The G8 communiqué issued at the conclusion of the Northern Ireland meetings contains six paragraphs addressing the crisis in Syria. Despite British Prime Minister David Cameron's valiant attempt to portray some kind of a breakthrough, the sad but inevitable truth is that the communiqué broke no new ground.

Scowcroft Center Director Barry Pavel appeared on Al Jazeera English to discuss the thwarted terror plot in Canada and the suspects' possible links to al-Qaeda and Iran.

South Asia Center Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin joins CBC's Jennifer Hall to discuss the thwarted terrorism plot in Canada and the alleged links of Al-Qaeda to Iran.

There have been persistent rumors that Jabhat al-Nusra, among the most effective militias fighting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is linked to Al Qaeda. That connection has now been confirmed. The head of al-Nusra’s Syrian branch, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, has declared his organization’s “allegiance” to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s leader.

From David Enders, McClatchy:  Two Syrian rebel groups – one seeking an elected civil government, the other favoring the establishment of a religious state – are battling each other in the city of Tal Abyad

To make sense of our complex world, we rely on paradigms to offer insights to solve problems. After World War II, for example, the dominant paradigm was the Cold War, which envisioned a world divided between free and unfree or democratic-capitalist and authoritarian-socialist countries. The paradigm prevented global cooperation and miscalculations almost led to war.

From Eric Schmitt, New York Times:  With France planning to start withdrawing its troops from Mali next month, Western and African officials are increasingly concerned that the African soldiers who will be relied on to continue the campaign against militants linked to Al Qaeda there do not have the training or equipment for the job.

Rudolph Atallah, senior fellow of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, joined Erick Stakelbeck on CBN News to discuss Al-Qaeda's expansion to Africa.