President Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly this morning, his final speech before the international governing body. As he nears the end of his two terms in office, the president spoke about some of his administration's biggest foreign policy initiatives, including the importance of the Paris climate accord, the nuclear deal with Iran and fighting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. He also talked about the ongoing, multisided war in Syria. His speech comes the day after a cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia collapsed, in part because of distrust sowed by an accidental strike by a U.S-led coalition aircraft that killed Syrian soldiers over the weekend. And on Monday, an aid convoy in Syria was attacked from the air.

A Turkish businessman who was living in New York has died after he was attacked with a baseball bat during a brawl that erupted over his decision to relieve himself on private property. Kayhan Som, 56, told his driver to pull over due to his need to use the bathroom while he was heading from Manhattan to Whitestone neighborhood last week.

Already strained Turkish-U.S. relations have been further soured after Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) member Ahmet Sait Yayla was invited to speak to a congressional panel Wednesday that focused on the developments in Turkey and the July 15 Gülenist coup attempt. Yayla is a former police chief who was suspended from duty due to his alleged links to the terrorist group. Despite that, he was able to testify before the U.S. Congress on a hotbed topic: the July 15 coup attempt. Having understood that he cannot stay in Turkey as a terrorist group member, Yayla, who was chairman of the sociology department at Harran University, and a former Gülenist police chief, fled to the U.S. last November after it became public that he had links to FETÖ leader Fethullah Gülen.

Since the launch of TCA's Syrian Refugee Campaign in June 2016, TCA has distributed humanitarian grants to several organizations working directly on the ground with Syrian refugees in Turkey. These organizations include Refugee Volunteers of Izmir (ReVi), Butun Cocuklar Bizim (All Children are Ours), and Sureli Destek (Periodic Support).