Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, made his first televised speech since June, blaming a foreign conspiracy for the 10-month uprising against his regime. 

Students attending a lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE) recognized Egypt's pre-revolution finance minister, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, in the audience. Their calls for him to be arrested under an international police warrant prompted security to whisk him out of the building. 

Can Hezbollah decide what international officials are welcome in Lebanon? Well, they do control the Beirut's international airport. 

Israel’s parliament is often a lively and irreverent place, and almost universally bemoaned among the people it is supposed to represent for the crudeness and ineffectiveness of its proceedings.

The Knesset Speaker, Likud member Ruby Rivlin, the scion of one of Jerusalem’s great families, is often dismissed for his courtly ways.

This morning the house found itself at an unprecedented low when right-wing Israel Beiteinu representative Anastasia Michaeli, a crony of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, threw a glass of cold water at the face of Labor party member of parliament Ghaleb Majadele. The entire sorry episode was filmed by Knesset TV and became talk of the day.

Ironically, the event occurred during a debate on the conduct of a school principal from the southern Negev Beduin town of Arara, who took his students on a field trip to a human rights parade in Tel Aviv.