World/Nation
Emotions mount on final day of Scottish campaign
EDINBURGH, Scotland - For Scots, Wednesday was a day of excitement, apprehension, and a flood of final appeals before a big decision. Today they will determine whether Scotland leaves the United Kingdom and becomes an independent state.
A full 97 percent of those eligible have registered to vote - including, for the first time, 16- and 17-year-olds - in a referendum that polls suggest is too close to call.
A phone poll of 1,373 people by Ipsos MORI, released Wednesday, put opposition to independence at 51 percent and support at 49 percent, with 5 percent of voters undecided.
That means neither side can feel confident, given the margin of error of about plus or minus three percentage points.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, himself a Scot, told a No campaign rally that the quiet majority of pro-Union Scots "will be silent no more," while pro-independence leader Alex Salmond urged voters to seize a democratic opportunity 307 years in the making.
Wary lawmakers grudgingly OK arms for rebels
WASHINGTON - The Republican-controlled House voted grudgingly Wednesday to give the administration authority to train and arm Syrian rebels as President Barack Obama emphasized anew that American forces "do not and will not have a combat mission" in the struggle against Islamic State militants in either Iraq or Syria.
The 273-156 vote crossed party lines to an unusual degree in a Congress marked by near-ceaseless partisanship. Top Republican and Democratic leaders backed Obama's plan seven weeks before midterm elections, while dozens of rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties opposed it.
The provision was added to spending legislation that will ensure the federal government operates normally after the Sept. 30 end of the budget year. Final approval is expected in the Senate on Thursday.
Even supporters of the military plan found little to trumpet. "This is the best of a long list of bad options," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.
One Republican supporter noted the measure includes strict limits on Obama's authority. "Members on both sides of the aisle are very concerned that too much of Congress' warmaking power has gone to the president," said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma.
Iraqi prime minister rejects US ground troops
BAGHDAD - Iraq's new prime minister ruled out stationing U.S. ground troops in his country, chiding the international community Wednesday for inaction in Syria and lamenting the "puzzling" exclusion of neighboring Iran from the coalition being assembled to fight the Islamic State group.
Haider al-Abadi has been embraced by the West as a more inclusive leader who might heal the internal rifts that have dismembered Iraq. But his forthrightness in an interview with The Associated Press - his first with international media - suggested a man capable of parting ways on vision and holding his ground.
Al-Abadi praised the U.S. aerial campaign targeting the militants who have overrun much of northern and western Iraq and carved out a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border, saying it has helped efforts to roll back the Sunni extremists.
But he stressed that he sees no need for the U.S. or other nations to send troops into Iraq to help fight the Islamic State.
"Not only is it not necessary," he said, "We don't want them. We won't allow them. Full stop."
Toronto Mayor Ford has cancer in abdomen
TORONTO - Toronto's embattled mayor has a rare and difficult cancer that will require aggressive chemotherapy, his doctor said Wednesday, days after Rob Ford's dramatic announcement that he was pulling out of a re-election campaign.
Dr. Zane Cohen, a colorectal surgeon at Mount Sinai hospital, said Ford has a malignant liposarcoma. Ford has been hospitalized for a week with a tumor in his abdomen.
Cohen said the cancer is spreading and that they have found "a small nodule in the buttock" near the left hip. He said the mayor will be treated with fairly intensive chemotherapeutic agents within the next two days.
"We think it's fairly an aggressive tumor," Cohen said. He said Ford had a CT scan in 2011 and there was no sign of the tumor then. "But we're treating this very aggressively in order to eradicate the tumor."
The doctor said Ford's cancer makes up only about one percent of all cancers but said he was optimistic about Ford's treatment because they have many experts in sarcoma at the hospital. He said Ford will get two cycles of chemotherapy over the next 40 days in an effort to shrink the tumor, and then they'll assess. He said surgery may or may not be necessary.
Stalled nuke talks hamper prospects for meeting
WASHINGTON - One year ago, President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came close to ending the decades-long freeze on face-to-face meetings between their countries' leaders.
Next week both men are scheduled to again be in New York for United Nations meetings but expectations for even a handshake are more muted than they were last fall. While lower level officials from both countries are now in regular contact, deadlocked nuclear talks - as well as the complexities of the fight against militants in the Middle East - are clouding the prospects for an elusive leaders' meeting.
"The state of play between the United States and Iran is too fragile to endure what would be the shock of a direct meeting," said Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.
An in-person meeting between the two leaders would mark a substantive shift in the way the U.S. has dealt with Iran for decades and could eventually open the door for talks on matters beyond Tehran's disputed nuclear program. It would also mark the fulfillment of a pledge Obama made as a presidential candidate when he said he would be willing to talk to America's adversaries without preconditions.
- The Associated Press