According to the US State Department, "no one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance" within our government. And what constitutes a terrorist is rather expansive, as Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) explains. Even former White House Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel meets the criteria. Perianne Boring has more.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stressed Russia's strong rejection of the attempts of some NATO member states to repeat the Libyan scenario in Syria. ● "A group of NATO countries are violating with their activities the principles set out by the Security Council and thus trying to repeat the Libyan scenario in Syria," said Ryabkov in a talk among experts on the sidelines of the International Exhibition of Arms, Military Equipment in the Russian city of Nizhny Tagil. He affirmed that his country strongly opposes such acts at the international arena.

Moon of Alabama: Syria: The Mask Is Off

Most of Syria’s toxins can be destroyed more easily than officials initially thought. ● U.S. and Russian officials now believe that the vast majority of Syria’s nerve agent stockpile consists of “unweaponized” liquid precursors that could be neutralized relatively quickly, lowering the risk that the toxins could be hidden away by the regime or stolen by terrorists. A confidential assessment by the United States and Russia also concludes that Syria’s entire arsenal could be destroyed in about nine months, assuming that Syrian officials honor promises to cede control of the chemical assets to international inspectors, according to two people briefed on the analysis.

A Syria resolution drafted by Russia and the US and submitted to the UN Security Council does not suggest immediate military action under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, Russia’s FM Lavrov said. A vote on the measure could take place Friday evening. The Council has begun consultations on the draft and may vote on the resolution on Friday evening, as soon as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons makes its own decision on the submitted draft, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov might slightly extend his visit to New York to take part in the vote, and his counterparts from the Security Council member states are considering similar moves, Churkin added. The resolution which was submitted to the UN Security Council is fully in line with the Geneva framework on the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria, Sergey Lavrov told the press earlier on Thursday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's 68th session. “There will be no enforcement in line with Chapter 7,” he emphasized.

VoR: Russia, US agree on draft resolution on Syria chemical weapons - Lavrov
SANA: Lavrov : Russia, U.S reach understanding on Syria chemical arms resolution

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met Thursday in the highest-level talks between the two countries since the 1979 Iranian revolution. ● Going into the meeting, both US and Iranian representatives voiced optimism that progress could be made toward an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. “We’re going to have a good meeting, I’m sure,” Kerry said early on Thursday. ● The face-to-face encounter took place in the framework of a joint meeting of the foreign ministers of the so-called P5+1 group (consisting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—US, Russia, China, Britain and France—plus Germany), which was formed in 2006 to conduct diplomatic negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. ● Now the Iranian negotiations have overshadowed the diplomatic maneuvers surrounding Syria. It may well prove that both were part of a bid by the US administration to play for time, using the argument that the “diplomatic path” had been tried and had failed to prepare for military aggression once again.

Fars News Agency: Iran's Zarif, US Kerry Meet in New York
Fars News Agency: President Rouhani Asks for Global Nuclear Disarmament
LisTwns.com: Iran's President: No nation should have nuclear weapons - Video
Moon of Alabama: Some Agreement On U.S.-Iran Negotiations

The CNN aired its interview with Rouhani on Tuesday but the news channel added to or changed parts of his remarks when Christiane Amanpour asked him about the Holocaust. Here is the exact transcript of the Farsi text according to the CNN broadcast:

من قبلا گفتم که من تاریخ دان نیستم و ابعاد حوادث تاریخی را تاریخ دانان باید تبین کنند، بیان کنند و توضیخ بدهند. اما به طور کلی هرگونه جنایتی که در تاریخ علیه بشریت اتفاق افتاده باشد و از جمله جنایتی که نازی ها انجام دادند چه در مورد یهودیان و چه در مورد غیر یهودیان از نظر ما کاملا محکوم است همانطور که امروز هم اگر جنایتی انجام شود علیه هر ملتی یا هر دینی یا هر قومیتی یا هر اعتقادی، ما آن جنایت و نسل کشی را محکوم می کنیم بنابراین کار نازی ها محکوم است, ابعادی که شما می گویید به عهده مورخین و محققین است که آن ابعاد را روشن کنند. من محقق تاریخی نیستم.

Here is the exact English translation of President Rouhani's remarks:

Rouhani's: "I have said before that I am not a historian and historians should specify, state and explain the aspects of historical events, but generally we fully condemn any kind of crime committed against humanity throughout the history, including the crime committed by the Nazis both against the Jews and non-Jews, the same way that if today any crime is committed against any nation or any religion or any people or any belief, we condemn that crime and genocide. Therefore, what the Nazis did is condemned, (but) the aspects that you talk about, clarification of these aspects is a duty of the historians and researchers, I am not a history scholar."

Pakistan is poised to take the issue of Washington’s controversial drone strikes on the Pakistani soil to the United Nations. ● Pakistani government confirmed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will seek an immediate halt to such attacks during his speech at the annual UN General Assembly session. Senior Foreign Ministry officials say the prime minister will present Islamabad's viewpoint with regards to the ongoing US drone strikes within Pakistani territory while addressing the global platform. Sharif has been a vocal critic of US drone strikes since his party won the general election in May. He has frequently condemned the US assassination drone strikes in his country, describing them as a violation of international law and the UN charter.

Experts 95 per cent certain 'humans are responsible for global warming'. Well, of course they are. If there is one overriding prerequisite of every new IPCC Assessment report, it's to sound even more scary and urgent and certain than its predecessor. Professor Bob Carter noted this progression in his excellent book Climate: the Counter Consensus:

● First Assessment Report (1990) – "The observed [twentieth century] temperature increase could be largely due…to natural variability."
● Second Assessment Report (1996) – "The balance of the evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."
● Third Assessment Report (2001) – "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last fifty years is attributable to human activities."
● Fourth Assessment Report (2007) – "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-twentieth century is very likely [= 90 per cent probable] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

The irony is, of course, that the third, fourth and fifth assessment reports were all produced in a period of rising CO2 levels in which there has been no "global warming" whatsoever. You'd imagine that, had the scientific method been more highly valued by the IPCC, this rather glaring flaw in AGW theory might have been afforded more prominence. But this is not the IPCC Assessment Reports' job. As Christopher Booker and others have often noted, the IPCC's reports are essentially political artefacts rather than scientific ones. This is why some governments – including Germany's and Belgium's – have been manoeuvring behind the scenes to have the new IPCC report "sexed up".

Climate Depot: UN IPCC Report Exposed By Its Own Members as ‘a pure political process’

The murder of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi was an organized hit to cover up direct arm deals. ● A former CIA gun runner revealed that the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in order to cover up the U.S. State Department’s direct arm shipments to al-Qaeda. William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee started his career as a CIA contract pilot in the late 1950s, delivering guns and ammunition on behalf of the agency to Fidel Castro. Plumlee confirmed that such arm deals are still common today, with the State Dept. shipping arms to al-Qaeda via the CIA.

The National Security Agency's employees misused the agency's surveillance power and eavesdropped on the phone calls of girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives and spouses and engaged in other "intentional" abuses of their authority on "12 occasions" since 2003, according to a newly released letter by the agency’s inspector general. ● According to a letter by NSA inspector general Dr. George Ellard, the NSA employees at times have been caught in collecting intelligence on love interests. But until now, the specific examples and the frequency of such cases have never been disclosed by the NSA. The practice is known as LOVEINT. Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of 'INT,' such as 'SIGINT' for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and 'HUMINT' for human intelligence, or spying, the WSJ reports.

Russia Today: Intelligence agencies want 'all the phone records,' defend surveillance programs