Syria's air force struck rebel-held areas near Damascus and Aleppo Saturday, a monitoring group said, as regime and opposition representatives met briefly in the same room in Geneva for peace talks. Government warplanes fired rockets at Talfita north of the capital, and helicopters...

The rapprochement between the US, Iran, and Russia on the nuclear deal, and the increased likelihood of the Geneva 2 Conference on Syria taking place have spurred heightened political and security tensions in Lebanon. The crushing of Sheikh Ahmad al-Asir’s group in Sidon, the escalation...

A powerful alliance of Syrian Islamist rebels rejected upcoming peace talks on Sunday, meaning that even if the talks reach an unlikely breakthrough in the three year old civil war, it will be harder to implement it on the ground. Syria's main political opposition group in exile, the...

South Africa buried Nelson Mandela on Sunday, leaving the multi-racial democracy he founded without its living inspiration and still striving for the "Rainbow Nation" ideal of shared prosperity he had dreamed of. The Nobel peace laureate, who was held in apartheid prisons for 27 years...