ANKARA, Turkey – Syria said Friday it shot down a Turkish military plane that entered Syrian air space, and Turkey vowed to “determinedly take necessary steps” in response.
It was the most clear and dramatic escalation in tensions between the two countries, which used to be allies before the Syrian revolt began in March 2011. Turkey has become one of the strongest critics of the Syrian regime’s brutal response to the country’s uprising.
Turkey issued a statement Friday night saying the two Turkish pilots remain missing.
Paraguay votes Lugo from office
Paraguay’s Senate removed President Fernando Lugo from office in a rapid impeachment trial on Friday, and the leftist former priest said he was stepping aside even though he considered his ouster a blow to democracy.
After the five-hour trial, 39 senators dismissed Lugo, while four senators voted against and two were absent.
The Senate tried Lugo on five charges of malfeasance in office, including an alleged role in a deadly confrontation between police and landless farmers that left 17 dead.
NATION
Composer, lyricist Richard Adler dies
Composer and lyricist Richard Adler, who won Tony Awards for co-writing snappy and infectious songs for such hit Broadway musicals as “The Pajama Game” and “Damn Yankees,” has died. He was 90.
Adler died Thursday at his home in Southampton, N.Y., said his widow, Susan A. Ivory.
He and Jerry Ross wrote the music and lyrics to “The Pajama Game,” a light comedy about labor-management relations at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory, which won the best musical Tony in 1955.
Economist, author Anna Schwartz dies
Anna Schwartz, an economist and co-author with Milton Friedman of a book on monetary policy that shaped the views of central bankers including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, died Thursday. She was 96.
The first book that Schwartz wrote with Friedman, “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960,” had “critical influence” on the outlook “of a generation of policy makers,” Bernanke said in 2003, when he was a Fed governor.
Published in 1963, the book advanced the idea that the Great Depression had been triggered by the central bank’s reduction in the U.S. money supply from 1928 until the early 1930s. That contradicted the prevailing view that it resulted from the 1929 stock-market crash.
“Nobody knew as much about the history of monetary theory and the history of monetary policy in the United States as she did,” Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said Thursday.
Man admits plot to bomb Capitol
An Alexandria, Va., man pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to a plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the Capitol using what he thought were explosives supplied by al-Qaeda.
Amine Mohammed El Khalifi was arrested in February as he was heading to the Capitol with what he thought was a loaded handgun and an explosives-laden vest. Both were provided – and rendered inoperable – by undercover FBI agents.
