Leadership & Governance

The Syrian army has successfully concluded the first phase of its operation in the strategic western city of Qusayr. According to reports from the city, an unknown number of security agents from different foreign countries have been detained or killed during the operation. Syrian forces have inflicted major losses on the militants in Qusayr, destroying their weaponry, equipment and several caches of weapons, mostly containing Israeli-made ammunition.

The Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry reiterated Syria's right to respond immediately to any breach of its sovereignty and the sanctity of its land, calling upon the UN Security Council to put an end to the Israeli violations.

The House of Commons has voted to allow gay marriage in England and Wales by 366 votes to 161. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill now goes before the House of Lords. Prime Minister David Cameron hopes it will become law soon, with the first ceremonies taking place by next summer.

The zero credible Bolivian right, acting under instructions from the United States government, is banking on low intensity national conflict to wear down the government of President Evo Morales, and create an image of chaos through fomenting racism and fuel the fires of old divergences between city and rural inhabitants. The U.S. administration and its destabilizing tentacles, directed at interrupting at all costs the revolutionary process of change taking place in the country and to overthrow its leader, are well aware of the damaged state of the traditional Bolivian right and that there is no candidate in the wings to rival Morales, despite unsuccessful attempts to create one. This is one of the reasons for expelling USAID.

Washington, D.C. insider says nine-term New York State Democrat Senator John Sampson, who represents some of the poorest areas of Brooklyn, covered-up evidence of widespread corruption in New York Surrogate's Courts.

The US Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the agency's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organisations gather news. The records listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

French President Francois Hollande on May 18, 2013 has legalised the historic gay marriage and same-sex adoption bill into law. The bill is one of the biggest social reforms in France since abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Sandwiched between the First International Top-level Lesbian, Gay Emancipation Congress that convened in the Netherlands on May 17 and the Eurovision 2013 gay marriage theme in Malmö, Sweden on May 18, France, a predominantly Catholic country, now follows 13 others including Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and most recently Uruguay and New Zealand in allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed. In the United States, Washington D.C. and 12 states have legalized same-sex marriage.

The president of Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, has condemned users of Twitter and said anyone using social media sites - and especially Twitter - "has lost this world and his afterlife".

May 16, 2013 (TSR) - Bolivian President Evo Morales followed on May 2 the example of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, expelling  the United States Agency for International Development...

Iran has the world's fourth-largest reserves of recoverable oil, after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. With 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia. The country has allocated 5.5 trillion rials (about $450 million) to oil and gas exploration projects in the current Iranian calendar year, which started on March 21.

Initially, the scandal of singling out certain groups had been confined to the IRS office in Cincinnati – but it has now expanded to include Washington. With the involvement of the FBI, the Obama administration shows that it is doing everything it can to be as open and thorough as possible. After the review, U.S. President Barack Obama finds the report's findings intolerable and inexcusable. He now demands punishment for IRS staff who targeted conservatives after official report finds tax exemption was deliberately delayed.

Unknown gunmen opened fire at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans Sunday, wounding 19 people in an incident the FBI attributed to "street violence." The Federal Bureau of Investigation said the shooting was unrelated to terrorism. There were no fatalities nor life-threatening wounds.