One man, many questions

March 16, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Whatever the cause of Vladimir Putin's absence, Russians have another reason to question a system that vests so much power in the hands of one man.

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The first aid teams to reach Vanuatu reported widespread devastation on Sunday as authorities declared a state of emergency after a "monster" cyclone tore through the Pacific island nation. With winds of more than 185 miles per hour, Cyclone Pam razed homes, smashed boats and washed away roads and bridges as it struck late on Friday and into Saturday. Aid workers described the situation as catastrophic. The count of confirmed deaths was at eight with 30 people injured. But those numbers were almost certain to rise as rescuers reached the archipelago's outlying islands.

A 20-year-old man charged Sunday with shooting two police officers who were keeping watch over a demonstration outside the Ferguson Police Department had participated in the protests earlier that night, police said. St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch said Jeffrey Williams told authorities he was firing at someone with whom he was in a dispute, not at the police officers. "We're not sure we completely buy that part of it," McCulloch said, adding that there might have been other people in the vehicle with Williams.

Three male teens from Britain reached Turkey before being deported to the U.K. are the latest examples of a worrying trend — the rising number of young Britons seeking to travel to Syria to join extremists there. The three suspects were being questioned at a central London police station after their alleged bid to get to Syria, coming soon after three British schoolgirls managed to elude authorities and get to Syria last month. The girls are believed by police to have joined Islamic State militants in their self-declared caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.

Pope Francis on Friday marked the second anniversary of his surprise election by predicting that he won't be pope for long. "I have the sensation that my pontificate will be brief: Four or five years," Francis said in an interview with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa. "I don't know. Or two or three. Well, two have already passed!" Francis has previously said he thought he'd be pope for two to three years and that the precedent set by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in 2013 shouldn't be considered exceptional.

Robert Durst, a wealthy eccentric linked to two killings and his wife's disappearance, was arrested on a murder warrant just before Sunday's finale in a serial documentary about his life. Durst, 71, has never been charged in connection with the unsolved 2000 murder of Susan Berman in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, who was killed as New York authorities prepared to question her in the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie. He moved to Texas after Berman's death, where he lived as a woman before being acquitted in the 2001 dismemberment death of his Galveston neighbor, Morris Black. Durst said that killing was in self-defense.

Russia was ready to bring its nuclear weapons into a state of alert during last year's tensions over the Crimean Peninsula and the overthrow of Ukraine's president, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks aired on Sunday. Putin also expanded on a previous admission that the well-armed forces in unmarked uniforms who took control of Ukrainian military facilities in Crimea were Russian soldiers.

“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.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

“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.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

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