The Libyan prime minister appeared live on television on Thursday just hours after his release was confirmed. Ali Zidan was seized from his hotel and held for several hours by suspected former rebel militiamen in the early hours of the morning.

"Libyans need wisdom ... not escalation ... to deal with this situation," he said during a televised cabinet meeting. "There are many things that need dealing with."

House Speaker John Boehner (pictured above) said on Thursday that Republicans would propose a temporary increase in the US debt limit, but only if President Obama agreed to negotiate over the ongoing government shutdown.

"Listen, it's time for leadership," Boehner told reporters after meeting his party colleagues from the House of Representatives.

"What we have discussed as a conference is a temporary extension of the debt ceiling - in exchange for a real commitment by this president and the Senate majority leader to sit down and talk about the pressing problems that are facing all the American people."

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) released the indictment of Merhi on Thursday, accusing the 47-year-old of helping to plan the bomb attack that killed Hariri (pictured above) and trying to cover up the perpetrators' involvement afterwards.

Judges at the STL had issued the indictment in secret on July 31 in order to give authorities time to arrest Merhi. After failing to track down the suspect, the tribunal decided on Thursday to make the indictment public.

In the 35-page indictment, prosecutors use cell phone records to establish how Merhi allegedly tracked Prime Minister Hariri's movements in the final weeks of his life. It says he worked with two other Hezbollah-connected suspects, Salim Jamil Ayyash and Mustafa Amine Badreddine.

The US Secretary of State sought to reassure Egypt on Thursday over its decision to suspend some of its financial and military aid to the military-backed interim government. The move came amid widespread international concern over the government's crackdown on supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.

"The interim government understands very well our commitment to the success of this government, which we want to see achieve, and by no means is this a withdrawal from our relationship or a severing of our serious commitment to helping the government," John Kerry told reporters shortly after arriving in Malaysia.

Iraq's Justice Ministry on Thursday defended the executions, claiming that they had been appealed "more than one time" and that appellate judges had reviewed the accuracy of the verdicts.

According to the ministry, all 42 inmates had been convicted of "terrorism crimes, killing dozens of innocents in addition to other crimes aimed at destabilizing the country, causing chaos and spreading horror." One woman was among those executed, the ministry said.

Experts say destruction of Syria's chemical weapons is proceeding according to plan. But apart from this success, the work could have meaningful political side-effects, says a political scientist at a Zurich think tank.

The rift between Guinea's government and opposition appears to be unbridgeable. The opponents of President Alpha Conde refuse to recognize the validity of parliamentary elections held at the end of September. They speak of "large-scale vote rigging" and demand that the election should be declared null and void.

Sidya Toure is a former prime minister who now leads one of the strongest opposition parties, the Union of Republican Forces (UFR). In an interview with DW he said that "no condition had been fulfilled for these elections to go ahead."

The two rabbis offered an unusual service to Jewish women who could not get their husbands to agree to a divorce, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For a fee, they would convene a rabbinical court and authorize the use of violence to get a recalcitrant husband to agree to a divorce, the F.B.I. said.

But that was not all, according to court papers unsealed Thursday morning. They were also willing to employ hired muscle, two men known as Ariel and Yaakov, to actually kidnap the man and torture him, until he pledged to divorce his wife, according a criminal complaint in Federal District Court in Newark.

Two men whom the authorities describe as rabbis - Martin Wolmark and Mendel Epstein - as well as a third man, Ariel Potash, have been charged in a kidnapping conspiracy according to court papers. In connection to the case, F.B.I. agents carried out raids in South Brooklyn and Monsey, N.Y., in Rockland County on Wednesday evening.

Russia slams Netherlands over diplomat's beating, 'deadline for explanation' passes

(RT) - Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich added that the results of the initial talks with the Dutch government on the issue were "more than disappointing."

"The attempt of the Dutch side to somehow justify the brutal police action does not hold water," Lukashevich said, saying that the "unacceptable" and "incomprehensible" incident was not equal to the usual level of Russian-Dutch relations.

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to account for the incident. On Tuesday the ambassador left the ministry, refusing to make any comment to press about the attack on Borodin.

"Police in The Hague managed to beat up and detain the second-in-command of the Russian Embassy without any punishment from the higher authorities. This looks like a response to the Greenpeace affair," wrote Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian President.

The incident has heightened tensions between the Dutch and Russian governments already at loggerheads over the detention of Greenpeace activists who staged a protest at a Russian oil rig off Russia's north coast.

On Friday, the Netherlands has filed a lawsuit against Russia in an International Maritime Dispute Court, in a bid to win the release of the Dutch-registered Greenpeace vessel 'Arctic Sunrise' and its 30-strong crew - all of whom face charges of piracy.

In response to the announcement, the Russian government issued a sharp rebuke to the Dutch government for failing to address the issue earlier.

"Over the last year-and-a-half the Russian side made repeated attempts to contact their Dutch counterparts to intervene in the vessel's illegal activities," Russian Foreign Ministry deputy head Aleksey Meshkov told RIA Novosti on Saturday.

Russia, Netherlands Spat Over Arrested Russian Diplomat Escalates  

○ Moscow Art Show cancelled in Dutch-Russian year of cultural exchange
○ Russia-Netherlands exchange year to open up significant economic and cultural opportunities - Shvydkoi

Oil traders razor-focused on signs of escalating violence in the Middle East were jolted on Thursday by a Twitter posting from the Israeli military that, at first glance, suggested they had just bombed Syrian airports.

Oil prices jumped $1 as the talk raced through oil markets, which frequently react quickly to rumors of geopolitical events and where traders have increasingly turned to the Internet and social media for advance warning of escalating risks, from the Arab Spring to the Iranian nuclear standoff.

The Tweet was true, but it wasn't news. The posting referred to an attack 40 years ago in the Yom Kippur war, the latest in a series of Tweets from the Israel Defense Forces Twitter handle (@IDFSpokesperson) commemorating the war.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2013

The Nobel Peace Prize 2013 was awarded to Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons".

During World War One, chemical weapons were used to a considerable degree. The Geneva Convention of 1925 prohibited the use, but not the production or storage, of   chemical weapons. During World War Two, chemical means were employed in Hitler's mass exterminations. Chemical weapons have subsequently been put to use on numerous occasions by both states and terrorists. In 1992-93 a convention was drawn up prohibiting also the production and storage of such weapons. It came into force in 1997. Since then the OPCW has, through inspections, destruction and by other means, sought the implementation of the convention. 189 states have acceded to the convention to date.

The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law. Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons. Some states are still not members of the OPCW. Certain states have not observed the deadline, which was April 2012, for destroying their chemical weapons. This applies especially to the USA and Russia.

○ RT - Global chemical weapons watchdog wins Nobel Peace Prize
○ JPost - Chemical weapons watchdog OPCW wins 2013 Nobel Peace Prize