Chatter: Egyptian leaders wanted

NEED TO KNOW

Egypt unled. Leaders are in short supply in Egypt today, as the interim president and prime minister struggle to form a cabinet and prosecutors order the arrest of the powerful head of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mohamed Badie, the Islamist movement's supreme guide, is under a warrant for supposedly inciting the violence in Cairo this week that left 51 people, mostly Brotherhood supporters, dead. If the Brotherhood wasn't keen before on joining interim prime minister Hazem al-Biblawi in a transition government, it'll be even less so now. And sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a bad leader is no leader at all.

Syria according to Russia. Russian investigators have looked into the allegations of chemical weapons in Syria and concluded that yes, sarin was "clearly" used — not by the people known to have a large stash of the gas, government forces, but by rebels who'd apparently made their own.

That's not quite the version told by the United States, Britain, France or any of the other countries who accuse President Bashar al-Assad's army of poisoning its opponents. Russia has handed over the samples it collected from the scene of one of the alleged attacks to the United Nations — whose own investigators, by the way, are unable to carry out a full analysis because Assad's government refuses to let them in. Funny, that.

WANT TO KNOW

Buried in China. As many as 40 people are feared trapped in China's Sichuan province after a landslide smothered the town of Zhongxing. Rescue teams are hunting for survivors under the mud they know is covering at least 11 families' homes.

The landslide follows days of torrential rain that has already caused a Sichuan road bridges to collapse. Twelve people are still missing in the river beneath. In total, officials say more than 500,000 people in two provinces have been affected by the downpours.

Going off the rails. Canadian police have opened an investigation into the deadly derailment of a train in the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, suspecting that what caused the engine to plough off the tracks and into downtown was not a malfunction but a crime.

Investigators say they're trying to determine whether the oil train's brakes had been tampered with, possibly while firefighters were putting out a blaze that broke out aboard earlier in the day. If foul play is proved, whoever carried it out will have to bear reponsibility for the deaths of at least 15 people killed in the crash and resulting fireball. 

Boston bomb suspect in court. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the teenager accused of bombing the Boston marathon, is due in court today for the first time since his arrest. Tsarnaev hasn't been seen in public since the dramatic police chase in April that left him with multiple gunshot wounds and his older brother dead.

The 19-year-old will thus be charged alone for his alleged role in the attack and the three deaths it caused. Alone, and face to face with people who survived the bomb.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Together in perfect broccoli. President Barack Obama has made a sweet — if not entirely convincing —attempt to do America's parents a solid by telling kids that his favorite food is, ahem, broccoli.

Now, don't get us wrong. We love us a floret or five. But when a president who until recently claimed to love nothing more than "chili, French fries and pork chops" suddenly develops a love of the green stuff, you can't blame us for being suspicious. Can it be coincidence that Obama loves the very vegetable that George H.W. Bush declared he'd never eat again? Um, probably.