The USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating US preparation for a potential ground intervention.

While the Obama administration has not announced any sort of American-led military intervention in the war-torn country, the US is now ready to launch such action “within days” if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to use chemical weapons against the opposition, the Times reports. Some have suggested that the Assad regime may use chemical weapons against the opposition fighters in the coming days or weeks. The arrival of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers that has the capacity to hold thousands of men, is now stationed at the coast of Syria, DEBKAfile reports. The aircraft carrier joined the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, which holds about 2,500 Marines.

Russia Today: ‘Syria is not Libya’ - Lavrov
Al-ManarTV: Two Russian Warships Land in Tartus Port (Syria)
Finian Cunningham: 'West moves in for Syrian endgame and war on Iran'
Michel Chossudovsky: Western Naval Forces Confront Russia Off the Syrian Coastline?

PressTV: Chemical Weapons, West excuse for war on Syria: Official - In an interview with the Lebanese news channel al-Manar on Thursday, Maqdad dismissed as "theater" reports that Damascus was preparing to use chemical weapons during the ongoing turmoil in Syria. "Syria stresses again, for a tenth and a hundredth time, if we had such weapons, they would not be used," Maqdad said.Maqdad said Syria's foes might give "terrorists" chemical weapons and then blame the use of them on Damascus.

Officials in the southeast Asian nation announced Thursday that even emergency shelters were no match for the large storm. - A powerful typhoon that washed away emergency shelters, a military camp and possibly entire families in the southern Philippines has killed almost 350 people with nearly 400 missing, authorities said Thursday. More bodies were retrieved from hardest-hit Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental provinces and six others impacted by Tuesday's storm, the Office of Civil Defense reported. At least 200 of the victims died in Compostela Valley alone, including 78 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp. "Entire families may have been washed away," said Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who visited New Bataan on Wednesday. The farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and coconut and banana trees felled by ferocious winds.

BBC: Philippine Typhoon Bopha death toll passes 300 - Video
WikiPedia: Typhoon Bopha (2012)

At least five people have been killed in an air strike carried out by US-led forces in the eastern Afghan province of Nuristan, Press TV reports.

Afghan officials say that the victims were all members of one family and that they were not affiliated to any political group. Foreign forces have not yet commented on the incident that took place on Wednesday. Civilian casualties inflicted by US-led troops have dramatically increased anti-US sentiments in Afghanistan. The deaths have been the main source of friction between Kabul and Washington over the past years. The US-led war in Afghanistan began in October 2001. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across the country, despite the presence of about 130,000 US-led troops.

Members of the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have agreed to work towards implementing a standard for the Internet that would allow for eavesdropping on a worldwide scale. - At a conference in Dubai this week, the ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through data passed across the Web. According to the UN, implementing deep-packet inspection, or DPI, on such a global scale will allow authorities to more easily detect the transferring and sharing of copyrighted materials and other protected files by finding a way for administrators to analyze the payload of online transmissions, not just the header data that is normally identified and interpreted.

TechDirt: ITU Approves Deep Packet Inspection Standard Behind Closed Doors, Ignores Huge Privacy Implications

Muslim Brotherhood (MB) forces supporting Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Mursi are carrying out a bloody crackdown in Cairo. Amid intensifying mass protests in the past two weeks against Mursi, the Islamists are mobilizing their forces to try to crush strikes and protests. - In scenes recalling the “Battle of the Camels”—when then-President Hosni Mubarak’s thugs attacked protesting workers and youth on Tahrir Square in the initial days of the Egyptian Revolution last year—MB cadres together with forces of the Salafist Call and al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya assaulted a sit-in of several hundred peaceful protesters in front of the presidential palace in Heliopolis in Cairo. The sit-in began after hundreds of thousands of workers and youth protested, demanding the ouster of Mursi and the cancellation of Mursi’s presidential decree, granting himself dictatorial powers, on Tuesday night. It was one of the largest mass protests against the MB and Mursi since Mursi’s power grab two weeks ago.

Al Jazeeera: Egypt deploys tanks outside Morsi palace - Video

The U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to quickly open its nuclear program for inspection and backing a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled. - All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on Nov. 23 that it wouldn’t take place, citing political turmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation. Iran and some Arab nations countered that the real reason for the cancellation was Israel’s refusal to attend. The resolution, approved Monday by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ‘‘without further delay’’ and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting ‘‘no’’ were Israel, the U.S., Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

Russia Today: Israel rejects UN call for nuclear transparency
AWIP: Israel joins US in false claim on Syria ‘WMDs’

The Moment had arrived! I’m talking about that Benghazi Moment, when the axis of elite opinion turns and the Forces of Righteousness come to the rescue — Syria’s internet was down!

Rachel Maddow had one of those “Oh, This is Serious” looks on her face as she solemnly warned us that Something Was Up: that nasty old critter Bashar al-Assad was about to commit Hair-Raising Atrocities “in the dark”! Think of those poor jihadists “rebels” who would have to construct their suicide bombs without downloading the instructions — why, that could be dangerous! Of course, Maddow knew who was behind this outage, because the US government told her what to believe, and she believed it. So in place of reporting, you know, actual news, she channeled US government officials accusing the Syrian government of this dastardly act. “The worry is that the Syria government has made that country go dark, so that under cloak of darkness they can do something to their own people that they are unwilling to have people see in the light.” Oh, the drama! The sheer power of the narrative! Where’s Richard Engel when you really need him?!

Oh, but wait …! Two days later, our Rachel was “reporting” the imminence of yet another Benghazi Moment — the Syrians, she breathlessly recounted, have Weapons of Mass Destruction! Without referencing her previous false alarm, Maddow once again solemnly informed us the evil Syrian government was about to visit Death and Destruction “on its own people” — you know, just like Saddam Hussein, that other possessor of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Because, you see, the Syrians have poison gas — sarin and mustard gas, primarily — and US government officials are noting “unusual movements” near these sites. Is it really necessary to point out the completely nonsensical aspect of this allegation?

The Israeli government’s announcement that it is to expand settlements in the West Bank in response to the United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood violates human rights and international humanitarian law, Amnesty International said today. - Israel said on Friday that it had authorised an additional 3,000 housing units to build or expand settlements in unidentified locations in the occupied West Bank. The announcement came a day after Palestine was recognised as a non-member observer state of the UN by a vote at the UN General Assembly in New York. Israel has previously announced new plans for settlement expansion in reaction to Palestinian diplomatic initiatives at the UN. On 3 November 2011, following Palestine’s admission into United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organisation UNESCO, the Israeli government announced that around 2,000 new homes would be built in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank settlements of Efrat and Ma’ale Adumim. Twelve days later the Ministry of Housing published tenders for 2,230 new housing units beyond the Green Line (the 1949 Armistice Line). Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Ann Harrison said: "This announcement sends a strong signal to the world that the current Israeli government has no respect for human rights and international law.

Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to see how effective they were. Details of the top secret project have been unearthed in the files of the Stasi secret police in Berlin. The communist regime profited with millions in hard currency. But the human cost was high with dozens killed through side effects of drugs which had bypassed the normally stringent testing procedures demanded by western democracies. Even worse, some patients received placebos - pills that did nothing at all - to gauge how they responded in comparison to others who were given proper medication.