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• DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- A United Nations spokeswoman says the last U.N. observers still in Syria have started to leave the country as their mission officially ends at midnight Sunday.
• Juliette Touma tells The Associated Press that the rest of the observers will leave within hours. There are about 100 observers left in Syria -- a third of the number at the peak of the mission earlier this year.
• Their departure comes after the Security Council agreed to end the U.N. mission and back a small new liaison office that will support any future peace efforts.
• The U.N.'s top body has acknowledged that international efforts to significantly reduce the violence and end the Syrian government's use of heavy weapons -- conditions set for the mission's possible extension -- have failed.
• ___

• MOSCOW (AP) -- Three punk rock-style activists who briefly took over a cathedral in a raucous prayer for deliverance from Vladimir Putin were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism on Friday, a decision that drew protests around the

world as it highlighted the Russian president's intensifying crackdown on dissent.
• Protesters from Moscow to New York and musicians including Madonna and Paul McCartney condemned the prosecution of the three women, members of a band called Pussy Riot. Several countries, including the U.S., and even some Kremlin loyalists decried the verdict.
• Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were arrested in March after performing a "punk prayer" in Christ the Savior Cathedral, dancing and high-kicking as they called on the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin, who was elected to a third term as Russia's president two weeks later.
• Judge Marina Syrova ruled Friday that the band members had "committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred." She rejected the women's arguments that they were protesting the Russian Orthodox Church's support for Putin and didn't intend to offend religious believers.
• Putin himself had said the band members shouldn't be judged too harshly, creating expectations that they could be sentenced to time served and freed in the court

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