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Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta, Independent Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent, analyzes today’s news headlines:

Russian and US representatives are meeting in Geneva to discuss how to oversee Syria’s chemical weapons. A two-day meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov could yield an agreement on international inspections of Syria’s chemical arsenal. The meeting offers Russia an opportunity to protect its ally while the US could save face in constructively backtracking from the edge of an unpopular war. Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin penned an op-ed in today’s New York Times, saying “It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States.” Click here to read a Wall Street Journal article about the Geneva meeting. Click here to read Vladimir Putin’s Op-ed in the New York Times.

A department at Johns Hopkins University has joined an anonymous US government official in declaring that North Korea may have restarted a long-defunct nuclear reactor as per satellite images. The Obama Administration’s Special Representative for North Korea Policy, Glyn Davies, told the press, “If it turns out these reports are true … it would be a very serious matter.” Click here to read a Reuters article about the story.

A controversial aspect of the government spending bill passed earlier this year and facing renewal soon, is the obscurely named “Farmer Assurance Provision.” Activists like to use a clearer name: The Monsanto Protection Act. Despite intense public disapproval, House Republicans have just inserted the provision into a spending bill designed to avert a government shutdown. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who is fighting the provision, calls it “a special interest loophole that nullifies court orders that are protecting farmers, the environment, and public health.” Click here to read a Huffington Post article about the story.