Syria civil war: 5 things to pay attention to today

Today could be a crucial day in the push to rid Syria of chemical weapons.

It's day two of meetings between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland. A plan could be created Friday, but then again ...

The United Nations is also poised to get involved.

Although Syria's bloody civil war is over two years old, power players from many nations seemed focused on making changes.

Here are the five things to pay attention to today.

1. Nailing down a plan

Lavrov and Kerry take 2. The most talked about chat in the world goes into its second day Friday with many hoping that the two can nail down a blueprint to destroy Syria's chemical weapons.

2. More Putin backlash

Russian President Vladimir Putin may not be America's favorite writer, right now. Putin's opinion piece published Wednesday in the New York Times ruffled some feathers and had at least one U.S. lawmaker looking for a barf bag. The Russian leader's argument against military intervention in Syria brought some response. But his slap at American exceptionalism brought a flurry of U.S. reaction Thursday.

3. More fighting and sadly more deaths

Though the camera seems focused on political spats, and negotiations about Syria, in the country a fierce fight continues.

The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria reported that fighting killed at least 94 people across Syria on Thursday, including 24 in Daraa province. This figure includes 27 deaths in Daraa province and another 26 in Aleppo province.

The same group documented shelling that struck nearly 500 locales, along with almost 50 military jet attacks.

The fight continues Friday.

4. So where are these chemical weapons?

And while world powers haggle about what to do with Syria's chemical weapons, a rebel leader is claiming the government's cache of mass destruction is on the move.

Gen. Salim Idriss, head of the opposition Free Syrian Army, says Syria's government is shifting its chemical weapons out of the country.

5. The UN gets closer to weighing in

A greatly anticipated U.N. report on Syria's alleged chemical attack could be coming soon. This development could speed up an international response to Syria

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday that the United Nations report on the August attack in Syria will "probably" be published on Monday, and that there will "certainly be indications" pointing to the origin of the attack.

Russia: Deadly fire sweeps through psychiatric institution

Up to 37 people died Friday after a fire tor through a psychiatric institution in Russia, a regional branch of the country's Investigative Committee said, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

A representative of Russia's Emergencies Ministry gave a different toll, telling the news agency that 15 bodies had been recovered and 22 people were still missing after the fire outside the central Russian city of Veliky Novgorod.

A criminal case has been opened to look into the cause of the fire, according to a statement on the Investigative Committee's website.

A total of 59 people were inside the building when the fire broke out, the Health Ministry said, according to RIA Novosti. The Emergencies Ministry said 23 people have been rescued, according to the news agency.

Police are searching the area for residents who may have fled the site, it said.

The fire broke out shortly before 3 a.m. Moscow time in the men's ward of the Oksochi mental health care clinic, state-run Itar-Tass reported. The facility is a low-level wooden building.

The fire has been extinguished, the news agency said, and dozens of emergency personnel are working at the scene.

In April, a fire at another psychiatric hospital near the capital, Moscow, left 38 people dead. President Vladimir Putin called for an investigation and a closer focus on fire safety in hospitals after that blaze.

Rape sentencing feels like judgment day for all of India

Anticipation hung heavier than the sultry air outside the massive court complex Friday afternoon. Here and all across India, people awaited the decision from Courtroom No. 304.

Inside the wood-paneled room lighted by the glare of harsh white lights, the four men found guilty of gang-raping a Delhi womanwould learn whether they would die for their crime. Three exchanged their t-shirts for collared shirts on this day, one of the most important of their lives.

Life or death? The people clamored for the latter.

A curious crowd gathered outside the courtroom as the clock neared 2:30 p.m., when Judge Yogesh Khanna was set to convene his court. Some traveled great distances to be present when the sentences were read.

It was almost as though this were judgment day for all of India.

There are no cameras allowed inside the courthouse, but everyone had a cell phone. One woman stood on a bench, held her dated Samsung high in the air and pressed the video button. She wanted to capture every moment.

Mounted police as well as a water cannon truck were the most obvious signs of the combustive atmosphere. Authorities blocked off the road in front of the Saket District Court complex in hopes of preventing angry clashes. Dozens of journalists set up roadside mini studios to file what felt to many like the biggest story of the year.

Prosecutors argued that the men -- Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh -- deserved to die for an "extreme act of brutality." The woman's family members have said the same. To them and many others gathered here, nothing less could deliver justice. Nothing else could be an appropriate ending to a case that has gripped India.

People here had waited for this day for nine long months, since December 16, when the woman, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, went to see "The Life of Pi" with a male friend.

The movie theater is in an upscale mall just a short walk from this court complex. The woman -- Indian law forbids naming rape victims -- and her friend boarded a private bus to make their way home from South Delhi to the suburbs.

The driver and at least five other men, said police, were drunk that night and looking for a joyride. They dragged the woman to the back of the bus and beat up her friend, authorities claim; then they took turns raping her, using an iron rod to violate her as the bus drove around the city for almost an hour. When they had finished, they dumped their victims on the side of the road.

The woman's internal injuries were so severe that some organs had to be removed. Two weeks later, at a hospital in Singapore, she died.

The horrific nature of the crime got to people. It was like a bomb had exploded inside the collective Indian psyche.

The nation erupted in outrage. Crowds poured into the streets of major cities and openly questioned the civility of their own society. How could the world's most populous democracy, a nation that had finally made its stand on the global stage, allow such a heinous act to take place?

As India waited to hear the fate of the men responsible for casting such a dark shadow over their nation, a national discussion blossomed on the treatment of women. It included a call for tougher punishment for sexual assault. For some at the courthouse, Friday's sentence would be a test, of sorts, of whether the message had been heeded.

Wet Nellie finds a buyer

The submersible Lotus Esprit used in filming the 1976 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me sold at auction on 9 September in London for £616,000 ($976,000). According to consigners RM Auctions, the winning bid was placed by an anonymous buyer by telephone. The Esprit, which earned the nickname Wet Nellie on the production set, was said to be fully operational.

Week in pictures: A Renault fit for a pope

A humble ride for his holiness

Motivated by a papal plea, a priest from northern Italy has given Pope Francis I his 1984 Renault 4L. The pontiff will drive the compact wagon, which has 300,000km (186,000 miles) on its odometer, around the Vatican, a spokesman said. Pope Francis has called on clergy to shun ostentation and live humbly, a directive that resonated with the priest, 70-year-old Renzo Zocca (second from right), who had driven the car for decades. It is not the first Renault to be presented to a pope. Benedict XVI, Pope Francis’ predecessor, took delivery of two electric Renault vans in 2012 for use within the Vatican and at his summer residence southeast of Rome, at Castel Gandolfo

Putin's PR blitz - win or lose?

All this excitement over recent Russian public diplomacy on Syria is a bit odd to those of us who have been following that diplomacy strategy for over a decade. That Vladimir Putin chose to write an op-ed in The New York Times this week is not at all shocking. It is part of a broader pattern of Russian outreach that began in 2001.

What confuses people about Russian public diplomacy is that it often veers from a closed fist approach to an open handshake depending on its narrow objective -- all the while testing America as it seeks to build its own popularity around the world.

Since the end of the 1990s the Russians have been aware that America and other nations see a weakened former Soviet empire behaving badly in the world, and they have sought to correct that perception beginning with the hiring of an American public relations firm back in 2006, which generated interest at the time.

For years the Russians have worried about how they are portrayed in American media, about Hollywood's depiction of Russians as mobsters and thugs, for example. Scholars of Russia have written often about Russia's near-obsession with its place in the world, including a fixation on polls -- like Gallup's -- about Russia's popularity with the outside world.

Over the years, Russian officials have looked for opportunities in the media to portray Russia as helpful and constructive -- even when it was not. They attempted to use Russian television, and later the Internet, to brandish a better image in the West -- creating a news agency, RIA (The Russian Agency for International Information) which operates 80 news bureaus around the world and Russia Today which boasts a following of 630 million people in over 100 countries. The Russians are also fans of inserting newspaper supplements of Russia Today in American newspapers just to remind readers of their relevance.

Let's face it. Russia remains relevant but its image in the world has suffered throughout the last decade, for good reason. Think of some of the recent events: the conflict Russia had in 2008 with its southern neighbor, Georgia, over the disputed territory of South Ossetia. Then there was the feud with Ukraine in 2009 which resulted in Russia cutting off gas to Ukraine. There was a series of international corruption scandals around a Russian oil firm, Gazprom, including accounting charges involving U.S. financial firms.

Mexico teachers clash with police in Zocalo Square

Police in Mexico City have clashed with protesters during an operation to clear a square occupied by striking teachers.

Riot police used tear gas and water cannons to remove the protesters from the city's main square, the Zocalo.

Striking teachers had been camped out there for weeks. Some responded with petrol bombs as police moved in after a government deadline passed.

The teachers have been demanding changes to education reforms approved by President Enrique Pena Nieto.

The authorities said they wanted to clear the Zocalo for the Independence Day celebrations at the weekend.

Most of the protesters left peacefully by Friday's deadline. But some stayed on, and police backed by armoured vehicles and helicopters clashed with missile-throwing protesters on the square and in nearby streets.