Spotlight
A Muslim U.S. soldier turned conscientious objector was jailed for life on Friday after being convicted of plotting to kill troops and their families from a military base.
The court had heard that Naser Jason Abdo, 22, planned to attack soldiers and their families from Fort Hood, a sprawling army installation northwest of the Texas state capital, Austin.
Full StorySyrian rebels on Friday captured three journalists who work for state television as they accompanied government troops operating near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
"Three Syrian journalists who work for state television were seized by rebels while they were on assignment, accompanying soldiers in al-Tal," just north of Damascus, the monitoring group said.
Full StoryIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday that he would be making "a big mistake" if he attended an international summit in Iran.
"Mr. Secretary General, you do not belong in Tehran," a statement from Netanyahu's office quoted the premier as telling Ban in a telephone conversation.
Full StorySyrian troops and rebels fought fierce battles on Friday in the city of Aleppo, where several people died when a shell crashed into a bakery as hundreds queued for bread, Agence France Presse reported.
The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces shot dead 115 civilians and rebels across the country.
Full StoryThe United States on Friday added Hizbullah to a list of organizations under sanctions for their ties to the Syrian regime.
"This action highlights Hizbullah's activities within Syria and its integral role in the continued violence the Assad regime is inflicting on the Syrian population," the U.S. Treasury Department charged in a statement.
Full StoryA Polish Catholic priest accused of pedophilia in Germany and of similar crimes in his home country was found dead Friday, his body badly burned, at the foot of his family grave.
Identified only as Boguslaw P., he had been on trial in Poland for offences allegedly committed in 2004 and 2005 against a child in Pocking in the German state of Bavaria, where he had served as a priest.
Full StoryPool or lake, it makes no difference to Ous Mellouli.
As long as there's water involved.
Full StoryThe United States plans new sanctions targeting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and its supporters in a bid to put further pressure on Damascus, a U.S. State Department official said Friday.
"...One of the key forms of pressure is economic sanctions, which in the coming days or very shortly we will be tightening further with additional sanctions (on) both Syrian entities and those who are supporting the efforts of the Syrian government to oppress its own people," the official said.
Full StoryPolice fired tear gas and rubber bullets late Thursday to disperse a second anti-government protest in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, birthplace of last year's revolution.
Some 800 demonstrators furious at police intervention against a protest earlier in the day threw stones at security forces who again replied with rubber bullets and tear gas.
Full StoryA member of the elite Red Beret paratrooper unit which served ousted Malian leader Amadou Toumani Toure has been shot dead in his barracks, military sources told Agence France Presse on Friday.
"Staff Sergeant Amadou Traore was shot in unclear circumstances in a military camp" near Bamako on Thursday night, a colleague said on condition of anonymity.
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