Globe Trot: Israel targets Syrian weapons with dual airstrikes

Israel, largely staying on the sidelines of Syria’s civil war, this weekend launched a pair of airstrikes,including an attack near a sprawling military complex close to Damascus that reportedly killed 42 Syrian soldiers. The attacks are to prevent advanced Iranian weapons from reaching Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, which last week vowed to defend the Assad regime.

Among many strange facets to this conflict is the prospect that aggressive Israeli military retaliation could actually serve the interests of the Arab League.

Syrian Christians will unite in prayer with believers in the country and around the world for on May 11. Churches representing many denominations will gather in an arena in Damascus and in 10 other cities around the war-torn country.

Saturday was the deadliest day of war in Afghanistan, with seven Americans and a German killed in attacks.

An explosion in a church in Tanzania yesterday was an “act of terrorism,” said Jakaya Kikwete, the Tanzanian president. The attack killed two people and injured about 30. Six people—four Saudis and two Tanzanians—have been arrested for the attack.

The ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon are considered first among the Seven Wonders of the World, but new research suggests they were not in Babylon after all. After 20 years of study, an Oxford expert says the famed gardens were built in Nineveh by the great Assyrian ruler Sennacherib—and not, as historians have always thought, by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

Record-setting Chinese tightrope walker Adili Wuxor, his eyes blindfolded, walked across a steel wire 350 feet above the ground in Zhejiang Province on Sunday—successfully completing a series of performances that included balancing upside down.