"UNITED NATIONS — After months of negotiations, the United Nations announced Wednesday that U.N. experts will depart imminently for Syria to investigate alleged chemical weapons use."

"The Central Intelligence Agency is funding a scientific study that will investigate whether humans could use geoengineering to alter Earth's environment and stop climate change."

"Syria has crossed a 'red line' with its use of chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin gas, against rebels, a move that is prompting the United States to increase the 'scale and scope' of its support for the opposition, the White House said Thursday."

"One of the Pentagon’s top strategists said climate change is fundamentally altering how the Defense Department (DOD) evaluates future conflict areas."

"No bases visited, no vets interviewed for Pentagon probe into dioxin in Okinawa."

"President Obama’s conciliatory gesture toward the press this week — a review of Justice Department investigations involving journalists — struck some national security reporters as closing the door after the sources have already bolted."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some fresh news from World War II: Thirteen Merchant Marine ships sunk by the German navy in the Battle of the Atlantic threaten to release oil from their watery graves."

"This Syrian disaster is like a superstorm. It’s what happens when an extreme weather event, the worst drought in Syria’s modern history, combines with a fast-growing population and a repressive and corrupt regime and unleashes extreme sectarian and religious passions, fueled by money from rival outside powers — Iran and Hezbollah on one side, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar on the other, each of which have an extreme interest in its Syrian allies’ defeating the other’s allies — all at a time when America, in its post-Iraq/Afghanistan phase, is extremely wary of getting involved."

"The U.S. military spent $5 million on incinerators at a base in Afghanistan that never became operable, forcing troops to use a type of open-air burn pit that has been linked to serious respiratory problems among veterans, according to a government report."