Talks to avoid a US Military Strike in Syria continue – The sentence is death in a rape case that shocked the world – And, how NOT to make $50,000 per month from your own home.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says an upcoming report will “overwhelmingly” confirm that chemical weapons were used in an attack on civilians on 21 August.  Ban did not elaborate on which party was responsible, the government of Bashar al-Assad or one of the rebel groups fighting to topple Assad.  But he did say Syria's president was guilty of “crimes against humanity”.  The report will be presented to the Security Council on Monday.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet for a third day Saturday in Switzerland for “constructive” talks on ending Syria's chemical weapons program.  At issue is how to implement a Russian plan to put Syria's chemical weapons under international control.  Success could avert a US military strike in retaliation for the poison gas attack on civilians.

Four men convicted in a notorious gang rape in Delhi, India have been sentenced to death.  The brutality of last December’s crime, in which the young medical student victim eventually died of massive internal injuries, shocked the world and prompted a conversation about rampant sexual assaults in India.  A teen co-defendant was already sentenced to three years in a juvenile detention center, the toughest penalty under Indian law.

Four Chinese Coastguard vessels sailed into Japanese waters this morning, near the Senkaku Islands.  It’s the latest move in a cat and mouse game between the two.  Japan has controlled the previously unclaimed islands since 1895.  Tokyo insists China's assertion of ownership only came after the discovery of gas and oil resources in the seabed in the 1960s.

Thirty-seven people were killed when a fire swept through an aged psychiatric hospital in Russia, a hospital that authorities had previously warned to improve fire safety.  A patient was either smoking in bed, or had deliberately set fire to his mattress.  The fire at Oksochi Hospital in Luka, halfway between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, broke out in the middle of the night, reducing the decrepit wooden building to charred ashes.  It’s the second psychiatric hospital fire in Russia this year.

Mexican cops clashed with teachers who occupied the main square in the capital to protest education “reforms” by President Enrique Pena Nieto.  Most of the protesters left Zocalo square peacefully, but a few stayed on and then.. tear gas, water cannons, petrol bombs, the usual clash-with-riot-police sort of thing. 

Police in Rosario, Argentina are holding a 19-year old “superhacker” who led a cadre of Internet ne’er-do-wells who allegedly targeted international money transfer and gambling websites.  Cops say the kid was making more than A$50,000 a month from his bedroom in his dad’s house.  Junior is accused of three crimes, and if convicted of all, could be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.

An elderly Roman Catholic Priest is recovering after attackers threw acid on him, in the Island city of Zanzibar off Tanzania’s coast.  It happened in the same part of town and a month after a similar attack on two young British women, who were significantly injured in the earlier attack.  Zanzibar’s President condemned the attack.