BEIRUT (AP) ? Heavy shelling in a neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo sent civilians fleeing for their lives on Sunday, and the state news agency accused rebels trying to topple the government of setting fire to three oil wells.
Syria's civil war has battered the country's infrastructure and torn its social fabric. After more than two years of conflict, neither President Bashar Assad's regime nor the rebels fighting for his ouster appear close to victory.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said civilians were vacating the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo under heavy shelling by government forces. Rebels took over parts of the neighborhood late last week and were still clashing with Assad's troops who are trying to push them out. The Observatory, which relies on a network of contacts inside Syria, said four people, including two children, were killed in the shelling.
In the east, the state news agency, SANA, said rebels had set fire to three oil wells in the province of Deir al-Zour, causing a daily loss of 4,670 barrels of oil and 52 cubic meters of natural gas. It accused "terrorists," the government's term for rebels, of setting the fires after fighting among themselves about how to divide the oil.
Rebels battling Assad have seized large areas of territory in Syria's oil-rich east, including a number of oil fields. Although they lack the ability to exploit them, their loss represents a setback to the cash-strapped government they are trying to overthrow.
SANA said rebels have burned a total of nine wells in recent months. The three set ablaze on Sunday are the only ones still burning.
Also on Sunday, the government and the opposition blamed each other for killing a group of people found dead near the Lebanese border.
The Observatory said the bodies of 11 people, including eight women, were found near the town of Talkalakh in Homs province. The group said they were killed when government forces stormed the area. But SANA blamed rebels for the "massacre," saying they stormed the area, killed 10 people and looted homes and shops.
In another development, the head of the Syrian opposition's umbrella body said the group's military chief planned to visit Arab countries to solicit military aid. The trip follows a declaration last week by the Arab League that its member nations have a "right" to aid the Syrian opposition. Mouaz al-Khatib, the head of the Syrian National Coalition, told the Qatari daily Al Sharq of Gen. Salim Idris's travel plans, but did not say which countries he would visit.
Syria's conflict began in March 2011 with protests calling for Assad's ouster. It has since become a civil war, with hundreds of independent rebel groups across Syria fighting Assad's forces. The government says the war is an international conspiracy to weaken Syrian being carried out by terrorists on the ground. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed.
___
Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-accuses-rebels-setting-fire-oil-wells-142049239.html
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Dear Lifehacker,
You're probably familiar with Windows Phone's now-iconic home screen: Instead of multiple screens arranged with rows of icons, it has one home screen called the "Start" screen, with two columns of big tiles that launch apps. You can move these tiles around, resize them, and arrange them in many different ways on the grid. Each tile shows you information (like how many unread SMS messages you have, or your next calendar appointment) so you can always stay up-to-date without having to open an app completely. It doesn't have widgets, but these live tiles are kind of like a halfway point between boring ol' badges and interactive widgets.
Windows Phone disappoints when it comes to notifications. Both iOS and Android have fantastic notification systems, letting you view all your recent notifications from a drawer at the top of your screen. Windows Phone doesn't have this. When you first receive a notification, you'll get a little banner at the top of your screen. Tapping on it will take you to the app in question, but if it disappears before you can tap on it?or if you check your phone later?you won't be able to access those notifications anywhere. You'll be able to see the number of unread messages in all your apps from the live tiles on your home screen, but there isn't one central place where you can get a "roundup" of all your recent notifications, which feels really frustrating after you've gotten used to iOS or Android.
Android and iOS could learn a thing or two from Windows Phone's multitasking abilities. To see your open apps, you just press and hold the back button to view a bunch of thumbnails in a row (kind of like Android's new multitasking system). Tapping on one of those thumbnails resumes the app almost instantaneously. The whole process is extremely smooth.
Email: Windows Phone's email app is pretty basic. After linking your accounts in the Settings app, you can send and receive emails, put them into folders, and flag them. It doesn't have a great conversation view, and viewing other folders takes quite a few taps. It actually feels a little like an older desktop client, and even using Microsoft's awesome Outlook.com service feels like you're using IMAP on a very basic client (which sucks if you're a Gmail user?no archiving here). You can merge all your inboxes into one, if you so choose, which is nice.
Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer puts an emphasis on the site you're viewing rather than buttons and other browser features. This is nice, until you want to do something besides refresh the page or go back (you can't go forward, by the way), because everything is in its menu "drawer." From the menu, you can add sites to your favorites list, view your recent history, and open multiple sites at once in "tabs." You can also pin pages to your start screen and find text on a page, though, which is nice.
So, what do you do when your built-in apps are lackluster? You go to the app store! Unfortunately, you've probably heard about how small a selection Windows Phone has, and it's true. It severely lacks the app selection of iOS or Android. You may find an alternative calendar app or two in the Windows Store, but there aren't any awesome standouts like there are on iOS (or even Android). Most are mediocre, or are missing a lot of features compared to their iOS and Android counterparts. Unlike the other platforms, you don't always have a "good" app for any given category.
That said, I could still see myself recommending this phone to some people. Much like my experiment with Internet Explorer, many of my gripes tend to be a tad more on the "advanced user" side of things. In my eyes, this Windows Phone is less of a smartphone and more of a dumbphone that can surf the web, send emails, and navigate you around town, without all the apps and other stuff you've come to expect. For some people, that's fine?in fact, it's exactly what they need. I'd recommend this to my less tech-obsessed friends that aren't locked into certain apps, or just want a phone that works. If you want something simple and distraction-free, Windows Phone has potential, but if you like Android and iOS, it's going to be difficult to switch. Not impossible by any means, but difficult.
