The BBC's Paul Adams in Geneva says it appears large disagreements still exist between the two governments. Syria's president has agreed to give up his chemical arsenal, but the rebels say it will not stop the killing. Free Syrian Army spokesperson Louay Moqdad told the BBC that the government of President Bashar Assad still had plenty of conventional weapons at his disposal and said he was "just trying to buy time" with the help of the Russians.

Russia announced its proposal for dealing with the escalating chemical weapons crisis on Monday, as the US Congress was preparing to debate whether to back President Barack Obama's moves towards military strikes. The UN has confirmed it has received documents from Syria on joining the Chemical Weapons Convention, a key step in the Russian plan.

It's not that federal government tried to prosecute a bunch of them but lost the cases. There were no serious efforts at criminal prosecutions at all. Which isn't to say nobody is in jail. There have been prosecutions of various mortgage brokers and other small fish who lied or encouraged clients to lie on their applications for a home loan. The crisis exposed some outright fraudsters who are now in the slammer, such as Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford. And, yes, major banks have been working through billions of dollars in civil settlements for shady behavior in the runup to the crisis.

But it's shocking that for a crisis that drove the global economy off a cliff, caused millions of people to lose their homes and generally spread mass human misery to almost every corner of the earth there is no defining prosecution. No man or woman who led one of the firms directly culpable for the catastrophe has been put in a prison-orange jumpsuit. You might think that by now we could say that orange is the new charcoal pinstripes. But we can't.

No CEOs even came particularly close to facing criminal charges. The closest would probably be Angelo Mozilo, who was chief executive of Countrywide, one of the most aggressive mortgage lenders during the boom years. It was bought up by Bank of America in late 2007 and has caused the bank no end of trouble since.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mozilo with insider trading and securities fraud in 2009 for selling shares of his company while publicly proclaiming it was in fine shape. But those were civil charges, which Mozilo settled with $67.5 million in fines and a lifetime ban from serving as an officer of a public company. A criminal investigation was dropped.

And that’s about it.

He said the Church must ‘reflect the democratic spirit of the times’ and take the opinions of its members into account. He said: 'Celibacy is not an institution but look, it is also true that you can discuss (it) because as you say this is not a dogma, a dogma of the church.'

Archbishop Parolin is considered to be the most powerful official in the Vatican and his comments carry considerable weight. Pope Francis has been making waves in the Church with his forward-thinking approach and has made a series of comments to suggest that he is in favour of shaking up some age-old traditions.

Soon after being becoming Pope he called for a ‘poor Church for the poor’. He also said he wanted to boost the role of women in the Church and proposed a more tolerant stance on homosexuality, stating: ‘Who am I to judge?’ And before he took office he gave an interview in which he said: ‘For the moment, I am in favour of maintaining celibacy; with all its pros and cons... It is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change.’

While Fatah head and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas negotiates with Israel for the creation of a PA state, the Al Aqsa Brigade has incited all Muslims to take part in the “Day of Rioting” in defending "Palestinian land.”

In response, the Jerusalem police announced on Thursday evening that, following a security assessment, they will be restricting the entry of Muslim worshipers to the Temple Mount for Friday prayers. Among men, only those aged 45 and over with blue ID cards will be allowed to enter the compound.

Thousands of Jewish worshipers are also expected to gather at the Kotel at the start of Yom Kippur, causing security measures to heighten in anticipation of harassment and violence at the hands of groups of Muslims, as was the case during Rosh Hashanah when 15 stone-throwing Islamist rioters were arrested at the Temple Mount. Jerusalem police in large forces will be stationed around the Old City and the Kotel starting on Friday morning to maintain order during Yom Kippur.

Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote: “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart.”

“The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.”

Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent for the Catholic journal The Tablet, said the pontiff’s comments were further evidence of his attempts to shake off the Catholic Church’s fusty image, reinforced by his extremely conservative predecessor Benedict XVI. “Francis is a still a conservative,” said Mr Mickens. “But what this is all about is him seeking to have a more meaningful dialogue with the world.”

Criticising David Cameron’s promise to claw back powers from Brussels, Jose Manuel Barroso suggested that his tough line on Europe was an insincere attempt to counter the rise of the UK Independence Party.

He said: ‘Let me say this to all those who rejoice in Europe’s difficulties and who want to roll back our integration and go back to isolation – the pre-integrated Europe of the divisions, the war, the trenches, is not what people desire and deserve. The European continent has never in its history known such a long period of peace as since the creation of the European Community. It is our duty to preserve it and deepen it.’

Starting today, following a 5-0 vote by the FDIC, depositors in foreign US bank branches will officially no longer have recourse to a $250,000 in deposit insurance. The notional amount of deposits at risk: $1 trillion. This is not a new development: the FDIC rule to curb insurance on this category of deposits was proposed earlier this year, and today was the formalization.

Questions do arise: if a major US depository institution does fail domestically, the financial state of their depositors abroad will hardly be the biggest issue. However, a different question emerges: if the US offshore bank branches will no longer be insured by the US, the logical implication is that deposits of foreign banks in the US are not insured either.

Putin will renew an old offer to supply Iran with five of the sophisticated ground-to-air missile systems at a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rowhani on Friday, Kommersant said, quoting a souce close to the Kremlin. Putin is set to meet Rowhani at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation held in Kyrgyzstan on Friday.

Kommersant wrote that Putin would offer to supply Tehran with a modified export version of the S-300 systems called S-300VM Antey-2500. Russia has urged the West to soften sanctions against Iran after the election of Rowhani, a centrist cleric, in June.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Kommersant that Putin and Rowhani were expected to discuss "working together in the nuclear energy sphere" and "questions of military technical cooperation" in talks at the summit in Bishkek.

The Prime Minister insisted he would never discuss giving up the overseas territory with Spain without the consent of people living on The Rock. In a message to celebrate Gibraltar’s National Day, told locals that the UK government will ‘stand with you' despite no progress in ending the long-running border disputes.

Tensions have mounted this summer in a dispute over Spanish fisherman accessing Gibraltar waters, which has seen Madrid impose draconian border checks which have caused huge queues. Gibraltar's chief minister accused Spain’s prime minister of behaving like Argentine dictator General Galtieri. The European Commission is due to send a team to the border to examine the delays this month.

Mr Cameron has threatened to take Spain to the European Court of Justice over its imposition of 'politically-motivated' border checks. In a strident video message shown at a National Day event today, the Prime Minister said: ‘Gibraltar has been British for 300 years. Let's keep it that way.’

“It’s called Comet ISON,” said Jim O’Leary of the Maryland Science Center. “That tail can get tens of millions of miles long, so it’s huge,” O’Leary said. But in its middle, it’s just dirt and ice three miles across. “It could be the comet of the century,” O’ Leary said. “That is what some people are calling it, and we’re not that far into the century you know.”

It’s certain to light up the winter sky. That is, unless it doesn’t. They don’t know if the sun will blast it to shreds. “It’s only passing through one diameter away from the sun, 700,000 miles, through the hot corona. That might be enough to blast it apart,” O’Leary said. In that case, it could turn into smaller comets or disappear completely.

The moment of silence at 8:46 am Wednesday marked when the first plane hit the twin towers on a clear, sunny day in 2001. Then, families of the victims started reading aloud the names of those who died. Along with the names of those who died when the hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were read out the names of those killed in the hijacked Flight 93 and the victims of the 1993 trade center bombing.

In a sadly familiar ceremony, friends and relatives of World Trade Center attack victims gathered at the National September 11 Memorial plaza to call out the names of the dead and read messages to their lost loved ones. A bell tolled to mark the moments when four hijacked jets crashed into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in the Pennsylvania countryside, and again to mark the moments when the two skyscrapers collapsed.

Steve Rosenberg BBC News, Moscow writes: On the Syria issue, Russia seems to have kept one step ahead of the US. While President Obama has been accused of U-turns and zig-zags, of drawing red lines and being slow to act on them, President Putin has been as solid and unshakable as the Kremlin walls: consistently opposed to a US strike. The Kremlin's not for turning.

What's more, Russia believes that its message has been getting through and that its tough stance has helped dilute international support for US military action. Last week, the UN, the EU and the Vatican all expressed their support for a political solution.

Even if the Russian initiative eventually unravels amid bickering and paralysis in the Security Council, Moscow can still argue that at least it tried to find a peaceful solution.

This week, the chief nuclear officers of around 100 American nuclear power plant reactors are taking a field trip. They are travelling to Japan and then taking a bus to Fukushima. There, dressed in protective suits, they will walk through the ruins left behind by the earthquake of the century, the tsunami of the century and the resulting triple nuclear reactor meltdown that occurred in March 2011.

"I can assure you when they get back from this trip, all of these chief nuclear officers will double their safety precautions," says Dale Klein, who has made the same trip and describes it as "very sobering." Klein, who was head of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission until 2009, now serves as chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, which advises Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company that once ran the Fukushima power plant and is now responsible for cleaning up the site.

In the eyes of industry experts and the Japanese public alike, the company has proved one thing unequivocally - that it is in far over its head in trying to handle the aftermath of the disaster. Klein is generally a polite man, but he recently announced in public exactly what he thinks of the company that hired him. "You do not know what you're doing," Klein told company president Naomi Hirose in person. "You do not have a plan."

In accordance with Japanese custom, the company head, thus chastised, inclined his head and replied, "I apologize for not being able to live up to your expectations." TEPCO has been stumbling "from crisis to crisis," Klein says. And with no improvement in sight, it had recently become clear that Japan would find itself, out of necessity, doing something that is generally considered very un-Japanese: asking for foreign help. Klein said there were signs that the government was planning on inviting experts from Europe and the US in to help.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Tuesday after meeting with Russian parliament speaker that his government quickly "agreed to the Russian initiative." Al-Moallem added that Syria did so to "uproot US aggression."

His statement sounded more definitive than his remarks Monday, when he said that Damascus welcomed Russia's initiative. Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that Russia is now working with Syria to prepare a detailed plan of action, which will be presented shortly.

Lavrov said that Russia will then be ready to finalize the plan together with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

There's a reason you're only getting snippets about Assad's supposed "chilling warning" of "repercussions" to the US if his country is invaded, it's because he calmly and succinctly exposed Obama and the US government's hypocrisy through and through. For one, Assad says there's no evidence his regime used chemical weapons, but notes such illegal weapons were used by the US in Iraq and Israel in Gaza.

Assad recollects that the last time the US presented "evidence" of WMDs was Colin Powell at the UN making the case Iraq had WMDs (and could "nuke us within 45 minutes"), which we all know now was a fabrication.