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Five people have been jailed in Britain for pretending to make a Hollywood movie in a scam to defraud tax authorities of millions of pounds. The fraudsters were convicted earlier this month of attempting to bilk the government of
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad used his third televised appearance in the three months since anti-regime protests first erupted to deliver a monotonous, rambling and technocratic speech to a handpicked audience at Damascus University on Monday — and while the autocratic leader promised a national dialogue, the offer is unlikely to damper the violent dissent rocking his country. There was little new in his more than hour-long address
There was little possibility that the frail Syrian woman in her 70s could make the arduous, illegal trek across the steep, mountainous territory separating Syria from Turkey, but she nonetheless stood with a few young men who were hiding on the Syrian side, waiting for a Turkish soldier to move away from an opening in the coiled razor wire before dashing through it. After about a half an hour, she gave up.
The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad doesn’t make threats lightly. And as they confronted the uprising in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, government security forces were blunt, according to the medical staff in area’s small hospitals and the local Red Crescent outpost there
This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Monde
Like many of the syrian farming communities near Lebanon’s northern border, Aarida, as seen from the Lebanese village of Buqaya, offers a bucolic scene worthy of a postcard.
To the untrained ear, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Tuesday offer of amnesty for “all members of political movements” may sound resoundingly generous. But his opponents know that anything sugarcoated offered by the Syrian regime has had a violent and bitter follow-through.
The capital of Syria has the illusion of calm.
Abu Rida barely has time to talk.
The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat used to be called “the great survivor.” Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad may be succeeding to the title. Many observers had expected Barack Obama to use a much-anticipated speech on the Middle East to call for Assad to step down, much as Washington has demanded that Muammar Gaddafi relinquish power in Libya.