The Kurdish opposition bloc walked out of the Syrian National Council at a meeting in Istanbul, accusing host country Turkey of "pressuring the SNC" to omit the demands of the Kurdish members in the final document outlining a transition plan.
Israeli prison authorities stormed the cells of Palestinian prisoners, leaving 61 injured. The raid in Israel’s Nafha facility came after prisoners refused to submit to forcible DNA tests. The Palestinian Authority says the tests are illegal.
South Sudan accused Khartoum April 5 both of bombing an oil pipeline near the town of Heglig, in South Kordofan state, and of trying to build an “illegal” pipeline crossing the border towards the South’s oil fields.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released the last 10 members of the security forces they were holding captive—but over 400 civilians remain held in the guerillas’ jungle camps, receiving less priority from the government.
A day after Mali’s northern city of Timbuktu fell to Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), Ansar Dine, an Islamist faction that had been cooperating with the rebels, has reportedly seized control there.
The Director of National Intelligence released a report warning that competition for increasingly scarce water in the next decade will fuel instability in the Middle East, South Asia and other strategic regions around the world.
Just before last month’s notorious purge of Bo Xilai, populist Chinese Communist Party chief in Chongqing, World Bank President Robert Zoellick lectured the People’s Republic at a Beijing meeting that its economic model is “unsustainable.”
Two Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in Sichuan province—bringing the total of protest self-immolations in little more than a year to over 30. Days earlier, a Tibetan exile self-immolated a protest in New Delhi.
In the wake of last month’s kill-spree in southern France, lines across the blogosphere are drawn predictably, indicating the near-complete polarization and lack of any dialectical spark in contemporary thinking on the question of Jew-hatred.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has seized several provinces in southern Yemen, keeping government troops at bay—and in the latest clash, seizing two tanks. The US launched at least six drone strikes against AQAP targets last month.
Reactions to the passing of Pope Shenouda III, leader of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, reveals much about the country’s ominous but still tentatively hopeful political situation. Compass Direct News, which documents persecution of Christians around the world, on March 23 noted… Read moreEgypt: now the Muslim Brotherhood are the moderates…
Released document reveal that the Civil Administration in the West Bank has for years covertly mapped available land, naming the parcels after existing Jewish settlements, with an eye toward expanding these communities.
