Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• Syrian president in Moscow.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria met in Moscow with President Vladimir V. Putin late Tuesday in an unannounced visit to discuss their joint military campaign in Syria, a Kremlin spokesman said today.
Mr. Assad briefed Mr. Putin about the situation on the ground, and Mr. Putin said that Russia was ready to contribute to a political settlement of the conflict that has raged for more than four years.
The meeting came after Russia and the United States signed an agreement aimed at regulating aircraft and drone flights over Syria.
• Paul Ryan names his price.
Representative Paul D. Ryan is waiting for his Republican colleagues to decide if they will agree to conditions he set for serving as speaker of the House.
In private talks Tuesday night, he called for more focus on communicating the party’s message, and for an end to the antics of “bomb throwers and hand wringers,” according to lawmakers in the room.
• Call to cut prison rosters.
A group of more than 130 U.S. police chiefs, prosecutors and sheriffs today joins the movement to reduce the nation’s incarceration rate, saying “too many people are behind bars that don’t belong there.”
Members of the group are to meet on Thursday with President Obama.
• Jim Webb pulls out of race.
An independent race is still possible for former Senator Jim Webb, a onetime Republican, who dropped his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination after failing to gain traction.
• Police officer killed.
A New York City officer died after he was shot in the head while chasing a gunman in East Harlem on Tuesday, the authorities said.
• Before Clinton’s Benghazi testimony.
A longtime adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a conference call with top campaign donors tonight before Mrs. Clinton’s testimony on Thursday to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
The adviser, Huma Abedin, testified for eight hours before a private session of the House panel on Friday.
• Church arsons investigated.
Fires at six largely black churches in the St. Louis area in recent days are believed to be connected, but the authorities said they didn’t know if race had been a factor.
BUSINESS
• Stock in Ferrari starts trading today at $52 a share, the top end of estimates, after raising more than $894 million for its corporate parent, Fiat Chrysler. Its ticker symbol is RACE.
• Tesla lost the Consumer Reports endorsement of its Model S after a series of complaints from owners of the electric luxury sedan.
• The DNA-testing company 23andMe announces today that it will begin providing customers with their own health information again — though less than before, and now with the F.D.A.’s approval.
• Toyota Motor today begins U.S. sales of the Mirai, its hydrogen-powered sedan introduced last year in Japan.
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Separately, Toyota is recalling 6.5 million vehicles globally, almost half of them in North America, to fix a defect in the power window switch in Corolla, Camry and other models.
• Wall Street stock futures indicate another flat day. European indexes are slightly lower, and Asian shares ended mixed.
NOTEWORTHY
• A change in mammogram advice.
In a turnabout, the American Cancer Society now says women should start having mammograms at age 45 and continue yearly until 54.
It previously recommended mammograms and clinical breast exams starting at age 40. Here are the group’s new screening guidelines.
• On the diamond.
The Kansas City Royals could clinch the American League series this afternoon after taking a three-games-to-one lead over the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday.
In the National League, the New York Mets are one win from their first pennant since 2000 after beating the Chicago Cubs on a wild pitch on Tuesday. They meet again tonight.
• Missing Batman.
Batman won’t be there, but 15 other superheroes drop by Children’s National hospital in Washington today to cheer up patients and deliver toys.
Lenny Robinson, who visited kids as Batman for the Hope for Henry Foundation for nearly 10 years, was killed in a car accident in August when his custom-made “Batmobile” broke down on a Maryland roadside.
• Tracing your roots.
Experts at the National Archives answer your questions during a free online genealogy seminar today and Thursday.
Sessions, which will be live-streamed, include how to find your family in the archives, ancestral migration routes and exploring bankruptcy records.
• Health and wealth.
Swedish researchers have found that the higher a person’s income, the lower the risk of death after heart surgery. Those in the richest one-fifth of the patients studied were 29 percent less likely to die than those in the lowest-income group.
But the authors concede that it is possible that severe cardiac illness leads to lower income rather than the other way around.
• Reviving the dead.
Netflix is close to reviving the once-popular series “The Gilmore Girls” with 90-minute episodes. But some critics say the trend in bringing back TV series is a bad idea.
And here are the episode recaps for “Scream Queens” and “Jane the Virgin.”
• E-sports.
Our tech reporter Nick Wingfield describes how he took his kid to “video game little league,” a new wave of competitive e-sports for middle-school students.
BACK STORY
Celebrations for the centennial of Frank Sinatra’s birth get into full swing, so to speak, today in Los Angeles with two posthumous Grammy awards for the singer known as “the Chairman of the Board,” “the Voice” or “Ol’ Blue Eyes.”
These awards — unlike the nine Grammies he received before his death in 1998 at age 82 — are bestowed by the Grammy Museum, which today also opens the exhibit “Sinatra: An American Icon.”
New recordings, a special Jack Daniel’s Sinatra Select whiskey blend and even an app (Frank Sinatra 100) are also part of this year’s observances.
Sinatra, who had more than a dozen Top 40 hits, mostly in the 1960s, was born Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J. He holds the record — 57 — for the most albums to make the Billboard 200.
(The Hoboken Historical Museum has its own exhibit, “Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Voice and the Fans.”)
The Grammy Museum exhibit, which debuted at Lincoln Center in New York earlier this year, is open until the next Grammy Awards, in February.
It includes a re-creation of Sinatra’s favorite Studio A at Capitol Records in Hollywood, his original paintings, and many personal effects from the Sinatra family’s personal archives.
His signature fedora is there.
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