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The search for survivors grew more desperate, the homeless problem more acute and the death toll rose sharply Wednesday as rescuers labored to find signs of life amid the rubble of Monday's earthquakes and aftershocks that laid waste to a wide swath of Turkey and Syria.

Turkey’s disaster management agency said the country’s death toll passed 8,500. The Syrian Health Ministry placed the toll in government-held areas at more than 1,200, and at least 1,400 people have died in the rebel-held northwest, according to the White Helmets volunteer agency.

Dale Buckner, CEO of McLean, Virginia-based Global Guardian, said his international security firm has clients in the region, and his team is helping with medical evacuations, transportation and the delivery of food, water and power supplies in and around the earthquake zone. It will take months to stabilize the region and years to recover from the disaster, he said.

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Even as Donald Trump prepares to dial up his campaign to take back the White House, the former US president’s political and personal fate may already have been decided by the secret workings of a grand jury in Georgia.

The 23-member panel, convened to consider whether Trump and others committed crimes in trying to overturn his defeat in Georgia when it appeared the state might decide the outcome of the entire 2020 presidential election, was dissolved on Monday after submitting its conclusions and asking that they be made public.

If the grand jury’s report recommends prosecution, a county district attorney in Atlanta, Fani Willis, will face the most consequential decision of her career – whether, for the first time in American history, to charge a former president with a criminal offence.

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Jeremiah Green, the founding drummer for the rock band Modest Mouse, has died just days after the band announced he had been diagnosed with cancer. He was 45.

The US Senate has passed the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation to protect same-sex unions that Democrats are hurrying to get to Joe Biden to be signed into law before Republicans take over the House next year.

The House must now pass the bill, a step the majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said could come as soon as Tuesday 6 December. Nearly 50 House Republicans supported the measure earlier this year. In the Senate, support from 12 Republicans was enough to override the filibuster and advance the bill to Tuesday’s majority vote, which ended 61-36.

Although the Respect for Marriage Act would not codify Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 supreme court decision which made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, it would require states to recognise all marriages that were legal when performed, including in other states. Interracial marriages would also be protected, with states required to recognise legal marriage regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin”.

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Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched Feb. 24, will pass the nine-month mark this week. Areas of control in Ukraine mapped out by security analysts continue to shift. After Russia pulled out of Kherson this month, analysts say Russian forces may ramp up their operations elsewhere, in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Monday is the anniversary of the start of Ukraine's Euromaidan protests in 2013, sparked by the government backing out of a deal with the European Union. Now Ukraine is on a path toward EU membership.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Austin Lloyd, China's Defense Minister Wei Fenghe and a host of other countries' defense chiefs are due to participate in a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

On Thursday, Ukraine's finance minister is scheduled to speak at the London School of Economics and outline the country's path to recovery.

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