1050 GMT: Israel-Palestine. The Israeli Prime Minister's spokesman has said that West Jerusalem has not yet decided whether to resume transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority.
Ofir Gendelman said the Government will announce its position in the coming days.
At the start of December, Israel withheld the $100 million per month it collects on behalf of the Authority. The move was ostensibly because of $200 million owed to Israeli electricity companies, but it was widely seen as punishment for United Nations recognition of Palestine as an Observer State.
1030 GMT: Syria. Rana Sweis, writing for The New York Times, portraying growing difficulties for Syrian refugees in Jordan:
Shaking with fear, Abu Abdel Hadi tripped and fell three times in the dark as he fled across the desolate desert from Syria into Jordan.
The 65-year-old was clutching his grandchildren, intent on shielding them from snipers who often lie in wait along the border. But that night the family ? 19 members in all ? made it safely through the danger zone.
Now all they dream about is going back. While they wait, they are housed in a tiny, freezing apartment with no windows, cracked walls and worn carpets piled on top of one other.
Their most recent threat: frigid winter weather. The temperatures are down to 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) at night, and prices of basic commodities, including gasoline and electricity, are rising.
?We suffer from the cold and we are poor here but we are safe,? said Abu Abdel Hadi, whose last name is being withheld for safety reasons. ?When we came here we thought we would stay one week, maybe one month, but it?s been six months and now we learn to live with the uncertainty.?
About 80 percent of Syrian refugees across the region are not housed in camps, according to the U.N. refugee agency. Many of them live in grim apartments along narrow dirt roads, blending in with poor Jordanians.
Jordan has drawn waves of refugees in the past, but this one is particularly severe. The flood of refugees is straining the limited resources of the Jordanian government and aid agencies, though agencies say they are also trying to steer funds to poor Jordanians. Foreign assistance is only trickling in, leaving many in need.
In Lebanon the Cabinet is meeting today to discuss the refugee issue, as "the aggravating situation of this file requires an emergency plan".
Lebanese media reports 150,000 registered and 50,000 unregistered Syrian nationals now in Lebanon, with the total expected to rise to 300,000 by July.
The plan also considers the "miserable situation of the communities hosting these refugees".
0930 GMT: Turkey. Former army chief ?smail Hakk? Karaday? has reportedly been detained as part of an investigation into a "postmodern coup" almost 16 years ago.
On 28 February 1997, the Turkish military forced the departure of the coalition government, led by the now-defunct conservative Welfare Party (RP), claiming a rise of religious fundamentalism. The coup introduced a series of restrictions on religious observation, including an unofficial but widely practiced ban on the use of headscarves by women. The military was purged of members with suspected ties to religious groups and even observant Muslims. Newspapers were closed down.
About 60 people have been arrested in relation to the coup, including retired General ?evik Bir, then the second-highest-ranking general in the army at the time.
0630 GMT: Syria. The United Nations made headlines Wednesday with its report that more than 60,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime in March 2011.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said data analysis indicated?59,648 people had been slain by the?end of November 2012:?"The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking."
Indeed, the figure exceeds even that put out by organisations which have provided the most detailed accounting of deaths, such as Syria Tracker and the VDC. However, as EA's James Miller explained, this is not surprising: the UN's examination of 147,349 reported killings included the deaths of regime troops and security forces, usually left out of the databases of the activist groups.
As the UN was putting out its report, an incident near Damascus was graphically turning numbers into images. A regime airstrike on a petrol station in Mleiha reportedly killed at least 30 people, with video showing charred and dismembered bodies.
The Local Coordination Committees claimed 47 people were slain in Mleiha, with a total of 207 people dying across the country on Wednesday.
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