Monitor Daily News Briefing - September 6, 2013

September 06, 2013 - Daily News Briefing

President Obama and Congress are weighing three possible outcomes in considering military action in Syria.

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President Obama pressed fellow world leaders on Thursday to support a US-led strike on Syria, but he ran into opposition from Russia, China, and even the European Union – which condemned the deadly recent chemical weapons attack in Bashar al-Assad’s country but declared it too soon for military action. Obama mostly made his case behind the scenes at the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A gigantic wildfire in and around Yosemite National Park was caused by an illegal fire set by a hunter, the US Forest Service said Thursday. The agency said there is no indication the hunter was involved with illegal marijuana cultivation, which a local fire chief had speculated as the possible cause of the blaze. No arrests have been made, and the hunter’s name was being withheld pending further investigation, according to the Forest Service.

The sound of artillery reverberated Thursday through a predominantly Christian village north of Damascus as government troops and Al Qaeda-linked rebels battled for control of the mountainside sanctuary. The hit-and-run attacks on the ancient village of Maaloula highlighted fears among Syria’s religious minorities about the growing role of extremists among those fighting in the civil war to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

For the US auto industry, the recession is now clearly in the rearview mirror. New car sales jumped 17 percent to 1.5 million in August, their highest level in more than six years. Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Chrysler, and General Motors all posted double-digit gains over last August. The full-year sales pace rose above 16 million for the first time since November 2007, the month before the Great Recession officially started.

The world’s largest cruise ship company will adopt technology from power plants and automobiles to reduce air pollution from the massive diesel engines powering its ships. In a tentative agreement reached Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency, Carnival Corp. will deploy scrubbers to reduce sulfur dioxide and filters to trap soot on as many as 32 ships over the next three years. At port, the ships will plug into the electrical grid, rather than idle, to reduce pollution.

Children – like adults – are increasingly trying electronic cigarettes, according to the first large national study to gauge use by middle- and high-school students. About 2 percent of the students said they’d used an e-cigarette in the previous month, according to a survey done last year that was released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . That was up from 1 percent in 2011.

Iran’s president confirmed Thursday that the Foreign Ministry will lead nuclear talks with world powers in a shift away from security officials setting Tehran’s strategies for the critical negotiations. The report on the website of President Hassan Rouhani’s office gave the official stamp on a policy change first indicated last month after Rouhani’s inauguration.

Compiled from wire service reports

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