Syrian vice president: regime, rebels both losing in civil war, no military decision possible
Syrian vice president: regime, rebels both losing in civil war, no military decision possible
BEIRUT — Syria’s longtime vice president said Sunday that his regime and the rebels are both going down a losing path after 21 months of civil war, a rare admission by a top government official that President Bashar Assad’s victory is unlikely.
The comments by Farouk al-Sharaa came as an Islamist faction of Syrian rebels captured an infantry base in the northern city of Aleppo, and Syrian warplanes blasted a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, killing eight people and wounding dozens, activists said.
Al-Sharaa told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar that neither the rebels nor the Assad regime can “decide the battle militarily.” It appeared to be an attempt to show that the rebels are not the solution to the Syria conflict, and their victory might bring chaos to the country.
Balancing that, he said the Assad regime “cannot achieve change.”
The solution to the conflict must come from within Syria, al-Sharaa said, adding that any political settlement “must include stopping all types of violence, and the creation of a national unity government with wide powers.”
Right to carry a loaded gun in public could be next big Supreme Court battle over guns
WASHINGTON — The next big issue in the national debate over guns — whether people have a right to be armed in public — is moving closer to Supreme Court review.
A provocative ruling by a panel of federal appeals court judges in Chicago struck down the only statewide ban on carrying concealed weapons, in Illinois. The ruling is somewhat at odds with those of other federal courts that have largely upheld state and local gun laws, including restrictions on concealed weapons, since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling declaring that people have a right to have a gun for self-defense.
In, 2008, the court voted 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller to strike down Washington’s ban on handgun ownership and focused mainly on the right to defend one’s own home. The court left for another day how broadly the Second Amendment may protect gun rights in other settings.
Legal scholars say the competing appellate rulings mean that day is drawing near for a new high court case on gun rights.
The appeals court ruling in Chicago came early in a week that ended with the mass shooting in Connecticut that left 28 people dead, including 20 children at an elementary school and the presumed gunman.
Alabama police officer improving after shooting sparked by triple killing, chase
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Authorities said an east Alabama police officer shot and seriously wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a homicide suspect was improving Sunday as investigators tried to verify the identities of three people whose slayings sparked a two-county pursuit.
Heflin police officer Jackie Stovall was removed from a breathing machine and remained hospitalized in stable condition in Anniston a day after Saturday’s shootings. Stovall was progressing faster than expected, police said.
Stovall asked about his parents and grandchild as soon as he could speak, Heflin’s interim police chief, A.J. Benefield, said in a post on the department’s Facebook page. Then, Benefield said, Stovall asked, “Did y’all get him?”
“I was happy to tell him, ‘Yes, we did,’ and no one else will have to worry about him doing anything like this again,” wrote Benefield.
Stovall was seriously wounded during a chase that began in Cleburne County and ended in Calhoun County with officers shooting and killing Romero Roberto Moya, 33, of Heflin.
By wire sources