World Briefs

UNITED NATIONS Obama and Putin’s first formal meeting in more than two years started with an awkward handshake and ended without a breakthrough on Syria, a crisis that has strained their already tense relationship. On the biggest issue that divides them in Syria — the status of embattled leader Bashar Assad — Obama and Putin left their discussions yesterday exactly where they started. The U.S. still insists Syria’s future cannot include Assad, while Russia appears to only want to bolster the standing of his longtime ally, casting him as the best defense against IS militants.

US-CHINA The multitudes of Chinese students attending American universities are approaching college as less of a life experience and more as a transaction, educators worry, leading to measures to help them integrate — including broadcasting football games in Mandarin.

SPACE Mars appears to have flowing rivulets of water, at least in the summer, scientists reported in a finding that boosts the odds of life on the red planet. “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past,” said yesterday Jim Green, director of planetary science for NASA.

SYRIA A dedicated manhunt by the CIA, the National Security Agency and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command has been methodically finding and killing senior militants in Syria and Iraq, in one of the few clear success stories of the U.S. military campaign in those countries.

HUNGARY The government is consulting with Volkswagen unit Audi and with Mercedes Benz over the potential impact on their local factories from the VW emissions-rigging scandal. Economy Minister Mihaly Varga says about 2 million of the engines suspected of being manipulated by VW to cheat environmental standards were made in Hungary by the Audi affiliate

USA A day before the only woman on Georgia’s death row is set to be executed, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles scheduled a new clemency hearing in her case. Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 47, is set to die by injection of pentobarbital at 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson.

PERU Clashes between police and local residents protesting construction of the USD7.4 billion Las Bambas copper mine project has left two people dead and 18 injured in Peru’s southern Andes.