A breakthrough on ending Syria’s chemical weapons menace – Revelations of US spying could scuttle an important international visit – France’s Greens demand more input on the environment – And three Aussies are amongst thousands stranded on a Chinese Cruise Liner.

After three days of talks, the US and Russia struck a deal on removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical arsenal, a deal that may avert military action against him.  The “ambitious” deal demands Assad account for his secret stockpile within a week and let international inspectors eliminate all the weapons by the middle of next year.

Top advisers are urging Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to cancel her planned state visit to the White House next month, because of recent revelations the US National Security Agency (NSA) spied on her and other Brazilians.  A former president of Brazil is among those urging her to call off the trip.  Rousseff says she will not make a final decision until after Tuesday’s scheduled meeting with her foreign minister.  Rousseff doesn’t believe Washington's contention that it only gathers information critical to US national security.  Brazil is a peaceful democracy with no history of international terrorism or access to weapons of mass destruction.

The Green Party is threatening to drop its support for France’s government unless President Francois Hollande makes a clearer commitment to protect the environment.  The government has put off transitioning France to less carbon-intensive energy sources until next year, is stalling on scrapping a diesel fuel tax, and cut the Environmental Ministry’s budget.

About 100,000 angry Polish trade unionists marched through Warsaw in the finale of a four-day protest against the unpopular and increasingly fragile center-right government.  They’re worried over the unpopular right-leaning government’s “Flexible Labor Policy”, which is code for “crappy wages and slashed hours”.  Traditionally left-wing unions joined center-right union “Solidarity” (the union that brought down the Soviet system) in calling forPrime Minister Donald Tusk’s outster.

A cease-fire between Philippine troops and Muslim rebels in the south has fallen through and the shooting has restarted.  The government is retaking a series of villages near Zamboanga, where the Islamists are holding about a hundred hostages.  At least 50 people have been killed in a week of fighting.

About 2,300 passengers and crew aboard China’s largest cruise ship Henna are stranded at South Korea’s Jeju Island while a legal dispute over the boat is worked out.  Three Australians are on board.  No one can get off, because everyone had already completed South Korean immigration exit procedures.  The exact nature of the dispute is unclear, but the South Koreans are insisting the big boat stay put while a Chinese shipping company presses a claim against the Henna’s owner in Beijing.

Japan’s nuclear authority plans to conduct radiation contamination surveys at 600,000 points on the seabed off the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, looking for traces of cesium and assessing the amount of damage to the environment.  That’s a marked increase from the 200 places surveyed so far.  The new survey points are spread over a much larger area, a 1,000 square-kilometer area in the Pacific Ocean off of the crippled nuclear power plant where three cores melted through in March of 2011.  Since then, efforts to contain billions of gallons of radioactive water used for cooling the nuclear waste pools have large failed.