Since 1946, the United States' government has maintained fleets of various "mothballed" ships, which can be readied and used in case of a crisis.

These boats, some of which are very old, include military ships that served in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm, as well as civilian merchant ships from previous decades. The fleets sit, mostly untouched and off-limits, in the coastal waters of California, Texas, and Mississippi, as well as North Carolina and New Jersey.

One of the fleets, located off the coast of San Francisco in Suisun Bay, once counted as many as 340 ships in its ranks. Today, 10 ships remain, rusting in the California sun, leaving toxic chemicals in the water. Because of this, the Maritime Administration has mandated their scrapping. By 2017, they will all be gone. 

Boarding these ships is strictly prohibited to the general public — getting onto one at all is a tall task. However, photographer Amy Heiden gained access to the decaying ships before some of them were scrapped, shooting on their decks as well as inside the vessels.

The "Mothball Fleet" is about a mile off the coast of Suisan Bay, a body of water Northwest of San Francisco, near the town of Benicia.

Many of the ships were former military vessels. The USS Nereus, a submarine tender, joined the fleet in 1971 and didn't move until 2012, when it was sent to Texas to be scrapped.

The ships pose an environmental threat, as they have already dropped around 20 tons of barium, copper, lead, and zinc into the bay.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has reportedly made his first public appearance in over a month, Yonhap News Agency reports.

Pyongyang's state media agency says Kim was touring a newly built housing complex, according to Yonhap.

It's worth noting that the North Korean state media agency is basically a propaganda tool, and it's still unclear why Kim has been absent from public view since September.

State media reportedly released photos of Kim walking with a cane as proof that he's reappeared, but did not say when the photos were taken, according to CNN.

Speculation about what happened to Kim has been mounting since he was seen limping across a stage during at the anniversary memorial service of his grandfather and the nations' founding president, Kim Il Sung:

Since his last public appearance at a concert Sept. 3, Kim has missed high-profile public events that he would normally attend, fueling speculation that something was amiss, the Associated Press notes.

North Korean observers have theorized that Kim is suffering from health problems, that he's no longer in control of the country, or that he's in the midst of an attempted coup.

Considering the fact that people have been predicting the downfall of North Korea for decades, the latter two scenarios don't seem likely.

The most plausible explanation for the dictator's absence is that he was recovering from some sort of operation or dealing with other health issues. A source with access to North Korea's leadership told Reuters that Kim hurt his leg while overseeing military exercises, while other North Korean officials have said that his health is fine.

North Korean state TV previously alluded to an illness, saying "Kim is suffering from uncomfortable physical condition," but did not elaborate on what was ailing him.

Foster Klug writes for the Associated Press:

This bewildering ability to command attention by doing nothing said a lot about the North's propaganda focus on Kim as the center of everything. Remove for 40 days the sun around which that propaganda spins and the international media, both traditional and social, exploded with curiosity.

SEE ALSO: Here's The Most Likely Explanation Of What Happened To Kim Jong Un

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October 27 is Navy Day in the United States, celebrating the world's largest fleet, with 317,054 active duty personnel, 109,671 reserves, and 285 ships and more than 3,700 aircraft in active service.

It is the force that gives America the ability to project military power around the world. Although the Navy has been out of the spotlight after a couple of decades of land wars, it is expected to play a bigger role given America's Pacific pivot and growing reluctance to deploy troops.

"You're going to see a much greater emphasis on using sea-based forces to produce an effect,"Admiral Gary Roughead told Reuters. "You're seeing it in the Mediterranean, with Syria, and you're seeing it in the Pacific and the Middle East."

To celebrate America's Navy, we've pulled out some of the coolest photos from the archives.

After Reconstruction from the Civil War, America began a new era of foreign intervention, with the Navy leading the way. This 1899 photo shows sailors eating on the USS Olympia, which was America's flagship during the Spanish-American War of the previous year.

The USS Holland was the Navy's first commissioned submarine, as seen in this 1900 photo.

President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a fleet of U.S. ships to circumnavigate the world from 1907-1909.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran was a watershed event in modern history. It resulted in the overthrow of a brutal yet modernizing and pro-western government — and its replacement with a revolutionary theocracy that supports sectarian proxies throughout the Middle East. The breakdown in relations between the US and Iran, the Iranian nuclear standoff, the civil war in Syria, the current chaos in Iraq, and a host of other regional crises are to varying degrees the result of events that were put in motion in 1979.

And according to a recently declassified article from Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's internal journal, the significance of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi's lymphatic cancer — from which the exiled Iranian monarch would die in July of 1980 — was badly misread by US intelligence agencies. It was hardly the only factor contributing to rise of the Islamic Republic, but it shows the potentially outsized impact of such seemingly tertiary and misunderstood factors.

In the summer, 1980 issue of Studies in Intelligence, an author whose name is redacted in the paper's declassified version suggests that US intelligence officers did not have an adequate sense of the Shah's actual health during the closing years of his regime. "We now know that by 1973 [the Shah] knew that the time was short," the paper's author writes, using redacted information from "the definitive medical report" of the Shah as proof.

He apparently learned of his lympathic cancer that year — and it might have made him govern in a way that hastened the country's crisis.

The paper notes that the Shah upped his government's modernization efforts to a breakneck pace after 1973, and that the Shah's "grandiosity expanded exponentially" after that year. This alienated parts of a population that was already bristling under the Shah's dictatorial rule, and the ruler's sense of his own finite time in power might have caused him pursue policies that only deepened the country's frustration towards its ruling family.

"Having sewn the seeds of a too-rapid modernization, he had reaped the whirlwind of revolution," the author writes.

His illness might have made the Shah more willing to abdicate the throne, which he did in early 1979. The author raises the possibility that the cancer may have made the Shah's decision-making more erratic while sapping his will to cling to power. He may have been "able to give only part of his energy to fighting for Iran's life, since he was fighting for his own."

Yet the US was largely in the dark about something that might have been central to the Shah's calculations during the critical final years of his rule.

"Had we known the Shah was suffering from cancer of the lymph nodes since 1973, our government's judgements as to his ability to deal with the revolutionary forces that swept through Iran would probably have been quite different," the author writes. "Serious doubts would have replaced the guarded optimism concerning his ability to weather the storm."

And these doubts might have convinced the US to pursue policies that could have staved off Iran's eventual Islamist takeover. It could have led to the US push the Shah towards an "early accommodation" with his opponents. At the very least, it would have provided some much-needed explanation of the leader's mindset during the frantic closing months of his rule.

The US's misunderstanding of the Shah's medical condition contributed to a crisis whose consequences are still deeply felt throughout the Middle East. It's a reminder of how things that are seemingly background-factors can contribute to major shifts in history.

And it's a reminder that even the CIA can totally miss them.

SEE ALSO: A declassified CIA paper shows how the US prevented an Iranian sneak attack on Saudi oil platforms in 1987

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North Korean state media announced on Monday that its leader, Kim Jong Un, was photographed touring a newly built housing complex, marking his first public appearance in over a month.

The photos show Kim walking with a cane, which supports the most plausible theory that Kim sustained an ankle or leg injury that might have required surgery and a subsequent recovery period.

The news was likely meant to quell rumors of serious health issues or a coup in the secretive state. Kim, who is usually eager to be seen out and about at various events, last appeared in public Sept. 3 when he attended a concert with his wife.

His 40-day absence from public was unusually long, leading North Korea observers to speculate that he was no longer in control of the country or was suffering from any number of afflictions, including gout, diabetes, fractured ankles brought on by a cheese addiction, or some sort of leg injury.

Photos released by North Korean state media give the appearance that Kim is back from his temporary absence, but the propaganda agency didn't say when the photos were taken or when the visit to the housing complex took place.

The Korean Central News Agency story was accompanied by this statement from Kim:

Our scientists are patriots who are devoting all their lives to building a rich and powerful nation, convinced that though there is no frontier in science, they have a socialist motherland and are under the care of the mother party. There is nothing to spare for them. It is necessary to project and treat scientists preferentially and always take care of them.

Here are the photos:

One of the more outlandish theories suggested that ankle fractures brought on by a weight gain from Swiss cheese addiction were the source of Kim's injury. But a source with access to North Korea's leadership told Reuters that Kim hurt his leg while overseeing military exercises.

Others theorized that Kim's sister had taken control of the country or that Kim fell victim to some sort of coup. This is unlikely — political scientists said earlier this year that North Korea's coup risk was very low, and people have been predicting the downfall of North Korea for decades.

North Korean state TV previously alluded to an illness, saying "Kim is suffering from uncomfortable physical condition," but did not elaborate on what was ailing him.

An (unofficial) North Korea joke Twitter feed offered this explanation of where Kim has been for the past month:

Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un returns from martial arts training and meditation atop Mount Paektu, to defend people against Japanese aggression

— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) October 13, 2014

The new photos of Kim appeared on the front page of North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

Sky News' China correspondent Mark Stone notes that we should be skeptical of the photographs:

[The photos] could be unpublished photos from a previous visit — albeit a recent one, given that he is carrying a walking stick. It is conceivable the photos were taken in the past few months, but not published at the time because Mr Kim didn't want to appear weak. ... The North Korean regime has form in releasing doctored or inaccurate photographs.

SEE ALSO: No One Really Knows What Happened To Kim Jong Un

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RIYADH (Reuters) - A US national was shot dead and another wounded when their car was fired upon in an eastern district of Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh on Tuesday afternoon, a police spokesman said in a statement carried by state media.

An assailant was cornered and arrested, the statement said.

Photos have circulated on Twitter purporting to show the site of the attack:

One American killed, another wounded in the #Saudi capital #Riyadhpic.twitter.com/DwZIFVunaF

— Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) October 14, 2014

According to the police statement, the Americans were attacked while stopped at a gas station. There was an exchange of fire, leading to the attacker's injury and arrest. 

(Reporting by Angus McDowall, Editing by William Maclean and Alison Williams)

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The US military significantly escalated its airstrike campaign against the extremist group ISIS in the Syrian border town of Kobani on Monday and Tuesday, conducting 21 airstrikes in and around the town. 

US Central Command said the strikes had successfully slowed the group's advances in the town, which is in danger of falling to ISIS, also known as ISIL or the Islamic State. 

Centcom said the 21 strikes in and around Kobani destroyed two of the group's staging locations and damaged another, destroyed one an ISIS-held building and damaged two others, damaged three ISIS-held compounds, destroyed one ISIS truck, and destroyed one ISIS armed vehicle and another ISIS vehicle. 

The US military also struck an additional seven ISIS staging areas, two ISIS mortar positions, three ISIS occupied buildings, and an ISIS artillery storage facility. Centcom said early indications were that these strikes were "successful."

Separately, the US military conducted an additional strike on an ISIS-held oil refinery near Dayr az Zawr. Centcom said this strike was also successful.

"These airstrikes are designed to interdict ISIL reinforcements and resupply and prevent ISIL from massing combat power on the Kurdish held portions of Kobani," Centcom said.

"Indications are that airstrikes have slowed ISIL advances. However, the security situation on the ground there remains fluid, with ISIL attempting to gain territory and Kurdish militia continuing to hold out."

The US said Saudi Arabia also participated in the airstrikes.

The US and its coalition partners have warned of a potential massacre if ISIS successfully takes control of the town. ISIS has been rapidly advancing against Kurdish fighters in Syria, as political considerations have largely prevented Turkey from intervening.

While bickering in public, the US and Turkey have begun bracing for the fall of Kobani. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, said last week that ISIS "will take" control of some towns and that Kobani "may fall." The US has also said Kobani isn't part of the coalition's strategic objective of preventing ISIS from gaining a "safe haven" inside Syria.

The US airstrikes Monday and Tuesday, however, were the most significant in quantity since the US began bombing ISIS targets in Syria last month.

SEE ALSO: The ISIS Siege Of Kobani Exposes A Critical Flaw In Obama's Syria Plan

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Chatter has begun about a possible easing of sanctions on Russia in the event of "progress" on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

But Garry Kasparov, the Russian political activist and former grand chessmaster is convinced scaling back Western sanctions would only serve to embolden the country's leader, President Vladimir Putin — in Ukraine and elsewhere.

At a panel hosted by Reuters in New York on Tuesday, Kasparov used a line from the hit HBO show "Game of Thrones" to illustrate Putin's position. He said Putin believes he has a trump card — "winter is coming," and Europe needs oil.

Putin's message to Russian elites affected by the tensions with the West has been to convince them sanctions will eventually be lifted. 

"What's critical now is whether the sanctions, European sanctions, will stay in place," Kasparov said Tuesday morning on a panel hosted by Reuters and moderated by the news agency's editor-at-large, Sir Harold Evans. 

"Because the winter is crucial. Putin's message to those elites and to Europe comes from 'Game of Thrones': 'Winter is coming,'" Kasparov explained. 

Russia is Europe's main gas supplier, accounting for about one-quarter of the continent's demand, according to Reuters. And one-third of Russia's supply to Europe goes through Ukraine.

Because of this, Putin is betting European countries big and small — from Germany and France to the Czech Republic and Hungary — will look to ease sanctions rather than risk facing retaliation from Russia in the form of reduced oil supply. Germany gets about 30% of its energy imports from Russia, according to The New York Times, while France gets about 17%. Most EU countries obtain a minimum of 10% of their energy imports from Putin's country.

"He believes that Europeans will blink," Kasparov said on the panel, which also featured New Yorker editor David Remnick, journalist and author Masha Gessen, and former Treasury Department official Roger Altman. "Putin thinks that it's all temporary. And I think that if the West shows weakness, that will embolden Putin to move forward."

Kasparov went on to argue Putin is counting on the West to blink and ease sanctions. This is crucial for Putin because, according to Kasparov, the biggest pressure the Russian leader feels in the short-term will come from Russian elites and oligarchs — many of whom are his friends — who have been targeted under the US and European Union sanctions.

The US and EU last leveled another new round of sanctions on Russia in the middle of September. Those sanctions specifically targeted Russia's oil sector, taking particular aim at Russian oil exploration in the Arctic. But US deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told reporters recently that sanctions could be rolled back if there was "meaningful" progress and implementation of the ceasefire plan in Ukraine.

Blinken said some of the steps Russia needed to take are the removal of its troops from Ukraine, as well as returning control of the border back to Ukrainian authorities.

"Our hope over the next weeks is that we begin to implement that agreement in a meaningful way on the Russian side. And if that happens we can actually begin to talk about rolling back the sanctions," Blinken said.

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Kurdish forces and the US-backed coalition aren't the only forces with female soldiers fighting in Syria and Iraq. The militant group The Islamic State (ISIS) is recruiting women, too.

Since February, ISIS has controlled at least two all-female battalions, recruiting single women between 18 and 25 and paying a monthly salary of roughly $150. 

Al Arabiya reports the groups were initially formed to “expose male activists who disguise in women’s clothing to avoid detention when stopping at the ISIS checkpoints.”

The battalions are also used to enforce ISIS's strict laws of individual conduct on women — sometimes violently. Abu Ahmad, an ISIS official in Syria, told Syria Deeply, "We have established the brigade to raise awareness of our religion among women, and to punish women who do not abide by the law."

Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on violent Islamism, told The Atlantic that it appeared the female battalions were restricted to the ISIS-controlled Syrian city of Raqqa. 

"There is a process of female emancipation taking place in the jihadi movement, albeit a very limited and morbid one,"Hegghammer said. "Many of them are eager to portray themselves as strong women and often make fun of the Western stereotype of ‘the oppressed Muslim woman.'"

But the battalions aren't evidence that ISIS is embracing female empowerment. It's the just the opposite.

"ISIS created it to terrorize women," Raqqa-based activist Abu al-Hamza told Syria Deeply, telling of a raid the group conducted at a girls school. "After arresting those women and girls they took them to ISIS prisons and locked them in for six hours and punished some of them with 30 whips each."

The girls and women were accused or wearing veils which were two thin, or exposed too much of their faces.

Zainab, a teenager in Raqqa, told Syria Deeply she was arrested by the group.

"I was walking down the street when a car suddenly stopped and a group of armed women got out,"she reportedly said. "They insulted me and yelled at me. They took me to one of their centers and kept me locked in a room. Nobody talked to me or told me the reason for my detention. One of the women in the brigade came over, pointing her firearm at me. She then tested my knowledge of prayer, fasting and hijab."

According to Syria Deeply, the fighter told Zainab she was arrested because she had been in public without an escort and her hijab was not being worn properly.

"You should be punished for taking your religion lightly,"the female fighter said, threatening Zainab with a harsher punishment if she was caught again, according to Syria Deeply.

The all-female battalions may be just another way that ISIS inflicts rampant gender-based violence on its captive population. The Islamic State has been disastrous for women living under its control, who are reportedly subject to rape, beatings, and arbitrary arrest and are ordered to wear coverings more extreme than the vast majority of Islamic societies. Women must also be accompanied by male guardians in public.

SEE ALSO: This One Document Tells How A Teenage Girl From The Colorado Suburbs Got Involved With ISIS

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On June 6, hundreds of ISIS jihadists on pick-up trucks raced towards Mosul with the somewhat modest goal of seizing control of parts of the city for several hours, thus making a statement that the Baghdad government couldn't ignore.

Instead, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) collapsed, ISIS pushed their advantage, and large swaths of northern Iraq fell under the group's control, according to a special report from Reuters by Ned Parker, Isabel Coles, and Raheem Salman. 

The report, compiled from months of research and interviews with ISIS-affiliated contacts, members of the Iraqi military, and Kurdish officials, re-creates the slow moving disaster that ended with the jihadist seizure of Iraq's second-largest city.

As it turns out, one of the main reasons for the fall of Mosul was the Iraqi Security Forces' fatally poor logistics. 

Reuters: 

The first line of Mosul’s defence was the sixth brigade of the Third Iraqi army division. On paper, the brigade had 2,500 men. The reality was closer to 500. The brigade was also short of weapons and ammunition, according to one non-commissioned officer. Infantry, armor and tanks had been shifted to Anbar, where more than 6,000 soldiers had been killed and another 12,000 had deserted. It left Mosul with virtually no tanks and a shortage of artillery[.]

This shortage sharply undercut the manpower required to defend Mosul.

The city was meant to have approximately 25,000 soldiers and police defending it in total. In actuality, there was at most 10,000 security personnel in the city at the time of the attack. 

And of these 10,000 personnel, many were under-equipped or deployed in a way that left the city badly exposed. One of the main entries into Mosul that ISIS attacked had only 40 men guarding it, according to the report. 

Even when there enough personnel in place to put up resistance to the ISIS militants, the soldiers in Mosul found themselves outgunned. 

"In my entire battalion we have one machine gun. In each pickup they had one," Dhiyab Ahmed al-Assi al-Obeidi, the colonel of the fourth battalion in Mosul, told Reuters. 

Along with this logistical chaos, Reuters discovered that political failings played a decisive role in the fall of Mosul. On June 7, during the second day of the ISIS assault, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani offered to send Peshmerga fighters to aid the ISF in Mosul. Maliki, suspicious of Kurdish intentions, twice declined the Kurds' assistance. 

On June 10, Mosul fell to a force of slightly over 2,000 ISIS fighters as the final remnants of the ISF withdrew from the city, at times burning their uniforms in an attempt to blend in with the civilian population.

The fall of Mosul has led to a domino effect of instability throughout the rest of Iraq and the Middle East. ISIS fighters seized critical weapons from the ISF's bases in Mosul, which the jihadists then used to push their advantage further into both Syria and western and northern Iraq. 

You can read the full Reuters report here»

SEE ALSO: Erik Prince is right: Private contractors will probably join the fight against ISIS

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The Syrian civil war has become a Pandora's box in the Middle East. The conflict ripped the country apart before leading to spillover violence in Iraq, Lebanon, and the UN-patrolled border region with Israel in the Golan Heights. 

Now, it might be Turkey's turn.

Turkey's refusal to resolve the crisis in the Kurdish border city Kobane has enraged the country's Kurds. The situation threatens to further complicate the region's political and security dynamics — or even restart a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey itself.

Turkey's Kobane Calculation

The ongoing conflict in Syria has become intensely focused on the Kurdish city of Kobane, located almost exactly on top of the Turkish-Syrian border. And the repercussions of the Syrian civil war in are now being felt broadly across Turkey — violently, at times.

Turkey, a NATO member, has been hesitant to become directly involved in the war in Syria and has not joined US-led coalition strikes against ISIS. Instead, Turkey has stuck to a policy where it demands that any meaningful strikes against ISIS must also include concrete efforts to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. 

But this reluctance to become militarily involved in Syria has led to an uproar amongst the nation's Kurdish minority, who make up an estimated 20% of Turkey's overall population.

Turkish troops on the border are currently able to view the fighting in Kobane, but have refused to become involved in a battle that observers warn could turn into a massacre of Kurdish civilians if the city falls to ISIS. 

Adding to the frustration, Turkey has refused to open a humanitarian corridor between its border checkpoint of Mursitpinar and Kobane. According to Turkey's foreign minister, the opening of a humanitarian corridor would allow civilian fighters to stream into Kobane and actually constitute a war crime.

The limitation of Turkish Kurds crossing into Syria has less to do with concern over legality, however, and more to do with Turkey gaining strategic leverage over two Kurdish groups — the Syrian YPG and the Turkish PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has been designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU. 

Soner Cagaptay, a Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, sums up the relationship between Turkey and Kobane in one sentence: "Ankara wants to use the battle for Kobane to make the PKK/PYD recognize that they need Turkey to survive in Syria, thus folding the Kurds under its strategic vision for Syria's future."

But the Kurds have not folded in the face of dual pressure from Turkey and ISIS.

Instead, the PKK has upped the stakes.

The Peace Process Breaks Down In Turkey

Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned head of the PKK, has announced that the two-year-old peace process between Turkey and the separatists would end by October 15 if steps were not taken to aid Kobane and if there weren't concrete progress towards enacting the policies agreed upon between the PKK and Turkey. 

But rapprochement between the PKK and Turkey — a signature policy of Turkish president Reccip Tayyip Erdogan — has already hit a dead end.

Turkish warplanes struck suspected PKK positions after the rebels shelled a military outpost in southeastern Turkey, according to the Turkish military. These were the first major airstrikes carried out against the PKK since the peace process began two years ago. 

Should the peace efforts fall apart, Turkish President Erdogan and his ruling AKP party could face a serious public backlash.

Erdogan spent considerable political capital in an effort to reach an agreement with the Kurds and end the three-decade-long PKK insurgency, which has killed upwards of 40,000 people. These overtures wor his party considerable support among Kurds, who would likely abandon the PKK should fighting between Kurds and the Turkish military begin again. 

Kurdish youth have already taken to the streets early last week in massive demonstrations across Turkey against what they saw as the government's complicity with the siege of Kobane. Dozens of Kurds were reportedly killed in the government clampdown on the protests, and the PKK called its fighters back into Turkey for a possible resumption of hostilities against the Turkish state.

The Turkey-PKK conflict has raged at various levels of intensity since 1984. During the three decades of fighting, over 40,000 people were killed and the east of Turkey suffered substantial economic damage. In total, it is estimated the fight against the PKK has cost Turkey upwards of $450 billion. 

Should fighting between the PKK and Turkey resume, the fight against ISIS will become even more complicated as the PKK, one of the most capable forces in the fight against ISIS, will also return to a state of war with Turkey.

This development would make Turkish participation against ISIS in Syria even more unlikely as any anti-ISIS intervention would aid the Kurds.

Along with the rise of ISIS, the displacement of 9 million Syrians, the destabilization of Iraq and Lebanon, a sustained US bombing campaign in the region, and the deaths of some 200,000 people, renewed conflict between Turkey and the PKK would be yet another consequence of the Syria conflagration that might have seemed unthinkable when the conflict began 3 years ago.

SEE ALSO: Kobane's about to fall because the US doesn't have partners on the ground

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The US and Turkey, the Middle East's only NATO member state, are at a frustrating point in their relationship.

The Syrian city of Kobane, which is on the Turkish border, is in danger of falling to ISIS. Turkey has lined up tanks on its border but isn't sending in troops and is actively impeding Kurdish militants looking to reinforce the town. The US is bombing ISIS outside of Kobane, but the overwhelming likelihood is that neither side's actions are meeting the other's hopes or expectations.

Yet today, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted during a press conference in Paris that there was "no discrepancy" between the US and Turkey on the issue.

This is unlikely. Turkey has plotted its policy in Syria with the implicit assumption the US would act forcefully to remove the government of Syria President Bashar al-Assad. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for Assad's ouster in mid-2011 and took a much harder line against a diplomatic solution to the conflict than the US and its other allies. Turkey has since accommodated over 1 million Syrian refugees within its borders. However, Turkey has also turned a blind eye to jihadist facilitation networks and selectively enforced the movement of fighters across the border.

Turkey bet on Assad losing the war early on and isn't changing its strategy to adjust to the reality his regime is no longer living under an immediate existential threat. And Erdogan's government has approached the crisis with the expectation the US or the NATO states would intervene on their side, most notably when Turkish leaders invoked the mutual defense provision of the NATO charter after a Turkish fighter plane was shot down in Syrian airspace in June of 2012.

Turkey's Syria strategy is considered a failure. Erdogan's administration acted in a way that aided extremist groups while waiting on outside help that never came. And now a US-led coalition is now undertaking airstrikes that many anti-Assad groups are less than thrilled about, and which have targeted jihadist organizations like Jabhat al-Nusra that have fought alongside some of Syria's more moderate anti-Assad factions.

Erdogan clearly sees the US bombing campaign against ISIS as something of a betrayal. In recent days, he's characterized western actors in the region as foreign meddlers, or "Lawrence of Arabia" figures— comments that have been read as an uncharitable reference to the American military operations.

Turkey's been noncommittal about allowing the US to use airbases in the country for attacks on ISIS and the country is a ways off from fully joining the anti-ISIS coalition.

The US, for its part, might think Turkey isn't doing enough for the anti-ISIS effort, considering its NATO membership, geographical proximity, and the military buildup outside of Kobane.

Kerry's insistence there's "no discrepancy" between the US and Turkey plainly goes against the current dynamic along the Syrian border and against the larger trend in relations between the two countries during the Syria conflict. However, Kerry's comments get at the Obama administration's belief that its relationship with Turkey is salvageable — and that Erdogan could still be willing to cooperate in Syria.

On the other hand, they might just show how desperate US policy in the region is getting.

SEE ALSO: Turkey is now the latest country to deal with serious spillover violence from Syria

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Numerous US troops found and were exposed to chemical weapons while serving in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of the country, and they were plagued by not only the terrible aftereffects but also by substandard medical care and little recognition after the military attempted to keep the discovery of the munitions a secret.

In a long exposé highlighting the "secret US casualties" posted Tuesday evening by The New York Times, journalist C.J. Chivers brings to light what has been suppressed for years by military officials. Between 2004 and 2010, according to The Times, troops found thousands of rusty, corroded chemical munitions throughout Iraq, though all were manufactured before 1991.

"I love it when I hear, 'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq,'" former Army Sgt. Jarrod L. Taylor told Chivers. "There were plenty."

In the runup to the Iraq war in March 2003, the Bush administration made the case that Saddam Hussein was actively working to build and obtain weapons of mass destruction. These included claims of building biological weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons. The Times report, while revealing that Hussein did in fact have chemical munitions, notes that all were made before the 1991 Gulf War, and quite embarrassingly, often with US help.

Chivers writes:

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.

In many of the cases Chivers highlights, explosive ordnance disposal personnel — believing they were dealing with old artillery or mortar shells on a roadside used as improvised explosive devices (IED) — disarmed them and sometimes put them in their trucks, being exposed to leaking chemicals like mustard and sarin.

"This is mustard agent," Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling told his men over the radio, according to Chivers. "We've all been exposed."

Read the full article here >

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Good morning. Here's what you need to know for Wednesday. 

1. Fresh protests in Hong Kong coincide with a video taken by a local television crew that allegedly shows police officers in plainclothes kicking a protester while his hands are tied. 

2. The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that there could be 10,000 new Ebola cases in West Africa each week if efforts to combat the virus are not increased within the next two months. 

3. A New York Times investigation reveals that the US government kept the discovery of abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq secret and that many soldiers were exposed to the munitions between 2004 and 2010. 

4. A US-led coalition has ramped up airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria over the last two days.

5. Oil prices continue to slide, posting their "biggest one-day drop in nearly two years Tuesday as a U.S.-led wave of crude has crashed into weak global demand," The Wall Street Journal said. 

6. Mexican authorities said that the bodies found in mass graves last week do not belong to the college students who have been missing for almost three weeks. 

7. The Spanish nurse infected with Ebola is showing signs of improvement, while highlighting issues in response and treatment of the virus. 

8.David Greenglass, a spy for the Soviet Union during the Cold War era whose testimony famously led to the execution of his sister, Ethel Rosenberg and her husband Julius, has died. 

9. The US Supreme Court has sided with abortion rights advocates in blocking parts of a 2013 Texas law that would have closed all but eight abortion facilities in the state.

10. A report led by London's former health commissioner calls for a ban on smoking in the city's public parks as well as Trafalgar and Parliament squares. 

And finally ...

Michelle Obama made a "Turn Down For What" parody vine. 

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A video of police officers allegedly beating a pro-democracy protester in Hong Kong has triggered a fresh round of demonstrations in the city controlled by China. 

The footage was captured by a local news station, TVB, early Wednesday morning and appears to shows officers kicking a protester, identified as Ken Tsang Kin-chiu, in a dark corner while his hands are handcuffed, Reuters said. 

Tsang is a social worker and member of one of Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy political parties, the Civic Party, according to various media reports. 

The incident, which happened after police used pepper spray to break up demonstrators blocking a road tunnel, led to six officers being relieved of their duties, the department said in a news conference Wednesday evening, The New York Times reports. 

According to the Times, TVB said the beating lasted 4 minutes, although the video clip is under a minute. 

The Wall Street Journal quoted Tsang's lawyers as saying, “the marks on his body show some sort of tools or weapons were used. Now he is in hospital and he has to do a full body scan to see if he has any internal injuries, especially on his back."

The police beating video could renew support for the protestors, the WSJ points out, as pro-democracy riots have started to fizzle out into the third week. 

The video is below, courtesy of WSJ:

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The US and Russia have apparently agreed to put aside their differences to cooperate in the international fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has thus far failed to slow the momentum of the Sunni extremist group also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The Associated Press notes that although John Kerry didn't use the term "reset"after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the US Secretary of State used "familiar language about managing differences and forging a better partnership on matters where they agree."

The attempted "reset" in 2009 was the Obama administration's first big policy statement and is largely considered a failure to be ignored. Nevertheless, Kerry's comments on Tuesday suggested that the State Department had changed its view on US-Russian relations once again.

The New York Times highlights that it seems to signal a new tack, given that six months ago the "Obama administration officials suggested that their goal was to isolate President Vladimir V. Putin following Russia’s decision to annex Crimea and provide military support to separatists in eastern Ukraine."

That would seem to be great news for Russia — which has denied meddling in Ukraine and continues to house former NSA contractor Edward Snowden— as well as for Moscow's strategic allies in the Middle East.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom Moscow staunchly backs, appears to be the big winner in the short term.

The Obama administration appears intent on ignoring the Syrian dictator, who has survived a three-year civil war by gassing, torturing, and barrel bombing his enemies while receiving military support from Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Iranian-trained Iraqi Shia militias.

Meanwhile, US-backed rebels are on the brink of defeat while the US-led coalition prepares to build a new army to fight ISIS militants.

The new agreement with Russia means that the US is now sharing intelligence on ISIS directly or indirectly with Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraq, and Russia.

Kerry said that Lavrov agreed to exploring ways to support Iraq's government, such as providing weapons to the country's demoralized security forces. As for Syria, Moscow has told Washington that any US airstrikes should be carried out in cooperation with Assad.

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NEW YORK (AP) — In 1953, at the height of the Cold War, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died in the electric chair after being convicted of conspiring to pass secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviets. The government's star witness at their trial: Ethel's own brother, David Greenglass.

On Tuesday, family members disclosed that Greenglass died July 1 in New York City at age 92.

He had served 10 years in prison for espionage followed by years of living in Queens under an assumed name.

For years, as the debate raged over the explosive McCarthy-era spying case, Greenglass was vilified by the Rosenbergs' defenders as the man who sent the couple to their deaths — anger that flared again in 2001 when he admitted that he had lied on the witness stand against his sister.

"He was self-aggrandizing, narcissistic, unremorseful," Sam Roberts, a New York Times reporter who wrote the book "The Brother," told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

After his release in 1960, Greenglass hoped to be forgotten for his part in the cause celebre that is still furiously debated to this day.

The Rosenbergs' sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, were aware of their uncle's death last summer but did not seek media attention and received no inquiries at the time, according to their spokeswoman, Amber Black.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted in 1951 and executed at New York's Sing Sing prison, insisting to the very end that they were innocent.

Greenglass, indicted as a co-conspirator, testified for the government that he had given the Rosenbergs research data obtained through his wartime job as an Army machinist at Los Alamos, New Mexico, headquarters of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.

He said he had seen his older sister transcribing the secret information on a typewriter at the Rosenbergs' New York apartment in 1945. That testimony proved crucial in convicting Ethel along with her husband.

"Without that testimony, I believe she would not have been convicted, let alone executed," Roberts said.

In 2001, Greenglass was quoted as saying he had not actually seen Ethel typing and knew of it only from his wife, Ruth. For the prosecution, however, the typewriter "was as good as a smoking gun in Ethel Rosenberg's hands," Roberts wrote.

In the book and a CBS interview, Greenglass admitted he lied on the stand about his sister to assure leniency for himself and keep his wife out of prison so she could care for their two children.

"I don't care. I sleep well," Greenglass said in the interview, adding that "stupidity" had kept the Rosenbergs from possibly saving themselves by admitting guilt. According to Roberts, Greenglass said his nephews also showed "stupidity ... to actually think they (the Rosenbergs) were innocent."

Greenglass said that while history might blame him for the Rosenbergs' deaths, he hadn't known that would be their fate. He also said he had been urged to lie by prosecutors, among them Roy Cohn, later a key aide to anti-communism crusader Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

To some, Greenglass came to be seen as a symbol of betrayal. In the 1989 Woody Allen movie "Crimes and Misdemeanors," Allen's character says of his smug and annoying brother-in-law: "I love him like a brother — David Greenglass."

In a statement Tuesday, the Rosenberg sons said that David and Ruth Greenglass were the ones who passed atomic secrets on to the Soviets, then "pinned what they did on our parents — a calculated ploy to save themselves by fingering our parents as the scapegoats the government demanded."

The sons cited the 2001 interview in which Greenglass said he expected to be remembered "as a spy who turned his family in."

"He was right," the sons said in their statement.

After their parents were executed, when the boys were 6 and 10, both took their adoptive parents' surname, Meeropol.

Their uncle was born in New York in 1922. After Army service in World War II, he and Julius Rosenberg became partners in a machine shop that failed.

David and Ruth Greenglass, like the Rosenbergs, were active communist sympathizers, having joined the Young Communist League in 1943. Both couples believed the Soviet Union should have the bomb if the United States did.

At trial, the Greenglasses said Julius Rosenberg had recruited David Greenglass as a spy and arranged for him to feed stolen atomic research and a detonator to a go-between, Harry Gold. Gold also was convicted.

Greenglass served 10 years of a 15-year sentence.

After his release, he remained estranged for the rest of his life from his nephews.

Here are some pictures of the trial, to have a splash in those Cold War days.

SEE ALSO: These Are The Secret Sites Where The Soviet Union Exploded Atomic Bombs And Tested Radiation On Unsuspecting Russians

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What is going on in Vladimir Putin's mind?

That's the question a panel of Russia experts was trying to answer Tuesday morning. Attention on Russia and the crisis in Ukraine has dwindled as the press has focused more on the West's fight against the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State. 

US Secretary of State John Kerry also announced Tuesday increased intelligence-gathering cooperation with Russia on the group — also known as ISIS — a particularly significant development given the recent thaw in US-Russia relations.

But this panel, which was moderated by Reuters, took a much more alarmist tone when speaking about America's relations with Moscow and speculating about Putin. All the experts in attendance warned that Putin's recent moves in Ukraine might only be the start of new territorial ambitions.

Three of the four panelists — New Yorker editor David Remnick, journalist and author Masha Gessen, Russian political activist and former grand chessmaster Garry Kasparov, and former Treasury Department official Roger Altman — agreed Putin could soon try to stretch his influence into the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

"They already are under pressure," Gessen, the author of a 2012 unauthorized biography of Putin, said of the Baltics. "That's very much where he's doing his nuclear saber-rattling, and that's where he's planning to call NATO's bluff."

Unlike Ukraine, all three Baltic states are NATO members. NATO's Article 5 requires all members of the alliance come to the defense of any member that is attacked or targeted. 

Putin last month made casual mention of his country's nuclear arsenal, around the same time NATO accused Russian forces of an "incursion" in Ukraine. Many analysts have speculated Putin's next move could come in the Baltic states, something that would be a clear challenge to NATO. 

Amid the bluster from Putin — who also reportedly said in a private conversation he could invade Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states if he really wanted to — NATO states made a point of countering with strong rhetoric of their own.

President Barack Obama traveled to Estonia last month on the way to a meeting in Wales with other NATO states, in a trip the White House said was aimed at reassuring NATO allies in the Baltics that felt threatened by Putin's moves in Ukraine. The message, a White House adviser said, was for Putin to "not even think about messing around" with the region.

But members of the panel were skeptical the US and other European members would rush to the Baltics' defense if they were targeted. And they said Putin would love a chance to try to embarrass NATO and paint it as nothing more than a symbolic alliance.

Kasparov speculated Putin may try to push NATO by employing some of the same tactics he used in Crimea, which Russia formally annexed from Ukraine in March. He said that, rather than marching across the border, Russia would try to stir up some pro-Moscow "form of dissent" in the Baltics. This would allow Russia to maintain plausible deniability and characterize any military action in the region as a reaction — something that would make it difficult for NATO members to call it an invasion. 

Remnick agreed a potential Putin playbook for the Baltics would resemble Crimea. He added that a potential Putin push into the region wouldn't resemble "Czechoslovakia in 1968," when the Soviet Union lined up tanks and invaded the country to crack down on reformist trends.

"There's a rich tradition of these highly crude, sophisticated provocations," Remnick said. "It's not going to look like Czechoslovakia in 1968. Thousands of tanks are not going to cross into [the Baltics]. The operation in Crimea, on a military intelligence basis, was brilliant. Brilliant."

What may be most disconcerting about Putin in general, however, is his lack of predictability. All of the panelists agreed on one thing: Putin's end goal is to stay in power. And if that goal is suddenly best furthered through making noise in the Baltics, then there's a very real possibility he'll take action.

"We're talking about a man who doesn't have a plan. So we're trying to figure out what his plan is, but he doesn't have one," Gessen said. "He sees that as an option. It is definitely an option, he is considering it, and he may wake up one morning and do it."

SEE ALSO:  Putin's Ukraine Strategy Is Straight Out Of 'Game Of Thrones'

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After two months of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the US-led coalition has a name: "Inherent Resolve."

Interestingly, the name had previously been rejected for a multitude of reasons, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal two weeks ago.

"It's just kind of bleh," an unnamed military officer told The Journal. An unnamed senior official further said the name was merely a placeholder that had never been considered to be the actual name for the overall operation. 

The initial failure of the name of the operation was multifaceted. For some officers, Inherent Resolve failed to evoke the sense of the Middle East. Other officers rejected the name on the grounds that it failed to capture the sense of the international coalition that had joined the US in operations. 

Military operations have been named by the US military since at least World War II. The lack of a name for the operations in Syria and Iraq had come as a break with 70 years of military tradition.  

The issue of a lack of a name for the operations had been raised since airstrikes first started in Iraq. In August, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said there was no "good reason" for the lack of an operational name.

Operation Inherent Resolve has targeted positions of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, throughout Syria and Iraq for the past two months. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the US-led coalition carried out 18 strikes against the militants in the two countries.

The strikes focused on ISIS positions around the town of Kobani in Syria, while in Iraq the airstrikes hit ISIS militants by the critical Baiji oil refinery plant and the Haditha Dam.

SEE ALSO: The US Is In The Midst Of A Full-Scale Strategic Meltdown In Syria

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Tom Foley, a businessman running for governor in Connecticut, seems to own a pair of his own supersonic fighter jets.

According to a 1997 profile of Foley in "Flying" magazine, Foley purchased two Folland Gnats — British military aircraft first used in the late 1950s — and received special training to fly them and perform the "usual range of military aerobatics including, barrel rolls, loops and even spin entry." The magazine described Foley, the owner of Stevens Aviation, as someone with a "lifelong interest in airplanes, cars, boats and other machines."

Foley purchased the planes when the British government auctioned some of its old Royal Air Force vehicles in 1990. He reportedly leapt at the opportunity and bought two for $200,000 apiece from Sotheby's. He then spent about a million dollars "modernizing and civilizing" one of the jets.

Among other changes, he gave the jets a special white paint makeover that was the reverse of the color scheme the planes sported in the Royal Air Force. You can see a photo of one of the jets in its military colors here and another picture of it after Foley's makeover here. "Flying" also has a photo of Foley in the cockpit. 

"Flying" reported Foley, who had to wear an oxygen mask while piloting what the magazine dubbed "an unusual business jet," originally intended to sell one of the planes and use the funds to make the second one "even better." However, the magazine said his makeover of the first aircraft "took so long and turned out so well" that he did not get rid of the second jet. 

Currently, FAA records seemingly show Foley still owns both planes. One of the jets is still registered in Foley's name at an address in Greenwich, Connecticut. The second jet is registered to a holding company at the same address. Foley's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about his jets.

Foley's opponent, incumbent Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D), has repeatedly sought to depict Foley as an out-of-touch millionaire who profited from heartlessly firing workers across his various businesses. Malloy reportedly pointed out at a recent debate that Foley owns the jet, in addition to a "$10 million house and a $5 million boat," in order to press this point.

The Journal Inquirer reported earlier this month that it reached out to Foley's campaign about the "Flying" magazine account of the fighter jet. However, Foley's spokesman "ducked" and instead chose to speak broadly about his candidate's vision for the state.

"What people want in leaders are strong values, the right policies, and the right experience and skills for the job," the spokesman said. "Tom Foley beats Dan Malloy on all three. Tom believes in honesty, hard work, generosity, and being a respectful, contributing member of the community."

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