In Toledo, 150 women and children invaded welfare-department headquarters last month, tumbling workers from their chairs and tossing mounds of paper work onto the floor. In Boston, 50 others staged a raucous sit in at the Massachusetts Statehouse, refusing to budge until police carted them away. Forty-four more were arrested last week in Cleveland when they took over the big welfare offices on St. Clair Avenue. Such demonstrations by the welfare poor have become commonplace. Even as politicians and taxpayers ...

"Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" The Arabic pronouncement that "God is great" sustained the Iranian revolutionaries as they marched through the streets of Tehran in demonstrations against the Shah. The invocation was heard again as students attacked the U.S. embassy, and as mobs last week marched about the captured compound, demanding death for the hostages. To what extent was the student action—and the Ayatullah Khomeini's endorsement of it—in accordance with Islamic law? Experts differ. Zaki Badawi, Egyptian director of the Islamic ...

The women and children waited until early morning of April 28 and then they fled in their hundreds. Most of the Syrians walked the few short kilometers from their hometown of Tall Kalakh, a cluster of low-slung cream-colored homes scattered on a gently sloping hill, toward the sleepy Lebanese village of Al-Boqia'a just across the river that demarcates the border, a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Some carried whatever they could fit into a few plastic bags, ...

Today was not a good Friday for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Across Syria, tens of thousands of people once again streamed into the streets. Even though the demonstrations have now become daily occurences, the numbers swell as Syrians take advantage of Friday prayers and the government-recognized right to gather at mosques for worship to then march out in protest. As with previous Fridays, the geographical breadth of the uprising has grown — from the Mediterranean coast to the ...

Syria could very well learn its fate this Friday. According to a source from the country with close ties to the regime, if large-scale demonstrations break out after midday prayer in Syria's two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, the regime will be faced with a stark choice: either crack down with unlimited violence, or meet the demonstrators' demands. In either case, Syria is looking into an abyss. The regime is in uncharted waters. In 1982 President Hafez Assad, ...

The news came, and the fires followed. On Dec. 9, sometime after 5 p.m., Britain's Parliament passed a bill to triple university tuition fees to $15,000. Within minutes, peaceful student demonstrations descended into chaos, and Parliament Square — home to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey — transformed into ground zero. Protesters broke through metal barricades and used them to smash windows at the Supreme Court. They urinated on a statue of Winston Churchill. And they scaled the ...

It's been an almost endless summer in Lebanon, with beach weather and relative political harmony continuing well into November. The only thing marring what could have been a perfect year for a country more accustomed to serving as a battleground in regional power struggles was the fact that Lebanon has had no government since parliamentary elections in June. That was until Monday, when the majority U.S.-backed political bloc and its rivals in the Syria- and Iran-backed minority coalition finally ...

Airline pilots and cabin crew across Europe are holding demonstrations Monday to protest over rules governing their flying hours which they say are putting the lives of passengers at risk. LONDON, England (CNN) -- Airline pilots and cabin crew across Europe are holding demonstrations Monday to protest over rules governing their flying hours which they say are putting the lives of passengers at risk. Organized by the European Cockpit Association (ECA), and the European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF), ...

With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall being commemorated on Nov. 9, Germany is in a celebratory mood. The once divided city of Berlin and the former East German cities of Leipzig and Dresden, among others, are staging events to mark their key roles in the peaceful revolution that swept away the old Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or D.D.R. Celebrations begin a month early in Leipzig, where Oct. 9 is the resonant date. On that night ...

Iran's hardline regime sharply escalated the post-election confrontation on August 8 by putting two foreign embassy staffers and a French teacher on trial alongside dozens of political dissidents. The stepped-up campaign to characterize the widespread unrest since the June 12 presidential election as a foreign-led attempted "soft overthrow" appears to be an effort by the ruling faction to rally the increasingly-splintered conservative base against a popular — and old — enemy: the West. Following on the heels of ...