World: Saudi Arabia stunned the UN and the diplomatic world by rejecting a long-desired seat on the Security Council as an act of protest against the UN’s failure to deal with major problems in the Middle East. High on Saudi Arabia’s list of complaints is the lack of strong action on the Syrian civil war, but also the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iran.

National: Two Florida prisoners released with forged documents later registered in Orange County and had their fingerprints taken in what may have been a continuance of the fraud that got them out of jail. Both men were serving life sentences. Police are looking for them

>A trainee Catholic nun in Washington, DC has been charged with first-degree murder in the smothering death of her newborn baby. Police say the 26-year-old woman told them she was afraid the other nuns would hear the baby crying.

A similar case is unfolding in New York, where a security guard at a Victoria’s Secret lingerie store stopped a 17-year-old suspected of shoplifting and discovered a dead baby in a shopping bag. With the baby’s cause of death uncertain, so far the girl is charged only with shoplifting. She told investigators she gave birth the day before and was carrying the body because she didn’t know what to do with it.

World: At least 200 homes have burned in a rash of 80 wildfires in New South Wales, Australia. It’s unseasonably hot and just the beginning of summer. The Army is investigating whether one of the fires might have been started by a live-fire artillery exercise.

Boys of October: St. Louis smacked the Dodgers 9-0 last night to move on to the World Series for the second time in three seasons. Boston is 3-2 against the Tigers and Game 6 is tonight at Fenway.

The Obit Page: Former NFL coach “Bum” Phillips, who with the Houston Oilers was for a time the most winning coach in the league, has died at age 90. He wore cowboy boots and Stetsons on the sidelines.  Phillips was known for his folksy truisms called “Bumisms”, the most famous of which was, “There’s two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.”

• Former House Speaker Tom Foley, the Democrat at the helm when Republicans took the House in 1994, has died at age 84 of complications of a stroke. After 30 years in the House Foley also lost his own seat in that election and was replaced as Speaker by Newt Gingrich (R-GA). Foley was known as a skilled compromiser who used to say “the perfect should not get in the way of the achievable.”

Crime of the Century: The shortage of small batch bourbons just got shorter. The makers of Pappy Van Winkle report that someone has stolen 195 bottles of 20-year-old bourbon, which retails for $130 a bottle. It had to be an inside job. Pappy is released to the market once a year, and basically, you can’t get any even when they do. A shot in a bar can cost $75 and a bottle recently sold at auction for $1,190.

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