The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed the traces of the sarin gas used in Syria are not linked with the Syrian government's former stockpile of chemical weapons. The report corroborates the Syrian government's assertions that the faction responsible for the chemical attack, as well as 11 other instances of chemical weapons use, was the Syrian opposition.

The report also substantiates last month's claims from Ahmed al-Gaddafi al-Qahsi, cousin of Muammar Gaddafi, who said that the chemical weapons used in the incident had been stolen from Libya and later smuggled into Syria via Turkey by militants.

The announcement follows an investigation carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at the request of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government. "In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance" said Ahmet Uzumcu, the head of the OPCW. He later added that the sarin gas examined bore different characteristics to the one formerly owned by the Syrian government.

When the devastating sarin gas incident left some 1400 civilians dead in East Ghouta in 2013, the United States, European Union and Arab League were quick to accuse Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian military of utilizing its chemical weapons to combat Islamist rebels in the Syrian capital.

Subsequently, the Syrian government agreed with Russia and the US administration to have its stockpile safely demolished in Norway. Less than a month ago, it was announced that the entirety of the chemical stockpile had been safely disposed of. Prior to the 2013 attack, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that the Syrian Army had seized chemical gas equipment from a militant field hospital in the western port city of Latakia. It cited a field commander stating that the nature of the equipment suggested militants had been planning to carry out chemical or biological attacks and blame the government.

Prime Minister David Cameron appears to have no evidence to support his claim that Britain's benefit system attracts EU migrants to the UK, according to a Tory minister's statement.

Former Labour leader Lord Kinnock requested the government release the "factual evidence" it has to prove EU migrants move to Britain to claim benefits.

In his response, Welfare Minister Lord Freud failed to provide any evidence.

Instead the junior minister, who is great grandson of Sigmund Freud, referred to 2013 data by the Department for Work and Pensions, which states "between 37 percent and 45 percent" of recent EU migrants lived in households that claimed benefits.

Desperation does not even begin to describe the current plight of the House of Saud.

Riyadh was fully aware the beheading of respected Saudi Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation bound to elicit a rash Iranian response.

The Saudis calculated they could get away with it; after all they employ the best American PR machine petrodollars can buy, and are viscerally defended by the usual gaggle of nasty US neo-cons.

In a post-Orwellian world "order" where war is peace and "moderate" jihadis get a free pass, a House of Saud oil hacienda cum beheading paradise — devoid of all civilized norms of political mediation and civil society participation — heads the UN Commission on Human Rights and fattens the US industrial-military complex to the tune of billions of dollars while merrily exporting demented Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadism from MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) to Europe and from the Caucasus to East Asia.

And yet major trouble looms. Erratic King Salman's move of appointing his son, the supremely arrogant and supremely ignorant Prince Mohammad bin Salman to number two in the line of succession has been contested even among Wahhabi hardliners.

But don't count on petrodollar-controlled Arab media to tell the story.

English-language TV network Al-Arabiyya, for instance, based in the Emirates, long financed by House of Saud members, and owned by the MBC conglomerate, was bought by none other than Prince Mohammad himself, who will also buy MBC.

With oil at less than $40 a barrel, largely thanks to Saudi Arabia's oil war against both Iran and Russia, Riyadh's conventional wars are taking a terrible toll. The budget has collapsed and the House of Saud has been forced to raise taxes.

The illegal war on Yemen, conducted with full US acquiescence, led by — who else — Prince Mohammad, and largely carried out by the proverbial band of mercenaries, has instead handsomely profited al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP), just as the war on Syria has profited mostly Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria.

Three months ago, Saudi ulemas called for a jihad not only against Damascus but also Tehran and Moscow without the "civilized" West batting an eyelid; after all the ulemas were savvy enough to milk the "Russian aggression" bandwagon, comparing the Russian intervention in Syria, agreed with Damascus, with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

US Think Tankland revels in spinning that the beheading provocation was a "signal" to Tehran that Riyadh will not tolerate Iranian influence among Shi'ites living in predominantly Sunni states. And yet Beltway cackle that Riyadh hoped to contain "domestic Shi'ite tensions" by beheading al-Nimr does not even qualify as a lousy propaganda script. To see why this is nonsense, let's take a quick tour of Saudi Arabia's Eastern province.

Russia says the Iranian missile program constitutes no basis on which the US can impose potential new sanctions against the Islamic Republic. "We have no confidence that there are any grounds for the imposition of sanctions against Iran in connection with its missile program," Interfax quoted a Russian diplomatic source as saying.

Talk of new US sanctions against Iran emerged after the Islamic Republic successfully test-fired a precision-guided long-range missile on October 11, 2015. Several US politicians have said the test violated a United Nations resolution against Iran, and called on the US administration to introduce new sanctions against Tehran.

"The Americans interpret the relevant provision of Resolution 1929 as prohibiting any ballistic missile launches, whereas the text speaks about a ban on launches of ballistic missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads," the Russian source also said, referring to the UN resolution adopted against Iran in June 2010.

The US administration, however, announced last month new sanctions against nearly a dozen companies and individuals for their alleged role in developing Iran's missile program. Fearing Iran's reaction, the White House delayed implementing the sanctions for an unspecified time. The sanctions would be the first ever since Iran and the P5+1 group reached a nuclear deal, dubbed as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in July 2015.

They're back!

From the look of the presidential campaign, war crimes are back on the American agenda. We really shouldn't be surprised, because American officials got away with it last time -- and in the case of the drone wars continue to get away with it today. Still, there's nothing like the heady combination of a "populist" Republican race for the presidency and a national hysteria over terrorism to make Americans want to reach for those "enhanced interrogation techniques." That, as critics have long argued, is what usually happens if war crimes aren't prosecuted.

In August 2014, when President Obama finally admitted that "we tortured some folks," he added a warning. The recent history of U.S. torture, he said, "needs to be understood and accepted. We have to as a country take responsibility for that so hopefully we don't do it again in the future." By pinning the responsibility for torture on all of us "as a country," Obama avoided holding any of the actual perpetrators to account.

Unfortunately, "hope" alone will not stymie a serial war criminal -- and the president did not even heed his own warning. For seven years his administration has done everything except help the country "take responsibility" for torture and other war crimes. It looked the other way when it comes to holding accountable those who set up and ran the CIA's large-scale torture operations at its "black sites" around the world. It never brought charges against those who ordered torture at Guantánamo. It prosecuted no one, above all not the top officials of the Bush administration.

Now, in the endless run-up to the 2016 presidential elections, we've been treated to some pretty strange gladiatorial extravaganzas, with more to come in 2016. In these peculiarly American spectacles, Republican candidates hurl themselves at one another in a frenzied effort to be seen as the candidate most likely to ignore the president's wan hope and instead "do it again in the future." As a result, they are promising to commit a whole range of crimes, from torture to the slaughter of civilians, for which the leaders of some nations would find themselves hauled into international court as war criminals. But "war criminal" is a label reserved purely for people we loathe, not for us. To paraphrase former President Richard Nixon, if the United States does it, it's not a crime.

The European Union called on Friday on all parties involved in the ongoing Syrian civil war to implement measures in order to stop attacks on civilians amid the upcoming intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva.

In late December, the UN press service said that a target date for intra-Syrian negotiations was January 25. On Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the talks would take place on schedule and would not be disrupted by the diplomatic fallout between Iran and Saudi Arabia,

"It will be important to implement concrete confidence building measures in support of the upcoming intra-Syrian political talks scheduled to start at the end of January: an end to attacks on civilians, to aerial bombardments and sieges of civilian areas," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and EU Commissioner for Humanitarian aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides said in a joint statement.

Russia's counterterrorism operation in Syria has essentially made possible the achievements of the Iraqi forces in their fight against Daesh, political analyst Professor Stephen F. Cohen said during the John Batchelor Show.

This could sound surprising to some but consider this: Moscow's anti-Daesh campaign, according to Cohen, "has been denigrated and deleted in the US press coverage but it has been very-very successful." The analyst described Russia's contribution to the fight against Daesh as "tremendous."

Moscow has helped Damascus-led forces to strengthen their position so that they could tackle Daesh. The campaign has "also contributed to the wins (that the United States is boasting of) in Iraq," the analyst said, referring to the recent victory in Ramadi.

President Bill Clinton warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that Iraq could become a "nightmare" for the UK four years before Britain and the US invaded the country in search of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Previously secret transcripts of phone calls between the two leaders reveal Clinton spoke to Blair extensively about Saddam Hussein's suspected chemical weapons and his violation of no-fly zones.

The documents published by the BBC following a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, also disclose the two leaders' mixed feelings about newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While Clinton initially lavished praise on Putin as someone with "enormous potential," he later expressed caution about the Russian leader, suggesting he would get "get squishy on democracy."

US ground forces have been stationed in the surrounding areas of Tishrin Dam Northeast of Aleppo province after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized full control of the dam from the ISIL nearly two weeks ago, media reports disclosed on Friday.

"US troops are presently in control of the Tishrin Dam," the Arabic service of Deutsche Welle news channel quoted Syria's Local Coordinating Committees as saying on Friday.

This is the first US deployment of ground forces in Syria after the crisis started in the country in March 2011.

The US deployment runs counter to President Obama's repeated claims that his country would have "no boots on the ground" in Iraq and Syria.

As long as the Turkish President pursues a policy that contributes to the prosperity of terrorists in the Middle East, a resolution on addressing the situation in the region would be extremely difficult, German politician Sahra Wagenknecht said.

Western countries should exert pressure on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and put an end to the secret relations of Ankara and Daesh (also known as Islamic State terrorist group), otherwise the conflict in Syria may escalate, Deputy Chairman of the Left Party Sahra Wagenknecht said in an interview with German magazine Spiegel.

"The escalation risks are extremely high," Wagenknecht said. "There are now 15 countries fighting in Syria, sometimes together, sometimes side by side, sometimes against each other. There is no common strategy," she added.