965 voting rights marches. Writer Diane McWhorter told the NY Times that the movie wrongly depicts Johnson trying to stop the Rev. Martin Luther King from staging protests in Selma, Ala. “Not only is this not true, it’s the opposite of the truth,” McWhorter said. The film’s director has defended her work with tweets, not books, and so far seems to be winning the argument. Evidently historians are not familiar with the old saying, “It’s only a movie.”

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