Dzokhar Tsarnaev (AFP Photo)

 Boston Bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev has been officially charged with killing four people and using weapons of mass destruction, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Tsarnaev, 19, faces a potential death sentence over the alleged crimes.

According to the United States Attorneys’ Office, 17 of the 30 charges levied against the teenager carry a penalty of life in prison or execution.

“The defendant’s alleged conduct forever changed lives," prosecutors said in a statement.

Officials believe the former UMass Dartmouth student and his older brother Tamerlan planted homemade explosives near the finish line ahead of the April 15 race. The double explosion that went off as runners crossed the line en masse caused three deaths and 264 injuries.

The indictment says the Tsarnaev brothers used pressure cookers stuffed with low-explosive powder, ball bearings, nails, adhesive, electronic components, and other substances to manufacture their devices.

Jahar Tsarni, as prosecutors referred to him, is also charged with carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury. While fleeing the police, the brothers stopped a vehicle and ordered the driver to turn over the car and $800, according to officers.

“I thought it was just a robbery...He took out his gun, pointed it to me,” the carjacking victim told CBS. “He told that, ‘You know I am serious. Don’t be stupid.’”

Four days later, the Tsarnaev brothers allegedly killed a police officer during a firefight. Tamerlan also died in the incident.

  A wounded Dzokhar later hid inside a boat in the backyard of a Watertown, Massachusetts residence. He was arrested after a massive manhunt and placed in a medical prison facility where he has stayed ever since.

Prosecutors say Tsarnaev scribbled an anti-government message as he bled from a throat and leg wound, waiting for the police to find him.

“The US Government is killing our innocent civilians. I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished. We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all,” it read, the indictment claims. “Stop killing our innocent people, we will stop.”

One of the passages, the FBI claimed, quoted Anwar al-Awlaki, the American propagandist killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Previous reports indicated that Tamerlan Tsarnaev watched Awlaki’s speeches on YouTube.

“Today’s indictment is the result of the dedicated and collective efforts of law enforcement and intelligence partners, working with a sense of urgency and purpose to find those responsible for those deadly attacks,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. “These continuing efforts reflect the pursuit of justice for those who lost their lives and the scores of individuals who were injured.”

While the indictment did not speculate on any larger conspiracy behind the attacks, prosecutors did say they found an issue of Inspire magazine - an English language Al-Qaeda publication - downloaded by Dzokhar. The literature, which was dated  summer of 2010, contained “detailed instructions for constructing IEDs using pressure cookers, explosive powder from fireworks, shrapnel, adhesive and other materials,” the indictment read.

“IEDs constructed in this manner are designed to shred flesh, shatter bone, and cause extreme pain and suffering, as well as death.”

Dzokhar was initially unable to talk, but said in a phone call released by his mother earlier this month that he is well-fed and recovering physically.

The Tsarnaev brothers are ethnic Chechens and have roots in Russia’s North Caucasus – a region that has witnessed a massive Islamist insurgency in the past and partly remains a hotbed of extremism.

US military commanders are examining ways the US could bolster security in Syria’s neighboring countries, and have recommended sending military trainers to Lebanon and Iraq.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on Wednesday revealed US plans to strengthen military assistance in Lebanon and Iraq as the conflict in Syria begins to spill over its borders. Dempsey noted that Iraq is suffering the re-emergence of al-Qaeda. Terrorist fighters, including members of the al Nusra Front, are crossing from Iraq into Syria, he said.

"We've made a recommendation that as we look at the challenges faced by the Lebanese armed forces, the Iraqi security forces with a re-emerging al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Jordanians, that we would work with them to help them build additional capability," Dempsey told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

To strengthen US security assistance in the region, he recommends that the US accelerate arms sales and send military training teams to Lebanon and Iraq. He already asked Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the US Central Command, to consider small deployments in upcoming weeks, Dempsey spokesman Col. Edward Thomas told CNN.

Thomas said that “it’s in the realm of the possible” that training teams will be sent back into Iraq – a move that would mark the first significant deployment since the US withdrew its troops in 2011. Dempsey emphasized that the US was not sending combat troops into Lebanon or Iraq, but noted that a Patriot missile battery and about a dozen F-16 fighter jets had already been left in Jordan, bringing the total number of American forces in the country to 1,000.

"Militarily, what we're doing is assisting our partners in the region, the neighbors of Syria, to ensure that they're prepared to account for the potential spillover effects," Dempsey said during Pentagon briefing. "As you know, we've just taken a decision to leave some Patriot missile batteries and some F-16s in Jordan as part of the defense of Jordan. We're working with our Iraqi counterparts, the Lebanese Armed Forces and Turkey through NATO."

Syria’s two-year war has already killed more than 100,000 people, and both Iraq and Lebanon have witnessed an increase in violence as the Syrian conflict has divided supporters of President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian rebels.

Ali al-Moussawi, the media adviser for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, on Thursday told AP that Baghdad would be welcome to increased arms sales and US training teams to address instability in the region.

The US has long maintained that its involvement in the conflict would be limited. But if military commanders agree to send trainers to the region, the US would have a more direct role in addressing the violence along the Syrian border.

“When you say would we send the United States Army or the United States military into Lebanon, I'm talking about teams of trainers, and I'm talking about accelerating foreign military sales for equipment for them," Dempsey said, trying to reassure Americans that combat troops would not be deployed. "This is about building their capability, not ours."

A revered Syrian monk and hermit, Father Franҫois Mourad, has been killed during an assault of the Franciscan monastery in a predominantly Christian village in the north near the Turkish border, Vatican Radio reported.

The circumstances surrounding Mourad’s death in the monastery of St. Anthony of Padua, about 70 miles from Syria’s largest city Aleppo, remain unclear.

It’s believed that Maroud was shot dead when tried to defend several religious sisters from the rebels when the monastery that gave them shelter was attacked and pillaged on June 23.

In a statement issued earlier this week the Prefect Cardinal Leonardo Sandri said that “this latest episode of unjustified violence, arouse the conscience of the leaders of the conflicting parties and the international community, so that, as repeatedly stated by the Holy Father Pope Francis, the guns of war be silenced and a season of justice and reconciliation begun for a future of peace.”

After the outbreak of the war in Syria, Father François left his hermitage to be with a friar in fragile health and to serve a neighboring community of religious sisters, Vatican Radio reported.

The head of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, told Vatican Radio that Mourad was not a Franciscan, but had to take refuge in the convent after it became clear he was not safe at the Syriac Catholic hermitage that he was building nearby.

According to Father Pizzaballa, the Ghassanieh neighborhood "like other Christian villages, has been almost completely destroyed and is almost totally abandoned," adding that the only people left there were "the rebels with their families, rebels who are not from Syria and who are extremists."

"The only thing we can do, other than pray for Father Francois and all the victims, is pray that this folly ends soon and that no more weapons are sent to Syria because that would only prolong this absurd civil war," Father Pizzaballa suggested.

He described the current situation in Syria as a "battleground, and not just between Syrian forces, but also for other Arab countries and the international community. The ones paying the price are the poor, the small and the least, including the Christians," according to the Catholic News Service.

"The international community must put the brakes on this," he noted.

Syriac Catholic Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo of Hassake-Nisibi told Fides (the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) that Father Mourad sent him “several messages which showed he was aware of living in a dangerous situation and was willing to offer his life for peace in Syria and the world."

Killings and abductions have become common in Syria as the country has been locked in a two-year internal conflict. In April, two Orthodox bishops were kidnapped when they returned to Aleppo from the Turkish border. Their driver was killed.

Syria's 10 percent Christian population is particularly vulnerable to such attacks, especially from the opposition groups, as they have remained largely neutral or supportive of the government.

Members of the Free Syrian Army aim their weapons as they take up a defensive position in Aleppo's Salaheddine district June 25, 2013.(Reuters / Hamid Khatib)

 The CIA is stockpiling arms in Jordan for US-trained Syrian rebels, which they will use in an offensive against Damascus starting August, according to The Wall Street Journal. Up to hundreds of fighters are to be armed and sent to the battlefield monthly.

The intelligence agency had stored Soviet-made arms at a network of secret warehouses in advance of the Obama administration’s decision to provide military assistance to the militants fighting against the government of Bashar Assad, the newspaper reports. The weapons include anti-tank missiles, which may be handed over to the Syrian rebels.

The CIA was chosen to deliver arms to the Syrian revels to limit public disclosures and restrict oversight to a small group of lawmakers, who would oversee the clandestine operation, the report explains.

Other countries may join the US program for arming the rebels. Washington is in talks with France about pre-positioning European-procured weapons in Jordan. Saudi Arabia is expected to provide some portable anti-aircraft weapons as well, the WSJ says.

The weapons are meant for Syrian rebels trained by US instructors, the report says. The CIA says it has an “elaborate” vetting system, which will supposedly prevent the American-trained and armed fighters from joining jihadist forces among the anti-Assad troops. The agency may co-opt aid from the US special operations forces and similar units in other countries like Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to train the rebels, the report says.

Up to several hundred troops may be sent into Syrian territory every month under the program, the newspaper says, citing diplomatic sources. The rebel troops will be deployed starting early August and will need four to five months before making “a meaningful difference” in the Syrian civil war, unnamed US officials told WSJ.

Earlier media reports said the CIA played an important part in funneling weapons, which countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been smuggling to Syrian rebels for more than a year. The participation was expected to prevent the arms from ending in the hands of Al-Qaeda-linked militants fighting in Syria.

A Free Syrian Army fighter cleans his weapons.(Reuters / Muzaffar Salman)

  The Obama administration announced plans to provide military support to rebel forces this month after accusing the Assad government of using chemical weapons against rebel forces. Earlier, similar allegations came from France and UK. The UN and several nations, including Russia, said the evidence of the alleged chemical attacks by the Syria army, which the US showed them, was inconclusive.

Two separate reports on the issue sent to the UN by the US and Britain described 10 cases of suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria, a UN diplomat told AP on Wednesday. The US accuses Damascus of being behind at least two of those, according to a letter sent by US envoy to the UN Susan Rice to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The US and Russia are engaged in a joint effort to arrange a peace conference in Geneva, with hopes of paving the way for a political solution to the Syrian crisis. The conference is meant to gather all parties with stakes in the conflict to agree on a way to end the bloodshed, which has already claimed an estimated 100,000 lives.

The effort however is stalled by a number of obstacles, including the differences over who should get invited. Damascus objected to Saudi Arabia’s participation, while some of the organizers stood against inviting Syria’s ally Iran. There is no unity among the opposition forces over their participation and representation.

Amid the ongoing organizational problems, the planned date of the conference has been postponed several times. UN peace envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said Tuesday he didn’t expect the meeting to happen before August.

After the US announced plans for arming Syrian rebels, Moscow, Washington’s partner in organizing the peace conference, said the move didn’t help their joint effort.

Members of the Free Syrian Army walk down the stairs holding their weapons in Aleppo's Salaheddine district.(Reuters / Hamid Khatib)

The MI6 building, which is the SIS (The Secret Intelligence Service) headquarter, is pictured at Vauxhall Cross in central London (Reuters/Toby Melville)

 UK intelligence will receive the largest budget boost in the latest government review of public spending, reports the Telegraph. The funds increase follows civil rights uproar at UK involvement in the NSA spy scandal.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will present a review of public spending for 2015-16 on Wednesday with a view to cutting the deficit. While, funding for most government bodies will be slashed, MI6, MI5 and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will receive a bonus of up to $154 million.

The increase of 3 percent in overall funding for intelligence organizations, which already have a budget of $2.9 billion, will make them top of the UK government’s spending agenda, overtaking the health service, education and military.

The institutions that will suffer most at the hands of the $17 billion austerity cuts include the Business department, the Culture department, the Home Office and the Justice department. The Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, faces cuts of around $1.5 billion, with the reassurance that this will not stipulate a decrease in front-line troop numbers.

Recently, UK intelligence has come into the firing line after it was discovered the GCHQ has access to a massive global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories. GCHQ also shares this data with the NSA.

The extent of the spy program is such that whistleblower Edward Snowden, who originally leaked the information to the Guardian, called it “worse than the US.” Rights groups were up in arms about the sheer scope of the network able to monitor 600 million ‘telephone events’ a day.

“This appears to be dangerously close to, if not exactly, the centralized database of all our internet communications, including some content, that successive Governments have ruled out and parliament has never legislated for,” said Nick Pickles of UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch.

GCHQ, for its part, has defended its sweeping eavesdropping network, saying it had always been “scrupulous” in complying with the law.

In answer to the public uproar to the sweeping surveillance programs, UK Foreign Minister, William Hague spoke out in support of the spy network and data sharing with the US. He said that both the US and the UK had acted in compliance with the law and used information only “to protect citizens’ freedoms.”

 "We should have nothing but pride in the unique and indispensable intelligence-sharing relationship between Britain and the United States," Hague said in his speech at the Ronald Reagan Library on Tuesday afternoon. He went on to call the US-UK alliance a “bastion of freedom.”

Moreover, he stressed that such surveillance was “indispensable” to combat the growing threat of terrorism.

Following the brutal murder of 25-year-old soldier Drummer Lee Rigby by Islamist extremist in Woolwich in May, UK intelligence has come under increased scrutiny. There were suggestions that MI5 and MI6 could have done more to prevent the death of Rigby after it was found that one of the alleged killers, Michael Adebolajo, had already been flagged by UK intelligence as a potential threat.

Taliban has launched an attack in central Kabul, targeting the presidential palace, the CIA and ISAF headquarters, the Ministry of Defense, as well as an international hotel. All the assailants have been killed in the 90-minute showdown.

A Reuters reporter who was at the palace to cover a presser by president Karzai along with some 20 other journalists said heavy gunfire was heard, and smoke from an explosion had blanketed the area.
First of all, one insurgent reportedly opened fire with an automatic rifle at a gate to the palace.
Then, palace guards, as well as guards from the adjacent CIA compound, reportedly fired back when several attackers fired on the west gate as journalists were waiting to enter the compound for the president’s press conference.

All the insurgents were killed in the 90-minute showdown, according to Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi. 

“What I saw from the outside of that gate is more of a blast wall around the green zone area, as there were giant holes in the concrete walls, and the entire gate was destroyed. Apparently, one vehicle was able to get inside, and one vehicle was stopped at the gate, and that’s when the attack began,” local journalist Courtney Body told RT.

It was not immediately clear whether Karzai was in the compound at the time. The area of the city where the attack took place is the site of several important organizations, including the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, as well as the headquarters for the CIA and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Up to 10 blasts heard in Kabul, near Palace, CIA, ISAF HQ, UNAMA. Smoke rising over central #Kabul pic.twitter.com/9F54LmmdAb via @nohodge
— Harun Najafizada (@BBCNajafizada) June 25, 2013

The American Embassy in Kabul was reportedly placed on lockdown, with ISAF confirming a lockdown over its Twitter feed; other facilities in the area are said to be under lockdown as well. According to the BBC, SMS messages were sent on behalf of the Taliban stating that targets were the presidential palace, the Ministry of Defense, as well as the Ariana Hotel, which is popular with international visitors.  

The CIA building in central Kabul was reported to be on fire shortly after the attack, according to 1TV News, a local news broadcaster.

Ambassador James Dobbins, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was currently in Kabul after returning from Doha over the weekend, where talks with the Taliban were derailed after the insurgent group opened an embassy-like compound, declaring it the 'Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.'

Taliban officials stated that the newly opened office in Qatar was a response to calls by opponents for the launch of a political process to reach some measure of peace, and end three decades of fighting in Afghanistan. 

Steve Zunes, a professor of international studies at the University of San Francisco, pointed out to RT, that the Afghan army would never succeed unless the Afghan people support the country's leadership in the first place.

“Even if they are very well trained, even if they have the very best equipment, the strength of the Afghan government <…> doesn’t have credibility with the Afghan people. While the Afghans don’t subscribe to the Taliban’s ideology, they are very frustrated with corruption, inaptitude, and arbitrariness of the Afghan government, including the ongoing repression. They’re resentful of the foreign presence to prop up this government. And it’s this kind of environment that leads to the rise of extremists. So it’s not a security question.”

A group of gunmen have stormed a hotel in northern Pakistan, killing ten foreign tourists, Pakistani security officials report. Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian citizens were among the victims of the attack.

This is the first attack on tourists in the far flung region of the country and the motives behind it are unclear as of yet.

"Unknown people entered a hotel where foreign tourists were staying last night and opened fire," Ali Sher, a senior police officer in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan province, told Reuters. "They killed 10 foreign tourists and fled."

He added that three Chinese, five Ukrainians, one Russian and a guide were gunned down in the attack that happened at around 1:00 am local time (20:00 GMT).

Authorities have deployed a large number of security personnel to the area and have sealed off the scene of the crime.

The bodies will have to be recovered by helicopter because of the remoteness of the northern province that borders China and Kashmir, an anonymous official told Reuters.

"We are not able to say who has used chemical agents or chemical weapons and we are very worried about the chain of custody of the substances," Pinheiro told reporters after an informal meeting with UN Security Council ambassadors.

UN experts investigating the use of chemical weapons say they need to access Syria to determine where the alleged chemical weapons have been used. But Syria has thus far refused to grant them entry, citing concerns for their safety and doubts about their impartiality, as neither China nor Russia were allowed to participate.

Pinheiro's commission said in a report published this month that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that chemical agents have been used as weapons".

"Allegations have been received concerning the use of chemical weapons by both parties," said the commission, adding that "the majority concern their use by government forces."

Pinheiro believes that a "diplomatic surge" is needed to resolve the long-standing conflict, which has left more than 93,000 dead, according to UN figures.

However, just before foreign ministers from the "Friends of Syria" group met in Doha on Saturday, the main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), told the AFP that it had new weapons that could beat President Bashar Assad's regime.

  "We have begun distributing them on the front lines, they will be in the hands of professional officers and FSA fighters," he said.

These reports come after the US decided to arm the Syrian rebels, which reportedly sparked feuds among various rebel factions dominated by radical Islamist fighters.

President Barack Obama said on Friday that the US will leave about 700 combat-equipped troops in Jordan after a training exercise there, which would increase the number of US troops stationed there to almost 1,000. The US announced earlier that it will leave Patriot missiles and warplanes in the country.

The Qatari foreign minister supported and encouraged the idea of arming the Syrian opposition fighters during the foreign ministers’ meeting in Doha.

The EU lifted its arms embargo on Syria last month, and the UK and France spoke favorably about arming the rebels, though no decisions have been due to increasing concerns about the Islamist element within the Syrian rebel forces.
Risks of arming Syria

There are fears that a power struggle may be brewing in the rebels’ ranks, with fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front reportedly assassinating a large number of officers of the Free Syrian Army.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West against arming Syrian rebel forces, which he said included "terrorist" groups.

He reiterated that weapon supplies to the Syrian rebels would violate international law and threaten to further destabilize the war-torn state.

"Why supply weapons to militant forces in Syria when we are not sure of the composition of these groups?” he said Friday at the Economic Forum, adding that it remains unclear where these arms will end up.

"If the United States ... recognizes one of the key Syrian opposition organizations, al-Nusra, as terrorist ... how can one deliver arms to those opposition members? … Where will (those weapons) end up? What role will they play?" Putin said, arguing that a quick exit by President Bashar Assad would create a dangerous power vacuum.

Earlier on Friday, Pinheiro warned that sending more weapons into Syria would lead to more war crimes. "States that provide arms have responsibilities in terms of the eventual use of those arms to commit ... war crimes or crimes against humanity," Pinheiro said.

Putin also defended Russia’s contract to deliver advanced S-300 long-range air defense systems to Damascus, saying that Moscow maintains that all arms supplies to Syria are being carried out under a contract signed with the country several years ago.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (RIA Novosti)

Putin has supported Pinheiro’s idea of a “diplomatic surge”, and insisted that an international peace conference is the right way to proceed to solve the Syrian conflict, referring to the earlier proposed peace conference in Geneva on June 25.

But the conference has been continually postponed. After the clash of G8 leaders with Russia over the nature of transitional government, the conference may be delayed until late August or early September. 

With a massive stockpile of loosely-supervised Gaddafi-era weapons, Libya resurfaces as a key player in the Syrian conflict, with more reports emerging that rebels get material through official and rogue channels, despite UN condemnation.

“It is just the enthusiasm of the Libyan people helping the Syrians,” explained Fawzi Bukatef, a former revolutionary commander, who has recently been appointed as ambassador to Uganda, to the New York Times.

According to the paper, Qatari C-17 cargo planes – capable of carrying a payload of more than 70 tons – have landed at least three times in Libya this year, each time to pick up a shipment of weapons that were then taken the Turkish-Syrian border, and passed onto the rebels.

Earlier this week, British-Libyan arms dealer Abdul Basit Haroun boasted to Reuters that weapons reach Syria not only by numerous charted flights, but also on ships – concealed among humanitarian aid.

The process is not controlled by the weak central government; instead, a handful of opportunistic middlemen have emerged.

"The authorities know we are sending guns to Syria," Haroun said. "Everyone knows."

Libyan assembly member Tawfiq Shehabi said the government tacitly supports the activities of dealers like Haroun, himself a brigade commander during the successful uprising against Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

"After the end of the war of liberation, he became involved in supporting the Syrian revolution... sending aid and weapons to the Syrian people," said Shehabi. "He does a good job of supporting the Syrian revolution."

Kornets anti-tank missiles

  Haroun and others insisted that they work according to an “above-board” scheme, whereby rebels initially approach the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the moderate wing of the rebellion against President Bashar Assad, which then asks Turkey, the gateway for the majority of weapons, to sanction a shipment.

Once shipments – which initially comprised mostly light weapons, but have more recently included Soviet-era Kornets anti-tank missiles, and Konkurs-M guided rockets – arrive in Turkey, they are then distributed among the assorted rebel units.

As the rebels do not fight under a single command, pre-agreed formulas are used to make sure that various brigades are armed proportionally to their manpower and needs, according to Safi Asafi, a coordinator commander on the border who spoke to the New York Times.

Asafi said that the weapons were not officially distributed to “blacklisted” groups, such as the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, but that this was merely a formality, with the extremist Islamists simply purchasing the weapons from the “approved” units.

A report by Time magazine at the end of last month showed that weapons trafficking is not restricted to the semi-official channels, with shadowy backers driven by ideology, religion and profit managing to set up separate deals.

The piece detailed a negotiation between a former Libyan anti-Gaddafi fighter, and a group of leading Islamic organizations fighting Assad. The Islamists said that they did not recognize the authority of the FSA, and described their commanders as “corrupt failures”.

The people involved described the talks – conducted in a hotel on the Turkish side of the Syrian border – as a routine, and everyday occurrence, as volunteers, mercenaries and arms dealers congregate in several border towns.

Restrictions on official weapons supplies to rebels by their sympathizers in the West and the Arab world have been in place for most of the past two years, and have made it almost inevitable that a haphazard weapons trade would boom around the conflict that is estimated to have taken more than 90,000 lives the UN estimates.

Nonetheless, the United Nations has severely criticized Libya for proliferating weapons at “an alarming rate”.

A report released in April said that Libya, whose substantial stockpile is largely controlled by tribal militias and even private citizens, is “enriching the arsenals of a range of non-State actors, including terrorist groups.”

It is unclear if the torrent of badly-controlled shipments will be stemmed, now that most Syrian allies have lifted their weapons supply restrictions, or if the trade will move to arm those not catered for by official channels. 

  The US decision to arm the Syrian rebels fighting government troops has sparked feuds among various rebel factions dominated by radical Islamist fighters. RT contributor Afshin Rattansi warns against the move, as internal schisms among the rebels deepen.

A power struggle may also be brewing in the rebels’ ranks: Fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front have reportedly assassinated a large number of officers of the Free Syrian Army.

RT: The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front is now said to be targeting Free Syrian Army (FSA), but these two share a common goal – to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. Is there some sort of power struggle we are seeing within the rebel ranks?

Afshin Rattansi: The rebel ranks were in Istanbul recently, where they could make no type of agreement between themselves. Now they are actually killing each other. This power struggle has been going on for months and months.

And presumably President Obama and the NATO powers are saying that they will give weapons to the Free Syrian Army. Well, if Al-Nusra Front is murdering members of the Free Syrian Army, then presume they take some of those arms and use them. Disunity in the rebel ranks is high, and is now extending to attacking Kurds in the northern part of Syria.

RT: Reports say that many FSA fighters are leaving more modern brigades for hard-line groups. What are the dangers of that, and why are they doing it?

AF: The dangers are everywhere to be seen in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, as the Al-Nusra Front becomes the lead faction in the opposition. No amount of arming the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ is going to work against the hundreds or thousands, millions or billions – we don’t know – coming from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the American allies in the Persian Gulf.

So, the dangers are everywhere to be seen. Another danger is the blowback that is occurring even now, with some of those militants returning to their home countries in Europe and perhaps to the US to fight their jihad on European and American soil.

RT: Any clearer about who or what is actually making up the FSA?

AF: The Free Syrian army seems to have deposed some of the initial leaders, but rather like the pre-Iraq-War time, we don’t really know. It isn’t stopping the Americans. They seem to know exactly who the Free Syrian Army is, and they have 2,000 marines over the Jordanian border putting in Patriot missiles and getting ready for war. They were flying F-16s over the past 48 hours.

France does not seem to know who the FSA is either, as Paris is saying “no more arms, no more weapons, until we find out who the personnel really are in this rebel movement.”

RT: What is the right way forward here with the rebels calling on Western backers to send in weapons?

AF: The right way of going about it in Syria is keeping money on the humanitarian groups that are going to help the refugees. The US should be bombing Syria not with weapons, but with airlifts of medicine and urgent medical care for all of these millions of refugees.

Syria already had a refugee crisis in the fallout of the Iraq war, and it has its own one now. So the way forward is to pour humanitarian aid into the country, and of course get those talks going in Geneva. Hopefully, all sides will be talking soon without the preconditions of this loose coalition of rebels.

Crawford, an industrial mechanic with General Electric Co., evidently sought to assemble a radiation-emitting device “that could be placed in the back of a van to covertly emit ionizing radiation strong enough to bring about radiation sickness or death against Crawford's enemies," according to a complaint put together by an FBI agent on the case.

The agent’s affidavit indicates that Crawford then telephoned another Jewish organization in Albany and made a similar offer. Luckily, Crawford’s visit to the synagogue raised eyebrows, and an unidentified individual later contacted police.

Rabbi Matthew Cutler of the Congregation Gates of Heaven in Schenectady told the Times Union that a "strange man" came to their synagogue in April of 2012, and discussed a mysterious device he was developing that would protect the Jewish people.

"They had a hard time getting rid of him," Cutler said. "He had this device, this plan on what to do."

Crawford referred to enemies of the United States and Muslims as "medical waste," according to court records obtained by the Times Union.

Once members of the synagogue had contacted law enforcement, the Joint Terrorism Task Force began an investigation into the odd occurrences, and an undercover FBI agent made contact as a potential supplier of radiation equipment, such as x-ray tubes, and emailed him with information on different x-ray systems.

According to the FBI, Crawford never obtained a radiation source and the device, meant to be placed in the back of a van, was never fully constructed. Crawford did, however, make some progress, such as constructing a remote triggering system that could work from about half a mile away.

Crawford managed to recruit Eric J. Feight, 54, of Hudson, who worked at an electronics company to help him construct the controls for the alleged weapon. The two suspects met in Albany in May, at which point Feight gave the remote-transmission device to Crawford. The two had planned a test to take place at an undisclosed hotel in the Albany area, which according to the complaint was successful.

Through undercover contacts the FBI was able to monitor the two suspects’ movements and communications. Crawford allegedly spoke of being “tired of getting 'raped,' that there are people out there who have decided that they don't get their fair share in life, and that (Crawford) wanted to stop these people."

Crawford was, in his own words, "a member of the Ku Klux Klan, specifically, the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" and also listed on several websites as a member of Americans Demanding Liberty and Freedom, a Tea Party group.

The FBI’s affidavit indicates that as many as six unidentified people were assisting Crawford in the assembling of his radiation beam device, including another fellow GE employee. The Times Union has reported that of those individuals, some if not all may have known information regarding Crawford’s project.

The two men were arrested on Tuesday, and held without bond pending detention hearings. Crawford and Feight each face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

During his initial appearance in front of a US District Court in Albany Crawford was informed that he would be assigned an attorney for his defense. "Is it going to be the right kind of attorney for this?" Crawford asked the judge.

In a statement responding to the arrest, General Electric said: "On Tuesday afternoon the FBI informed GE that Glendon Scott Crawford, a GE manufacturing employee, was arrested for a criminal act. We have no reason to believe the act took place on GE property nor is there any information indicating that our employees' safety was ever compromised. Since this incident, Mr Crawford has been suspended. We are cooperating fully with the authorities on their investigation."

The FBI seized a vehicle belonging to Crawford on Tuesday at an out-of-business auto body shop, just prior to when the two men had planned to conduct a test-run of the device’s triggering system.

Under the law at the time the FBI had the authority to monitor the email accounts of people linked to terrorists. Zazi was identified when British intelligence found a computer containing an email from Zazi to Pakistani terrorists, at which point the government could have gone to a judge for a warrant. “To get a warrant, the law requires that the government show that the target is a suspected member of a terrorist group or foreign government, something that had been well established at that point in the Zazi case,” the Associated Press reported earlier this month. “In using Zazi to defend the surveillance program, government officials have further confused things by misstating key details about the plot,” the agency said at the time. Critics have not only levied their complaints at politicians, but at mainstream media outlets for failing to ask the relevant questions about the NSA programs. Charlie Rose, in particular, has been chided for not pushing Obama to provide evidence for his NSA claims while 24-hour news channels including CNN seem to have devoted more coverage to NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s personality than to the information he made public. Snowden himself digitally emerged from hiding Monday to answer reader-submitted questions on TheGuardian.com, where he lamented the media’s failings. “Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicion-less surveillance that could not be gained via any other source?” Snowden wrote. “Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicion-less surveillance in human history.”