NATO supports efforts to control and eliminate Syrian chemical weapons

An official in the alliance told Itar-Tass, commenting on Russia’s proposal to Damascus to put its chemical weapons arsenal under international control, “efforts to ensure the control of and ultimate destruction of Syria's chemical weapons are positive and we support the UN in this area; however, the details of these proposals are not yet clear,” the source said. “The international community has a responsibility to make sure that the longstanding norm and practice against the use of chemical weapons is maintained, and violators are held accountable.” 

American arms experts are going to Geneva with US Secretary of State John Kerry

Where he will meet on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for talks on Syria, AFP reports, the talks are expected to last for at least two days, possibly more, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a media briefing, Reuters reports, while in Geneva, Kerry also plans to meet with UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the US and Russia to tackle the obstacles to delivering aid in Syria.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are to meet in Geneva on Thursday to discuss Russia’s plan to transfer Syrian chemical weapons to international control, both Syrian government forces and rebels are preventing medical assistance from reaching the sick and wounded, Reuters cited Red Cross president Peter Maurer as saying.

Five permanent members of the UN Security Council are holding a closed-door meeting on Syria

The meeting where the envoys are expected to discuss the French proposed resolution, it follows a gathering of representatives from Britain, France and the US earlier on Wednesday. 

Russia has submitted to the UN Security Council documents providing evidence that chemical weapons were used by rebel forces, Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Aleksandr Zasypkin told Al Mayadeen channel, reports RIA Novosti.

British parliament to discuss bringing back national service

A bill reintroducing national service, or conscription, in the UK has been put forward for discussion in parliament. The legislation would make it mandatory for 18-26-year-olds to participate in military or charitable service for a period of one year, the bill was brought to parliament by Conservative MP Philip Hollobone, who has championed the legislation as a way to inspire young people in Britain with “self-respect, personal reliance, discipline and behavior.”

“I believe that the introduction of a modern form of national service would prove popular with the public and be of immense benefit to the young people who take part,” Hollobone said, the year of charitable or military service could range from care for the elderly or disabled to work with the emergency services or the armed forces. Those who do not participate would be guilty of a criminal offense.

Hollobone brought the bill to parliament to be debated last Friday, but discussion was postponed until February next year.

source rt.com

Israel stockpiled chemical weapons decades ago – CIA document

American surveillance satellites uncovered in 1982 “a probable CW [chemical weapon] nerve agent production facility and a storage facility... at the Dimona Sensitive Storage Area in the Negev Desert,” states the secret 1983 CIA intelligence estimate obtained by Foreign Policy (FP),“ according to FP, US intelligence agencies are almost certain that Israel possesses a stockpile of nuclear weapons that the Middle Eastern country developed in the 1960s and 1970s as part of its defense against a possible attack from Arab neighbors.

The FP report is based on a page from a secret, Sept. 15, 1983, CIA Special National Intelligence Estimate entitled “Implications of Soviet Use of Chemical and Toxin Weapons for US Security Interests.” Part of the document was released in 2009 in the National Archives, but the piece on Israel was extracted from that version.

Experts’ attention, in particular, was focused on the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Ness Ziona, located 20 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. The highly-classified research center operated and funded by the Israel Ministry of Defense is alleged to be a military facility manufacturing chemical and biological weapons.  The IIBR was allegedly involved in several “accidents.” In one of them, according to the British Foreign Report in 1998, authorities were close to ordering evacuation of homes in the area before scientists discovered there was no threat to the population.

source rt.com

Google rejects music industry request to remove Pirate Bay homepage

The Pirate Bay has long been a thorn in the side of copyright holders, but when Britain’s record industry trade association asked Google to remove the notorious file-sharing site from its homepage, the search engine refused to comply.

The BPI, which comprises the big three record companies (Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group), hundreds of independents representing thousands of labels as well as associated manufactures and distributors, is every bit the stake holder in the anti-piracy crusade as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US, albeit less well-known stateside.
Last week, the BPI sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice containing over 2,000 URLs which allegedly infringe the US law criminalizing production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works.

Google, however, refused to comply with the BPI’s request, making The Pirate Bay homepage the only URL in the entire notice where no proscriptive action was taken.
The catch is that while search results on The Pirate Bay provides links to hundreds of thousands of infringing titles, its own homepage in fact provides no links to pirated content.
This means that while The Pirate Bay’s search results pages may not show up in the Google index, the site’s homepage meets these standards, and should not be excluded.

source rt.com