Democracies and war

September 24, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Open societies rarely enjoy the element of surprise in a military conflict. And that's OK.

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The Israeli military shot down a Syrian fighter jet that infiltrated its airspace over the Golan Heights on Tuesday morning – the first such downing in decades, heightening tensions in the volatile plateau. The military said a "Syrian aircraft infiltrated into Israeli air space" in the morning hours and that the military "intercepted the aircraft in mid-flight, using the Patriot air defense system." A defense official identified the downed aircraft as a Sukhoi Su-24 Russian fighter plane.

A Chinese court on Tuesday jailed for life the country's most prominent advocate for the rights of Muslim Uighur people, a sentence that rights advocates said sent a clear signal that the government is determined to suppress dissent. Economics professor Ilham Tohti, 44, stood trial for two days last week on separatism charges in the western region of Xinjiang. His case has provoked an outcry in the West and among international human rights groups. Tohti, who is an ethnic Uighur, is the latest moderate intellectual to be convicted by Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration.

A UPS employee opened fire Tuesday morning inside one of the company's warehouses in Alabama, leaving three people dead, police said. The shooter also was killed in the gunfire. Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper told reporters that the gunman was wearing his uniform when he started shooting either in or near some offices inside the warehouse. The warehouse is in an industrial area just north of the Birmingham airport. No one else was hurt, Roper said.

Defiant to the end, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for acting as the voice of Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, telling a judge that there would be a price to pay for trying to "bury me alive." Sulaiman Abu Ghaith – the highest-ranking Al Qaeda figure to face trial on US soil since the attacks – quoted from the Quran, praised Allah and suggested his case would prompt a backlash in the Muslim world. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, told Abu Ghaith his defiance was further proof he deserved life behind bars.

Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai used his farewell speech on Tuesday to take one last swipe at the United States, capping a long-testy relationship with the accusation that America hasn't wanted peace in Afghanistan. The US ambassador called the comments ungracious and ungrateful. The only president Afghanistan has known since the 2001 US-led invasion said the United States wanted war in Afghanistan "because of its own interests." Karzai's relationship with the US has grown increasingly fragile in recent years, but the US-Afghan relationship may get a reset on Monday, when President-elect Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai will be sworn in.

Global experts issued stark new warnings of the scale of West Africa's Ebola outbreak on Tuesday, with the US government estimating between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its projection was based on data from late August and did not take into account a planned US mission to fight the disease, so the upper end of the forecast was unlikely. However, it followed research by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College, which estimated that 20,000 people risked infection within six weeks – months earlier than previous forecasts. It warned that the disease might become a permanent feature of life in West Africa.

“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.

“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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