Week In The News: Sinai Jet Crash, Key Local Elections, GOP Debate Demands

Russian plane mystery. Keystone pipeline. Kentucky elects deep red Republicans. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

A Russian plane down in Egypt this week, and all kinds of questions about what brought it down. ISIS is happy to claim credit. The president says it could have been a bomb. At the polls, pot loses in Ohio. AirBnb wins in San Francisco. An LGBT rights rejection in Houston. We’ve got Republicans tangling on debate format. Ben Carson on the pyramids. A Bush family rumble. The Keystone pipeline. And a surge in middle-aged white people, dying off. Up next On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
-Tom Ashbrook

Juana Summers, politics editor for Mashable. (@jmsummers)

Sam Youngman, political reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader. (@samyoungman)

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

Lexington Herald-Leader: Kentucky politics moves to a deep shade of red" — "For the first time in the state's history, Bluegrass seems like a misnomer. It would be an understatement to call Tuesday a good night for Republicans — it might well have been the end of the Democratic Party in a state where it dominated for so long. This was a massacre from top to bottom, with Alison Lundergan Grimes and Andy Beshear the only people left standing with Ds behind their names."

NBC News: What we know about the doomed Russian jetliner — "A U.S. official said investigators are looking at the possibility that an explosive device was planted on the plane by ground crews, baggage handlers or other ground staff at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport before takeoff. However, the official stressed that it's too early to conclude that for certain that terrorism was to blame."

Associated Press: A look at key results from state and local elections across the US "The elections generally drew fewer voters than will be expected for the 2016 presidential contest. Nonetheless, they provided a test of public opinion on such topics as marijuana, gay rights and the emerging "sharing economy," which includes services that allow individuals to rent out rooms in their homes via the Internet."