Meanwhile, clashes pitting rebels against troops raged in the Qadam area in the southwest of Damascus, according to the Observatory, which relies on a broad network of activists, doctors and lawyers for its reports.
"The regime is trying to score victories around Damascus to give its supporters a boost of confidence," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
"But the Eastern Ghouta area (east of Damascus) is very different from Qusayr" in central Syria, which fell fro...

Investigators from the Illicit Gains Authority have been questioning Mubarak at the south Cairo prison where he is being held to look into how he acquired several houses and villas around Egypt.
According to sources close to the case, Mubarak insisted that all the property was acquired legitimately.
Last week, Mubarak, his wife and one of their sons Gamal said they would return gifts worth a total of $600,000 to Egypt's former information minister Anas al-Fekki, according to the official MENA news agency...

On Tuesday, after just two weeks of rehersal, he sat down at a baby grand piano in an auditorium at the US State Department in Washington and played Kaczmarek's composition to American ears for the first time.
"As a classically-trained pianist, you're always playing pieces that the audience or judges or teachers have heard a thousand times before," said the winner of this year's National Symphony Orchestra young soloists competition.
"But in this case...

On Tuesday its boss Jeffrey Katzenberg confirmed another deal with SUPER RTL, the German children's TV market leader, to produce over 1,100 half-hour shows over the next five years.
The Netflix deal covers over 40 countries, and Katzenberg announced that the California-based studio was in active talks with potential partners in other markets around the globe.
"In addition to being the world's largest feature animation studio, we're now on a path to becoming one of th...

Putin and Obama did not try to disguise the fact they are estranged on Syria and cannot agree on Assad's fate -- but appeared keen to keep flagrant differences on the vicious civil war from sinking wider US-Russia relations.
They announced Obama would go to Moscow on September 3-4 for a full-scale summit, expanding a previously announced trip that includes the G20 summit in St Petersburg.
They spoke of cooperation on terroris...

"I will continue to do my work to urge Iran to work closely with me, and the E3+3, to build confidence in the nature of their nuclear programme," Ashton told journalists in Baghdad, referring to the group of global powers that are negotiating with Iran over the programme.
It comes just days after moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani was declared Iran's new president, with world powers offering a cautious welcome ami...

The production is the latest attempt to build a money-spinning franchise around the planet Krypton's most famous son, and follows a 2006 reboot by Warner Bros -- "Superman Returns" -- which ultimately stalled after one film.
Snyder's movie has divided critics however, scoring a modest 56 percent rating on the movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with many complaining of an over-reliance on computer-generated imagery.
Another ne...

The two-state solution is the only one "that will preserve the essential character of the state of Israel as a Jewish but democratic state where minorities can vote," Clinton said in the speech at the Peres Academic Centre in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv.
"No matter how many settlers you put out there the Palestinians will have more babies," said Clinton. As the then US president, he presided over the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace accords by Israel's Yitzak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
]]> http://en.hdhod.com/photo/art/imagette/5620448-8383071.jpg http://en.hdhod.com/No-alternative-to-Palestinian-state-Bill-Clinton-in-Israel_a10734.html tag:en.hdhod.com,2013:rss-5616777 Mon, 17 Jun 2013 02:32:00 +0200 us AFP

"What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognise that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them," said Cameron.
Putin, who has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite pleas from the West, has been dismissive of US claims that the regime has used chemical weapons and insisted Russia ha...

The Syrian government on Sunday slammed the decision.
Morsi had joined the "conspiracy and incitement led by the United States and Israel against Syria by announcing the cutting of ties," an unnamed official told Syria's state news agency SANA.
He accused Morsi of announcing the cut in ties to deflect attention from domestic crises.
On Saturday, Morsi said Egypt will recall its charge d'affaires from Damascus and shut the Syrian embass...

The 76-year-old remains the only women to have ever made a solo flight in space.
"The importance of this event is impossible to overestimate in the history of Russian and world space travel," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in a congratulatory message to Tereshkova.
State television celebrated by running documentaries about Tereshkova's life while the former cosmonaut herself spent the day commemorating a new space museum in her native region of Yaroslavl.
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