Women at the Olympics, Syrians in Iraq, and Discarded Pianos
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
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Russia, one of the few remaining friends of Bashar al-Assad's regime, just sent the Syrian government some advanced antiship missiles.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Syria's admission Monday that it has chemical weapons has revived a counter-theory to one of the biggest intelligence failures in American history: The non-existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Turkey is employing a range of covert tactics to provide military assistance to Syrian rebels, but there's one thing it would really like at its disposal: American drones.
President Bashar al-Assad's forces have withdrawn from towns and cities across the country to crush the Syrian opposition in Aleppo in a battle military analysts say could be a focal point in the 16-month conflict.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
In response to increased fighting near its border with Syria, Turkey has closed all its official border gates between the two countries.
Syria's public position is that it won't use its chemical weapons unless some outside state attacks it, but a Reuters Insight piece on Tuesday included the scary detail that the regime there was close to using them on rebels two weeks ago, but Russia stopped it.
A fundraising campaign launched by the Saudi royal family on behalf of the people of Syria generated more than $32 million worth of donations in one day.
The Syrian foreign ministry claims that the military would never use its stock of chemical weapons "inside Syria," but let the world know that it could definitely bring them out if a foreign country tries to interfere in its civil war.
As President Bashar al-Assad's regime teeters on the brink of collapse, military planners in the Middle East and the United States are projecting worrying scenarios of the regime's disintegration.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
As fighting continues to rage in the capital city, reports are that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is "directing a response" to yesterday's bombing of his top staff from the coastal city of Latakia.
This morning, Foreign Policy published new results from a poll asking Americans what the president should do about the bloodshed in Syria, which primarily builds the case for why foreign policy shouldn't be conducted by opinion poll.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
A suicide bomber struck a national security building in the Syrian capital, killing two of the highest-ranking members of the Assad regime.
The most prominent Syria defector to date says that his country's "wounded" regime may have already used chemical weapons on its people and has collaborated with Al Qaeda terrorists to orchestrate high profile bombings across the country.
A freelance photojournalist who visited the town of Tremseh after reports of a recent massacre the says he saw first-hand the evidence of heavy artillery and mass executions by the Syrian government.
Syrian activists claimed yesterday of a new massacre in Tremseh, where pro-regime forces allegedly killed 200 residents of the small village with tank and helicopter fire. New reports suggest the town was filled with poorly armed opposition forces who brought knives to a tank fight.
We won't call it cosmic justice but it does make you wonder: On Wednesday, an Egyptian journalist died on live TV while defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The 2007 explosion at a Syrian chemical weapons plant still taints that country's safety record when it comes to its chemical weapons, so the news that it's breaking them out of storage is, well, disturbing to say the least.
Pro-government forces in Syria are accused of killing more than 200 residents of a small village near Hama, in what may the worst single incident of the 16-month uprising.
Nawaf Fares, Syria's ambassador to Iraq, has defected to the opposition and is now urging the army to turn its guns on President Basahr al-Assad's regime.
China has finally decided to support Kofi Annan's efforts in Syria, now that he's calling for action the United States doesn't like—mainly because it may involve Iran.
In a rare interview with German TV, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed the idea that he and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi have anything in common, but we can help him think of at least a few things.
On the same day that reports of violence in Syria is spilling to its neighboring countries, Kofi Annan admitted that the U.N.'s efforts to bring peace to Syria have failed.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
At a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" in Paris, French François Hollande and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered some of the strongest threats so far against Syria and the nations that are supporting its dictator.
While we're no doubt excited about the 2.4 million e-mails from Syrian politicians, officials, and companies that WikiLeaks says it's releasing today, we're more interested in exactly how anyone will find any juicy stuff in an ocean of documents.
The bodies of two Turkish air force pilots who were shot down by the Syrian military last month have been found with the help of Robert Ballard, the undersea explorer famous for discovering the wreck of the Titanic.
How can Kofi Annan expect to form a unified government in Syria when meetings of the Syrian opposition end with women crying and fights breaking out?
Today the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad told the Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper that he totally regrets shooting down the warplane. But really, what does regret mean to a dictator like al-Assad?
A investigation by Human Rights Watch has identified the locations of 27 different "torture centers" across Syria where thousands of citizens have been interrogated and abused since the nation's uprising began in March of 2011.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
The biggest question surrounding Kofi Annan's new plan for a unified government in Syria that he debuted on Saturday is whether Bashar al-Assad will be included. Hillary Clinton, for one, doesn't think so.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan says he "optimistic" that international talks in Geneva this weekend will end with "an acceptable result" for the Syrian peace process despite little evidence that this peace plan will do any better than the last one.
Kofi Annan has a big, new idea on how to save Syria (because his last one worked so well) and it's a unified Syrian government with regime and opposition representatives, but Bashar al-Assad may have to be left out.
Despite major defections and an increasing tough and brutal resistance, intelligence officials in the United States say that Syria's government is unlikely to fall anytime soon.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
As Turkey, NATO, and the United Nations all struggle with an appropriate response to Syria's continued flouting of international norms, Iran is now offering its services as a peacemaker.
Six senior officers, including a general and two colonels, have defected along with 30 other soldiers from Syria's army and arrived in Turkey.
Turkey and Syria are currently working together to locate the wreckage of the downed Turkish fighter jet shot over Syrian airspace on Friday, but the world is waiting to see how Turkey is going to respond.
In today's tour of state-sponsored propaganda: China tells Burma democracy isn't that great, Saudi Arabia funds propaganda in Syria, and American propagandists lose work.
Neighborly relations between Syria and Turkey were already deteriorating, and now Syria has downed a Turkish war plane, according to reports.
In what appears to be the first defection of its kind, a Syrian fighter pilot has landed at a military base in neighboring Jordan Thursday and has requested asylum, according to Jordanian officials.
Publicly, the Obama administration opposes "further militarization" of the conflict in Syria. Covertly, the CIA is helping direct powerful weapons purchased by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syrian opposition fighters.
The U.N. announced they're suspending the activities of their team of monitors tasked with implementing the failing six-point peace plan in Syria on Saturday.
The conflict in Syria isn't officially labeled a civil war but the denomination gained new validity in the last 24 hours following a series of developments on the ground including land grabs and weapons buildups.
The 22-year-old aide to Bashar al-Assad, who Barbara Walters helped get into a Columbia University graduate program, used her powers of spin on herself in a New York Post interview, saying she was "nothing but a victim for some personal agendas."
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