In Brief | Nation & World | 9-15-15

EU holds emergency talks on sharing refugees

BRUSSELS — European Union interior ministers meet for emergency migration talks on Monday, a day after Germany reintroduced checks at its border with Austria to stem the continuing flow of refugees.

The ministers will try to narrow a yawning divide over how to share responsibility for thousands of migrants arriving daily and ease the burden on frontline states.

Their talks will focus on distributing 160,000 refugees over the next two years, and the German decision to have checks at a border that for 20 years has usually been open as part of the EU’s landmark Schengen passport-free zone has added urgency.

The arrival of around 500,000 migrants so far this year has taken the EU by surprise and it has responded slowly.

Lacking a quick and comprehensive policy answer, countries have begun tightening border security or, in the case of Hungary, erecting fences. Greece is simply overwhelmed by the numbers and cannot properly screen migrants let alone lodge them.

Kentucky clerk allows same-sex licenses, but questions legality

MOREHEAD, Ky. — Undaunted in her religious faith but facing the specter of another courtroom reckoning, Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk who was jailed for defying a federal judge’s order that she issue marriage licenses, said Monday that she would not stop her employees from processing licenses for same-sex couples.

But the condition that Davis attached to her admittedly makeshift solution — that the licenses would lack her authorization — was the latest indication that her protracted legal and political battles would not go away soon. Davis’ strategy could spur new litigation to challenge the disputed licenses, and it was unclear how Judge David L. Bunning of U.S. District Court, who jailed Davis on Sept. 3, would respond.

By wire sources