Syrian army 'retakes Golan crossing'

BBC's Lyse Doucet was the first western journalist to enter Qusair after it fell and returned a day later to see how it had changed

The Syrian army has taken control of a UN-monitored crossing in the Golan Heights that had been overrun by rebel forces, Israeli military sources say.

Tanks and armoured vehicles were used in the fighting at Quneitra, near Israeli-held territory.
Austria has said it will withdraw its peacekeepers from the Golan Heights because of the fighting.
It comes a day after Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants retook the key town of Qusair.

Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent

Quneitra is close to the dis-engagement line with Israel on the Golan Heights and is a crossing point for local - mainly Druze - inhabitants, many of whose families straddle the de-facto border.
There has been sporadic fighting in the Golan over recent months with many Syrian army units having been pulled out to battle the rebels elsewhere.
On occasion, Israeli positions have come under fire and the Israeli army has fired back. Israel, while anxious not to get involved, remains deeply concerned about what is going on in and around Quneitra.
It fears a rebel success could open up its Golan border to attack from jihadist elements. This is just one more front where the violence in Syria threatens to spill over - drawing in Syria's neighbours.

The involvement of Hezbollah and the upsurge of fighting near the ceasefire line with Israel in the Golan have both raised fears that the conflict could spread across Syria's borders.

Rebels seized the crossing near the town of Quneitra earlier on Thursday, with explosions and heavy shelling rocking the area.
But an Israeli military source said Syrian government forces retook the symbolically significant position hours later, and that it was now relatively quiet in the area.
'Unacceptable threat' Two UN peacekeepers were wounded as fighting raged around the crossing and Quneitra.
Austria said it would withdraw its soldiers because the threat had "reached an unacceptable level".
Austrian troops make up more than a third of the more than 900-strong UN force monitoring the demilitarised zone and Quneitra - the only open crossing between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Israel expressed regret at Austria's decision, and said it hoped it would not lead to "further escalation" in the region.

UN mission in the Golan Heights

• UN peacekeeping troops have been in the demilitarised zone of the disputed Golan Heights, between Syria and Israel, since the armistice following the 1973 War
• Austrian soldiers have been part of the mission, known as the UN Disengagement Observer Force (Undof), from its beginning in 1974
• Undof had 913 troops as of 30 April 2013, more than a third of them Austrian
• Canada, Croatia and Japan had already withdrawn their contingents, leaving just India and the Philippines as contributors to the mission

The UN said the withdrawal of Austrian troops would affect the mission's operational capacity and it would look for replacements.

Croatia, Canada and Japan had already withdrawn their contingents in the Golan because of the conflict in Syria.
Syria's deployment of tanks in the demilitarised zone violates ceasefire agreements in place since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, but sources have told the BBC that Israel will not react.
Israel captured part of the plateau in 1967 and later annexed it in a move that has never been internationally recognised.
Israeli officials have voiced fears the civil war in Syria could spill over their borders. They are worried the Golan Heights could be used to launch attacks against Israel - either by Islamist extremists fighting for the rebels, or by Hezbollah militants fighting on the government side.
Hezbollah's growing role in the conflict was highlighted by its involvement in the battle for Qusair, which government forces recaptured on Wednesday after a bitter siege.
Hezbollah is a political and military organisation in Lebanon made up mainly of Shia Muslims.

Lyse Doucet: "[The rebels] say they're coming back but they'll come back to a city that's gone"

It emerged with backing from Iran in the early 1980s when it fought Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and has always been a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Its involvement in Syria has heightened sectarian tensions across the region, and the US has called for it to withdraw.

At the scene Lyse Doucet BBC News, Qusair

This battle for Qusair is over. But now the fight begins to help the people who survived.
Thousands fled the violence; many were trapped inside. Aid agencies speak of alarming reports that large numbers of wounded need urgent care.
There's not enough food or water in Qusair or for those displaced outside in schools, shelters and on the streets. In the last two days, the UN managed to send in a powerful generator to help restart the main pumping station for this entire region.
But now aid agencies are urging the government to give them greater access to the city. The fight for Qusair was a strategic victory, but a humanitarian disaster.

Late on Wednesday several rockets landed in the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek inside Lebanon - after rebel threats to strike at Hezbollah on its home turf.

Ghost town Qusair lies only 10km (6 miles) from the Lebanese border and is close to important supply routes for both the government and rebels.
A BBC team who were the first Western journalists to reach it after the fighting found it in ruins and deserted but for Syrian and Hezbollah troops.
As the battle for Qusair raged, fighting was continuing in most other parts of Syria, especially around the capital Damascus, where regime forces are trying to push the rebels back from the suburbs, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut.

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Whether the government victory at Qusair proves a real turning point will depend on the wider ebb and flow of the struggle for Syria”

Jim Muir BBC News, Beirut

More than 80,000 people have been killed in Syria and more than 1.5 million have fled the country since an uprising against President Assad began in 2011, according to UN estimates.

International efforts to resolve Syria's conflict continue, but the US and Russia have failed to set a date for proposed peace talks.
Meanwhile France has said that growing proof of chemical weapons use in Syria "obliges the international community to act".
However, President Francois Hollande cautioned: "We can only act within the framework of international law."

Sanctuary at front line of fight against 'inhumane' dog trade

By Anna Coren, CNN

June 6, 2013 -- Updated 1402 GMT (2202 HKT)

Dog smuggling in Thailand

Nakhon Phanom, Thailand (CNN) -- We arrive in the morning at the Animal Quarantine Center in Nakhon Phanom, north-east Thailand, just a few kilometers away from mountains which outline the border with Laos. The summer heat is already beating down hard and it's only 9 a.m.

But it's not humidity that hits me as I climb out of the 4WD, rather the overwhelming smell of dog urine and feces.

This is a makeshift shelter that should be housing a maximum of 400 dogs. Instead there are more than 1,700 animals being kept in large concrete pens at the compound. Staff work around the clock.

This region is the heartland for the cruel and inhumane dog smuggling trade. The illegal operation sees an estimated 200,000 dogs transported in trucks from Thailand into neighboring Laos, across the Mekong River and driven across to Vietnam where the meat is considered a delicacy. Some believe it has medicinal qualities and acts as an aphrodisiac -- black dogs are apparently the best for sexual dysfunction. Yet no scientific proof has ever proved such a claim.

READ: Smugglers drive Thailand's grim trade

Images: Keeping dogs from dinner plate

Dogs slaughtered for meat in Vietnam

The dogs at this shelter were intercepted more than a month ago after Thai authorities stopped several trucks trying to cross the border into Laos. The drivers were arrested but no one was prosecuted. Their cargo? Thousands of dogs crammed into small steel cages -- at least a dozen dogs to a cage -- where they are left for days on end without food or water, while the smugglers make their week-long journey.

Some of the dogs die from suffocation along the way. Others endure broken bones and crushed skulls during the trip. And they're all disease ridden. These dogs were destined for restaurants in Vietnam where a single dog can be sold on average for $60 an animal. It's a lucrative business for smugglers, considering a dog fetches only a few dollars in Thailand.

John Dalley, founder of the Phuket-based Soi Dog Foundation, moved to Thailand from the UK 10 years ago on a mission to help the country's overwhelming stray dog population. The charity, which relies on donations from animal-lovers around the world, set up an immunization program, and just last week neutered its 50,000th dog. There are now plans to expand the program nationwide.

Dalley says the dogs would have endured an even more horrific ordeal if the truck hadn't been intercepted.

"At best, they could have been clubbed -- maybe unconscious, maybe not -- and had their throats slit in from of other dogs and they all know what's going on. At worst, they're skinned alive, strung up and beaten ... while alive, set on fire," he said. "It's a horrendous death and that's what we're trying to stop. Never mind that it's illegal to do it -- it's the sheer inhumanity of this trade that this can still be going on in the 21st century."

This place should just be for dogs coming in, to get vaccinated and then to leave and move on to other shelters. But they're all full, if not overflowing, and these dogs desperately need loving homes.
John Dalley, Soi Dog Foundation

While these dogs didn't end up on dinner plates in Vietnam, they were struck by disease that spread like wildfire through the shelter due to the overcrowding.

"This place should just be for dogs coming in, to get vaccinated and then to leave and move on to other shelters. But they're all full, if not overflowing, and these dogs desperately need loving homes," he said.

The few that are cute, fluffy or pedigrees are swiftly adopted but the majority -- mangy strays and street dogs -- will never leave the concrete floors and wire fencing of the shelter.

Chusak Pongpanit, chief of the Animal Quarantine Station, also knows the challenges in front of him. "We still need a lot of funds because we will have to take care of these dogs for a long time before they can find homes -- if they find homes."

Meters away from the pens that divide the sick dogs and the healthy is a building that houses the critically ill.

Skin hangs from their frail, skeletal bodies. Many are covered in sores, while others have mucus dangling from their noses -- often a sign of pneumonia, distemper or canine parvovirus infection.

Last month, disease claimed 780 dogs. While we watch the veterinarians try to minimize pain and suffering, a dog takes its final breath and passes away on a stainless steel trolley.

Marisa Goudie is one of several vets from the UK who have flown to Thailand, volunteering their time to help local staff try to stop the outbreak.

The Soi Dog Foundation that supports the shelter with food, drugs and vaccinations put out an SOS last month and the Worldwide Veterinary Service, Animals Asia and the Humane Society International -- organizations based in the United States, Britain and the Philippines -- answered the call for help.

"It's heartbreaking being here. These dogs are inherently still wanting to trust humans after everything they've been through," said Goudie, as she pulled her stethoscope away from the bony ribcage of the dead dog.

It's heartbreaking being here. These dogs are inherently still wanting to trust humans after everything they've been through.
Marisa Goudie, British Vet

The challenge facing western veterinarian staff that have flown into assist is the Buddhist religious beliefs of the Thais that don't allow dogs to be euthanized. "We do have our hands tied because of religious issues and that's something that internally we're conflicted with -- but we need to respect their views," Goudie explained.

Hayley Walters is a veterinarian nurse based in Edinburgh, Scotland and arrived at the shelter just a few days ago. Not being able to put a dog out of its misery goes against every bone in her body.

"It's heartbreaking because in the western world we would help them on their way. But here we can only give palliative care -- make them as comfortable as possible. We give them pain relief, with the really skinny ones we give them some cardboard to sleep on and some kind words. But that's the saddest thing -- we can't send them on their way."

As for the relatively healthy ones, she can only try and remain optimistic that the rescue of these dogs means they have another chance at life.

"What they need is good treatment, good nutrition and loving homes to go to. This must not be the end place for any rescue dog. A shelter should not be the end place. It's a huge problem. if we could stop the root of the problem, which is the dog eating trade, we could stop this -- all of this."

But for now the multi-million dollar dog meat industry continues to thrive in parts of Asia, a harsh reality for animals affectionately referred to as "man's best friend."

A Road in Burma Paved with Hope

By JOCELYN GECKER / AP WRITER| Friday, April 19, 2013 |

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Burma’s central government is pushing to updated the country’s antiquated infrastructure, including the laying of paved roads. (Photo: Reuters / Soe Zeya Tun)

MONG PAN, BURMA — A winding, bumpy route through the misty mountains of eastern Burma is being paved into a smooth two-lane highway, the type of road commonly found in other scenic stretches from the Alps to the Rockies.
But here, in a rugged land long cut off by ethnic insurgency, there is nothing ordinary about a paved road.
For farmers and villagers who have spent decades in isolation, it is a potential path out of their impoverished hinterland to a better future. It is an emblem of how much is changing in Burma — but also how much is not.
The 320-kilometer road swerves along a mostly jungle-covered plateau of Shan State, a war-torn region that is known for drug smuggling and has been off-limits to foreigners for years.
As Burma emerges from half a century of military rule, one of its toughest challenges is to reintegrate areas like this one, where decades of fighting has engendered deep feelings of fear, mistrust and hatred of the army and, by extension, the government. Paved roads might be called Burma’s first peace dividend, an effort by its new civilian rulers to connect some of Asia’s poorest people to their own country and show them the benefits of joining the fold.
The Associated Press was granted rare permission to accompany a UN mission into the restricted area, past valleys of emerald rice paddies and highlands inhabited by indigenous hill tribes. The mission, to visit opium poppy fields, traveled under armed escort since it is still a conflict zone. Many along the way said they had never seen a foreigner before. The five-day journey offered a glimpse into the challenge ahead: Can the government overcome the ingrained animosity among its ethnic minorities and achieve its goal of national unity?
Signs of hope mingled with reminders of a troubled past. Police filmed and photographed the AP crew and villagers during many interviews. Some towns are barricaded by gates still locked at night to keep armed rebels out. The road is being paved with the help of child labor, a scourge of the military era. But teachers, farmers, nurses and others seemed genuinely pleased when they described the construction — and other recent developments — as a tangible sign of progress in a corner of the country that has been cut off by conflict, trapped by poverty and overlooked by the government.
About halfway along the route, the farming village of Dar Seid was excitedly awaiting the arrival of nearby work crews, said a young man who proudly introduced himself as the community’s first democratically elected leader.
Since his election in January, 34-year-old Sai Phone Myat Zin has immersed himself in the study of democracy and the needs of his ethnic Shan people, who have no electricity or running water.
“A good, paved road will change our lives,” he said. For now, the road is a potholed dirt trail that bisects the village, and every passing vehicle kicks up clouds of chalky dust. “Our children have to walk two miles [3.2 km] through dust and dirt to get to the closest school.”
Of course, he said, Dar Seid’s needs exceed a paved road. He wants to win back farmland confiscated during military rule for bases and dams. He wants mobile phone service and irrigation so farmers don’t have to rely on the rain. “The road will not solve all our problems,” he said. “We have a lot of them.”
This part of Shan State is designated a black zone — areas that remain rebel strongholds, where battles with government troops raged in the jungles for decades. Shaky cease-fires signed over the past year and a half have paved the way for the roadwork.
The route starts outside the state capital of Taunggyi and heads east through government-controlled towns before climbing into the hills that give cover to rebels. Here too live the hill tribes — the Pa-O, Lisu, Lahu, Shan and others — many of whom survive by growing opium poppies, the region’s main cash crop. The road ends in the mountain town of Mong Hsat, near the Thailand border town of Tachilek, and is being touted as a new trade route.
The construction itself is a reflection of the old Burma, repressed and impoverished under military rule that ended in 2011. East of Dar Seid, children are paid US $3 a day to carry baskets of rocks amid choking dust.
“Sometimes my eyes sting,” said Thein Thein Maw, a 14-year-old orphan girl who sleeps in a tent near the worksite. “But I’m used to it.”
Several stretches of sleek pavement have been finished ahead of next month’s rainy season, but the Ministry of Construction says completion of the work depends on the availability of funds. The project is part of a national plan to improve Burma’s dilapidated infrastructure. Only 22 percent of its 142,400 kms in roads is paved.
“We use machines to break rocks from the mountains but the rest is done by hand,” Htay Thaung, a 65-year-old supervisor explained as his crew fit together brick-sized rocks with smaller stones and gravel to lay a 30-cm foundation.
Many portions of the road have foundations of granite, but his was a 1.6-km path of gleaming white marble extracted from the nearby hills. “This is going to be a very good road, a luxury road made from marble,” he said.
That’s welcome news for farmers like Nay Lin, who was sweating nearby as he fixed a flat tire on his tractor with a bicycle pump.
“The road is terrible, I get flat tires all the time,” said the 32-year-old man, who sells his hogs at the market in Mong Pan, a 50-km drive that takes him nine hours.
“I’ve never seen so much road construction,” he said, surveying the work crew and wiping his brow. “With a paved road, I can commute faster. It will help my business. I can spend more time working, and less time driving.”
After a bone-rattling ride around hairpin turns, bamboo groves and majestic banyan trees, the road dips into a valley and enters Mong Pan, which is gated like a medieval fortress. The cease-fires have resulted in less violence, but nobody is letting down their guard.
The town’s four entry points are padlocked every night at 6 p.m. A welcome sign lists all that is banned: bombs, narcotics, weapons, illegally logged timber, runaway prisoners.
Mostly, Mong Pan fears its neighbors from the highlands.
“We need a gate for security reasons. In the past it was not peaceful here,” said checkpoint supervisor Sai Htin Lynn, huddled near an open fire on a chilly morning after unlocking the town gate.
Outside Mong Pan, a dozen soldiers patrolled the road with machine guns, ammunition belts and mortar launchers. A round of explosions echoed in the distance, but villagers identified it as rock being blasted from the mountains to make the new road.
The drive out of Mong Pan to the eastern hills is slow, on a dirt road that enshrouds the countryside in a curtain of dust. It silhouettes farmers plowing fields with oxen in the early morning light. It casts a cloud over a woman kneeling at the roadside as she places offerings into the bowl of a barefoot Buddhist monk.
The road winds gradually up to the mountaintop village of Ywar Thar Yar, where ethnic Lisu women weave their multicolored, beaded clothing, as they have for generations.
Two years ago, when President Thein Sein inaugurated Burma’s first civilian government in five decades, the people of Ywar Thar Yar heard the historic news on their shortwave radios.
“We didn’t expect any changes here. But I’m surprised how fast change has come,” said the village teacher, Mu Mu Khaing.
“This year, for the first time ever, the village got books from the government,” she said, her eyes wide with emotion. “A big rice sack filled with school books just turned up one day.”
It was one of many firsts. The Education Ministry recently told the village it would build a schoolhouse to replace a flimsy bamboo hut made by the community.
“Sometimes, I teach with an umbrella because the rain is coming through the roof,” Mu Mu Khaing said. As she spoke, one student fell hip-deep through a hole in the floor, prompting an eruption of laughter from the students, who ranged in age from 5 to 13.
Mu Mu Khaing’s paycheck is bigger these days: Last year, for the first time in a decade, she got a raise that nearly tripled her monthly salary to 136,000 kyat, or $170. Once the road is paved, it will be easier to pick up her paycheck — now a 10-hour walk downhill to Mong Pan. Small steps, perhaps, for the long journey ahead.
“My hope, my dream,” the 45-year-old teacher said, “is that the new road will lead our children to a better life.”

World Economic Forum in Burma Shouldn’t Be ‘Fooled by Fine Words’

By WILLIAM BOOT / THE IRRAWADDY| Wednesday, June 5, 2013 |

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Naypyidaw’s government district features a landscape of modern interpretations of Burmese style monumental architecture, but is almost devoid of human activity. The Burmese capital is hosting the World Economic Forum this week. (Photo: Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy)

Senior international business, political and financial aid figures plus hundreds of peripatetic freeloaders have converged on Naypyidaw this week to offer a mountain of advice on how Burma might progress from Year Zero to booming tiger economy.
There will be much discussion about promoting the inclusive society and dragging the country’s tens of millions of subsistence farm workers into the 21st century with factory jobs, mobile phones and aspirations to own cars.
But how close to reality will all these worthies attending the three-day World Economic Forum (WEF) be, confined in the isolated and grandiose surreal capital built in the jungle with the sweat of Burma’s poor by a bunch of neurotic army generals?
“Davos Man arrives in Myanmar. Now Myanmar is truly a stopover for the Masters of the Universe, a country becoming part of the global economy, rather than an exotic cul-de-sac,” Sean Turnell, a long-time expert on the state of Burma’s economy, told The Irrawaddy.
“I suspect this will largely be one of those NATO [No Action, Talking Only] affairs, but not to be dismissed necessarily. The imprimatur of the WEF is not an unimportant one for multinational enterprises, who can now enter Myanmar in the expectation it is just another normal developing country of some risk, but opportunity too,” said Turnell, a professor at Australia’s Macquarie University and editor of Burma Economic Watch.
“That said, it is to be hoped that Davos Man and Woman look beyond the obvious, as well as the city limits of Naypyidaw, and recognize both the realities of life for most people in Myanmar, and their own responsibility in behaving in genuinely ethical ways.”
The conference from Wednesday through Friday will include debate on economic development across East Asia and particularly Southeast Asia, but its focus will be Burma.
“After a series of bold economic and political reforms in [Burma] the meeting will be the first leading international gathering of senior decision-makers from industry, government, academia and civil society to be held in the country,” the WEP said in its promotional blurb. “Through this unique multi-stakeholder platform, the meeting will be an unrivalled opportunity to understand and to shape Myanmar’s on-going reforms and reconciliation process.”
However, the forum is taking place as two reports highlight some of the unsavoury and questionable realities going on within Burma while multinational companies make or consider investments in the country.
“Pushed to the Brink,” published on Wednesday by the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, documents how thousands of ethnic Kachins displaced by fighting between Kachin militia and the Burmese Army have led to increased trafficking of women into China.
It details the cases of young women and girls “tricked, drugged, raped, and sold to Chinese men or families as brides or bonded laborers,” some ending up thousands of miles from home in eastern China.
“Push tens of thousands of people to China’s doorstep, deprive them of food and status, and you’ve created a perfect storm for human trafficking,” said the Kachin women’s group spokeswoman Julia Marip.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture’s latest statistics disclose a massive increase in land transfers to business and state agencies.
Between January 31, 2011 and March 31, 2012, so-called land concessions increased 76 percent to cover 3.42 million acres.
Under the new Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law, concession land is supposed to be unoccupied or unused. But it can include land in use by local communities and not registered with the government.
“The World Economic Forum should focus on the voices of the people of Myanmar, which should be the primary driver of development models adopted by the government, foreign investors, and other stakeholders,” EarthRights International campaigns director Paul Donowitz told The Irrawaddy.
He said the Farmland Act and the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Law were examples of laws passed “with little or no public consultations, that do not recognize traditional upland farming practices, and that are leading directly to land grabbing by powerful interests.
“This development strategy, which is more of the same from previous times, will continue to alienate the people of Myanmar and not lead to sustainable economic and development outcomes,” Donowitz said.
EarthRights is a US-based NGO seeking to promote fairness in environmental and commercial development of natural resources.
“We have seen the [Burma] government prioritize large-scale natural resource strategies, including the opening of almost all of the countries offshore petroleum blocks, and new mining and large-scale hydropower projects with little or no public consultation that are leading to conflict, land grabbing, and severe livelihood impacts,” Donowitz said.
The PR words on the WEF’s Naypyidaw conference website appear not to impress one former Young Global Leader at the WEF’s 2010 conference in Tanzania who spoke this week to The Irrawaddy.
“Delegates from the World Economic Forum must not allow fine words and fine wine to fool them into thinking that they are visiting a country making a transition to democracy,” said Zoya Phan, a manager at the London-based human rights NGO Burma Campaign UK.
“As they arrive in Naypyidaw, delegates should remember that a few hundred miles northwest ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity have been committed against the Rohingya, and a few hundred miles northeast, ethnic Kachin women have been raped and killed by Burmese Army soldiers,” Phan said.
“My advice to delegates is to go to visit the displaced people in Mai Ja Yang [a rebel-controlled area] in Kachin State who fled attacks by the Burmese Army. Go and see the squalid conditions in the Rohingya camps where [President] Thein Sein won’t allow free humanitarian access. Visit the farmers in Karen State whose land has been confiscated by the government. Then decide how real this process is and if you think Burma is a safe place to invest.
“Lt-Gen Myint Soe [from the Burmese Army] recently said in an interview with The Irrawaddy, ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’ That’s good advice for WEF delegates when listening to the government and military.”
It might indeed be something to bear in mind for the six high-ranking conference coordinators: AirAsia founder and chief executive Tony Fernandes; PepsiCo USA chairwoman Indra Nooyi; Mitsubishi Corporation chairman Yorihiko Kojima; General Electric vice chairman John Rice; Tata Consultancy Services of India vice chairman Subramaniam Ramadorai; and Helen Clark, the United Nations Development Program administrator in New York.

Syrian army retakes key town of Qusair from rebels

Jim Muir: "Syrian state TV is hailing this as a great strategic victory"

Syrian pro-government forces have taken full control of the strategic town of Qusair, state TV and the rebels say.

The town, near the Lebanese border, has been the centre of fighting for more than two weeks between rebels and Syrian troops backed by fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Syrian state TV said a large number of rebels had died and many had surrendered.
It comes as key rebel leader said his men were ready to fight inside Lebanon.
Gen Selim Idriss of the Free Syrian Army - the main umbrella rebel group - told the BBC that Hezbollah fighters were "invading" Syria and Lebanon was doing nothing to stop them.
Syrian pro-government forces, including Hezbollah fighters, have been battling rebels for control of Qusair for more than two weeks.
The town lies just 10km (six miles) from the Lebanese border and along major supply routes.
But on Wednesday, Syria's Sana state news agency said the "heroic armed forces have returned security and stability to all of the town".
Sana said a large number of "terrorists", as the state refers to the rebels, had been killed and many had surrendered. It said the army was now destroying barricades and weapons caches and searching the town for explosives.

Strategic town of Qusair

• Estimated population of 30,000 people
• Up to 10,000 people have fled to neighbouring towns and 1,500 people are wounded, the UN says
• Some 23 villages and 12 farms west of Qusair are reportedly inhabited by Lebanese Shia
• Near the main route from Damascus to port of Tartous, a gateway to the heartland of President Assad's Alawite sect

In Lebanon, Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV reported "widespread collapse" of the rebel forces in the town, while one Hezbollah fighter told Reuters news agency: "We did a sudden surprise attack in the early hours and entered the town. They escaped."

In a statement also quoted by Reuters, the rebels said: "In face of this huge arsenal and lack supplies and the blatant intervention of Hezbollah... tens of fighters stayed behind and ensured the withdrawal of their comrades along with the civilians."
AFP news agency quoted the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that monitors the conflict, as saying Hezbollah fighters were in control of the town.
'Brutality' The BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says there are still some pockets of rebel resistance in rebel hands to the north of Qusair, but that the government is hailing its recapture as a strategic victory.
It is likely to cut supply routes to rebels still in control of parts of the centre of the country, and so weaken their hold.
The move is also of symbolic importance in the run-up to a proposed peace conference backed by Russia and the US as neither side wants to go into the talks looking weak, our correspondent adds.
Last week, the Red Cross said it was "alarmed" by the worsening humanitarian situation in Qusair and appeal for immediate aid access.
More than 80,000 people have been been killed in Syria and more than 1.5 million have fled the country since an uprising against Mr Assad began in 2011, according to UN estimates.
The UN reported on Tuesday that the war had reached "new levels of brutality", with evidence of massacres and children being taken hostage of forced to witness - sometimes participate in - atrocities.
There is also growing evidence that chemical weapons have been deployed in the conflict.
France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Tuesday that samples taken from Syria and tested in France showed the presence of sarin, and that there was "no doubt that it's the regime and its accomplices" that were responsible.
Mr Fabius did not specify where the samples had been collected, but French media reported it had been from the northern town of Saraqeb.
The BBC was shown evidence last month which appeared to corroborate reports that government helicopters had dropped at least two devices containing poisonous gas on the town on 29 April.
The UK also says it has tested samples which give evidence of the use of sarin in Syria.
Both the Syrian government and the rebels have in the past accused each other of using the weapons.

Heaven for atheists? Pope sparks debate

By Dan Merica, CNN

(CNN) -– American atheists welcomed Pope Francis’ comments that God redeems nonbelievers, saying that the new pontiff's historic outreach is helping to topple longstanding barriers.
“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone,” the pope told worshipers at morning Mass on Wednesday. “‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!”
Francis continued, “We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, said that although he has been skeptical of Francis' outreach to the nonreligious, he welcomed Wednesday’s comments.
“I gather from this statement that his view of the world's religious and philosophical diversity is expanding,” Speckhardt said. “While humanists have been saying for years that one can be good without a god, hearing this from the leader of the Catholic Church is quite heartening."
He continued, “If other religious leaders join him, it could do much to reduce the automatic distrust and discrimination that atheists, humanists, and other nontheists so regularly face. “
Francis’ comments received a great deal of attention on social media, with a number of people asking whether the Catholic leader believes that atheists and agnostics go to heaven, too.
On Thursday, the Vatican issued an “explanatory note on the meaning to ‘salvation.'"
The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, said that people who aware of the Catholic church “cannot be saved” if they “refuse to enter her or remain in her.”
At the same time, Rosica writes, “every man or woman, whatever their situation, can be saved. Even non-Christians can respond to this saving action of the Spirit. No person is excluded from salvation simply because of so-called original sin.”
Rosica also said that Francis had “no intention of provoking a theological debate on the nature of salvation,” during his homily on Wednesday.
Although the pope's comments about salvation surprised some, bishops and experts in Catholicism say Francis was expressing a core tenet of the faith.
"Francis was clear that whatever graces are offered to atheists (such that they may be saved) are from Christ," the Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a conservative Catholic priest, wrote on his blog.
"He was clear that salvation is only through Christ’s Sacrifice.  In other words, he is not suggesting – and I think some are taking it this way – that you can be saved, get to heaven, without Christ."
Chad Pecknold, an assistant professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, agreed with Zuhlsdorf, pointing out that the pope’s comments came on the Feast of Saint Rita, the Catholic patron saint of impossible things.
“The remarks about atheists show that there is even a saint for atheists,” Pecknold said. “Including all of humanity, on this day especially, remarks like that are almost called for.”
“To stress that the gospel redeems all people, including atheists, is the teaching of the church,” he added. “This is an objective fact that the church believes.”
Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, said Francis' comments reflect “the interfaith and inter-community work many of us nontheists are dedicated to.”
That said, Epstein hopes that lay Catholics are listening.
“I hope Catholics, and all people hearing the pope's statement, will recognize that his words about atheists need to symbolize much more than just a curiosity or an exception to the rule,” Epstein said. “If someone thinks there are only a few atheists out there doing good just like Catholics do, that's a major misunderstanding that can lead to prejudice and discrimination.”
The pope’s comments come a few months after he told worshipers that Catholics should be close to all men and women, including those who don’t belong to any religious tradition.
"In this we feel the closeness also of those men and women who, while not belonging to any religious tradition, feel, however the need to search for the truth, the goodness and the beauty of God, and who are our precious allies in efforts to defend the dignity of man, in the building of a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in the careful protection of creation,” Francis said shortly after his election as pope in March.
Even atheists like David Silverman, president of American Atheists, who has had an antagonistic relationship with the Catholic church, welcomed the pope’s remarks.
“While the concept of Jesus dying for atheists is wrong on many levels (especially given that Jesus himself promised hell for blasphemers), I can appreciate the pope's `good faith' effort to include atheists in the moral discussion,” Silverman said.
“Atheists on the whole want no part in Catholicism, of course, but we are all interested in basic human rights.”

Wider World by CS: เรียนรู้ให้ถ่องแท้รูปหล่อหลวงพ่อเงินพิมพ์นิยม

Wider World by CS: เรียนรู้ให้ถ่องแท้รูปหล่อหลวงพ่อเงินพิมพ์นิยม