The Syrian army has successfully concluded the first phase of its operation in the western city of Qusayr. (File photo) The Syrian army has successfully concluded the first phase of its operation in the strategic western city of Qusayr.

Over the past few months, Human Rights First has been working hard to make sure that immigration reform includes much-needed changes to the U.S. asylum system.

If we look back over the past quarter century since the end of the Cold War in 1989, we can see how quickly confidence about the future can bloom and wither. A short-lived sense of a peace died in the Gulf, the western Balkans and Rwanda. Waves of prosperity came and went with the dotcom boom and bust, and the bursting of our western credit-based bubble of prosperity in 2008

[iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lRkKfGr_TWw?feature=oembed" width="425" height="239" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen] Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called on Tuesday for an investigation into oil price manipulation.

Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Country: Sudan United Nations Humanitarian Chief Valerie Amos is visiting Sudan from 20 to 23 May 2013. She will visit the region of Darfur where a shrinking humanitarian community has led to deteriorating services for hundreds of thousands of people living in camps.

Over the past month there has been a statistically improbable concurrence of events that can only be explained as a conspiracy to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE). Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to

For links to some of these stories see: Obama administration yet again makes a joke of ‘most transparent administration in history’ claim Revealed: IRS targeted groups critical of government US Justice Department acknowledges wide-ranging surveillance of Associated Press White House claims no knowledge of AP investigation Verizon secretly handed over phone records of AP reporters to the federal government CIA approved AP report that triggered investigation Subpoena of AP phone records said to damage press freedom by congressional critics Note: if you can’t see the video, click here . From the YouTube description: The Obama White House has released the latest installment of its ongoing and self-congratulatory video series, West Wing Week.

Source: UN Development Programme Country: World Executive Summary This review focuses on disaster loss and damage database implementation at country and regional levels.

“The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor” by Nathaniel Currier, a lithograph depicting the 1773 Boston Tea Party shows how some colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans. This time, the IRS was trying to unmask political operatives disguised as tea partiers. (Wikicommons) Friday’s IRS bombshell — the revelation that a Cincinnati field office (and perhaps others ) was targeting for special scrutiny conservative 501(c)4s – those tax exempt non-profits called “social welfare” groups — has generated more outrage over the past few days than even the IRS is used to receiving.

Fox News chose to ignore the historic passage of marriage equality in Rhode Island, Delaware, and Minnesota, opting instead to promote a handful of asinine horror stories about same-sex marriage.   Fox News viewers are likely unaware that three states – Rhode Island, Delaware, and Minnesota -voted to legalize same-sex marriage over the past three weeks. That’s because Fox News spent a total of one minute covering the stories, according to an Equality Matters analysis : While CNN and MSNBC both covered the developments, Fox News made only three mentions of the passage of marriage equality in Rhode Island, entirely ignoring the new law in Delaware.