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• The U.N. said several weeks ago that at least 9,000 people have been killed since the crisis began in March last year while Syrian activists say the violence has claimed the lives of more than 13,000 people.
• Damascus resident and activist Maath al-Shami said clashes between rebels and troops in the city's neighborhoods of Qaboun and Barzeh lasted until about 1:30 a.m. Saturday.
• On Friday, government troops clashed with rebels from the Free Syrian Army in Damascus' Kfar Souseh district in some of the worst fighting yet in the capital. The clashes were a clear sign that the ragtag group has succeeded in taking its fight to the regime's base of power.
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• JERUSALEM (AP) -- In the fraught atmosphere of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an approaching decision on whether to award coveted university status to a college has taken on powerful political overtones.
• For critics of Israel's policy of settling Jews in the West Bank, the upgrade of the "Ariel University Center of Samaria" into a permanent university would be a strong signal of what they say is creeping annexation of the hilly territory.
• For its supporters, upgrading the institution will be a crowning jewel of the government's commitment to holding the West Bank, the heartland of biblical Judaism, captured by Israel along with east Jerusalem in the 1967 war.
• "Most dramatically, this has a symbolic significance that no settlement has," said political scientist Yaron Ezrahi of Hebrew University. "It's an attempt to legitimize the occupation."
• Of Israel's more than 120 Jewish settlements, Ariel holds special significance.
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• BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- Prison officials say they'll work to carry out an execution next week as scheduled, after an appeals court sided with The Associated Press and other news organizations in ruling that witnesses should have full viewing access to a convicted killer's lethal injection.
• The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision Friday, a day after

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