The world must end Syria's conflict

January 22, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

For almost three years, Syria has torn itself apart.

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Russian security officials are hunting down three potential female suicide bombers, one of whom is believed to be in Sochi, where the Winter Olympics will begin next month. Police leaflets seen by an Associated Press reporter at a central Sochi hotel on Tuesday contain warnings about three potential suicide bombers. A police letter said that one of them, Ruzanna Ibragimova, a widow of an Islamic militant, was at large in Sochi. Russian authorities have blamed the so-called black widows of slain insurgents for previous suicide attacks.

A swirling storm with a potential for more than a foot of snow clobbered the mid-Atlantic and the urban Northeast on Tuesday, grounding thousands of flights, closing government offices in the nation’s capital, and giving students another day off from school. The storm stretched 1,000 miles between Kentucky and Massachusetts.

The International Monetary Fund is slightly more optimistic about the global and US economies this year than it was three months ago. In an updated outlook, the global lending organization forecasts that the world economy will grow 3.7 percent in 2014 and that the US economy will grow 2.8 percent. The global forecast is 0.1 percentage point higher and the US forecast 0.2 point higher than in the IMF’s October forecast.

President Obama will hold an African leaders summit in Washington this summer. The White House says the summit will focus on strengthening economic and trade ties with leaders from one of the world’s fastest-growing regions. The gathering will also focus on security issues and democracy development on the African continent.

The Pakistani Air Force pounded militant hideouts near the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing dozens of people following deadly bombings against security forces in recent days. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed 20 Shiite pilgrims in a separatist province, and gunmen opened fire on workers administering polio vaccinations, killing three people. The Pakistani government has come under heavy pressure to aggressively tackle a surge in militant violence instead of solely relying on efforts to start peace talks with the Taliban-led insurgents.

A Vatican monsignor already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle €20 million ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy was arrested Tuesday in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money. Financial police in the southern Italian city of Salerno said Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, dubbed “Monsignor 500” for his purported favored bank notes, had transferred millions of euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies through his accounts at the Vatican’s Institute for Religious Works.

A top opposition leader headed for talks with the Ukrainian president on Tuesday after yet another night of violent street clashes between antigovernment protesters and police. Ukraine’s two-month-long political crisis has shifted into a new phase after President Viktor Yanukovych pushed through harsh antiprotest laws last week that were widely seen as an attempt to quash the demonstrations calling for his ouster. The massive protests in Kiev, the capital, erupted after Yanukovych spurned a pact with the European Union in favor of close ties with Russia, which offered him a $15 billion bailout.

Federal investigators have begun the task of determining what caused an Omaha, Neb., industrial accident Monday that killed two and injured 17. Records kept by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration show the plant has been cited before for safety violations.

Fifty-seven civilian specialists involved in removing hazardous mines and other ordnance left over from wars were released on Tuesday just hours after being captured by unknown gunmen in western Afghanistan, officials said. All the Afghan de-miners were released unconditionally after being abducted in the Pashtun Zargun district as they drove to an area that needed to be cleared of mines. Police are investigating who kidnapped the de-miners and why. All the men worked for the British-based HALO trust.

President Nicolas Maduro has a new villain as he campaigns to bring down Venezuela’s spiraling crime: TV soap operas. He accuses the telenovelas of spreading “anti-values” to young people by glamorizing violence, guns, and drugs. The criticism follows attacks last year by Maduro on violent video games and the movie “Spider-Man.”

Airplane-maker Bombardier announced Tuesday it plans a workforce reduction of about 1,700 employees and contractors at its facilities in the US and Canada. That number includes 550 people in the company’s Learjet facility in Wichita, Kan.

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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