"GENEVA -- U.N.-mandated human rights investigators said Wednesday that they believed the Syrian government dropped the chemical agent chlorine on civilian areas on eight different occasions in April."

"Since the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five people and raised the specter of bioterrorism in the United States, the number of high-level biosafety labs operated by governments, universities and others to study potentially lethal pathogens has been expanding rapidly. According to a 2013 report to Congress, the number of these labs grew by almost 10 percent, from 1,362 to 1,495, between 2008 and 2010 alone."

"THE HAGUE, The Netherlands – All 581 metric tonnes of a precursor chemical for sarin gas that were removed from the Syrian Arab Republic and loaded onto the U.S. Maritime Vessel Cape Ray in early July, have been destroyed with neutralization technology aboard the ship while sailing in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea."

"Kurdish and Iraqi forces seized control of Iraq’s largest dam from Islamic State militants as the U.S. deployed air power that helped reverse some gains made by the Sunni-Muslim insurgents in the north."

"More than 1,100 laboratory incidents involving bacteria, viruses and toxins that pose significant or bioterror risks to people and agriculture were reported to federal regulators during 2008 through 2012, government reports obtained by USA TODAY show."

"BAGHDAD — The crisis gripping Iraq escalated rapidly on Thursday with a re-energized Islamic State in Iraq and Syria storming new towns in the north and seizing a strategic dam as Iraq’s most formidable military force, the Kurdish pesh merga, was routed in the face of the onslaught."

"The United States and Europe kicked off a joint effort on Tuesday intended to curb Russia’s long-term ability to develop new oil resources, taking aim at the Kremlin’s premier source of wealth and power in retaliation for its intervention in Ukraine."

"BOGOTA, Colombia — Cesar Florez is often hesitant to answer his phone because there might be another death threat at the end of the line. Sometimes the threat comes in a phone call, other times in a text message or an email. In April, flyers were posted in the restroom stalls at Florez’s workplace, declaring him and his colleagues 'permanent military targets.'"

"Iraq's government has lost control of a former chemical weapons facility to 'armed terrorist groups' and is unable to fulfill its international obligations to destroy toxins kept there, the country's U.N. envoy told the United Nations."

"Security analysts in London and Baghdad say control of rivers and dams has become a major tactical weapon for ISIS""