Syria needs peace power

October 30, 2013 - Daily News Briefing

More than 100,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in the conflict. With no faction likely to prevail and the conflict spreading, a peace process – distant as it may seem right now – is the only way out.

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Chinese police were seeking information Tuesday on two ethnic Uighur suspects believed linked to an apparent suicide car attack near Tiananmen Square in the country’s capital that killed five people and injured 38. Police released no word about a possible motive for Monday’s incident at Beijing’s Forbidden City, one of China’s most politically sensitive and heavily guarded public spaces. But investigators sent a notice to hotels in the city aimed at tracing the movements of two suspects, and possibly at uncovering any other conspirators.

Turkey is for the first time connecting its European and Asian sides with a railway tunnel set to open Tuesday, completing a plan initially proposed by an Ottoman sultan about 150 years ago. The tunnel is among a number of large infrastructure projects under the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that have helped boost the economy but also have provoked a backlash of public protest. The tunnel is 8-1/2 miles long, with 4,593 feet running under the Bosporus, the strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and divides Istanbul between Asia and Europe.

The judges presiding over the trial of nearly three dozen members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, including its top leader, stepped down Tuesday after security agencies refused to let the defendants attend the courtroom sessions, judicial officials said. The move represented a sharp pushback from within the establishment over the conduct of the trial amid criticism by the Brotherhood that wide-ranging prosecutions of its leaders, including ousted President Mohamed Morsi and group leader Mohammed Badie, are only vengeful show trials.

Faced with anger over revelations about US spying at home and abroad, members of Congress suggested Tuesday that programs the Obama administration says are needed to combat terrorism may have gone too far. The chairman of the House intelligence committee said it might help to disclose more about National Security Agency operations but barring the NSA from collecting millions of Americans’ phone records would scrap an important tool. “We can’t ask the FBI to find terrorists plotting an attack and then not provide them with the information they need,” said Chairman Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan. He spoke at the start of a hearing in which top intelligence officials were testifying, including NSA Director Keith Alexander.

A Bolshoi ballet dancer who is accused of ordering an acid attack on the company’s ballet chief pleaded not guilty Tuesday as his trial began in Moscow. Dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko is suspected of ordering the Jan. 17 attack on ballet artistic director Sergei Filin, which left Filin with severe burns to his face and his eyes, impairing his vision.

Dutch museums have identified 139 pieces of art, including dozens of paintings – one by Matisse and many by Dutch painters of varying renown such as Impressionist Isaac Israels – as likely having been taken forcibly from Jewish owners. The review of Dutch art acquisitions from 1933 on was conducted by the museums themselves and focused explicitly on pieces whose ownership records had gaps during the years that Germany’s Nazi regime was appropriating works from Jews, either by forced sale or outright seizure.

Syria’s president sacked a deputy prime minister who met Western officials to discuss the possibility of holding a peace conference, saying he acted without permission. The Tuesday decree was the latest blow to diplomatic efforts to bring the country’s warring parties to the negotiating table.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers Tuesday unveiled legislation that would delay for about four years several changes to the federal government’s flood insurance program that are threatening to sock thousands of people with unaffordable premium hikes. The move comes as the government is beginning to implement a significant overhaul of the much-criticized program. That overhaul passed last year with sweeping support. Last year’s legislation promises premium increases to 1.1 million homeowners who’ve received subsidized, below-risk coverage.

Former Illinois US Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has entered a North Carolina federal prison at least several days early to begin serving a 2-1/2-year prison term for illegally spending $750,000 in campaign money on everything from cigars to mounted elk heads, and a gold watch, a prison official said Tuesday.

Four Frenchmen taken hostage by Islamic extremists in Niger were released on Tuesday after three years of captivity and a French-led military intervention in the region that destabilized Al Qaeda-linked radicals. French President François Hollande announced the release and credited the president of Niger.

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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