One of the untold stories of Egypt's popular revolution is the plight of homeless children caught up in the unrest. As the country adjusted to a new political reality during the protests, Cairo’s estimated 50,000 street children also found that the rules of the game had changed. 　　The drop-in centers... More

　　Israeli settlers damaged houses and cars in two Palestinian villages on Tuesday, witnesses said, after Israel's demolition of homes in an unauthorized settler outpost. 　　Villagers in Hiwwara in the occupied West Bank said settlers threw petrol bombs into a house, broke the windows of another, and burned several cars in... More

　　Benghazi internal security headquarters, November 3, 1990. A fax arrives at 10:30 in the morning, addressed to the director from the head office in Tripoli. 　　"We received information about some of the suspicious people," it begins. A list of names and paragraphs of information follow. 　　One man is singled out... More

　　A distraught Libyan woman has told journalists in Tripoli how she was raped by government troops, before being bundled away by officials. 　　Iman al-Obeidi sought out foreign reporters in the capital's Rixos hotel on Saturday morning, weeping and claiming that troops had detained her at a checkpoint, tied her up,... More

　　Defectors of Syria’s security forces have described receiving orders from their superiors to fire live rounds at protesters to disperse them, according to Human Rights Watch. 　　The New York-based rights body released a statement on Saturday detailing interviews with eight soldiers and four members of secret security agencies it said... More

　　The Libyan deputy ambassador to the United Nations has called on the country's ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, to step down and face trial over war crimes and genocide. 　　"He has to leave as soon as possible. He has to stop killing the Libyan people," Ibrahim Dabbashi told CNN on Monday. 　　"The... More

　　NATO's political mission "should swiftly identify and nurture a national opposition and plot the path for a post-conflict transition to democracy, probably under UN auspices", or so advises the Financial Times in its lead editorial, "Plotting the Way Forward". 　　Both the title and the advice are borrowed from a past... More

　　Israel's expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday. 　　United States academic Richard Falk was speaking to the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass resolutions condemning settlement building... More

　　The UN has said that almost 40,000 people have fled fighting in Libya's Western Mountains region in the past month. 　　Thousands of ethnic Berbers from Libya fled into Tunisia after a brief hiatus in their exodus last week because of fighting between Gaddafi troops and opposition forces for control of... More

　　The political and economic problems facing Yemen: 　　Yemen is probably the hardest [state in the region] in terms of economic challenges and development challenges. The people of Yemen are the poorest in the region. The state in Yemen is by far the weakest, compared to Libya in the sense of... More

　　Fawaz al-Haraki had only minutes to live. 　　As the shots rang out, Abu Haidar and the other protesters ran for cover, grimly familiar with what to do when the mukhabberat (secret police) attacked. 　　But Fawaz fell, the blood soaking his trousers where the bullet from a Syrian secret policeman had... More

　　The sheer brutality of the Libyan suppression of anti-government protests has exposed the fallacy of the post-colonial Arab dictatorships, which have relied on revolutionary slogans as their source of legitimacy. 　　Ever since his ascension to power, through a military coup, in 1969, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has used every piece of... More

　　In the distance and high above, a Libyan air force jet circled over the town of Brega, a key oil port in eastern Libya around 330km from Sirte, one of Muammar Gaddafi’s last remaining strongholds. 　　As scores of revolution fighters armed with AK-47 assault rifles, shotguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers... More

　　According to a report in the Washington Post, US defense officials have claimed that there is no plan to suspend or restrict the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan, and that the agency has not been asked to pull any of its employees out of Pakistan. 　　US and Pakistan’s relationship was... More

　　Forces loyal to the embattled Yemeni president killed 20 protesters as they dispersed a sit-in in Taez, an organizer said on Monday. 　　Security service agents backed by army and Republican Guard troops stormed the protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Freedom Square in the centre of Yemen's second-largest city... More

　　The May 15 Nakba protests took a toll on one family in particular, losing a son who made the ultimate sacrifice. 　　Seventeen-year-old Mohammed al-Saleh grew up in Burj al-Shemali refugee camp in south Lebanon, caring little about politics and more about sport. However, when it came to Palestine, Mohamed's 16-year-old... More

　　President Assad reaffirms his father's legacy by quelling dissent with brute force. 　　As the fists and boots and sticks pummeled his body and bloodied his face, the college student screamed out what he thought his interrogators wanted to hear: The name of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. 　　It worked. The secret... More

　　When widespread protests broke out in Syria in March, President Bashar al-Assad's regime turned to its feared security services to smother the anti-government movement. 　　The bloody response has so far succeeded where other attempts to put down the "Arab awakening" have failed, and President Assad remains in power. 　　Verifying the... More

　　Recent polls suggest that while a majority of U.S. people disapprove of the war in Afghanistan, many on grounds of its horrible economic cost, only 3% took the war into account when voting in the 2010 midterm elections. The issue of the economy weighed heavily on voters, but the war... More

　　German Magazine Der Spiegel has released hideous photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenseless Afghan civilians they killed. 　　Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers... More