Washington (AFP) - At least three Russian military transport planes have landed in Syria in recent days, US officials said Tuesday, as Washington worries about the sort of assistance Moscow is providing to Damascus.

The aircraft have landed at the airport in Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast over the past several days, US officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Two of the aircraft were giant Antonov-124 Condor planes and a third was a passenger flight, one of the officials said.

The Russians have installed modular housing units -- enough for "hundreds" of people -- at the airport, as well as portable air traffic control equipment, the official noted.

"All of this seems to be suggesting that Russia is planning to do some sort of forward air-operating hub out of this airfield," the official said.

Washington has expressed concern following reports suggesting Moscow may be boosting military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and had sent a military advance team to the war-torn country.

"Our concern would be that any effort to bolster the Assad regime right now would potentially be destabilizing," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Tuesday.

Syria has denied reports of increased military activity by Russian troops on its soil.

US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov over the weekend to warn of the dangers of stoking a conflict which has already cost nearly 250,000 lives.

Russia rejects the charge, insisting that any deliveries are in keeping with its traditional links to long-time ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Bulgaria has refused permission for Russian aircraft to enter its airspace, and Greece said Tuesday that Washington had asked it to also deny Russian overflights.

WABC – NY
New York Gov. Cuomo's first deputy counsel shot during Brooklyn festival

By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A day after one of his top aides was critically wounded by a stray bullet, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday called for a national gun control policy, saying that New York's tough firearms laws are ineffective if they stand alone.

Police sought suspects in the shooting of Carey Gabay, 43, believed to be an unintended target who was struck in the head at an outdoor celebration on Monday before the West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department said.

Gabay, the first deputy counsel at Empire State Development, the state's chief economic development agency, remains in critical condition in an induced coma at Kings County Hospital Center, his family said in a statement.

"Carey has always been an inspiration to all of us and he continues to inspire us with his fight for survival," said relatives of Gabay, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was raised in a public housing project in the Bronx.

Following the 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, Cuomo oversaw passage of the state's sweeping gun control laws that are considered the strictest in the United States. At the time, President Barack Obama launched an aggressive gun control push but his efforts largely failed in Congress.

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo addresses the media before participating as an honorary grand marshal …

Cuomo in an interview on CNN on Tuesday called for a renewed effort to pass a national policy, saying it is key to stopping the flow of weapons into New York from other states.

"Elected officials have to have the political courage to step up and say, 'This weekly, ongoing tragedy of loss of life, of innocent victims, school children, young girls, young boys, must stop," Cuomo said on CNN.

"The only way to deal with this is a national gun policy," said Cuomo, who said he is "not anti-gun" and is a gun owner himself. He owns a shotgun for hunting, said his spokesman.

A U.S. firearms policy would be aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally ill people, Cuomo said.

"You have to check everyone before they buy the gun. And that is the rub. People who are law-abiding citizens say 'Don't bother me. Don't check me. Only check the criminal.' But you can't check the criminal unless you check everyone," the governor said on CNN.

(Editing by Lisa Lambert and Sandra Maler)

A fireball was recently caught on dash-cam video flying over Bangkok, Thailand, in broad daylight -- an incident that also prompted authorities to dispatch firefighters and rescue workers.

The luminous ball can be seen in the video flaring up before dying out as it descended on Monday during the morning rush hour in Thailand's capital.

Panic ensued in Nakhon Ratchasima, a city northeast of the Thai capital, where local authorities mistook the fireball for a plane crash and dispatched more than 100 rescue workers and firefighters to search for the wreckage, Thailand newspaper Khaosod Englis reported.

See 'Stunning' Fireball in the Sky Caught on Camera

Tensions in Ukraine: Tense Moments as Fireball Erupts Into Night Sky

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Mysterious Fireball Flying Over Bangkok Caught on Dash-Cam Video (ABC News)

Fireball Meteor Called Bolide Lights Up Japanese Sky

The search ended two hours later once authorities were notified that there were no reported plane crashes and no debris was found, according to the paper.

Astronomers and officials have since been debating the mysterious flaming object's origins, which remained unclear this morning.

The shooting-star-like object could have been a meteorite or space junk falling from the sky, deputy director of the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand Saran Poshyachina told theBangkok Post.

Meteorites and other falling space debris usually burn up in the atmosphere before hitting the ground, other astronomers noted.

A sign is pictured at the entrance to a Planned Parenthood building in New York August 31, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An influential conservative group is calling on Republican presidential candidates to vow they will veto any future funding for women's healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, which is under fire from abortion opponents.

In a letter seen by Reuters that is being sent to all party hopefuls in the 2016 White House race, the ForAmerica advocacy group asks candidates to make "a firm commitment" to starve Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

ForAmerica Chairman Brent Bozell - who has personally endorsed Republican Senator Ted Cruz for 2016 - also calls on the candidates to say whether they would launch an investigation by the Department of Justice into Planned Parenthood.

ForAmerica boasts a 7.7 million-member online presence, which in the past it has mobilized to bombard Republican congressional leadership with phone calls and emails to promote conservative positions.

Republicans have turned their sights on Planned Parenthood again since an anti-abortion group began posting a series of secretly recorded videos online. The center says the tapes show

Planned Parenthood engaged in illegal sales of fetal tissue.

Planned Parenthood counters that the videos were distorted and says that it did nothing wrong.

The effort by ForAmerica comes as a fight is brewing in Congress over Planned Parenthood that risks another government shutdown.

Cruz is threatening to block a spending bill if Planned Parenthood is not barred from receiving the $500 million in government funds it gets every year.

Having the rest of the 2016 Republican field on board would give Cruz more ammunition to push his fight against Planned Parenthood, even though the Republican leadership in Congress is wary of engaging in another high-profile battle that could fuel criticism their party is anti-women.

“We need a firm commitment from you so that voters may identify you as a pro-life man of your word, and expose fellow candidates who are giving lip service to this issue but intend to put this on the backburner if elected,” Bozell writes in the letter addressed to front-runner Donald Trump.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Andrew Hay)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — For years, Pakistan did not put prisoners to death. Then a Taliban attack butchered 150 people, most of them children, and the country resumed carrying out the death penalty and quickly turned into one of the world's most avid executioners.

But instead of killing militants, the campaign is largely executing common criminals, The Associated Press has found.

Only one in 10 of the 226 prisoners executed since December was convicted of a terror attack, according to human rights activists. Still, the executions continue in order to placate a public still angry over last year's Taliban assault on a military school in the city of Peshawar.

The Pakistani government refuses to discuss the executions, and most on the street still support them. Some, however, are beginning to question whether the death penalty truly works as a deterrent in a country where suicide bombings remain a common militant tactic.

"You cannot deter those militants who are committed to die for a cause," said analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi, a retired political science professor.

Pakistan under former President Pervez Musharraf halted executions in 2008, partly due to the pressure of human rights groups. The hiatus started after another terror attack shocked the nation — the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto amid a heated election campaign. The government blamed the Pakistani Taliban for that attack as well, though the militants never claimed responsibility for the assault and others questioned why elements of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agencies failed to prevent her killing.

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In this Aug. 27, 2015 photo, family members of carry a body of 71-year-old Maqbool Husain, who was h …

At the time of the pause in 2008, Human Rights Watch said some 7,000 people were on Pakistan's death row and 36 had been put to death that year. The year before, authorities executed 134 people; they put to death 85 in 2006, 52 in 2005 and 21 in 2004. Officials discussed commuting the death sentences of those remaining to life in prison, but apparently never did.

After 2008, Pakistan's military executed only one soldier in 2012 after convicting him of murder. Civilian authorities largely didn't discuss resuming executions, even as the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgent groups continued their campaign of violence across the country, including suicide bombings and the 2012 shooting of future Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The Dec. 16 attack changed everything. In Peshawar, Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school, killing 150 people, nearly all children attending class. Popular anger raged against the militants, many of whom have long ties to sections of Pakistani intelligence services.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif used his strongest language yet against the extremists, vowing there would be no discrimination between "good or bad Taliban" as he allowed those convicted of terror charges to be executed. He also pledged to "continue this war until even a single terrorist is not left on our soil,"

Days later, Pakistan carried out its first executions by hanging Mohammed Aqeel, convicted of attacking an army headquarters near Islamabad, and Arshad Mahmood, put to death for his role in a 2003 plot to kill Musharraf. Other executions followed. In all, at least 21 people have been executed in terror cases involving a plane hijacking, attacks on soldiers and other violence, according to data from the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

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In this Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2015 photo, family members of Shafqat Hussain, who was convicted and hang …

In March, Pakistan quietly lifted its execution ban entirely and hangings surged. Over all, Pakistan has executed at least 226 people, according to the commission, though an exact number is difficult to ascertain as authorities decline to discuss the death penalty in detail. Repeated requests for comment by the AP to the Pakistani Interior and Information ministries have gone unanswered.

Officials also said Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was traveling abroad and unable to discuss the executions. However, Khan told journalists in August that the country had executed at least 211 people, including terrorists. He did not elaborate.

On the street, the executions remain incredibly popular among many Pakistanis, including those who lost loved ones in the Peshawar school attack.

"I think terrorists should be killed at public places the way they kill innocent people," said Ashfaq Ahmed, an Islamabad taxi driver. "If terrorists use guns to kill people, you too kill them with guns. Kill them the way they kill innocent people."

Mohammad Ahsan, a university student, agrees.

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FILE - In this March 14, 2015 file photo, Makhni Begum holds a photograph of her son Shafqat Hussain …

"Hang 200 to 300 killers every day," he said.

But the rise in executions worries activists like Zohra Yusuf, the head of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. While only murder and treason carried the death penalty when Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, now 27 offenses carry the possibility of execution, including blasphemy charges often used in personal disputes against minorities in this largely Sunni Muslim country. While no one has been put to death for blasphemy, those accused in the past have been killed by mobs.

Others have raised concerns about death-row inmates being beaten into confessing to crimes they didn't commit or took part in as minors. In August, Pakistani authorities hanged Shafqat Hussain, who was convicted of killing a 7-year-old boy in 2004 when he was just 14, according to his family.

"There is a popular opinion in Pakistan that death penalty should not be abolished, but increasing incidents of terrorist attacks and routine crimes indicate that executions are not a deterrence," Yusuf said. "Even after the resumption of executions, violence has continued. There have been incidents of sectarian violence and we also witnessed attacks on churches."

Of the prisoners executed since December, most were convicted on murder charges. A confidential government report submitted to Pakistan's Supreme Court and seen by the AP said 7,056 prisoners were on death row in 2014, while the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it believes the number is more than 8,000. It's unclear how many of those on death row were convicted on terror-related charges.

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FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015 file photo, family members of Shafqat Hussain, who was convicte …

Either way, Pakistan was one of the world's top executioners this year, behind China, Iran and Iraq but ahead of Saudi Arabia, according to Amnesty International. The U.S. has carried out 19 in 2015 — 10 of them in Texas.

Pakistan carries out its executions at several locations, but all die by hanging.

A senior prison official and three other workers, all speaking on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to talk to journalists, told the AP that executions are carried out before sunrise. The condemned has a final meal, bathes and then has time to pray before being led to the gallows, they said. Executioners cover their face with a black hood and tie their hands and legs before hanging them, they said.

One of the last prisoners executed, 71-year-old Maqbool Husain, spoke to the AP before his death Aug. 27. He said a dispute between families over property saw him lose his right leg in an attack before his own family took revenge and amputated the leg of a rival. The other family killed two of his brothers in 1994 and Husain waited until 1996 before killing six of them in retaliation, he said.

Looking back on his life, he said: "I request all to end enmity so that no one faces hanging like me."

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Associated Press writers Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan, and Jon Gambrell in Cairo contributed to this report.

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Follow Munir Ahmed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/munirahmedap .