Turkey's deputy PM says more than 130,000 Syrians fleeing IS have now reached Turkey
The number of Syrian refugees who have reached Turkey in the past four days after fleeing the advance of Islamic State militants now totals 130,000, Turkey's deputy prime minister said Monday.
Numan Kurtulmus warned that the number could rise further but insisted that Turkey was ready to react to "the worst case scenario."
"I hope that we are not faced with a more populous refugee wave, but if we are, we have taken our precautions," Kurtulmus said. "A refugee wave that can be expressed by hundreds of thousands is a possibility."
The refugees have been flooding into Turkey since Thursday, escaping an Islamic State offensive that has pushed the conflict nearly within eyeshot of the Turkish border. The conflict in Syria has pushed more than a million people over the border in the past 3 years.
The al-Qaida breakaway group, which has established an Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by its harsh version of Islamic law in territory it captured straddling the Syria-Iraq border, has in recent days advanced into Kurdish regions of Syria that border Turkey, where fleeing refugees on Sunday reported atrocities that included stonings, beheadings and the torching of homes.
Busy week of Mideast diplomacy, with launch of Israel-Hamas talks, Abbas strategy speech at UN
It's a busy week in Mideast diplomacy, book-ended by the launch of Israel-Hamas talks about a border deal for blockaded Gaza and the Palestinian president's U.N. speech about a new strategy for dealing with Israel.
The talks about Gaza's future seem to be a long shot, and failure could set the stage for another Israel-Hamas war, even if neither side wants it. In another obstacle to an agreement, tensions are mounting between Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah, the movement of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, over who will run Gaza.
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Meanwhile, Abbas' apparent shift to inviting international pressure on Israel, rather than relying solely on so far unsuccessful U.S. mediation, is poised to strain ties with Washington.
The following is a look at what lies ahead.
Russia happy to keep Ukraine off UN radar as world focuses on Islamic State group and Ebola
As world leaders gather at the U.N. this week, the U.S. and its European allies are consumed by efforts to blunt the savage advance of the Islamic State group, to end the raging Ebola epidemic and to make progress in nuclear negotiations with Iran. That's likely just fine with Vladimir Putin, since these issues distract from Russia's presence in neighboring Ukraine.
While attention focuses elsewhere, the Russians are consolidating their annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. They are also deeply involved in turmoil in Ukraine's east and south, hoping to prevent the country from moving out of the Kremlin's orbit. Europe and the United States insist the independent nation must be free to choose its own course.
Russia is already enraged over NATO's having brought former Soviet satellite nations in Eastern Europe and some Baltic nations, once Soviet republics, into the alliance over the past two decades. The Kremlin insists it was promised, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that that would not happen. It's doing its best to prevent Ukraine from making the same move.
What's more, says American University professor Keith Darden: "Their strategy all along has been to argue that what they did in Crimea is not abnormal. Intervention in Ukraine is not unusual for great powers. The U.S. has intervened in Latin America consistently. Ukraine, they say, is their sphere of interest."
And given the chaos in other areas of the world, says Andrew Weiss, of the Carnegie Endowment, "I can't say I see the Russian challenges and issues as being front and center. Ukraine, to a degree, already has been pushed out of the public eye by the Middle East crisis and the Ebola epidemic. I don't think Ukraine will have the same centrality."
Court appearance scheduled for accused White House intruder, an Army vet who served in Iraq
The man accused of scaling a security fence and getting into the White House with a knife is scheduled to have his initial appearance Monday in federal court.
Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, of Copperas Cove, Texas, is facing charges of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. The Army says Gonzalez served from 1997 until his discharge in 2003, and again from 2005 to December 2012, when he retired due to disability.
The Secret Service tightened their guard outside the White House after Friday's embarrassing breach in the security of one of the most closely protected buildings in the world. Gonzalez is accused of scaling the White House perimeter fence, running across the lawn and entering the presidential mansion before agents stopped him.
President Barack Obama and his family were away at the time.
Secret Service Director Julia Pierson has ordered increased surveillance and more officer patrols, and has begun an investigation into what went wrong.
Obama's Mideast war plan to face sterner examination from Congress after elections
As far as Congress is concerned, President Barack Obama's Mideast war strategy isn't in the clear yet.
The president got what he wanted this past week when the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved arming and training moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants. But the go-ahead is good for less than three months. And many lawmakers want a say over the rest of a plan featuring more than 1,600 U.S. military advisers in Iraq and airstrikes expanding into Syria.
Congressional authorization for military action is "long overdue," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and the most senior member of Congress to question Obama's legal basis for intervening in the Middle East. "We are living on borrowed time, and we are traveling on vapors."
A showdown looms when lawmakers return to the Capitol after midterm elections -- and no one knows yet how it's going to play out.
Permission to prepare vetted Syrian opposition units as a ground force to complement U.S. airstrikes expires Dec. 11, at which point the training effort won't even have begun. American military leaders say the operation needs up to five months to get off the ground. Authorization for the training program is also included in a version of this year's defense policy bill, but its passage is not guaranteed.
Obama and immigration: Mixed record and high expectations; complicated history with issue
There were about 30, all Mexican nationals desperate to avoid deportations that would separate them from their families. Living in Illinois, they appealed for help from their new U.S. senator, Barack Obama.
He turned them down.
It was one of the first times Obama could have used the power of his office to help defer the removal of immigrants who were in the United States illegally. Eight years later, with his powers magnified as president, such a decision is upon him again, this time with the status of millions of immigrants at stake.
That episode in 2006 represents just one early marker in Obama's complicated history with the politics of immigration. The son of a Kenyan immigrant, Obama has been embraced and scorned by immigrant advocates who have viewed him as both a champion and an obstacle to their cause.
Now, perhaps paradoxically, in their anger over his delay of executive actions that potentially could give work permits to millions of immigrants living illegally in this country, these advocacy groups also hold out hope that when Obama does act, he will be aggressive and leave a mark for posterity.
Affluence eludes poor crowding into Asian cities as elites capture increasing share of wealth
Down a concrete path, between rail tracks that buzz with each approaching train and a river choked by plastic and raw sewage, Asih Binti Arif cradles her baby and reflects on dreams gone dark.
Five years ago, Arif and her husband left impoverished Madura Island, joining the stream of migrants from across the vast Indonesian archipelago seeking a better life in its capital.
Across the developing world, migration from country to city has long been a potential path out of poverty. Less and less is that true for Arif and millions of others in Asia, where the wealth gap is growing in many of the most densely populated cities in human history.
Experts say the trend could worsen as a widening gulf between the richest and everyone else undercuts efforts to reduce poverty, bringing a litany of problems: poorer health, less education, more family breakups, crime and unstable societies.
"With inequality, the impact of growth on poverty eradication is muted," said Indu Bhushan, an Asian Development Bank official.
Police say they're on the trail of trooper ambush suspect; assault rifle left in woods
Authorities have had no confirmed sightings of the alleged gunman who is accused of a deadly ambush at a police barracks 10 days ago, but they say they have found an assault rifle he was carrying and believe they are hot on his trail in the dense northeastern Pennsylvania woods.
Investigators said Sunday that the suspect they describe as a self-taught survivalist had been planning a confrontation with law enforcement for months, if not years, and they believe he is still armed and dangerous, and possibly concealing himself in self-built bunkers.
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens revealed a few more details about the manhunt for Eric Frein, saying trackers have discovered items he hid or abandoned in the woods _ including an AK-47-style assault rifle and ammunition they believe he had been carrying while on the run.
"We are pushing him hard, he is no longer safe and I am confident that he will be apprehended," Bivens said.
Authorities did not yet know if the weapon had been used in the ambush, he said. Still, police believe Frein, 31, remains dangerous, and possibly armed with a .308 rifle with a scope that police say was missing from his family home along with the AK-47.
NASA's Maven spacecraft enters Mars orbit, science work begins in 6 weeks to study atmosphere
NASA's Maven spacecraft entered orbit around Mars for an unprecedented study of the red planet's atmosphere following a 442 million-mile journey that began nearly a year ago.
The robotic explorer successfully slipped into orbit around the red planet late Sunday night.
"I think my heart's about ready to start again," Maven's chief investigator, Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, said early Monday. "All I can say at this point is, 'We're in orbit at Mars, guys!'"
Now the real work begins for the $671 million mission, the first dedicated to studying the Martian upper atmosphere and the latest step in NASA's bid to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.
Flight controllers in Colorado will spend the next six weeks adjusting Maven's altitude and checking its science instruments, and observing a comet streaking by at relatively close range. Then in early November, Maven will start probing the upper atmosphere of Mars. The spacecraft will conduct its observations from orbit; it's not meant to land.
Cuban baseball opening runs into trouble, fails to stop flow of departures to major leagues
Cuba's unprecedented effort to stop a devastating baseball talent drain doesn't seem to be working, with a string of stars leaving for the major leagues in the year since the government allowed a small number to play professionally overseas.
The island's national league began its 54th season Sunday badly weakened by the departure of both stars and promising prospects chasing dreams of riches in the U.S. To fight the drain, Cuba relaxed a five-decade ban on professional play in September 2013 and allowed ballplayers to sign offseason contracts with leagues like Japan's and Mexico's as long as a large chunk of their contracts goes to the state and they return to play in Cuba. The state also gave raises to on-island athletes.
There are no official statistics on ballplayers' departures from Cuba, typically murky affairs that come to light only when a player appears in Mexico or the Dominican Republic to be declared a free agent with a shot at a big contract in the major leagues.
But observers note that a quarter of the players on Cuba's star-studded 2013 World Baseball Classic team have stopped playing, with most leaving the island since last year's reform in search of major-league deals.
"There's no way that economically Cuba is going to keep enough top players in the country to have the quality of league they had five or ten years ago," said Peter C. Bjarkman, author of "A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006."
"It hasn't been destroyed, but my fear is that it's living on borrowed time ... It certainly doesn't seem to be affected by what the Cubans tried to do."
