By Lucky Gold, CNN

Syria’s bloody civil war represents a security threat to many nations in the region; none more so than its neighbor, Israel.

Tzipi Livni, former Israeli Foreign Minister and former leader of the centrist Kadima Party, didn’t mince words when describing the international community’s response to the Syrian crisis when speaking with Christiane Amanpour Tuesday:

“The fact that the international community is quite, excuse me, impotent on this issue sent a very sad and problematic message to the region. Because the international community is being watched by extremists in the region. It’s not only inside Syria, it’s by Iran, by other radical elements, by Hezbollah, by Hamas.”  FULL POST

By Samuel Burke, CNN

“I thought it would end in a tent with a knife, like Daniel Pearl,” Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler tells Christiane Amanpour about his 130 days being held captive by al Qaeda in Mali in 2008.

“Every time I went into a tent, the first thing I did was look on the ground to see if there was plastic,” he recalls. “I figured they wouldn’t want blood all over their rugs in the middle of the desert where there was no water.”  FULL POST