Claims 'Evidence' of Usage, But Stumped on Who, How, or When. - President Obama claims that the US now has “evidence” of chemical weapons use inside Syria, but is missing some very key pieces of the puzzle, such as when they were used, how they were used, and most importantly who even used them. Insisting that the Pentagon planners had given him an array of “options” militarily, Obama conceded that the US really can’t confirm that the Assad government actually used the chemical weapons and that they couldn’t really do anything until they figure that part out. Intelligence sources last month were saying that the largest such “attack” was almost certainly launched by the rebels, noting that it targeted Syrian troops and used a more primitive type of agent than the Syrian arsenal is believed to consist of.

Tony Cartalucci: West's WMD Lies Fray as Syrian Army Overruns Terrorist Proxies

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said the root of the conflict with the Palestinians was not about territory but about their refusal to recognise Israel as the Jewish state.

"The root of the conflict is not territorial. It started a long time before 1967," Netanyahu told top foreign ministry officials. "The Palestinians' lack of will to recognise the state of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people is the root of the conflict."

Haaretz: Netanyahu says there's no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - The problem is not the settlements; the root of the conflict is the fact that the Palestinians refuse to recognize the existence of the Jewish state. What the countries of the world have to do is expose the true face of the Palestinians and force them to recognize Israel not only as just any country, but as a Jewish state. “This is an insoluble conflict because it is not about territory,” he says. “It is not that you can give up a kilometer more and solve it. The root of the conflict is in an entirely different place. Until Abu Mazen recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, there will be no way to reach an agreement.”

Jason Ditz: Netanyahu Dismisses Land-Swap: Conflict Never Over Territory

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah hinted Tuesday that his group, as well as President Bashar Assad’s other allies Iran and Russia, could intervene militarily to prevent the downfall of the Damascus government. - The head of the resistance group also said his fighters would continue to defend Lebanese in Syrian border villages from rebel attacks, arguing that the Lebanese state was unable to fulfill the task itself. “Syria has real friends in the region and the world that will not let Syria fall in the hands of America, Israel or Takfiri groups. They will not let this happen,” Nasrallah, Assad’s closest ally in Lebanon, said in a televised speech. “How will this happen? Details will come later. I say this based on information...rather than wishful thinking,” Nasrallah added.

The Daily Star: Nasrallah hints Assad’s allies could intervene
Al-Manar News: Nasrallah: Syria’s Friends won’t Let It Fall in US, Israel, Takfiri Hands
PressTV: Nasrallah: Syria conflict aims to divide country into statelets

During a Tuesday speech to New York City Police Department brass, Mayor Michael Bloomberg equated critics of the controversial stop-and-frisk policy, which is the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit, with an unruly mob. Stop-and-frisk was enacted in 2002, but has drawn public ire in recent months after a federal judge ruled in January that the practice of searching pedestrians without probable cause is unconstitutional.

PressTV: New York mayor defends intrusive police practice that targets minorities

Michel Chossudovsky: In the wake of the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan, the British government of Tony Blair was entrusted by the G-8 Group of leading industrial nations to carry out a drug eradication program, which would, in theory, allow Afghan farmers to switch out of poppy cultivation into alternative crops. The British were working out of Kabul in close liaison with the US DEA’s “Operation Containment”. The UK sponsored crop eradication program is an obvious smokescreen. Since October 2001, opium poppy cultivation has skyrocketed. The presence of occupation forces in Afghanistan did not result in the eradication of poppy cultivation. Quite the opposite.

A lost ancient Egyptian city submerged beneath the sea 1,200 years ago is starting to reveal what life was like in the legendary port of Thonis-Heracleion.

For centuries it was thought to be a legend, a city of extraordinary wealth mentioned in Homer, visited by Helen of Troy and Paris, her lover, but apparently buried under the sea. In fact, Heracleion was true, and a decade after divers began uncovering its treasures, archaeologists have produced a picture of what life was like in the city in the era of the pharaohs. The city, also called Thonis, disappeared beneath the Mediterranean around 1,200 years ago and was found during a survey of the Egyptian shore at the beginning of the last decade. Now its life at the heart of trade routes in classical times are becoming clear, with researchers forming the view that the city was the main customs hub through which all trade from Greece and elsewhere in the Mediterranean entered Egypt.

They have discovered the remains of more than 64 ships buried in the thick clay and sand that now covers the sea bed. Gold coins and weights made from bronze and stone have also been found, hinting at the trade that went on. Giant 16 foot statues have been uncovered and brought to the surface while archaeologists have found hundreds of smaller statues of minor gods on the sea floor. Slabs of stone inscribed in both ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian have also been brought to the surface. Dozens of small limestone sarcophagi were also recently uncovered by divers and are believed to have once contained mummified animals, put there to appease the gods.

Dr Damian Robinson, director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford, who is part of the team working on the site, said: “It is a major city we are excavating. “The site has amazing preservation. We are now starting to look at some of the more interesting areas within it to try to understand life there. “We are getting a rich picture of things like the trade that was going on there and the nature of the maritime economy in the Egyptian late period. There were things were coming in from Greece and the Phoenicians.

A major study of attitudes towards religion says Germans approve of openness towards other religions. But many are still suspicious of Islam. Former German President Christian Wulff earned much praise but also much criticism when said in a speech during his tenure, "Islam is also a part of Germany." The criticism can be partly explained by the "Religion Monitor," a survey put together for the Bertelsmann Foundation. The findings have been published, and among them is the fact that half of all Germans believe that Islam does not fit into the Western world. The study, which surveys views on the social significance of religion and values, was carried out in Germany and 12 other countries, and included the views of 14,000 people. Among the Germans, 85 percent agreed or tended to agree that one should be open towards all religions. They saw most religions as an enrichment, especially Christianity, also Judaism and Buddhism, but a majority of 51 percent saw Islam as a threat. Detlef Pollack, the sociologist who co-authored the study, says that this negative perception could be due to the lack of personal contact between Christians and Muslims. More people in eastern Germany see Islam as threatening than in the West, even though the east is home to only two percent of all the country's Muslims. But Pollack also notes that people have even less contact with Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, all of which are seen more positively than Islam, and he argues that the media have a lot to do with that: "The picture the media give of Buddhism or Hinduism is that of peace-loving religions," Pollack told Deutsche Welle. "Their picture of Islam is more about fanaticism and aggression."