Syria

Heavily armed gunmen shouting Islamist slogans stormed a Paris satirical newspaper office Wednesday and shot dead at least 12 people in the deadliest attack in France in four decades.
      
Police launched a massive manhunt for the masked attackers who reportedly hijacked a car and sped off, running over a pedestrian and shooting at officers.
      

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev has denounced a request by the country?s interior minister for troops to be sent to the Turkish border to deter immigrants, saying it could spark ?a diplomatic scandal.?

The U.S. military has made progress in its effort to identify moderate Syrian rebels to train for the fight against Islamic State militants and a U.S. training mission could begin this spring, the Pentagon said on Jan. 7.
  

Syrians have overtaken Afghans as the largest refugee population aside from Palestinians, fleeing to more than 100 countries to escape war in their homeland, the United Nations said on Jan. 7.
   

Syria?s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, has written a letter to the U.N. Security Council, as reported by agencies on Jan. 5, in order to complain about some serious violations of the country's borders.

A female suicide bomber blew herself in Istanbul, killing one police officer and injuring another on Tuesday.

The target of the suicider was a police station in the tourist area Sultanahmet, near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia museum, the BBC reports.

About 51.2 million people have been displaced since World War II, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said on Jan. 6, noting the current figures for displaced people are the highest they have ever been.

Western states are focusing too much on tackling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and are forgetting the daily suffering of ordinary Syrians in areas of the country where the medical situation has become  catastrophic, a group of Syrian doctors said.
   

Ankara police collected a group of Syrians from the tents and shanty houses where they were living late on Jan. 5, in order to send them to refugee camps in southeastern Turkey.

Syria has complained to the United Nations that U.S. Senator John McCain, former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith entered the country without visas in separate visits in violation of its sovereignty.