According to a Gulf source cited by Reuters, the kingdom has been supplying shoulder-fired weapons “on a small scale” to the Free Syrian Army as of two months ago, though the country’s foreign ministry would not confirm the claims.

Members of Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy have been vocal of their support of Syria’s rebellion, including Prince Turki bin Faisal, who recently told Der Spiegel that “the immediate downfall of the Bashar al-Assad regime” was the kingdom’s “strategic aim” for Syria.

The same source that alleges the shipment of missiles to General Salim Idriss, considered Saudi Arabia’s “point man” within the Syrian opposition, believes that recent gains made against the rebels in Qusair as a result of involvement by the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah had alarmed the kingdom.

On Friday, Idriss told Reuters that his forces urgently needed heavier weapons in Aleppo to thwart a looming assault by forces loyal to the Assad government. Idriss further claimed that, if properly armed, his opposition forces could defeat Syria’s army within six months. 

Observers noted that King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud cut short his summer holiday in Morocco and returned to Saudi Arabia immediately following president Obama’s announcement that the US would begin arming Syria’s insurgency. It is believed that Saudi weapons supplies began to flow into Syria before the US announced a change of course - a policy Riyadh, a longtime American ally in the region, had been encouraging since the Syrian unrest began in earnest some two years ago.

Despite the recent announcement by Obama, recent polls show that a slight majority of the American public remains opposed to arming the Syrian opposition. A poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center showed 70 per cent said they are not in favor of “sending arms to anti-government groups in Syria,” an increase from 65 per cent in December and 63 per cent opposed in March 2012. Meanwhile, the number of those who favor providing military support dropped to 20 per cent in the most recent poll, down from 29 per cent in March of last year. 

There has also been increased rhetoric against the Syrian government from prominent Sunni religious figures in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, says the Wall Street Journal. According to sources close to Saudi Arabia’s king, he felt personally betrayed when President Assad rebuffed attempts made by him to encourage Syria to separate itself from Iran’s Shiites and ally itself with the region’s Sunni political movement.

Last week American officials confirmed that F-16 fighter jets and a Patriot missile defense battery that had been brought to Jordan for military exercises would now stay on in the country, prompting speculation that the US might deepen its involvement in Syria’s civil war by enforcing a no-fly zone extending from Jordanian airspace into Syria.

In the days leading up to the US announcement of renewed military support for Syria’s rebels, Saudi Arabia, France, Qatar and Britain were all said to be pushing for Washington to take decisive action against president Assad and support arming the rebel forces.

The demonstrators, many of whom were relatives of Gitmo prisoners highlighted the failure of the US government to fulfil its obligations to close the prison in Cuba. Activists have also gathered to draw attention to the deteriorating state of health of many prisoners who have been on hunger strike since February.

The protesters, many with pictures of their loved ones in captivity also call called for immediate release of Yemenis who were cleared while insuring speedy and fair trials for those who have not yet experienced the US justice system.

What is unusual about Monday demonstration in Sanaa, is that it included a group of Americans that traveled to Yemen as a peace delegation, organized by CODEPINK women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement. The delegation’s purpose was to meet with victims of US drone strikes and family members of Yemeni Guantanamo prisoners cleared for release.

Currently Guantanamo holds some 166 prisoners. Eighty six of those held are Yemenis with 56 of them cleared for release.

“We absolutely need to close Guantanamo Bay Prison,” said Colonel Ann Wright of CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace. “President Obama can take action by immediately releasing the 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release, then formally charge and try the remaining prisoners in fair and open proceedings,” quotes commondreams.org

Meanwhile the defense team of five prisoners accused of carrying out the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four co-defendants have requested International Committee of the Red Cross reports about the defendants conditions at the Guantanamo camp, as lawyers fear they might hinder defendants' ability to help prepare a defense.

Fears of mistreatment at the camp are on the rise as some 100 inmates are engaging in a four-month hunger strike to protest the failure to resolve their status for over a decade.

Guantanamo Bay’s medical team is now force-feeding over 40 prisoners at the US detention facility. With two detainees hospitalized, the strike shows no signs of ending a month after President Obama again pledged to close the base.

Also on Monday, Washington has disclosed the identity of 46 "indefinite detainees" that are being held in Guantanamo. These are men that are considered dangerous for release.  

The information provided to the Miami Herald and New York Times under the freedom of information requests includes 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, three Saudis, two Kuwaitis and Libyans, a Kenyan, Moroccan and a Somali. Two people on the list both Afghans have died in the camp, one by suicide, one of a heart attack.

The disclosure of the list comes a day after the US state department revelation of the appointment of Cliff Sloan, a special envoy to Guantanamo tasked with closing the camp down.

The 48 inmates were first identified in 2009 when the Obama administration first announced plans to close the prison camp by executive order. Authorities examining the cases, though, determined at that time 48 inmates who would be impossible to try in court because of a lack of evidence, or because the evidence was too tainted. They are ineligible for release, though, because the government has deemed them an immediate threat to American lives. 

The Department of Defense disclosed the names to the Miami Herald, which, along with a group of Yale Law School students, successfully sued for the list under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Pentagon has also provided the list to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees of Congress. 

Included on the list are Khalid Abdullah Al Awda, an alleged Taliban member who worked with al-Qaeda before fleeing Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and Fayez al-Kandari, who is accused of being an advisor to slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Both detainees, and dozens of others on the list, are currently on hunger strike and being force-fed. 

At least two of the men named on the list, Afghan Mohammen Rahim and Somali Hassan Guleed, are described as “high-value detainees” who are being held in separate quarters from other Guantanamo inmates. 

All told, the “indefinite detainees” list is made up of 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, 3 Saudis, 2 Kuwaitis, 2 Libyans, a Kenyan, a Moroccan and a Somali, according to the Miami Herald. Two Afghan inmates on the list are deceased, one by suicide and the other killed by a heart attack behind bars. 

Torture and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques have rendered evidence against many of the “indefinite detainees” inadmissible, US officials admitted. Army Brigadier General Mark Martins, the Pentagon’s chief war crimes prosecutor, told the Miami Herald that fewer than 34 of the detainees will be brought to trial. 

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the September 11 Commission Report described as “the principal architect of the September 11 attacks,” is due to stand trial, along with four co-conspirators who allegedly plotted the 2001 terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 civilians. Also incarcerated at Guantanamo is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of orchestrating the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Both men will face execution tribunals. 

Mohammed and his co-defendants are accused of training and funding the hijackers who would eventually fly two passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and a fourth that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The five men appeared in court Monday and, Reuters reported, appeared to be well-fed, suggesting they have not joined the ongoing hunger strike. Their trial date has yet to be determined.

Protests initially began last week following a government announcement of an increase in public transportation costs, which brought out students and young workers and led to more than 250 arrests.

According to reports by Brazilian media such as Jornal do Dia, the initially peaceful demonstrations last week became heated, and led to clashes with Brazil’s riot police that left at least 100 injured in the major cities of Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

Though the protests initially began following the announcement of bus fare increases, they have evolved to include a wide range of groups that have grown dissatisfied over everything from government corruption and income inequality, as well as to outrage over the police’s harsh response to protesters last week.

In a sign that public dissatisfaction was still simmering, soccer fans booed president Dilma Rousseff on Monday during the opening of a two-week tournament at a stadium in the capital Brasilia. The heckling only intensified when the president of the global soccer body, FIFA, reprimanded the crowed for failing to show the president “respect.”

Though Rousseff was able to ride on her predecessor's popularity, Brazil’s economic growth has slowed considerably since she took over from Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is widely credited with lifting 40 million Brazilians out of poverty. Brazil’s economy has posted its worst two-year performance in over a decade, and inflation rose to 6.5 per cent in May.

At least 20,000 Brazilians were expected to demonstrate in Sao Paulo on Monday, with organizers placing the figure closer to 30,000.  

O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo! #Brazil Social Protests. Photo Joao Pedro Sa. pic.twitter.com/w1aspthiO8

— Patricia G. Ferreira (@Pat_Galvao) June 17, 2013

#Breaking: Protesters have climbed atop the capitol building in Brazil. #ChangeBrazil pic.twitter.com/Tb6CblQ5T0

— Occupy Congress (@OCongress) June 18, 2013

The quadruped robot with finely mimicked feline morphology was designed at the Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob) at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), which published the results of tests in International Journal of Robotics Research.

The ‘cheetah-cub’ robot is moved by a Central Pattern Generator (CPG) that produces trot-gait locomotion patterns that move pantograph-like, three-segmented legs that thoroughly reproduce the mechanics of a feline leg.

“This morphology gives the robot the mechanical properties from which cats benefit, that's to say a marked running ability and elasticity in the right spots, to ensure stability,” explains Alexander Sprowitz, a Biorob scientist. "The robot is thus naturally more autonomous.”

The robot is light, compact and robust enough to carry a GoPro camera, it is reportedly assembled from cheap materials.

Though the project is still in early stages, ‘cheetah-cub’ already trots quite fast and fears no minor obstacles. It runs at a speed of 1.42 m/s, the average speed of a walking man or nearly 7 lengths of its own body per second.

“Studying and using the principles of the animal kingdom to develop new solutions for use in robots is the essence of our research,” shared an expert in artificial intelligence and Biorob Director Auke Ijspeert.

Biomechanics attracts robotic researches as a source of ready-to-use ideas on how to make an object move ‘naturally’ on rough terrain. But to do so the scientists go deep inside the mechanics of the process, trying to understand how a skeleton interacts with muscles and tendons. Animals also usually have excellent auto-stabilization characteristics, something that man-made robots usually lack.

The Biorobotics Laboratory has conducted research into animal locomotion before, having constructed operable models of a salamander robot and a lamprey robot.

The ‘cheetah-cub’ robot “is still in the experimental stages, but the long-term goal of the cheetah-cub robot is to be able to develop fast, agile, ground-hugging machines for use in exploration, for example in search and rescue in natural disaster situations. Studying and using the principles of the animal kingdom to develop new solutions for use in robots is the essence of our research,” shared Auke Ijspeert.

EPFL’s Biorob is certainly not the only laboratory that designs animal-like robots. The pioneer in this field is Boston Dynamics' quadruped walking machine program ‘Big Dog’, presented in 2008.

By 2011 the program developed into four-legged robot nicknamed the LS3 (AlphaDog) developed for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that they expect to send into battle to assist soldiers and Marines in an array of conditions.

0In April 2013 DARPA released video footage of a PETMAN bipedal robot that looks and moves alarmingly like a space-age robot warrior.

A coincidence about feline robots is that Boston Dynamics has also developed a quadruped robot called ‘cheetah’ with funding from DARPA. And this one is really fast. Boston Dynamics’ cheetah has already reached a top speed of 45 km/h, and while it still far from real cheetah’s max 120 km/h thrust, the ‘cheetah-cub’ robot can easily outrun a man once it gets onboard batteries, because as of now it receives electricity and commands via a ‘tail’ of wires.

Tensions ran high at the sidelines of the G8 summit, as the leaders of the eight world nations gathered in Northern Ireland for Syria-dominated talks.

Canada’s Harper chose to draw a line between Russia and the other countries at the summit, saying he thinks it is the odd one out when it comes to views on the Syrian conflict.

“I don’t think we should fool ourselves. This is the G7 plus one. Let’s be blunt, that’s what this is: the G7 plus one,” Harper said.

Russia joined the 1975 founded group, which includes Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, France and Britain, in 1997.

Harper has leveled criticism at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government’s position on Syria for allegedly “supporting the thugs of the Assad regime for their own reasons,” which, he believes, are “not justifiable.”

Putin on Sunday reminded that “blood is on the hands of both parties,” and that the human organs-eating Syrian rebels “can hardly be justified” at a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The Russian President wondered how come the UK and other countries speak for arming such people, whose actions “hardly correspond” with European values.

In a recent interview with RT, Putin also stressed that “we [the Russian government] are not advocates of the current Syrian government or the country’s current president, Bashar Assad,” that Syria has been “obviously ripe for some kind of change,” but that the current conflict’s outcome could cast the country into a state of chaos.

While Harper has advocated his G7 allies’ plans for sending arms to the Syrian opposition, he said Canada is not yet going to make such a move.

“We are not contemplating arming the opposition in Syria. I understand – fully understand – why our allies would do that, particularly given recent actions by Russia, Iran and others,” Harper said, adding that Canada will “for now” be providing humanitarian aid only.

From his point view, the other countries do not need Russia in their efforts to effect a democratic transition in Syria, and it is most important for Canada to work with other members of the G7 and its allies in NATO to “move the situation in a positive direction.”

However, Harper failed to note that Russia has long been working on a peaceful settlement of the conflict, and has been urging the conflicting sides to come to negotiation table and end the bloodshed.

The G7 countries have also not been as unified on their leaders’ course for arming the rebels as the Canadian official wishes to believe.

Even as the UK’s Cameron has been lobbying the move for months, London’s Mayor Boris Johnson, along with a number of prominent British political and social figures, has clearly warned against “pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs and Al-Qaeda thugs.”

The US has seemingly been trying to advocate direct arming of the rebel fighters by claiming it has evidence of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime.

The Russian Foreign Ministry, however, found this evidence “fabricated” and “unconvincing.” It also repeatedly warned that selling arms to non-state actors would be a breach of international law.

Setting up a no-fly zone over Syrian territory will also likely spark a heated debate at the G-8 summit, as Washington said it is “reviewing” such a possibility, while Moscow said it is set to “not allow the repetition of the [Libyan] scenario” and would veto such a decision.

The complaint, filed in federal court by attorneys representing two former inmates, says guards at the Live Oak County Sheriff’s office “ran a 'rape camp' known as the Live Oak County Jail" starting sometime in 2007 and lasting through August 2010.

“In this facility, numerous jailers, all employed by the Live Oak County Sheriff's Office, repeatedly raped and humiliated female inmates over an extended period of time,” reads the complaint, first obtained Monday by Courthouse News Service.

According to the document, jailers Vincent Aguilar, Israel Charles Jr. and Jaime E. Smith forced female inmates to repeatedly engage in a number of sex acts with them, even withholding “food, drink and other hygiene items” on occasion in order to coax the women to do certain things. Other times, the jailers threatened to take away basic privileges.

All three jailers have been incarcerated since an arrest in 2010, but the plaintiffs are now seeking punitive damages over alleged civil rights violations, instances of assault and emotional distress.

According to a June 2012 article in the Beeville Bee-Picayune, the three defendants originally pleaded guilty to multiple charges of improper sexual activity with a person in custody, but ultimately their counts were reduced to only two apiece. Smith and Aguilar were both sentenced last year to 18 months in prison, with Charles receiving only a one year sentence.

One of the plaintiffs, named only as J.A.S. in the complaint, told attorneys that she was forced to perform various sexual acts on the defendants, “including oral sex and manual stimulation - whatever time permitted for their amusement.”

“These incidents also included their own lewd acts on themselves, including masturbation where plaintiff was forced to conceal their ejaculate by way of ingestion,” attorney Ronald W. Armstrong wrote in the complaint.

"These and similar acts occurred so frequently that plaintiff cannot account for the number of assaults she was forced to endure,” Armstrong continued, noting that all three jailers would be present sometimes during the assaults.

That plaintiff, named only as J.A.S. in the filing, was ultimately released from Live Oak County Jail after the misdemeanor marijuana possession count she was originally charged with was dropped by the court. Not before, however, she says the jailers told her she “was their 'sex slave or whatever they wanted her to be.”

Another woman, J.M.N., said she was also held at the facility at the same time in July 2010 and was “repeatedly sexually assaulted by defendants.”

The man locked the children into a closet until police arrived, and claims he made no threats to hurt them.

Jesse Daniels, a 53-year-old resident of Clyde, N.Y. is facing felony criminal charges and up to one year in prison for each of the four counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child. The Wayne County man considers these charges a grave injustice and claims that he did nothing to threaten the four children he found in his father-in-law’s home.

At 9 p.m. on Saturday, Daniels told his wife to call 911 to report the loud noises coming from the house next door, which is where his wife’s father lives. He told 13WHAM News that he witnessed one boy striking a wall with a hammer, and subsequently went to investigate.

Upon entering the home, Daniels allegedly saw four boys between the ages of 8 and 10, trashing the house and causing an estimated $40,000 in damages.  He says 17 windows were smashed, the basement was filled with debris, the electrical fixtures were broken, the heat was turned on, and the walls were filled with holes. Paint had been spilled across the house, porcelain had been chipped off of a bathtub, and a toilet and sink were smashed to pieces.

Daniels says the home smelled like gasoline, paint and paint thinner, and that it was a fire hazard.

“I’m thankful that it didn’t light because with the oil-based paint, one of them children could’ve been torched in a second, in a second,” he told 13WHAM.

Daniels said three of the four boys were each holding a hammer when he came across them, prompting him to pick up a hammer himself. He then locked them in a closet until police arrived at the home.

“So I grab a hammer the one hammer and the other three boys got hammers, now I don’t know what to do here, I said you guys put that stuff down, what are you doing?” Daniels recalled. “Now they’re startled because now they’re caught. I was fortunate that they were in that room that had a closet, so I put them in a closet.”

One of the boys allegedly told Daniels that he was bleeding, and showed him a small scratch on his torso.

“I said listen when the police come they’ll take care of you. Just be cool man, just be cool, don’t worry about anything – I can’t let you go,” Daniels said, recalling what he told the boy.

Once police arrived, the children were released from the closet and taken home. Felony criminal charges for Second Degree Burglary and Second Degree Criminal Mischief were filed against them.

But the boys allege that Daniels threatened them with his hammer and grabbed one of them by the throat. Paul Bowler, the father of two of the boys, told 13WHAM that his kids are traumatized by the incident and haven’t been able to sleep at night.

“I understand they were in the wrong but there are other ways to handle it,” he said. “Daniels knew who the kids were – it’s not like they were strangers. Send the kids home and call the cops then. You don’t sit there and torment them and tell them you’re going to bash their skulls in with a hammer.”

Police are still investigating the incident. If Daniels is convicted of the four counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child, he could face up to four years in prison. If the boys are convicted, they could face juvenile detention, but are unlikely to receive punishments greater than probation and restitution. New York State law says that juveniles can only be held liable for damages up to $1500.

“I am sick to my stomach over this,” Daniels told the Wayne Times. “I was a nervous wreck. I did what I thought was the right thing.”