SYRIA popularity and SYRIA trends

At least 88 people, including many children, have been killed in Syria's restive Homs province, opposition activists say, calling it a "massacre".

BEIRUT (AP) -- Activists on Saturday raised the number of those killed in an alleged massacre by Syrian regime forces in a region in the center of the country to more than 90....

The rebel Free Syrian Army called on Saturday for the Friends of Syria to carry out air strikes on the forces of President Bashar al-Assad after more than 90 people, including 25 children, were reportedly "massacred" in the town of Houla.

US secretary of state to visit Istanbul in early June; at least 50 killed in Homs; Annan announces first visit to Syria since peace plan; UN nearing full deployment of unarmed observer forces.

Activists have raised the number of those reportedly killed by regime forces in a district of central Syria to more than 90.

President Bashar Assad’s forces have killed at least 50 civilians including 13 children in central Syria, activists say, in one of the highest death tolls in one specific area since an internationally brokered cease-fire went into effect last month.

More than 70 people were killed across Syria on Friday, monitors said, as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets and tanks were deployed in the country's second largest city.

Doctors who have been treating injured civilians inside Syria during the country's unstable ceasefire talk to Sima Barmania about their experiences and the types of casualties they have seen.

A Russian cargo ship loaded with weapons is en route to Syria and due to arrive at a Syrian port this weekend, Al Arabiya television said in a report that Western diplomats in New York described yesterday as credible.

MORE than 70 people were killed across Syria yesterday, monitors said, as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets and tanks were deployed in the country's second largest city.

Talk of the "Grand Bargain" is once again finding its way to theories on the relationship between the United States and Iran, in light of...

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon informed the U.N. Security Council on Friday afternoon that the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria will be up to full strength next week, but that Syrian forces continue to shell Syrian towns and that "most elements" of the U.N. six-point peace plan have yet to be implemented. In a 13-page report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban said that the U.N. in...

More than 70 people, including 13 children, were reportedly killed in a day of intensified fighting across Syria on Friday.

DAMASCUS - Tens of thousands of activists took to the streets of Aleppo and Idlib on Friday, braving the gunfire of Syrian troops, as at least 28 people were killed across the country, monitors said. The latest violence came as Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria who brokered a repeatedly-violated ceasefire last month, finalised plans to return to Damascus. For the first time in the ....

Headline Title:  Stories of defiance: Human rights activists speak out 25 May 2012 When it launched its 50th annual report on the state of human rights worldwide, Amnesty International highlighted the courage shown by protesters and human rights defenders over the course of ...

A group of Lebanese Shiites who were kidnapped in Syria were released in good health, three days after gunmen abducted the men as they returned from a religious pilgrimage.

Lebanese hostages kidnapped in northern Syria were set free today and are on their way to Beirut, Lebanon's prime minister and an Islamist cleric who brokered their release said.

The statement of the Under Secretary General for UN Peacekeeping Operations, Hervé Ladsous, said that terrorist groups attempt to benefit from trading in Syria, showing us one of the keys to understanding the violence in this country. Speaking to the media, the public official addressed some of their experiences

Iran’s eagerness to shower money on Lebanon is the latest indication of just how worried Tehran is at the prospect that Syria’s leader could fall.

The spillover from the violence in Syria has escalated and grown more complex.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One diplomatic effort after another has failed to end more than a year of brutal violence in Syria. Now, the Obama administration is preparing a plan that would essentially give U.S. nods of approval to arms transfers from Arab nations to some Syrian opposition fighters....

The leadership vote comes after squabbling in the council undermined international support for the opposition during the 14-month revolt

A team of UN observers today visited Douma, an opposition-controlled city in Syria, to initiate dialogue with opposition activists on the ground.

The Middle East sometimes resembles a string of detonators wired to explode together — and this seems especially true now of Syria and its neighbors. There is political instability nearby in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, as the Arab uprising moves through its second year. In each of these countries, the leadership maintains power in a balancing act. Only Turkey, with its triad of a strong economy,...

Google announced Wednesday that its mapping software and other products would be available in Syria after getting export approval by the US government.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syria's oil minister acknowledged the heavy toll international sanctions have taken on the country's oil sector, saying Wednesday that they had sucked about $4 billion from the economy.Sufian Allaw said the sanctions levied by the United States and the European Union to put pressure on President Bashar Assad were to blame for the shortages that have left Syrians across the co...

Lebanon has fallen hostage to the conflict in neighbouring Syria following deadly sectarian clashes between the country’s pro- and anti-Damascus camps, experts say.

NATO’S “victory” in Libya, senior U.S. officials recently wrote, was a “model intervention,” a “teachable moment.” “The first lesson is that NATO is uniquely positioned to respond quickly and effectively to international crises,” the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo H. Daalder, and NATO’s supreme allied commander, Adm. James G. Stavridis, wrote in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs. Read full...

One month ago, thanks to the efforts of United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan, both the Syrian government and the opposition forces in Syria accepted a ceasefire plan.

No casualties were reported from Sunday's blast in Douma.

String of blasts aimed at security targets raises fear of Al Qaeda infiltrating opposition movement Student Killed by Blast Outside School in Italy

At the end of a more then two-hour-long dinner at Camp David Friday night, President Obama ordered a cake for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, whose birthday is Sunday. The light moment capped off a serious evening of discussions about Iran, Syria and North Korea. A source familiar with the dessert order told a pool reporter that it was a chocolate cake.  (Official White House photo by ...

Group of Eight leaders agreed in their initial discussions at Camp David last night that Iran needs to disclose more about its nuclear ambitions and that it was time to focus on a political transition in Syria.

British military personnel could be deployed to Syria to increase pressure on the Assad regime over human rights abuses, David Cameron has signalled.

Meeting at President Obama's Camp David retreat, the G8 club of developed nations have focussed their discussions on growth and fiscal reforms.

Senior sources say the UK could end up sending dozens of soldiers to monitor alleged atrocities by President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday he believed al-Qaida was responsible for two suicide car bombs that killed at least 55 people in Syria a week ago and that the death toll in the country's 14-month conflict was now at least 10,000.

THERE ARE currently no plans to send further Defence Forces personnel to assist the UN military observer mission in Syria.

Two Britons reportedly killed while working as journalists in Syria were "engaged in terrorist armed operations," the country's UN ambassador claims.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- The president of the Syrian Olympic Committee says the war-torn country will send 20 sports officials and 10 athletes to the London Games....

Aaron David Miller says no safe zones in Syria: “If President Barack Obama determines that toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad by force is a vital U.S. national interest (though it isn’t), he should create a coalition to act quickly, decisively and effectively to do it. Otherwise, he should avoid half-baked measures, such as the safe-zones scheme, that can lead to an open-ended military comm...

Tweet Widget Facebook Like Syrian security forces are arbitrarily arresting and holding peaceful activists incommunicado, despite the government’s commitment under Kofi Annan’s six point plan to release everyone who has been arbitrarily detained. People being arrested include peaceful protesters and activists involved in organizing, filming, and reporting ...

Two strong explosions in the Syrian capital have reportedly killed more than 40 people and wounded 170, as well as damaging a military intelligence building

Fingers point to the anti-Assad opposition, the government and al-Qaeda operatives in Syria

EXPLOSIONS at intelligence headquarters in the capital left another 170 wounded

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan says his peace plan could be the last bid to avoid war in Syria, where a truce has failed to end months of bloodshed.

Syria once looked like a future technology hub, but that promise has been squashed, first by global economic sanctions and then bloody civil conflict.

Fluffeh writes "Syria's games industry now looks like just another collateral casualty of dictator Bashar Al-Assad's struggle to hold power. 'Life for Syrian game developers has never been better,' joked Falafel Games founder Radwan Kasmiya, 'You can test the action on the streets and get back to your desktop to script it on your keyboard.' Any momentum Syria may have been building as a regiona...

The diplomatic row over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng could hurt Sino-US efforts to cooperate on Iran, Syria and key economic issues, but both sides want to contain the fallout, experts said.

Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov held a three-hour meeting with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, on Sunday, but it was unclear whether he was acting on his own or unofficially on Moscow’s behalf.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida Governor Rick Scott waded into foreign policy on Tuesday and signed a bill banning local governments from contracting with companies that do business in Cuba or Syria, while acknowledging the law could not take effect without Washington's OK.

Many Syrians and outside observers hold sanctions at least partly responsible for the Syrian pound’s decline in value by a third

If you’re selling technology to Iran or Syria that’s used to commit human rights violations, you’ve got a new enemy: the White…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled sanctions on Monday against those who help Syria and Iran track dissidents through cell phones and computers and said he would keep adding pressure on both governments to prevent mass atrocities.

Journey from South Africa to London skirts Syria and Lebanon; end of ride to coincide with 2012 summer Olympics.

Washington and its allies need to pressure Damascus, Moscow and Beijing. That is the only way to stop the killing in Syria and avoid another war.

Unrest in Syria continues to cause suffering in several parts of the country. The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are doing their utmost to help the people affected.

PARIS  - Turkey is considering invoking the NATO alliance’s mutual defence treaty over “outrageous” Syrian shelling along its border, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.“Turkey is considering formally invoking Article Four of the North Atlantic Treaty,” Clinton said, at a meeting in Paris of senior envoys from countries seeking to pressure ...

PARIS  - Turkey is considering invoking the NATO alliance’s mutual defence treaty over “outrageous” Syrian shelling along its border, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.“Turkey is considering formally invoking Article Four of the North Atlantic Treaty,” Clinton said, at a meeting in Paris of senior envoys from countries seeking to pressure ...

PARIS (AP) -- France's foreign minister says an array of international sanctions targeting Syria's repressive regime have depleted its financial reserves by half - and Damascus is actively trying to evade them....

THE PRECARIOUSNESS of yesterday’s apparent ceasefire in Syria was explicitly acknowledged on all sides. A willingness to hold fire was qualified by both government and opposition statements expressing their determination to resume fighting if the other side breached the ceasefire and de rigeur expressions of disbelief in the good faith of the other.

The Foreign Secretary warns that Britain will intensify support for Syria's opposition and get the Security Council to refer President Assad to the International Criminal Court if he does not honour an agreement to pull back its troops.

THE same battlelines are drawn between the isolationists and interventionists.

Arab and Western nations pledged millions of dollars in aid to Syria's opposition and said the apparent failure of a U.N.-backed cease-fire could lead them to take tougher steps to bolster rebels against Assad's regime.

The five emerging BRICS economies added a strong political note to their economic agenda at the Delhi summit on Thursday, joining hands against the West's policies on Iran and Syria. Jayanth Jacob reports.

The five leaders stressed on the restructuring of the world order to accommodate emerging economies & developing countries for promoting balanced growth.

Without a hint of irony, Addounia TV superimposed a map of Syria on a screen to show how Barcelona had kicked a ball, representing a weapons shipment, into Syria from Lebanon

South Africa has condemned the escalating violence in Syria and has urged all parties involved to seek a peaceful solution to the ongoing conflict.

An American archaeologist has used satellite images and a computer program to uncover thousands of ancient human settlements in Syria, according to a research study.

The early history of civilisation could be rewrittten as scientists have dramatically speeded up the process of finding ancient settlements.

SYRIA has been hit by a third lethal car bomb as UN teams prepare for a government-led humanitarian mission.

THE Syria crisis poses a strange dilemma for the media: how to cover one of the biggest stories when they have been locked out.

Forced to play its home matches on foreign soil because of continuing violence, Syria’s soccer team advanced to the playoffs for an Olympic berth with a victory over Malaysia on Wednesday.

Syrian activists have leaked a cache of documents purporting to be the private email of Bashar al-Assad and his coterie, penned during the slaughter of the Syrian opposition. The Guardian is working its way through them, authenticating them as thoroughly as they can. In this overview, Robert Booth, Mona Mahmood and Luke Harding tour the [...]

Opposition members in Syria gained access to the personal email account of dictator Bashar Al-Assad, revealing a secret cache of... iTunes receipts? More »

You’re watching this unbelievable hysterical optimism despite the terror. – Mona Eltahawy on citizen journalists on Twitter in Syria and elsewhere, speaking at SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas.

Dramatic footage of Western journalists working in the besieged Syrian city of Homs will be aired for the first time tomorrow night on CNN.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday that the best solution would not involve military intervention, but that the United States and its allies were reviewing all options.

Two envoys will be posted at EU delegation to attend Spaniards resident in Syria

European Union’s blacklisting of Syrian oil companies, imposed with the aim of isolating President Bashar al-Assad's government, is pinching ONGC Videsh hard as the sanctions have cut off the flow of Indian state-run company’s share of revenue or official information on the operation of its field in the west Asian nation since last December.

China's foreign minister tells Arab League head that Beijing backs sending humanitarian aid to Syria, amid work on a new UN resolution.

Most recently in Libya, before that in Kosovo, western powers claimed on the basis of dubious facts that a humanitarian disaster was unfolding.

The official newspaper of China's Communist Party describes US criticism of Beijing's stance on Syria as "super arrogant".

The oil price is rising and with Syria in flames and tensions between Iran and the West worsening, petrol prices are unlikely to fall soon.

It goes without saying that the death of veteran Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and the French photographer Remi Ochlik - after an artillery shell hit their makeshift press centre in the Syrian city of Homs - is tragic. It's also testament to the lengths to which journalists often go to get the story. But equally, the use of new technology by 'citizen journalists' has been equally ...

The Red Cross says it is negotiating with all parties in Syria to broker a humanitarian ceasefire, the Associated Press reports.

Landmark agreement to strengthen co-operation on civil nuclear energy between France and the UK.

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie said her film about the Bosnian war should be a "wake-up call" for the world to act in time to prevent atrocities like those now happening in Syria.

The Syrian government is ordering politically sensitive text messages to be blocked with technology from an Irish firm being used to implement the orders, according to two people familiar with the filtering systems.

Ambassador Ford was dispatched to Damascus just as mayhem erupted throughout the Arab world, Syria included.

Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa was arrested over a year ago on charges that he helped co-ordinate the entry of four terrorists from Syria to Iraq.

Questor Plus: Garry White on his tips in Egypt and Syria and Facebook's IPO.

Foreign Affairs Minister says the UN resolution on the Syrian conflict doesn’t preclude a Russian initiative

You’ve read how Facebook and Twitter fueled the Arab Spring uprising. You are watching the videos coming out of Syria on Facebook. But most likely you have not witnessed the power of social media impacting politics in near real time right here at home in America. Sure, activism groups and politicians have tapped social media to raise money. But to date, no flash mob has ever stopped a bill in i...

La Syria a accusé ce lundi la Ligue arabe "d'ingérence flagrante". Les 22 Etats membres ont proposé la veille de prolonger d'un mois leur mission…

DAMASCUS - Pressure mounted on the Arab League Friday to seek UN intervention in the face of growing exasperation that the bloc’s hard-won observer mission in Syria has failed to staunch 10 months of killing. Meanwhile, thousands of people poured out of mosques after Friday prayers to call for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, after choosing “Prisoners of the ...

Observer operation in Syria appears to have been designed for failure, reflecting the ambivalence of an organization comprised of despots

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict called for an end to violence in Syria and a resumption of Middle East peace talks on Sunday on a Christmas Day marred by a bomb blast at a Catholic Church in...

In its time and place, the ancient city of Dura-Europos had much in common with today's most cosmopolitan urban landscapes. Religious, linguistic and cultural diversity characterized much of the city's life for more than 500 years, starting at the outset of the third century B.C. in what is now Syria. from the New York Times (Registration Required)

SEC clamps down on activity in Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba as part of ongoing reviews of companies’ investment risks to security holders

Utl.: Veranstaltung mit Reform Party of Syria und Syrien-Experten = Wien (OTS) - Am Dienstag, den 13. Dezember werden der Syrien-Experte Jonathan Spyer und der Vorsitzende der Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry, auf Einladung des Bündnisses STOP THE BOMB um 19:00 in der Aula am Uni Campus ...

L'Union européenne a imposé vendredi des sanctions à l'encontre de trois compagnies pétrolières syriennes, afin accroître la pression financière sur le régime de Bachar al Assad. Cette décision, publiée dans le Journal officiel de l'UE, vise la société nationale, la Syria Trading Oil (Sytrol), la...

Ich hatte eine Erinnerungen an einen Artikel im Magazin The Economist, der vor ein paar Jahren das Ende des syrischen Präsidenten Assad prognostizierte. Der Tenor war, es ist keine Frage ob er bald geht, sondern wann er geht. Diesen Artikel habe ich nun wieder gesucht. Dabei bin ich im Archiv des Magazins über diverse andere Berichte zum Thema gestolpert. Dies gibt einen interessanten ...

After revelations that it supplied Syria with Internet spy tools, a U.S. company faces similar allegations about Myanmar.