
Syrian opposition activists are warning of an imminent assault by President Bashar Assad's forces and Lebanese Hezbollah militants on a rebel-held town near the border with Lebanon.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched an "unprecedented" attack against political dissidence that includes harassment and intimidation, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday.

Sen. Mike Lee said Monday that conservatives cannot surrender the idea of community to the political left.

A number of the globe's most powerful countries "continued to repress or attack the means by which individuals can organize, assemble, or demand better performance from their rulers," according to the State Department's annual review of human rights worldwide released Friday.
President Obama's plan to renew sanctions against Somalia to weaken Islamist militants would wrack the war-torn country's economy just as an elected government is restoring stability for the first time in 22 years and as thousands of refugees are returning to their homeland.

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, a growing number of abortion foes say they are tired of waiting. Exposing a rift in the pro-life camp, Republican-dominated state governments in Arkansas and North Dakota have pressed forward with legislation imposing the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, all but inviting a courtroom confrontation taking on the 1973 Supreme Court decision.

Governments and rights organizations are decrying raids by Russian authorities on more than 2,000 international and domestic advocacy groups, what observers say is an unprecedented campaign to silence critics of the Kremlin.

There has been global outrage about the proposal from the Cyprus government to have a significant one-time tax on those who have deposits in Cypriot banks. It has been correctly called a theft of private capital. What many fail to realize is that from the beginning, governments have been engaged in this type of theft, including the U.S. government.

Which country will serve as the trigger for the next financial crisis? Given the continuing rise in debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratios in many countries, it is apparent that a new financial crisis will occur. Most of the speculation has been about when, rather than where.