Amid reports that the Syrian military is secretly stockpiling chemical weapons, U.N. human rights investigators allegedly have testimony indicating Syrian rebels have used sarin gas. Interviews with victims and doctors have provided “strong, concrete suspicions” that rebels used the deadly nerve agent, according to a lead investigator, though the U.N. does not have “incontrovertible proof.” There’s no evidence yet that the Syrian military used sarin. The latest Geneva-based investigation is separate from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s currently stalled inquiry into the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Reuters:

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

Israeli warplanes have targeted Syria twice in the last three days, and now Israel is deploying two batteries of its Iron Dome rocket defense system to the north of the country. The second airstrike early Sunday, hit a military facility just north of the capital, a Western intelligence expert confirmed. Israel declined to comment. “The sky was red all night,” said one man who lives less than a mile from the facility. “We didn’t sleep a single second. The explosions started after midnight and continued throughout the night.” The facility reportedly held Iranian-supplied missiles, which Israel contends were headed for Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel attacked the same site three months ago. President Obama, meanwhile, defended Israel on Sunday.

A suicide bombing tore through a mosque in the Syrian capital Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad along with at least 41 other people.

Syrian extremists have killed the wrong Sunni cleric. Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, a top Sunni preacher and supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, was one of 42 people killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in Damascus on Friday. In response, Assad has stated that his forces will “wipe out” and “clean our country” of the Muslim extremists he believes are responsible for the attack, the first to target a mosque since the country’s civil war began two years ago. Meanwhile, the United Nations plans to investigate whether either the Syrian government or its rebel opposition has used chemical weapons against one another, as they both have claimed.

Via:

It was one of the most stunning assassinations of the two-year civil war and marked a new low in the conflict: while suicide bombings blamed on Islamic extremists fighting with the rebels have become common, the latest attack was the first time a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a mosque. The grandson of the 84-year-old al-Buti was among those killed in the attack.

In the statement carried by Syria's state SUNA news agency, Assad said al-Buti represented true Islam in facing "the forces of darkness and extremist" ideology.

"Your blood and your grandson's, as well as that of all the nation's martyrs will not go in vain because we will continue to follow your thinking to wipe out their darkness and clear our country of them," said Assad.

Syria's crisis started in March 2011 as peaceful protests against Assad's authoritarian rule. The revolt turned into a civil war as some opposition supporters took up arms the fight a harsh government crackdown on dissent. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed since.

It is not yet clear when al-Buti's funeral would take place, although the Syrian government declared Saturday as a day of mourning.

A new U.N. report claims that widespread torture and abuse of detainees continues at Afghan police and intelligence facilities. Earlier this month President Hamid Karzai said that all detainees held by the U.S. and its allies would be transferred to Afghan custody. But the new allegations of torture could make such a transfer illegal. The 100-page report, that was released on Monday, was based on several hundred interviews and about half of the interviewed detainees and former detainees alleged torture or abuse. In 2011, a similar report caused the U.S. to halt transfers of detainees to nine Afghan facilities.

Via:

More than half of the 635 detainees questioned by U.N. investigators in the 12 months ending in October were ill-treated or tortured, including being subjected to severe beatings or electric shocks, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said.

The allegations, which the Afghan government calls "exaggerated," are likely to complicate discussions about the handling of detainees, a source of debate between the United States and Afghanistan as the countries prepare for the departure of most foreign troops next year.

Many of the suspected fighters who end up in Afghan custody are captured by U.S. and allied troops. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force said it has suspended the transfer of detainees to the facilities identified in the U.N. report and is working with Afghan authorities to address abuses.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has frequently maintained that the handling of detainees is a question of national sovereignty. During discussions with President Obama this month, he reiterated his demand that all Afghan prisoners be turned over to Afghan authorities.

Torture decreased at some facilities after the U.N. issued a report in 2011, and transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities were halted, but again increased after transfers resumed, according to the new report.

In all, 14 methods of abuse were documented. The report said evidence of torture occurred most frequently at facilities in the southern province of Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.

U.N. investigators received what they described as credible reports about the disappearance of 81 people who were arrested by Kandahar police between September 2011 and October 2012. They were also told about the reported existence of several unofficial detention sites and said some detainees held by intelligence officials were hidden from international observers — allegations denied by the intelligence agency.

Of the prisoners interviewed, 105 were children under international law, and a large majority of these juvenile prisoners had been tortured. Only a very small portion of prisoners had been in Afghan army or Afghan local police custody, but they also reported torture by those forces.

"A majority of NDS and ANP [Afghan National Police] officials do not accept that torture is ineffective and counter-productive as a tool to obtain strategically valuable and actionable intelligence to fight terrorism and conflict-related activities, let alone a serious crime under Afghan and international law," the report said.

[Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas/Reuters]

The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember state Thursday, in a move that strengthens the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The vote tally was 138 yeas to 9 nays with 41 countries abstaining. The United States certainly seemed in the nay camp, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling the vote "unfortunate and counterproductive," and Ambassador Rice arguing the vote does not establish Palestinian statehood, and places "further obstacles in the path of peace."

NYT:

More than 130 countries voted on Thursday to grant Palestine the upgraded status of nonmember observer state in the United Nations, a stinging defeat for Israel and the United States and a boost for President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who was weakened by the recent eight days of fighting in Gaza.

The new ranking could make it easier for the Palestinians to pursue Israel in international legal forums, but it remained unclear what effect it would have on attaining what both sides say they want — a two-state solution.
...
“The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the state of Palestine,” he said before the vote.

But in the run-up to the vote, he and Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, blamed the other side for not doing enough to pursue peace.

”We have not heard one word from any Israeli official expressing any sincere concern to save the peace process,” Mr. Abbas said.

“On the contrary, our people have witnessed, and continue to witness, an unprecedented intensification of military assaults, the blockade, settlement activities and ethnic cleansing, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem, and mass arrests, attacks by settlers and other practices by which this Israeli occupation is becoming synonymous with an apartheid system of colonial occupation, which institutionalizes the plague of racism and entrenches hatred and incitement.”

“The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, settlements and occupation,” he said.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released a statement calling Mr. Abbas’s speech “defamatory and venomous” that was “full of mendacious propaganda against the IDF and the citizens of Israel.”

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Sea levels are rising faster than previously predicted, according to a new U.N. study released Wednesday. The U.N. team found that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimate that sea levels would rise by about two millimeters a year was “biased low.” The group, which presented its findings in a peer-reviewed study, found that sea levels are actually rising by 3.2 millimeters a year—or 60 percent faster than previously expected. The rising sea levels are expected to worsen flooding and storm surges in coastal areas, especially when storms like Hurricane Sandy make landfall.

Today, delegates from nearly two hundred nations are gathering in Qatar for the UN'sThis new campaign is spreading an urgent message face-to-face all over the country, as this group of activists visit over twenty cities in the USA. Their message: it's simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming – anything more than this risks total catastrophe for all life on the planet. The problem: fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five more times the safe amount . . . And they’re planning to burn it all – unless we rise up to stop them."> COP18 – the latest round of UN climate talks aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

While they all try to talk it out in Qatar, Bill McKibben and his grassroots initiative with 350.org may achieve far more on the ground than any solemn swear of re-commitment to the Kyoto Protocol will at Qatar. This new campaign is spreading an urgent message face-to-face all over the country, as this group of activists visit over twenty cities in the USA. Their message: it's simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming – anything more than this risks total catastrophe for all life on the planet. The problem: fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five more times the safe amount . . . And they’re planning to burn it all – unless we rise up to stop them.

As the United Nations marks Thursday as International Day of the Girl Child, the world body's focus this year has been on ending child marriages.

In Afghanistan, the practice is illegal under the law but still common. In one case, an Afghan woman in Kabul was forced into a marriage at the age of 11.

Al Jazeera's Jennifer Glasse speaks to a woman in Kabul who was forced into marriage at age of 11.

Actress Angelina Jolie is in Iraq meeting with leaders about the plight of an estimated 50,000 refugees who fled to escape the violence in Syria in her role as a special envoy for the U.N.'s refugee agency.

A government statement said Jolie on Saturday urged Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari to ensure the refugees have enough supplies to meet all their daily needs.

Zebari said an estimated 21,000 Syrian refugees are living in Iraq's western Anbar and Dohuk provinces. Another 31,000 Iraqis who years ago fled to Syria to escape sectarian fighting in their homeland have returned, he said.

Jolie also recently visited refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan to highlight suffering and the need for international humanitarian assistance.

While at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan on Tuesday, Jolie, who is herself raising six children with her partner Brad Pitt, spoke of the horrors that children, many of them orphans, have witnessed in Syria.

"I am grateful to Jordan and the border countries for saving the lives (of those) who are dying in Syria. It's an extraordinary thing. We encourage the international community to support the people here until one day they go back home," she said

It was a rare visit to Iraq by a movie star, but Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are unique:

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie continue to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to charity. Their Jolie Pitt Foundation’s 2010 tax filing just became available. Of the over $2.3 million they gave away in 2010, $1 million went to Doctors without Borders treating patients in Haiti. But sometimes it’s the little things that count, too. Brad paid $3,000 toward a funeral for beloved New Orleans civic leader and his friend, Pamela Dashiell, who died unexpectedly at age 61 in December 2009. Dashiell had been a leader in New Orleans’s famous Lower 9th Ward where the most damage occurred from Hurricane Katrina. Big donations are wonderful, but something like that kind of breaks your heart.

The Jolie Pitt Foundation is also kind of a template for smart giving. For example, under a micro financing plan they loaned 201 needy Cambodians $21,000 for small businesses to purchase crop seeds and agricultural tools– a similar program to Kiva.org. All the money has been paid back.

Their largest expenditures went to SOS Childrens Villages ($250,000) and to other children’s causes around the world. But they also donated $200,000 to Drury University in Springfield, Missouri – Brad’s hometown – and $15,000 to Operation Blankets of Love in Granada Hills, California–they help rescue pets and abandoned animals.

Worth noting that the Jolie-Pitts donations repesented 25% of their assets, which is highly generous.

United Nations and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan met today with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the midst of worsening violence. Syria's 16-month conflict has so far claimed more than 15,000 lives. Annan said today's last-ditch attempt to salvage a peace effort ended with an agreement on how end the violence, but he did not disclose details. Earlier, he acknowledged his six-point peace plan had failed to halt the fighting between anti-government forces and the Assad regime. "The bottom line is that the majority of the country is engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, for democracy, for dignity," says Rafif Jouejati, the English-language spokesperson for the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists throughout the country. "We have mountains of evidence indicating that his armed forces have been engaged in systematic torture, rampant detentions, massacres across the country."

Full transcript here.

MSF will be able to supply Sudanese refugees at one camp with two and a half liters of water per person per day, as of next week - about a sixth of the amount of water they need. The minimum amount of water that should be allocated in refugee emergencies is 15 liters per person per day, with seven liters as the minimum "survival allocation", according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. Those refugees who fled the fighting in Sudan with little but the clothes on their backs need more humanitarian organizations to step up and provide assistance. In this slideshow, featuring audio from the BBC's "Focus on Africa," MSF international communications coordinator Erwin van 't Land describes the situation.