Assad’s allies certain he will complete term

AMMAN, Jordan — More than 200 Syrian soldiers and opposition fighters died in the eight-day battle for a police academy near the embattled northern city of Aleppo, activists said Sunday as President Bashar Assad lashed out at the West for sending aid to those trying to oust him. The Britain-based anti-regime group The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels seized control of the police academy in Khan al-Asal, west of Aleppo, after entering the sprawling government complex with tanks they captured from Assad’s troops in previous battles.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s prime minister escaped an assassination attempt Monday when a bomb went off near his convoy in Damascus, state media reported, the latest attack targeting a top official in President Bashar Assad’s regime. Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi was unhurt in the bombing in the capital’s western neighborhood of Mazzeh, state TV said. The TV showed footage of heavily damaged cars and debris in the area as firefighters fought to extinguish a large blaze set off by the explosion.

BEIRUT — Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said a UN commission has indications that Syrian rebel forces used nerve agent sarin as a weapon in their fight against Assad’s regime – but no evidence that government forces also used sarin as a chemical weapon.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama strongly suggested Tuesday he’d consider military action against Syria if it can be confirmed that President Bashar Assad’s government used chemical weapons in the two-year-old civil war. At a White House news conference, the president also defended the FBI’s work in monitoring the activities in recent years of one of the men accused in the deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon two weeks ago.

The flow of financial and other resources that sustains Syria’s agony is also the weakness of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, writes Owen Barder

On Syria’s digital battlefield, hackers loyal to Syrian PresidentBashar al-Assad are defeating the rebels' cyber militias.

Italy was pitched into chaos Monday night after early election results suggested that the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had surged back on to the political scene in a triumph that could enable him to undermine or even block a new government. The two houses of parliament were split between the billionaire tycoon’s conservative coalition and the centre-left Democratic Party, led by Pier Luigi Bersani, a 61-year-old former Communist and the son of a mechanic.

A Republican Guard General close to Bashar al Assad has fled to Turkey – in the most serious loss for the regime since Syria’s uprising began