WORLD BRIEFS

SYRIA: Exiles balk at opposition plan

Sharp disagreements arose Sunday on the first day of a conference in Doha, Qatar, meant to forge a more cohesive leadership that the international community says is necessary before it will boost its support for those trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad. The exile Syrian National Council balked at a U.S.-backed plan that would largely sideline it to make room in a new leadership council for fighters and activists inside Syria. However, with international pressure mounting, the SNC also suggested it is willing to negotiate a compromise. The SNC has been widely seen as dysfunctional and out of touch.

Homs gets Red Cross aid

The International Committee of the Red Cross has delivered aid to hundreds of civilians trapped for months in Homs. The aid group said it reached the neighborhoods of Khalidiya and Hamidiya in the old city on Saturday after negotiations with the government and rebels. It said late Sunday 34 foreign delegates and Syrian Arab Red Crescent officials were able to deliver medical aid to 100 wounded people. In the civil war, meanwhile, rebels firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades captured an oil field in the east on Sunday, the Al-Ward oil field in the province of Deir el-Zour near the border with Iraq, after three days of fierce fighting with government troops protecting the facility, activists said.

EGYPT: A child picks Coptic pope

A blindfolded child reached into a crystal chalice and pulled out a slip of paper -- and Egypt's Coptic Christians had a new pope. It was the end of a complicated process that began when the church's charismatic leader for four decades, Pope Shenouda III, died in March at 88. A nominations committee narrowed the field of Shenouda's possible successors to five, and a vote by 2,400 church leaders chose three of them. That set up the final act. At the Coptic Cathedral, the boy reached into the vessel and pulled out the name of Bishop Tawadros. On Nov. 18 he will be ordained as Pope Tawadros II, the 118th pope of the ancient Coptic Orthodox Church.