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fight to topple President Bashar Assad. The damage done to the majestic stone structure, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, shows that the warring sides will stop at nothing, including the destruction of the country's rich heritage, to hold on to power or territory.
• Journalists from The Associated Press reconstructed the battle for Crac des Chevaliers after talking to Syrian soldiers and local residents during a rare trip by Western media to the castle since its capture by government troops in March. They talked of residents of Hosn and rebels using the castle walls as a last refuge, much like the Crusaders before them.
• The Crac des Chevaliers, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Homs and just north of the Lebanese border, caught the eye of a young T.E. Lawrence before he became Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence lauded its beauty and called it one of the world's greatest castles. It dominates the surrounding valley and terraced hills below and once was one of the crown jewels of Syrian tourism before its 3-year-old conflict began.
• It is like many of the country's most significant historical sites, caught in the crossfire in a conflict that activists say has killed more than 150,000 people. Some sites have been turned into military bases. Shelling has smashed historic mosques, churches and markets. Looters have stolen artifacts from excavations and museums.
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• JERUSALEM (AP) -- The reprimand of an Israeli soldier -- who was caught on video cursing and pointing a cocked gun toward the head of a Palestinian teen -- has triggered the biggest outpouring of frustration by Israeli soldiers in years about their service in the West Bank.
• Thousands posted messages of support on social media for the infantry soldier after the army said he apparently violated norms of behavior during a shoving match in Hebron, where several hundred radical Israeli settlers guarded by soldiers live in daily friction with tens of thousands of Palestinians.
• The protest campaign appeared largely aimed at the army's perceived failure to back the soldier, rather than any moral judgments about Israel's 47-year military occupation of the West Bank. Some critics said the video reflected daily realities there and it was hypocritical to portray the confrontation, and the soldier's behavior, as un

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