A party on the brink

March 01, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Fissures are appearing in the Republican Party as the prospect of Donald Trump winning the party's nomination grow.

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday that a shaky cease-fire in Syria is holding "by and large" on its third day despite sporadic fighting and growing accusations of violations. A war of words between the Syrian government and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, has meanwhile added to the rising tensions. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said recent statements by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir were "lies meant to boost the morale" of militants who have suffered setbacks in Syria in recent weeks and demonstrate the kingdom's "destructive role" in Syria. Al-Jubeir had reiterated Saudi Arabia's longstanding position that Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power, either peacefully or through military means. The foreign minister also accused Syrian forces of violating the cease-fire.

Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev passed the US citizenship test just a few months before he helped carry out the bombings that killed thee people and injured over 260, according to heavily redacted Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by the Boston Globe. The documents, released to the Globe under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Mr. Tsarnaev, passed the test with only one incorrect answer, and that he also swore his allegiance to the United States and denied any links to terrorism.

In Iraq, the death toll from devastating back-to-back market bombings carried out by the Islamic State group the previous day in eastern Baghdad climbed to 73 on Monday, officials said. Several of the critically wounded died overnight while 112 people remain in hospital, two police officials said. Also, at least five people were still missing after the blast that ripped through the crowded Mredi market in the Shiite district of Sadr City, followed by a suicide bombing amid the crowd that had quickly gathered at the site to help the victims.

After calling off the launch of a telecommunications satellite into orbit aboard its Falcon 9 rocket twice last week, on Sunday SpaceX for the third time scrubbed the launch a few seconds before liftoff, citing a stray boat that wandered into a restricted zone east of SpaceX's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch site in Florida. The company resumed the countdown a few minutes after US Air Force officers dealt with the boat, but aborted a few seconds before launch. The problem in all three cases seems to be with a new feature of the Falcon 9: cryogenic propellant. This technique aims to give the rocket more power to carry heavier loads, and makes room for more fuel to ensure that the rocket can return to Earth for successful landing.

One of Pope Francis' top advisers acknowledged he had heard that an Australian Catholic school teacher who serially abused students might be involved in "pedophilia activity" in the 1970s, but said he had no idea how rampant clergy abuse was at the time, during an extraordinary public hearing of an Australian investigative commission just a few blocks from the Vatican. Australian Cardinal George Pell, who testified via videolink from Rome to the Royal Commission in Sydney from Sunday night to early Monday morning, also conceded that the Catholic Church "has made enormous mistakes" in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by priests.

President Obama shined a spotlight on a "special breed of warrior" as he awarded the nation's highest military honor Monday to a Navy SEAL who participated in a daring 2012 raid that rescued an American hostage in Afghanistan. Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward Byers Jr. is the first living, active duty member of the Navy to receive the Medal of Honor in four decades. Obama said during a ceremony at the White House that Byers is the "consummate, quiet professional" who would rather be elsewhere, perhaps holding his breath under dark, frigid water.

The University of California at Berkeley is investigating a cyberattack on a university computer system that holds financial data for 80,000 people, from students and alumni to faculty and vendors. The San Francisco Bay area university said on Friday that there is no evidence any information has been stolen, but that it has notified potential victims of the data breach, which include about half of the school’s current students, two-thirds of its active employees, and over 10,000 vendors who work with the school. The attack on the system, which stores social security and bank account numbers, occurred in late December when the university was patching a security flaw in its financial management system, school officials said.

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