Middle East, Uprising | featured news

...The truth is that there is no single explanation. One answer is that last year's wave of political uprisings, the so-called Arab Spring, is responsible. After all, protests began in Egypt, which last year became the most populous Arab democracy, and spread to Libya, which became the largest by area.

Syrians aiming to write a new constitution for the strife-torn country will meet for the first time on Monday, the state news agency reported Sunday, after a weekend of intense violence.

Western powers risk causing a major conflict in the Middle East if they intervene in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad says in an interview with a British newspaper.

Syrian forces pounded the western city of Homs Saturday with jets and tanks, sustaining fire with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, activists told CNN.

Syrian security forces opened fire Friday on protesters and hunted them down in house-to-house raids, killing about 30 people in the deadliest day in weeks in the country's 7-month-old uprising, activists said.

The United Nations' top human-rights official assailed the Syrian government Friday for a campaign of "ruthless repression and killings" and called for the international community to take steps to prevent the nation from plunging into "full-blown civil war."

A Syrian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen has been indicted on charges of spying on American activists opposed to the Syrian regime.

The United States called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to "step down now" following the assassination of a prominent Kurdish opposition figure amid continuing violence in the nation.

A leading Kurdish political figure was shot to death in northern Syria, while a political dissident was brazenly beaten in the heart of the capital Damascus, activists said.

The Obama administration is trying to avoid a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where the United States was not fully prepared for the aftermath of a leader’s fall.