After Sinai

November 09, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Nations must aside differences – as they did briefly after 9/11 – and work together to protect travel and commerce.

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Millions of citizens voted Sunday in Myanmar's historic general election. The poll is a test of whether the military's long-standing grip on power can be loosened, with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party expected to secure an easy victory. In a country that was under military rule for almost a half-century, many of the eligible 30 million voters -- including Suu Kyi -- cast ballots for the first time in what was billed as the nation's freest election ever.

A noise was heard in the last second of the cockpit voice recording from the Russian plane that crashed last week in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the head of the joint investigation team said Saturday. The statement bolstered U.S. and British suspicions that the plane was brought down by a bomb. U.S. and British officials have cited intelligence reports as indicating that the Oct. 31 flight from the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg was brought down by a bomb on board. All 224 people onboard, most of them Russian tourists, were killed.

The Mormon church distributed new rules last targeting gay marriage, putting gay marriage in the same category as polygamy under church law. The changes to the Mormon handbook — disseminated this week to local church leaders around the world — say being in a same-sex marriage warrants ousting from the religion and that children of gay parents must wait until they're 18 and disavow homosexual relationships to be baptized.

The leaders of China and Taiwan met Saturday for the first time since the formerly bitter Cold War foes split amid civil war 66 years ago, and though no concrete agreement resulted, both hailed the meeting as a sign of a new stability in relations. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou shook hands before a private summit on neutral ground in the Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore.

Around 80,000 Russians were stranded in Egypt after the Kremlin grounded all flights to the country following the crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai Peninsula, Russia's government said on Saturday. President Vladimir Putin ordered the flight suspension on Friday, a possible sign that Russia is attaching more credence to the theory that a bomb brought down the Russian passenger jet in Egypt a week ago, killing all 224 people on board. Some of those stranded travelers are now on their way home, with dozens of flights chartered by the Russian government beginning to fly tourists back to Moscow.

Political violence in Burundi is on the rise, with at least nine people were killed in a Saturday night attack at a bar in the latest violence in Burundi's capital. International concern is growing over the security situation in this central African nation, which been hit by unrest following the president's decision to extend his time in power.

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