The uprising in Syria began in the spring of 2011 when rebellious teenagers scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa.
The protest against their arrest, and the regime's brutal response, sparked the wider revolt. Throughout the unrest, the country's younger generation has been at the forefront of efforts to end the repressive regime of President Bashar Assad.
At a cafe in the heart of Damascus recently, a young man flips open his cellphone to show pictures of people killed in the uprising.
The Israeli village of Neve Shalom was founded decades ago as a place where Arabs and Jews could coexist in the volatile Middle East. The area has weathered regional wars and uprisings, but earlier this month, vandals targeted it and spray-painted anti-Arab epithets on the school's walls.
"We discovered first of all that a number of tires had been punctured, and then we noticed the damage at the school, slogans painted on the walls saying 'Death to the Arabs,' " says Howard Shippin, a longtime resident of Neve Shalom village. "Of course it's very disturbing."
Tom Tidwell speaks to CPR's Mike Lamp about this year's fire season.
Fire fighters with the U.S. Forest Service are currently on the front lines of thousands of wildfires burning in Colorado and across the country. In fact there are between 100 and 150 new starts each day. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell is the man overseeing the firefighting efforts.
Kaiser Permanente, the California-based managed care consortium, is touted as a model for saving money in the health care system. But they are not as inexpensive as they used to be.
