BLOOMBERG: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to early parliamentary elections and to share some power with his opponents, a concession that may facilitate a broader international coalition against Islamic State, Russian PresidentVladimir Putin said. Russia would consider participating in the coalition and the Russian president has already discussed the issue with U.S. President Barack […]

AOL: Last week Joe Biden confirmed that he’s considering a presidential run in a private Democratic National Committee conference call that wound up on CNN. On Thursday he made his first intentionally public remarks on entering the 2016 race while discussing the Iran nuclear agreement at an Atlanta synagogue. When asked about his possible candidacy, […]

FINANCIAL TIMES: Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential contenders in opinion polls, vowed on Thursday not to run as an independent if he failed to win the party’s nomination… “The best way for us to . . . beat the Democrats is if I win the nomination,” he told reporters and supporters after meeting Reince Priebus, chairman of the […]

WASHINGTON POST: …Scores on the SAT have sunk to the lowest level since the college admission test was overhauled in 2005, adding to worries about student performance in the nation’s high schools. The average score for the Class of 2015 was 1490 out of a maximum 2400, the College Board reported Thursday. That was down […]

POLITICO: The Republican National Committee on Wednesday privately reached out to GOP presidential candidates to ask whether they’d be willing to sign a pledge stating they would not run as an independent candidate in the event they fail to win the Republican nomination in 2016. The move is an implicit challenge to Trump, who pointedly […]

AOL: …Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland became the crucial 34th vote in favor of the agreement. “No deal is perfect, especially one negotiated with the Iranian regime,” Mikulski said in a statement. She called the accord “the best option available to block Iran from having a nuclear bomb. For these reasons, I will vote […]

WALL STREET JOURNAL: A long-awaited study by the Obama administration concludes that lifting the nation’s four-decade ban on oil exports wouldn’t increase U.S. gasoline prices and could even help lower them, raising the stakes in the debate about whether to lift or relax the ban. The report, issued Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, […]

WALL STREET JOURNAL: …Vladimir Putin ’s neo-imperial ambitions are clear enough in his attempt to dominate Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine most of all. But his ambitions increasingly extend to the Arctic and Europe’s northern flank. That is where I and my colleagues met with leaders and security officials from Norway, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Like […]

Reader comment: Who created more damage- Fina by concealing evidence for a decade in the Sandusky pedophilia-or Kane if she did what they allege? The charges are so trivial and the public could care less about it- especially since [J. Whyatt Mondesire, former head of the NAACP in Philadelphi] admitted guilty years ago.