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. Saving a wounded protester's life could cost them their own. As a result, private medical clinics closed and doctors in the northern Syrian town's public hospital fled. Of 200 Red Crescent volunteers, only ...

Liz, a Shi'ite in her late 20s, is afraid to leave her house. She says that the last time she went out, government-hired thugs stopped her car at one of the many checkpoints that litter Manama, the capital of Bahrain. They pulled her out, asked for her identity card and tried to ascertain one thing: whether she was Sunni or Shi'ite. "It's pure racial profiling," she says a few days later, sitting in her family's living room in ...

Soulless Empires and Nameless Massacres Mahatma Gandhi said that empires and states represented violence in a concentrated form, and that they were soulless and could never be weaned from violence to which they owed their very existence. His words came to mind when it was reported that a U.S.-led NATO air strike killed four civilians-including two women and a small child, and when Wikileaks released a 2007 video showing twelve Iraqi unarmed civilians being brutally massacred by an Army Apache helicopter ...

An umbrella group affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility Tuesday for a pair of weekend bombings that killed 160 people in Baghdad.Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who visited the scene shortly after the explosions, said holding the elections as scheduled would send a strong message to the attackers. "The cowardly attack ... should not affect the determination of the Iraqi people from continuing their battle against the deposed regime and the gangs of the criminal Baath party, and ...

The death toll from twin car bombings in Baghdad climbed to 160, with hundreds more wounded in the deadliest attack in the capital in more than two years, the Interior Ministry said Monday.U.S. President Barack Obama called the attacks an attempt to derail progress in Iraq, and pledged to work closely with the country as it prepares for elections. Obama spoke with the prime minister and President Jalal Talabani to express his condolences and reiterate U.S. support. In August, ...

A 20-inch machete from Costa Rica. New power drills with the tags still hanging. A pile of brass knuckles and nunchucks. Tubs of golf clubs, baseball bats and 10-pound exercise weights. These objects -- collected at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport security checkpoints -- are among millions of items confiscated by the Transportation Security Administration from travelers' carry-on bags each year. After the U.S. government expanded the list of items prohibited on airplanes in response to the attacks of September ...

Three men were found guilty Monday of plotting to blow up planes on flights between Britain and the United States and Canada, Woolwich Crown Court in London has said. Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanwir Hussain were all found guilty of conspiracy to murder in a majority verdict of 11 to 1. Five other men were found not guilty. It was the second trial of the men arrested in August 2006 on suspicion of plotting to blow up planes ...