• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

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:

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad says he will turn over his weapons for international oversight even as he maintains he was not responsible for the deadly Sarin gas attack on August 21st. An exclusive interview on Fox News with President Assad revealed a still-defiant leader who brushed aside the thousands of deaths of Syrians at the hands of his security forces and blamed rebel groups for the August 21st attack. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain pushed back against Russia’s pro-Syria President Vladimir Putin, publishing an op-ed on the Russian news Pravda. McCain did not hold back, saying Putin ruled “by corruption, repression and violence.” Click here for a Fox News article about Assad’s interview. Click here to read Senator John McCain’s Op-ed in Pravda.

In a neighboring region of the world, Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani, also gave an interview to a Western media outlet – his first since taking office. He told NBC, “We have never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb and we are not going to do so. We are solely seeking peaceful nuclear technology.” He also condemned war with Syria, and had considerably calmer rhetoric on Israel compared to his predecessor. Click here to read a Guardian Newspaper article about the story.

Just days after a mass shooting at the Navy yard in Washington DC that left 13 people including the shooter dead, a new report was released analyzing the correlation between gun laws and gun deaths in various nations. The gun lobby often asserts that guns make a nation safer. But this new study of 27 countries including the US published in the American Journal of Medicine concludes the opposite is true. The authors show an extremely strong correlation that the more guns available in a country, the more gun-related deaths there will be and that mental illness is a negligible factor. Click here to read the study on guns in the American Journal of Medicine.