UN experts tour site of attack as Assad gives warning to West

United Nations experts were in the eastern suburbs of Damascus Thursday for a third day of inspections of areas struck by a purported chemical weapons attack, as Syrian President Bashar Assad said that his country "will defend itself against any aggression," signaling defiance to mounting Western warnings of a possible strike.

Chemical weapons inspectors toured stricken rebel-held areas, ahead of a weekend departure that could clear the path for military action against Syria.

All the evidence gathered by the U.N. team will be brought to the Hague, Netherlands, where it will be separated into categories in an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) laboratory. Samples will then be sent to undisclosed, OPCW-designated and certified laboratories in Europe for analysis. The U.N. refuses to disclose where the labs are located, apparently to safeguard the integrity of the investigation.

The evidence will be transported to the Hague inside special OPCW containers that are sealed for safety and to ensure that the samples themselves are not compromised. Chain of custody during the transportation process is said to be impeccable, with state of-the-art logging and chronicling of every step taken.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Western powers to hold off on any decisions until his experts can present their findings to U.N. member states and the Security Council.

Ki-moon will be given a briefing by the head of the inspection team, “in the coming days,” a U.N. spokesman told Fox News.

A formal written report could take many days and up to a couple of weeks.

The suspected chemical weapons attacks took place Aug. 21 in suburbs east and west of Damascus. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has said the strikes killed 355 people.

The Syrian regime has denied a role in the attacks, suggesting instead that anti-government rebels carried them out to frame Assad.

The Syrian president struck a tough tone Thursday. His comments, from a meeting with a delegation from Yemen, were reported by the state news agency SANA.

"Threats to launch a direct aggression against Syria will make it more adherent to its well-established principles and sovereign decisions stemming from the will of its people, and Syria will defend itself against any aggression," Assad said.

It's not clear if Assad would retaliate for any Western strikes or try to ride them out in hopes of minimizing the risk to his own power.

Already, the conflict has sparked growing anxiety among civilians in neighboring countries.

Israelis stood in long lines Thursday for government-issue gas masks. Turkey's government crisis management center said officials had designated bunkers at seven areas along the border. And Lebanon's foreign minister, Adnan Mansour, warned that international military action against Syria would pose a "serious threat" to the security and stability of the region, particularly in Lebanon.

In one of the videos, the inspectors stood next to their U.N. vehicles, and the accompanying caption indicated Thursday's date and the location. In another video, the U.N. convoy was seen driving through a street, accompanied by armed rebels in pickup trucks.

On two previous tours this week, the inspectors visited a western suburb of the city as well as Zamalka where they took biological samples from suspected victims.

In countries neighboring Syria, governments began taking precautions against possible Syrian retaliation.

Israel has called up reservists and deployed missile defense batteries in preparation for a possible Syrian response to an American attack.

In Turkey, the government's crisis management center said on Twitter that a team of 100 chemical weapons experts were sent to the border area, which was being screened for any signs of chemical attacks.

Turkey is Assad's strongest critic and has backed Syria's opposition and rebels. The country said this week it would take part in any international coalition that would move against the Syrian government.

Fox News’ Jonathan Wachtel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Woman gives birth in Subway restroom in Nevada

RENO, Nev. (AP) — It was just another day at work for Flora Vargas until a screaming woman burst into her Subway sandwich shop in Nevada on Friday and announced she was in labor.

After the pregnant woman raced for the women's restroom, assistant manager Vargas and her boss sprang into action, placing sandwich wrappers and trash bags on the floor for sanitation.

With Vargas' help, the mother gave birth on the restroom floor in Minden, 40 miles south of Reno, a couple minutes later.

"It was a boy. A beautiful boy," Vargas told The Associated Press. "He didn't cry when he came out. Then he cried, and I breathed easier knowing he was alive."

No customers were in the restaurant at the time of the 9:30 a.m. birth, but the restaurant was open. The only employees inside were Vargas and the manager.

Vargas helped calm down the mother and get her on the restroom floor, she said, and it was "a blessing" that paramedics from the East Fork Fire and Paramedic District arrived in time to assist in the delivery.

"The head of the baby was already out when she went to the floor," Vargas said. "The baby came out really, really fast. Fortunately, the emergency service people got here really fast."

Paramedics transported the mother and child to Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center, where hospital spokesman Jon Tyler said he could only disclose that both are healthy. Their names were not released.

Vargas said the mother told her that she was 21 and had three other children. The mother was accompanied by a sister at the time, she added.

East Fork Battalion Chief Ron Haskins said paramedics have delivered babies in odd places, but it's the first birth on a restaurant restroom floor that he can recall during his 30 years with the district.

"We've delivered babies in cars and restrooms at home, but it's all part of the job," he said. "It's one of the most positive parts of our job."

When she entered the business, Vargas said, the mother was "screaming real bad, 'I'm in labor. I'm going to have it right now.' My manager said, 'What should we do?' I said, 'It's an emergency and we have to do something.'

"He and I grabbed Subway wrappers and trash bags and rags that we use in here, and put them on the restroom floor so there was sanitation. Everything happened so fast," she added.

After the birth, the 30-year-old Vargas held the mother's hand and assured her the boy was healthy. The mother reacted by "crying a bit but seemed to be OK," she said.

Vargas said though she's "really happy" about how things turned out, she urged her boss to provide training to employees on how to deliver babies.

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Cicada cam gives users frightening glimpse of ‘swarmageddon’

The cicada cam (Discovery.com)

The great cicada invasion of 2013 has begun in earnest on the East Coast, with hundreds of thousands of the noisy, sex-crazed insects popping up from Georgia to Connecticut. Discovery.com is looking to capitalize on the peculiar craze with a cicada cam, providing live, streaming video of the Brood II cicadas covering a replica of the U.S. Capitol.

"Like a scene from a horror flick, these creepy crawlers emerge from the ground every 17 years to invade the mid-Atlantic," reads a blog post introducing the cicada cam. "During the next few weeks, they will be emerging from their lengthy slumber to molt and mate. From North Carolina to Pennsylvania, little children and grown-ups alike will recoil in horror from the Cicada Invasion."

While their "loud mating calls and carpet of corpses may come as a nuisance to some," Megan Gannon writes on LiveScience.com, entomologists are getting a rare chance to study the mysterious Brood II, a distinct cicada population "that only matures every 13 or 17 years." More from Gannon:

Mapping where these 17-year cicadas emerge could offer new insights on land use, climate change and the bugs themselves. The cicadas' long subterranean youth, which may be the longest of any known insect, means it's difficult for scientists to study their life cycle.

"To be fair," Gannon added, "they're not swarming or invading or coming out of hibernation. They've been sharing the environment with East Coasters this whole time—they've just been underground sucking roots. The insects might only seem like a plague because of their numbers. Some scientists estimated up to 30 billion Brood II adults would make their debut this year."

The Discovery site isn't the only media outlet inviting its audience to get in on the gross action. Earlier this month, WNYC's Radiolab rolled out an interactive Cicada Tracker for user-generated mapping of the so-called swarmageddon.

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