With tensions high between Turkey and Russia, Moscow's intervention risks drawing the Kurds into the geopolitical game and escalating divisions within the Syrian resistance.
The Syrian regime says Russian air-strikes hit "ISIS dens"—but a look at the map indicates the strikes were nowhere near ISIS territory, and targetted rebel forces hostile to ISIS.
An Aleppo-based seed research center, forced by the war to flee to Beirut, has made an emergency request for seed stock from a "doomsday" vault on a remote Arctic island.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is now the first Western leader to take Vladimir Putin's bait in agreeing that Bashar Assad can be part of a Syrian "transition government."
China is reported to be sending warships to Syria to augment the Russian build-up there—as word emerges of a Uighur jihadist group allied with the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
Human Rights Watch charges that Egypt violated international law in the creation of a "buffer zone" on the border with the Gaza Strip, evicting thousands of local residents.
With the Rojava Kurds mounting an offensive on the last ISIS-held border town in northern Syria, Turkey has launched a new propaganda push to brand them as "terrorists."
The poorly named Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (sic) continues to propagate the bogus conspiracy theory of a CIA effort to overthrow the Bashar Assad dictatorship.
With much of Turkey's east under a state of emergency and pro-government mobs sacking offices of the left-opposition HDP, Kurdish leaders charge a campaign of "political genocide."
Amid signs of an escalating Russian intervention in Syria, the opposition government-in-exile issued a statement pledging to "defeat any foreign occupation."
ISIS fighters seized the last oil-field still under the control of the Assad regime after several days of fighting. The Jazal field has a production capacity of 2,500 barrels per day.
The Turkish state is lining up international support for its "anti-terrorist" campaign against the PKK—as it carries out air-strikes and harsh repression on Kurdish villages.
