Russia's Syria role

September 10, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Russia probably can't turn the tide in Syria, but it might help the Assad government defend its coastal stronghold.

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Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is committed to increasing the number of refugees it is willing to take in as US allies in Europe struggle to accommodate tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. After closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Kerry said President Barack Obama has made it clear that the US wants to take a leadership role on humanitarian issues. Two officials and a congressional aide said that Secretary Kerry told members of Congress that the US will boost its worldwide quota for resettling refugees from 70,000 to 75,000 next year, and that number could rise. A fraction of those would be from Syria.

Police said Wednesday a key suspect in last month's deadly Bangkok blast has admitted he handed a backpack containing a bomb to a man in a yellow shirt who was later seen leaving a similar bag at a downtown shrine just before the blast occurred. The account offered the first possible reconstruction of events leading to the Aug. 17 attack at Erawan Shrine, an unprecedented act of violence in the Thai capital that left 20 people dead and more than 120 injured. Authorities say they still don't know the motive but are also reluctant to call the blast an act of terrorism, which would harm Thailand's image as a tourist destination.

A Hungarian camerawoman for an ultranationalist online TV channel has been fired after reporters filmed her kicking and tripping migrants as they fled from police. Tuesday's footage went viral internationally within hours on social media. The N1TV channel's editor, Szabolcs Kisberk, said in a statement that employment of the camerawoman, widely identified as Petra Laszlo, had been "terminated with immediate effect." He said she "behaved unacceptably" at a police-supervised collection point for Arabs, Asians and Africans crossing the border from Serbia near the village of Roszke.

Britain paid heartfelt tribute to Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday with cheering, flag-waving crowds on the street and solemn messages in parliament as she sealed a special place in the country's history by becoming its longest-reigning monarch. Late Wednesday afternoon, Elizabeth, who now is also the nation's oldest ever monarch, surpassed the 63 years, 7 months, 2 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes that her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria spent on the throne.

Puerto Rico's government released a long-awaited fiscal reform plan on Wednesday that would reduce much of the island's $72 billion public debt and calls for restructuring the remainder at the expense of bondholders. The five-year plan addresses only $47 billion of the US territory's debt, leaving out debt held by Puerto Rico's troubled power company, as well as its water and sewer company.

China's increasingly ambitious space program plans to attempt the first-ever landing of a lunar probe on the moon's far side, a leading engineer said. The Chang'e 4 mission is planned for sometime before 2020, Zou Yongliao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' moon exploration department told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview broadcast on Wednesday. Zou said the mission's objective would be to study geological conditions on the moon's far side, also known as the dark side.

With his plan for two years of free community college stalled in Congress, President Obama is trying to put more oomph behind state and local programs that provide what he's been unable to offer nationally. Mr. Obama teamed up with Jill Biden, a community college professor and the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, to visit Macomb County Community College in Warren, Michigan, on Wednesday. They announced an independent College Promise Advisory Board, led by Biden, that will highlight existing programs providing free community college. The board will try to recruit more states and communities to do likewise and will also enlist celebrities in a public awareness campaign to press for tuition-free community college.

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