A bug in the system

October 24, 2013 - Daily News Briefing

Last week’s Washington kerfuffle was over the debt ceiling and government shutdown. This week, it’s been about Healthcare.gov, the malfunctioning website that is supposed to enroll millions of Americans in health insurance for the first time.

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An attorney representing Detroit urged a judge on Wednesday to allow the city to fix staggering financial problems through bankruptcy, arguing that without it nearly 65 cents of every tax dollar eventually would be gobbled up by debts and other obligations. The extraordinary trial, expected to last days, brings the bankruptcy case to its most crucial stage since Detroit in July made the largest public filing in US history.

India on Wednesday accused Pakistani troops of firing guns and mortars on at least 50 Indian border posts overnight in disputed Kashmir, calling it the most serious cease-fire violation between the nuclear-armed neighbors in a decade. The attacks began Tuesday night in southern Kashmir after India’s home minister visited the region to review security.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained to President Obama on Wednesday after learning that US intelligence may have targeted her mobile phone, saying that would be “a serious breach of trust” if confirmed. For its part, the White House denied that the US is listening in on Merkel’s phone calls now.

A military training exercise ignited the largest of the wildfires that have ravaged Australia’s most populous state over the past week, investigators said Wednesday. More than 100 fires have killed one man and destroyed more than 200 homes in New South Wales state since Thursday. Investigators found that a massive fire near the city of Lithgow, west of Sydney, “was started as a result of live ordnance exercises” at the Army range.

The Syrian government released 13 female detainees, an official and an activist group said Wednesday, in a move that appeared to be part of an ambitious regional prisoner exchange. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the women walked out of the headquarters of the Damascus provincial government Tuesday morning, but hasn’t been able to contact them.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers may try to save him from the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing by arguing he fell under the murderous influence of his older brother, legal experts say. The outlines of a possible defense came into focus this week when it was learned that Tsarnaev’s attorneys are trying to get access to investigative records implicating the now-dead brother in a grisly triple slaying committed in 2011.

Ireland’s justice minister says two children temporarily taken by police from their Gypsy parents have been returned to their families after DNA tests determined that the children were rightfully theirs. Police suspected that the children might be victims of abductions because they were blond-haired and blue-eyed, unlike the rest of their immediate relatives. Irish police were responding to public tip-offs fueled by media coverage of an alleged child-abduction case in Greece involving a blond-haired girl and a Gypsy, or Roma, family.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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