Here is what's happening across the United States and around the world today.
Report: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 likely downed by "high energy objects" from outside
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was likely struck by multiple "high-energy objects from outside the aircraft," causing it to break up over eastern Ukraine, a preliminary report into the deadly aviation disaster concluded Tuesday.
The report by the Dutch Safety Board stopped short of saying the Boeing 777 was shot down by a missile, but its findings appear to point to that conclusion. It also did not say who might have been responsible.
The Boeing 777 suddenly plunged out of the sky July 17 over pro-Russian rebel-held territory in Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board.
"The damage observed in the forward section of the aircraft appears to indicate that the aircraft was penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft," the report said. "It is likely that this damage resulted in a loss of structural integrity of the aircraft, leading to an in-flight break up."
The board is leading the international investigation into the cause of the disaster. Its full report is expected within a year of the crash.
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
AP Analysis: Putin hopes to achieve his goals in Ukraine with truce; military threat remains
Ukraine's last cease-fire collapsed quickly. This one may last — because it's in Russian President Vladimir Putin's interests.
Putin's goal of keeping Ukraine in Russia's orbit remains the same. But recent battlefield gains by pro-Russia rebels mean that Moscow has the upper hand in peace talks that will help determine Ukraine's future.
From the onset of the Ukrainian crisis, Putin's objective has been to secure enough autonomy for Ukraine's Russian-speaking east that the region can keep its close ties to Russia — and to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
In March, after Ukraine ousted its pro-Russian president, Moscow annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. But while many in Ukraine and the West fear Putin wants to seize more land, that doesn't seem to be his preferred option. If he wanted to grab more land in Ukraine, he could have easily done so.
Putin apparently has calculated that the price would be too high, both because of the devastating economic punishment the West would impose and because of the need to spend tens of billions of dollars to support eastern Ukraine. With the Russian economy in recession, that's a liability the Kremlin can't afford.
Analysis: Building a multinational coalition can be tricky business
The first President Bush had one, so did President Bill Clinton, and the second President Bush had two. Now, President Barack Obama wants to build a coalition of nations to join the U.S. to combat the threat posed by the Islamic State group in the Middle East and beyond.
The diplomacy of coalition building is time-consuming, and questions about who can or should join are often messy. And in this situation it is complicated by the fact that the U.S. and its allies share an interest in defeating the extremists with some governments they otherwise oppose. Yet, if politics makes for strange bedfellows, coalitions do as well.
Thus, when Secretary of State John Kerry embarks to the Middle East and Europe this week to enlist what he has called a "coalition of the willing and capable" against the Sunni-led militants controlling large swaths of Syria and Iraq, he must tread carefully.
"I think it is absolutely critical that we have Arab states, and specifically Sunni majority states, that are rejecting the kind of extremist nihilism that we're seeing out of ISIL, that say that is not what Islam is about, and are prepared to join us actively in the fight," Obama said last week at the NATO summit in Wales, using an alternate acronym for the militant group. "And my expectation is, is that we will see friends and allies and partners of ours in the region prepared to take action, as well, as part of a coalition."
Obama, who will lay out his strategy for confronting the Islamic State group in a speech Wednesday, and Kerry got a boost Monday when the Arab League essentially agreed to be become part of the coalition, announcing that its 22 members would take urgent — although unspecified — political, defensive, security and legal measures to combat extremists.
Appeals court hears arguments over whether legalizing gay marriage would harm children
A debate over whether children would be harmed or helped by legalizing gay marriage was the main focus when a federal appeals court in San Francisco waded again into the issue of the constitutionality of gay marriage.
The three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — two of whom have ruled in previous cases in favor of gay rights — reserved many of their most pointed questions Monday at the defenders of state bans in Idaho, Nevada and Hawaii.
Regardless of how the court ultimately rules, many legal observers — including one of the judges on the panel — believe the issue of gay marriage is heading for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide. Many are speculating the Justice Anthony Kennedy may cast the deciding vote for a Supreme Court often split 5-4.
"We all know this is going to be decided one step up," attorney Monte Stewart told the panel after arguing in favor of gay marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada.
"And we all know by whom," Judge Stephen Reinhardt said to laughter in the court, referring to Kennedy.
Syrian prisoner in deteriorating standoff at Guantanamo as transfer to South America stalls
At about 155 pounds, the Syrian prisoner is gaunt for a man over 6 feet tall. He is pale and weak, so lethargic at times that one of his lawyers said he had to lie on the floor when he met with her one day this summer at the prison on the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The hunger strike that 43-year-old Abu Wa'el Dhiab started 18 months ago to protest his indefinite confinement without charge was supposed to be over by now. He was told in the spring he would be resettled in Uruguay, along with five other Guantanamo prisoners. But as the months have dragged on and the transfer put on hold, his standoff with military officials has only deteriorated, at times turning violent.
"Everyone who has seen him recently is alarmed," said Alka Pradhan, one of his attorneys.
The prisoner has been engaged in a tense struggle with guards in recent months, according to documents filed in federal court in Washington, where Dhiab, who has been fed through a nasal tube to prevent starvation, is challenging some of the tactics used by the military to deal with prisoners on hunger strike.
In July, the Pentagon gave Congress a legally required 30-day notice that it intended to transfer Dhiab and five other Guantanamo prisoners — three other Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian — to Uruguay, where President Jose Mujica, a leftist former political prisoner, offered to accept them as a humanitarian gesture. The other prisoners have kept a much lower profile at Guantanamo than Dhiab so little is known about them. But they are among the several dozen prisoners who cannot return to their homelands because they would face persecution or because their own countries are considered unstable.
What we learned at the US Open: Cilic could win a Grand Slam title, Nishikori could come close
Suspended at this time in 2013, Marin Cilic showed at the 2014 U.S. Open that he could win a Grand Slam title.
Kei Nishikori proved that he can come very close.
And Cilic hopes the last 15 days made clear there are players that casual fans might not be familiar with who are capable of doing these things, too.
"It's, I feel, very inspirational for all the other guys out there who are working and sometimes losing motivation, having trouble to dig deep and to believe in the achievements," the 25-year-old Cilic said. "I would definitely feel much stronger if I would see somebody like me accomplish things like this. It sort of came out of nowhere for me."
The 14th-seeded and 16th-ranked Cilic's 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Nishikori in the final at Flushing Meadows on Monday made him the first player in a decade to win a major championship while ranked outside the top 10. (His victory pushed him up to No. 9).
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