Spotlight
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Middle East Syrian government and Druze minority leaders announce new ceasefire Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced a renewed ceasefire Wednesday after days of clashes that have thr...
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Middle East Israel bombs Syria army HQ and area near presidential palace in major escalation The Israeli military launched Wednesday rare airstrikes in the heart of Damascus, hitting the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters as clashes in th...
A Canadian woman held in connection with an audacious bid by a son of ex-Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi to smuggle himself into Mexico has been formally charged, along with three alleged accomplices, an official said Wednesday.
Mexico's Assistant Attorney General Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas said authorities charged Cynthia Vanier, a Dane and two Mexicans on January 28 for attempted trafficking of undocumented people, organized crime and falsifying official documents.

Four rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck inside Israel on Wednesday, causing neither casualties nor damage, an Israeli police spokesman said.
The rocket fire came as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Israel and the Palestinian territories. He is scheduled to visit Gaza on Thursday.

At least 74 people were killed and hundreds injured when rival fans clashed Wednesday after a football match in Port Said, highlighting a security vacuum in post-revolution Egypt.
In one of the deadliest incidents in the sport's history, violence erupted as soon as the referee blew the final whistle in a match which saw home team al-Masri beat Cairo's al-Ahly 3-1.

Arab ministers will meet February 11 to review their suspended observer mission to Syria, postponing talks as a U.N. vote on the country's bloodshed is delayed, an Arab League official said on Wednesday.
The official said a meeting of foreign ministers, planned for February 5 in Doha, has been rescheduled for February 11 in Cairo where the League has its headquarters.

A gunbattle erupted Wednesday near the beach house of slain Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Saadi, in central Tripoli, Agence France Presse correspondents reported.
Thick smoke billowed from near the house as rival militias, using heavy machineguns, clashed in the mostly business district not far from luxurious hotels like Corinthia Bab al-Africa and the yet-to-open J W Mariott.

Eleven Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped on Wednesday in Syria, in the latest such incident in the unrest-swept Arab state, the state news agency IRNA reported.
It said the latest case raised to 29 the number of Iranians abducted in Syria since December. The foreign ministry has urged Damascus "to use all means ... to release" Iranian nationals.

A top Bahraini interior ministry official said on Wednesday that some 100 jailed activists were still on a hunger strike after nearly three days, but denied claims that tear gas was used against inmates.
"Today, the number of prisoners on hunger strike has dropped to around 100. Yesterday there were 180," Major General Ibrahim al-Ghaith told Agence France Presse.

The Syrian crisis that began as a peaceful revolt is quickly turning into a full-blown insurgency pitting an increasingly militarized opposition against a powerful regime bent on repression, analysts say.
"It is the beginning of an all-out armed conflict," said Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Fresh violence killed at least 56 civilians, 15 soldiers and 14 rebels in Syria on Wednesday after Western powers and the Arab League demanded immediate U.N. action to stop the regime's "killing machine" but holdout Russia said any vote needed more time.
Wrangling at the United Nations came as fierce clashes raged across Syria's powder keg regions between President Bashar al-Assad's security forces and rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army.

Six people are to go on trial suspected of planning attacks on a Kuwaiti port project in the Gulf that is disputed by Iraq, a judiciary official said on Wednesday.
"The police have arrested six people accused of preparing an attack on Mubarak port," said a spokesman for the court of appeal in Nasiriyah, 305 kilometers south of Baghdad.
