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scraggly mongrels that shelter in demolition sites, rifle through garbage -- and increasingly attack humans. The capital's massive stray dog population, a legacy of communism and its aftermath, can have lethal consequences: In recent years, a Bucharest woman was killed by a pack of strays, and a Japanese tourist died after a stray severed an artery in his leg.
• Now, after a 4-year-old boy was fatally mauled last week, the city wants to take action. The controversial plan that has divided Bucharest? To capture and kill Bucharest's tens of thousands of strays, blamed for dozens of attacks every day that need medical treatment. Animal lovers and dog-wary citizens are at such loggerheads that the city has called a referendum next month on whether to go forward.
• "We will do what Bucharest's people want, exactly what they want," Mayor Sorin Oprescu said last week in announcing the Oct. 6 referendum.
• The stray dog population of this city of 2 million rose rapidly as the city expanded into once rural areas after communism ended in 1989. The Matei Bals hospital which handles infectious diseases has treated 9,760 people for dog bites in the first eight months of the year, of which a quarter were children, according to spokesman Catalin Apostolescu. It was the death of the 4-year-old boy playing with his older brother in a park that sparked a new impassioned debate over putting down strays.
• A day after the fatal attack, President Traian Basescu, a vocal supporter of stray dog euthanasia, called on the government of Prime Minister Victor Ponta to pass a law that would allow for stray dogs to be killed. "Humans are above dogs," Ponta said.
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• PARIS (AP) -- France will float a resolution in the U.N. Security Council aimed at forcing Syria to make public its chemical weapons program, place it under international control and dismantle it, the French foreign minister said Tuesday.
• Laurent Fabius said France, a permanent member of the 15-nation U.N. body, will start the resolution process on Tuesday under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable. The proposal would also condemn a chemical weapons attack near Damascus on Aug. 21 that Western powers allege was carried out by Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime -- a claim he has denied.
• The French initiative comes a day after Russia, a fellow permanent member of the council that has been a key ally of Assad's regime, expressed support for a pro

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