Demonstrations were staged in the towns of Homs, Hama, several suburbs of Damascus and the eastern town of Deir al-Zour, among other places, signaling that weeks of brutality have failed to dent the resilience of the protest movement.

Late Thursday, the government made an attempt to appease the opposition by announcing the resignation of the powerful tycoon identified by many Syrians as a symbol of their government’s corruption and nepotism.

Rami Makhlouf, Assad’s cousin and childhood friend, is relinquishing control over his business interests, Syrian state media reported. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, said he would sell his shares in Syrian companies and donate his wealth to charity. Makhlouf was motivated by a desire to create jobs and aid the economy, the news agency said…

Reports in Ankara said Turkey‘s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was planning to create a buffer zone to prevent its instability spilling into Turkish territory.

Activists say at least 10 of the deaths on Friday occurred in the northwestern province of Idlib. State-run news reports say an armed group in the provincial city of Maaret al-Numan attacked security forces and set several government buildings on fire.

The news report said gunmen were trying to “repeat the scenario” of Jisr al-Shughour. On Monday, the government said “armed gangs” in the northern region near the Turkish border had killed 120 security personnel.

Military forces have moved into Jisr al-Shughour.  Most of the town’s residents reportedly fled after the government promised a military response to the attack.

Meanwhile, witnesses and activists say security forces shot and killed anti-government protesters in several cities on Friday. They say the forces used live ammunition on demonstrators in Damascus and in the southern flashpoint Daraa region…

An explosion blamed on a gas leak struck a newly inaugurated section of an oil refinery Tuesday just before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the facility’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, state media reported.

At least one person was killed and up to 25 were injured by the explosion in Abadan in Iran’s oil-rich southwest, according to accounts by domestic Iranian news agencies. One Abadan resident quoted by the Associated Press said he saw rescue vehicles rushing to the site.

The incident did not disrupt Ahmadinejad’s speech, which included fairly typical denunciations of U.S. relations with Middle East autocrats and the course of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to news agencies.

Officials quickly insisted that blast was the result of an industrial accident and not an act of sabotage. Iran’s industrial sector has long been riddled with deadly accidents, from train and plane crashes to troubles at petrochemical facilities.

According to the semi-official Mehr news agency, the explosion and fire were caused by a gas leak, which poisoned oil workers…

The Libyan capital withstood the heaviest bombardment yet from NATO aircraft early Tuesday morning, as explosions rocked the area around Col. Muammar Qaddafi‘s compound.

The strikes – combined with a fresh commitment by Britain and France to deploy highly precise attack helicopters in Libya – appeared to signal a NATO escalation to break the current stalemate, if not actually target the Libyan leader.

“I think it is an absolute sign of [NATO] intensification, soon after the announcement of new military helicopters to be deployed,” says an opposition activist in the capital, where some 20 thunderous blasts came in 30 minutes. “This sends a message that the focus is on the regime stronghold. This suggests that [NATO] really wants to decapitate this killing machine, rather than eat away at it.”

NATO said it was targeting a facility adjacent to Col. Qaddafi’s compound for vehicles that were “active” in resupplying pro-Qaddafi forces that mounted “attacks against innocent civilians.” The Western military alliance, which took the lead from US military planners soon after a mid-March UN Security Council resolution authorized “all necessary means” to protect civilians, says it is not targeting individuals.

But the intensity of bombardment in the vicinity of Qaddafi’s headquarters early Tuesday convinced some in Tripoli otherwise. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said, “We are very much behind the intensification of the military campaign and … so is France.”…

Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist, was killed in Pakistan as the result of a U.S. military operation, President Obama announced to the nation Sunday night.

The historic revelation comes about four months before the 10th anniversary of the devastating Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, which were executed by the Al Qaeda network helmed by Bin Laden and prompted the start of a war on terror that has dominated U.S. foreign policy.

Bin Laden, 54, was a member of a wealthy Saudi family and has been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives List since 1999.

Bin Laden broke with Saudi leaders over their beliefs regarding Israel. He was eventually denounced by his family and gave up citizenship.

Al Qaeda has taken responsibility for the bombings of U.S. embassies in 1998 in Tanzania and Kenya. More than 200 people were killed in the attacks.

Al Qaeda has also claimed responsibility for other attacks on other symbols of U.S. power around the globe. It has spawned local organizations in hot spots from Iraq to Afghanistan.

The announcement by Obama from the East Room of the White House came eight years to the day after President Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, the so-called “Mission Accomplished” speech from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln…

The tech-savvy senator cuts to the chase — the fact that iPhones and iPads running iOS 4 record and store users locations in unencrypted files is serious. Sen. Franken’s letter begins:

I read with concern a recent report by security researchers that Apple’s iOS 4 operating system is secretly compiling its customers’ location data in a file stored on iPhones, 3G iPads and every computer that users use to “sync” their devices. According to the researchers, this file contains consumers’ latitude and longitude for every day they used an iPhone or 3G iPad running the iOS 4 operating system — sometimes logging their precise geo-location up to 100 times a day. The researchers who discovered this file found that it contained up to a year’s worth of data, starting from the day they installed the iOS4 operating system. What is even more worrisome is that this file is stored in an unencrypted format on customers’ iPads, iPhones and every computer a customer has used to back up his or her information…

Now, giving his new government its marching orders, Mr Assad told ministers their mission was to deliver a raft of reforms, structural changes and a new partnership with the public that would make Syria an example for democracy in the region.

His words will no doubt be greeted with scepticism by protesters who have lived through the past month of violent repression and the decades of ruthless control which preceded it.

But Mr Assad came up with a tangible promise to meet one of their most strident demands – the lifting of the hated emergency laws which have been in place since 1963 and under which security agents have detained and tortured people with impunity.

He said new legislation would be put through at the latest next week, allowing the emergency laws to be lifted…

With its aircraft in the skies of Libya and Ivory Coast, France has suddenly escaped diplomatic obscurity to find itself taking a leading role in two military ventures that have arguably tipped the scales on behalf of civilians.

This comes after France was embarrassingly late in embracing pro-democracy protests that successfully ousted its old allies in Egypt and Tunisia. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his aides at the Élysée Palace have emerged from that diplomatic fumble to help engineer intervention in Libya and Ivory Coast and are showing a new, more robust international profile.

For France, the two military actions followed the same script. It moved swiftly after 11th hour United Nations resolutions authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect civilians and worked in tandem with other countries or multinational forces. And in both cases, reputedly unstable leaders appeared bent on blocking the people’s will.

“In Libya and in Ivory Coast, France has played big. It is in the process, at least in Abidjan [Ivory Coast's capital], of scoring a success that will have a world impact,” said military analyst Pierre Rousselin in the pro-Sarkozy daily Le Figaro.

French analysts are divided not on whether, but the degree to which domestic politics is motivating Mr. Sarkozy. He is making bold moves at time when his popularity at home is low. The UN resolutions have inspired in him a new determination to intercede in select crises that favor France’s military capability. France has long been known for “punching above its weight” on the global stage and doing so in a way that appears to bolster its international aims and French values and interests…

Thousands of Syrians flooded the streets of several major cities Friday for a new round of antigovernment protests, defying security forces who used gunfire and tear gas to disperse them.

Four people were shot dead in Duma, a suburb of the capital, Damascus, when police fired on about 2,000 people gathered in a major square chanting “Freedom,” according to a witness who withheld his name out of concern for his safety.

Activists had dubbed Friday the “Day of Martyrs” to commemorate the more than 70 people who have been killed during the unrest of recent weeks. They used Facebook, Twitter and other online social media to mobilize mass demonstrations.

The protesters, who are seeking economic relief and the end of nearly five decades of martial law, gathered in Damascus, the seaside cities of Latakia and Banias, and the southern city of Dara.

But President Bashar Assad, who heads one of the region’s most repressive regimes, redoubled efforts to suffocate the dissent, which has persisted since his forces first fired on protesters March 18 in Dara…