Today on Velshi, we are following breaking news out of Qatar, where an American journalist

has died while covering the World Cup, according to Qatarian officials. Grant Wall was probably

the best-known soccer writer in the United States. His agent said the 48-year-old went into acute distress while working

in the press box on Friday. Wall has made headlines just last month after reporting that he

was briefly detained at a World Cup game for refusing to remove a t-shirt with a rainbow logo showing

solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Plus, members of the January 6th committee are poised to drop criminal referrals in the

coming days.

They're huddling this weekend to work out the final details.

And what you don't know about what it took to get American basketball star Britney

Griner out of Russia and the dangers of a world where foreign governments are willing to take civilian

hostages. Plus, Democrats are insisting nothing will change for them in the Senate now that

Arizona's Kirsten Cinema has left the party to become an independent, just days after Democrats

won a super slim majority in that chamber. But one very important thing will change for cinema. Matt O'Blog,

Steve Benin joins me with the answer. Then at the center of today's band book club feature is a

mystery and a quest, but it's also a multi-layered story about grief and love and community.

Extremely loud and incredibly close is a New York Times best-selling novel and an Oscar-nominated movie,

and it's been targeted by book banners. Its author, Jonathan Saffron Ford, joins me later in the show.

Velshi begins now.

Hey, good morning. It is Saturday, December the 10th. I'm Ali Valshi. We begin with the latest on the successful effort to bring Brittany Griner home to America from a penal colony in Russia.

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and basketball star, officially stepped back onto American soil at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas

early yesterday morning. After spending 294 days wrongfully detained by Russia, Russian authorities

captured Griner on February the 17th exactly one week before Russia invaded Ukraine

...