World leaders meet at UN facing turmoil from multiple crises, with few solutions
Facing a world in turmoil from multiple crises ranging from wars in the Mideast and Africa to the deadly scourge of Ebola and growing Islamic radicalism, leaders from more than 140 countries open their annual meeting at the United Nations on Wednesday with few solutions.
The issue certain to top the agenda is the threat from Islamic terrorists intent on erasing borders, with the first U.S. and Arab airstrikes in Syria delivered Monday night in response.
Many diplomats hope that crisis won't drown out the plight of millions of civilians caught in conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza; the misery of the largest number of refugees since World War II; and global support for new U.N. goals to fight poverty and address climate change.
Looking at the array of complex challenges, Norway's Foreign Minister Borge Brende told The Associated Press: "It's unprecedented in decades, that's for sure."
He pointed to an unprecedented situation in which the U.N. and international donors are confronting four top-level humanitarian crises at the same time in Iraq, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Syria, which is now in the fourth year of a civil war which the U.N. says has killed more than 190,000 people.
Obama to address UN amid new strikes against militants in Syria, as well as Iraq
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NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama is addressing the United Nations as a commander in chief overseeing a war against militants in two Middle Eastern nations, a striking shift in the trajectory of a presidency that had been focused on ending conflicts in the region.
Instead, when he speaks to the world body Wednesday, he will cast the U.S. as the linchpin in efforts to defeat Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said. After weeks of launching strikes against militant targets in Iraq, Obama extended the military action into Syria on Monday, joined by an unexpected coalition of five Arab nations. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S. in carrying out airstrikes, while Qatar played a supporting role.
The partnership with Arab countries marked a rare victory for Obama during a tough stretch in which his foreign policy has been challenged not only by the Middle East militants, but also Russia's provocations in Ukraine and an Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Officials said Obama will also address ways the U.S. has sought to mobilize international action to resolve the Ukraine and Ebola crises as well, including getting deepening economic sanctions on Russia and dispatching 3,000 U.S. troops to West Africa to help deal with the Ebola outbreak.
But the growing U.S. military role in the Middle East will be the centerpiece of the president's sixth address to the U.N. General Assembly. It comes at a time when Obama had hoped to be nearing the end of the second of the two wars he inherited in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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1. WORLD LEADERS MEET AT UN FACING MULTIPLE CRISES
The issues certain to top the agenda are Islamic extremists intent on erasing borders, Ebola and the plight of millions of civilians caught in ongoing conflicts.
Jordanian court acquits radical cleric Abu Qatada of plotting attacks on Americans, Israelis
A Jordanian court on Wednesday acquitted radical Muslim preacher Abu Qatada — known for his fiery pro-al-Qaida speeches — of involvement in a plot to target Israeli and American tourists and Western diplomats in Jordan more than a decade ago.
The ruling capped a lengthy legal odyssey for the 53-year-old cleric who has been described as a onetime lieutenant to Osama bin Laden, but in recent months emerged as a harsh critic of the Islamic State militant group. Abu Qatada was deported from Britain to Jordan last year, after years of fighting extradition.
The three-judge panel unanimously acquitted Abu Qatada "because of the lack of convincing charges against him," said Judge Ahmed Qattarneh.
The gray-bearded Abu Qatada sat on a bench in a cage in the courtroom, largely blocked from view by black-clad riot policemen lining the case. When the verdict was announced he briefly punched his left fist in the air.
Several family members jumped up from their seats, one calling out "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."
Anti-addiction activists call for FDA chief's resignation amid painkiller abuse epidemic
Anti-addiction activists are calling for the Food and Drug Administration's top official to step down, saying the agency's policies have contributed to a national epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse.
In a letter released Wednesday, more than a dozen groups ask the Obama administration's top health official to replace FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who has led the agency since 2009. The FDA has been under fire from public health advocates, politicians and law enforcement officials since last October, when it approved a powerful new painkiller called Zohydro against the recommendation of its own medical advisers.
The new letter is the first formal call for new leadership at the FDA over the issue.
"We are especially frustrated by the FDA's continued approval of new, dangerous, high-dose opioid analgesics that are fueling high rates of addiction and overdose deaths," states the letter, which is addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, who oversees the FDA and other health agencies. The groups signing the letter include Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, a 900-member advocacy group that petitioned the FDA to drastically restrict opioid use. The FDA rejected that petition last year.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said opioid abuse "is a serious issue and one that the secretary is focused on."
Fired by zeal, Turks move with children to "family-friendly" Islamic State territory
Asiya Ummi Abdullah doesn't share the view that the Islamic State group rules over a terrorist dystopia and she isn't scared by the American bombs falling on Raqqa, its power center in Syria.
As far as she's concerned, it's the ideal place to raise a family.
In interviews with The Associated Press, the 24-year-old Muslim convert explained her decision to move with her toddler to the territory controlled by the militant group, saying it offers them protection from the sex, crime, drugs and alcohol that she sees as rampant in largely secular Turkey.
"The children of that country see all this and become either murderers or delinquents or homosexuals or thieves," Umi Abdullah wrote in one of several Facebook messages exchanged in recent days. She said that living under Shariah, the Islamic legal code, means that her 3-year-old boy's spiritual life is secure.
"He will know God and live under his rules," she said. As for the American bombs being dropped on the Islamic State group, she said: "I only fear God."
Authorities: Fired UPS employees dons old uniform, guns down 2 former co-workers in Alabama
Fired a day earlier from UPS, a man put on his work uniform, drove to an Alabama package sorting center and evaded security by entering through a truck dock in the rear, police and the company say.
Two former UPS co-workers were shot dead within minutes Tuesday, and the shooter, identified by police as Kerry Joe Tesney, lay dead atop his gun from what police said was a self-inflicted wound.
The shooter entered after about 80 drivers had left for the day to deliver packages from the Birmingham center, UPS said, possibly avoiding even more bloodshed.
"It was a relatively small crew that was remaining," said Steve Gaut, a spokesman for the shipping company.
Authorities haven't released the slain people's names but said they were members of management.
India declares Mars mission a success, with satellite now circling red planet for science data
India triumphed in its first interplanetary mission, placing a satellite into orbit around Mars on Wednesday and catapulting the country into an elite club of deep-space explorers.
In scenes broadcast live on Indian TV, scientists broke into wild cheers as the orbiter's engines completed 24 minutes of burn time to maneuver the spacecraft into its designated place around the red planet.
"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a live broadcast from the Indian Space and Research Organisation's command center in the southern tech hub of Bangalore.
"We have navigated our craft through a route known to very few," Modi said, congratulating the scientists and "all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion."
Scientists described the final stages of the Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, as flawless. The success marks a milestone for the space program in demonstrating that it can conduct complex missions and act as a global launch pad for commercial, navigational and research satellites.
Soaring deer populations are nuisances for airports, threats to pilots
Long the bane of gardeners and unwary motorists, soaring deer populations are also nuisances for airports and threats to pilots, especially at this time of year, according to aviation and wildlife experts.
Whether driven by hunger or just crazy for love, deer will do seemingly anything to get onto airport grounds and runways, including leaping over tall fences or squeezing under them. Once there, they like to warm themselves by sauntering on runways, which hold heat longer than cold ground. But put a deer and a plane together on a runway and both can have a very bad day.
From 1990 to 2013, there were 1,088 collisions between planes and deer, elk, moose and caribou, according to a recent joint report by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Agriculture Department. Most of the planes suffered damage, and some were destroyed, the report said. One person was killed and 29 others injured. No mention is made of the fate of the deer.
The vast majority of collisions involved white-tailed deer, the smallest member of the North American deer family, but big enough to wreck a plane. There were only about 350,000 of the creatures in the U.S. in 1900. By 1984 there were 15 million and by 2010 more than 28 million. They've caused $44 million in aircraft damage and 238,000 hours of lost flying time over the past 24 years. About 30 percent of collisions occurred during the October-November mating season.
Last month in Florida, the propeller of a small plane landing at night at the Ormond Beach Municipal Airport struck a deer, causing the plane's front landing gear to collapse, according to local police. The pilot and three passengers were unhurt.
Tiny wasps tasked with saving Indonesia's cassava crop from devastating pest
They are the size of a pinhead and don't even pack a sting, but these tiny wasps are cold-blooded killers nonetheless. They work as nature's SWAT team, neutralizing a pest that threatens to destroy one of the developing world's most important staple foods: cassava.
The wasps are being released in Indonesia, the latest country threatened by the mealybug. It's a chalky white insect shaped like a pill that's been making its way across Southeast Asia's fields for the past six years.
But unlike in Thailand, where infestations reached some 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) of crops grown mostly as part of the country's huge export business, cassava in Indonesia is a vital food source second only to rice. That makes the mealybug a serious threat to food security in Indonesia, which already has one of the region's highest child malnutrition rates.
The parasitic wasps, or Anagyrus lopezi, need the mealybug to survive. Females lay their eggs inside the insect and as the larvae grow, they eat the bug from the inside out, slowly killing it until there's nothing left but its mummified shell.
On Wednesday, scientists will put 2,000 wasps into a holding cage at an affected field in Bogor, on the outskirts of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. They will be monitored to see how well they handle local conditions as they multiply to an expected 300,000 before being released into the wild to start their relentless killing spree.
