Tank shells crashed into residential neighborhoods in the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday. The country's third-largest city has been a hub of anti-government protests in recent weeks.
Abu Omar recently fled Homs to Lebanon. Before the trouble in Syria started, he was a housepainter. The country's economy was opening up and people were building. He says his children had free education and free health care.
With the release of a video, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich formally entered the 2012 Republican presidential race, today.
"I'm Newt Gingrich, and I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States because I believe we can return America to hope and opportunity, to full employment, to real security, to an American energy program, to a balanced budget," he said in the video.
Toyota, which has been suffering from ongoing parts shortages and production delays following the March earthquake and tsunami, announced Wednesday that its most recent quarterly profit fell by more than 75 percent.
The automaker has had a lot of problems lately, and they aren't just tied to the disasters in Japan.
Aaron Bragman, an analyst with IHS Automotive, says the company has a long list of troubles.
Japan is reassessing how it produces electricity after March's earthquake and tsunami sparked a crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan this week persuaded the operators of another nuclear plant west of Tokyo to temporarily close it to make safety improvements. And he is canceling a plan to build more nuclear facilities.
Michigan is increasingly using what some consider a drastic method for dealing with cash-strapped cities. New laws give emergency financial managers the authority to fire local government officials.
Residents of Benton Harbor, Mich., know this option well. A year ago, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) sent emergency financial manager Joe Harris to Benton Harbor last year.
Now the town of 10,000 — which sits on the other side of Lake Michigan from Chicago — now has just 6 firefighters and about 20 police officers.
In the past two years, Detroit has closed 59 schools and cut 30 percent of the school system's workforce. But the district is still staring at a deficit of more than $300 million, and thousands of students continue to flee every year.
"If you do the math and you look at the numbers, the question is: Do we continue to close schools here in the city of Detroit to have more vacant and burned-out buildings? Or do we take a bold step forward to create DPS as a service provider of education?" asks Anthony Adams,president of the Detroit Board of Education.
Here's a piece of curious news from the Office of Naval Research: In a bid to find out how much they can learn from a large group of people, the Navy plans to use an online war game to find solutions to real-life problems.
