Among today’s picks: factional politics in China, the emerging proxy wars in the Middle East and remembering 8-8-88 in Burma.
Bashar Assad
Must-Reads from Around the World, August 7, 2012
Today’s required reading: a harrowing account from Syria, searching for the ghosts of the financial crisis and new details in the Bo Xilai scandal
Syria’s Prime Minister Defects: More Erosion in the Assad Regime
By joining the rebels, Riad Hijab doesn’t quite debilitate the government of President Assad. He does, however, further humiliate it and thin the ranks of bureaucrats it can count on
“What you are seeing is the appetizer: the main course is yet to come.”
Russia and Syria’s Assad: The End of the Affair?
It has become clear to many officials in Moscow that the Assad regime cannot restore the pre-rebellion status quo in Syria, forcing them to consider backing away from a longtime client
As Syria Teeters, So Do Decades-Old Assumptions About the Middle East
The conflict is testing the brittle bonds of a national identity in states carved out of old Ottoman provinces at the end of World War I
In Rebel Syria: Celebrating Assad’s Departure–Even Though He’s Still Staying
Pummeled by regime firepower, a rebel town allows itself a brief moment to pretend he’s gone. And then it’s back to reality.
On Triumphant Day for Syrian Rebels, Tragedy in One Small Town
A TIME correspondent sends in a dispatch from a town in the restive northern Syrian province of Idlib. On a day when rebels managed to kill four top figures in the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, there were reminders …
Must-Reads from Around the World, July 12, 2012
Today’s global picks: another Syrian defection, the U.S. wades into the South China Sea and the decline of the Tetra Pak dynasty.
Must-Reads from Around the World, July 11, 2012
Today’s required reading: an interview with the Taliban, reporting from flood-hit Russia and go “inside Syria.”
“The sand is running out of the hourglass”
Must-Reads from Around the World, June 27, 2012
What you need to know on June 27, 2012: Ahead of elections, scandals and intrigue grows in Mexico; Turkey raises the heat on Syria; Germany digs in its heels ahead of Euro summit; the slow, but steady pace of reforms in Burma continues
Must-Reads from Around the World, June 21, 2012
Stories of note today: Western intervention in Syria, Pakistan’s political dramas and more deadly protests by Tibetans in China.