World/Nation Briefs September 3, 2013
French report pins attack on Syrian leader
PARIS - France released an intelligence report on Monday alleging chemical weapons use by Syria's regime that dovetailed with similar U.S. claims, as President Bashar Assad warned that any military strike against his country would spark an uncontrollable regional war and spread "chaos and extremism."
The verbal crossfire, including a rejection of the Western allegations by longtime Syrian ally Russia, was part of frenzied efforts on both sides to court international public opinion after President Barack Obama said he would seek authorization from Congress before launching any military action against Assad's regime.
In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Assad was quoted as saying that Syria has challenged the U.S. and France to provide proof to support their allegations, but that their leaders "have been incapable of doing that, including before their own peoples."
"If the Americans, the French or the British had a shred of proof, they would have shown it beginning on the first day," he said, deriding Obama as "weak" and having buckled to U.S. domestic political pressure.
"We believe that a strong man is one who prevents war, not one who inflames it," Assad said.
Study: Global warming could alter storm path
WASHINGTON - Man-made global warming may further lessen the likelihood of the freak atmospheric steering currents that last year shoved Superstorm Sandy due west into New Jersey, a new study says.
But don't celebrate a rare beneficial climate change prediction just yet. The study's authors said the once-in-700-years path was only one factor in the massive $50 billion killer storm. They said other variables such as sea level rise and stronger storms will worsen with global warming and outweigh changes in steering currents predicted by the study's computer models.
"Sandy was an extremely unusual storm in several respects and pretty freaky. And some of those things that make it more freaky may happen less in the future," said Columbia University atmospheric scientist Adam Sobel, co-author of a new study on Sandy. But Sobel quickly added: "There's nothing to get complacent about coming out of this research."
The study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at the giant atmospheric steering currents, such as the jet stream. A spate of recent and controversial studies have highlighted unusual kinks and meanders in the jet stream, linking those to extreme weather and loss of sea ice in the Arctic. This new study looks only at the future and sees a lessening of some of that problematic jet stream swerving, clashing with the other studies in a scientific debate that continues.
Both camps agree on what happened with the weird steering that shoved Sandy, a late season hurricane that merged with a conventional storm into a massive hybrid, into New Jersey. The jet stream plunged in an odd way. A high pressure system off the coast of Canada and Greenland blocked the storm from moving east, as most do.
Iraq vows to investigate killing of exiles
BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister ordered an investigation Monday into the slaying of half of the roughly 100 remaining residents at an Iranian dissident camp north of Baghdad, where a U.N. team got its first look at the aftermath of the large-scale bloodshed.
The promised probe will do little to appease backers of the more than 3,000 exiles left inside Iraq who believe they remain targets in a country whose government wants them gone.
- The Associated Press