A turning point approaches

November 19, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

France wants a 'large coalition' to deal 'decisively' with Islamic State. That could have far-reaching ramifications.

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A US lawmaker introduced a bill aiming to toughen the vetting process for refugees seeking to enter the United States as Republican leaders in Congress sought to block Syrians fleeing war in their country. The Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, said his bill would strengthen security measures for all refugee populations. It would stipulate that no Syrian or Iraqi refugee can enter the United States until Congress receives certification that they are not a national security threat, he said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Dramatic weather struck parts of the western United States Tuesday, with the Seattle area particularly hard hit. At least three people were killed in Washington state and some 360,000 homes and businesses left without power as a storm walloped the Puget Sound region, bringing down trees and setting off mudslides, according to local authorities. The storm brought wind gusts that topped 49 miles per hour, leaving roads littered with debris from downed trees and power lines. Coastal areas of Puget Sound region were under flood watches through Wednesday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $3 billion investment Wednesday to combat homelessness in New York City. The initiative will give nonprofit groups and developers subsidies to construct 7,500 supportive-housing apartments, according to the Wall Street Journal. Another 7,500 existing apartments will also be converted to supportive-housing. The development will be spread out over fifteen years, so the initiative will not provide immediate shelter to the city’s homeless, but within eighteen months the first units should be available.

Nigeria's leader has ordered the arrest of the former president's national security adviser for allegedly stealing billions of dollars meant to buy weapons to fight Boko Haram Islamic extremists rampaging across northeast Nigeria. The order follows an interim report by a presidential committee that uncovered fraudulent and fictitious arms contracts amounting to $5.4 billion, Femi Adesina, an adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, said in a statement Tuesday night. The committee is investigating arms procurement since 2007 as part of the fight against endemic corruption that Buhari has waged since taking office in May.

As confrontations between police and the black community once again trigger public outcry, law enforcement leaders around the country are looking for new ways to restore trust. In Tennessee, they have turned to the Nashville library's rich archive on the movement to teach new recruits about past injustices, hoping the lessons of history will foster even-handed police work. The sessions with new recruits quickly became a core part of their training, and other law enforcement agencies around the country have taken notice.

NASA announced Tuesday it will award two Valkyrie robots, a 6-foot-tall, 290-pound humanoid, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., and Northeastern University in Boston for intensive research and development into the robot’s applications in extreme environments. “Advances in robotics, including human-robotic collaboration, are critical to developing the capabilities required for our journey to Mars,” said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The space agency became urgently interested in robotics following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station incident in Japan, which the agency says “illustrated, rather candidly, how inadequate current robotic technologies are for use in highly unstructured human environments.”

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