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Laura Lynch, a correspondent for PRI's The World, recently spent seven days inside the Syria. She did so with permission, following U.N. monitors as they toured the country in an effort to maintain a U.N./Arab League-orchestrated ceasefire. Lynch shares her impressions and experiences of her time within Syria, and assesses the fragile state of the country.

The Syrian capital has gotten used to the sound of sirens, but this morning's two bomb blasts stand out as perhaps the most deadly in the capital. Syria's health minister says at least 50 people are dead, at least 170 wounded. The blasts were so powerful, a facade of a military intelligence build was ripped off. Today's bombing calls into question the entire UN peace plan. It's current mission inside the country is to monitor the peace, but seemingly there is very little peace to monitor. Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for Kofi Annan, Joint Envoy for Syria responds. We are also joined by correspondent for The World Laura Lynch from inside Syria.

The violence in Syria has continued in spite of the ceasefire which came into effect on Thursday, and the first members of a United Nations truce monitoring mission which have arrived in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Fighting was reported between government forces and rebels in the city of Homs and unverified video posted on the internet showed the Khaldiyeh area of Homs being heavily shelled. Kieran Dwyer, from the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Ops, outlines what's expected of the monitors in the coming days.

Tuesday marks the deadline for the Syrian government to begin drawing back troops as part of a cease-fire agreement with Syrian rebels brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan. But on Sunday night, President Bashar al-Assad’s government announced new conditions for the troop pullback. Amr Al Azm is a member of the Syrian opposition and professor of history and anthropology at Shawnee State University, and Jim Muir is the Baghdad correspondent for the BBC.

Hugh Sykes reports on the Arab League summit in Baghdad, where only 10 out of 22 leaders of the Arab world have turned up. It's the first time the Arab League summit has been in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's time. As the meeting began, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called on members to encourage political freedom across the region, and the main subject of today's summit is Iraq's neighbor Syria. Hugh Sykes is a reporter for our partner the BBC.

The Eighth Amendment declares that "cruel and unusual punishment" may not be inflicted on prisoners. But does solitary confinement constitute cruel and unusual punishment? In a new report looking at the imprisonment of Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of leaking confidential military documents to the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, the UN Special Rapporteuer on Torture, Juan Mendez, says that it does. Having just completed a 14-month investigation, Mendez concludes that keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period might have constituted torture and has formally accused the U.S. government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning. 

As hopes for diplomacy stall once again, the killing goes on in Syria, with a report this morning of dozens dead after an attack by pro-government militia in Homs. This latest violence comes after UN envoy Kofi Annan met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad twice over the weekend, but failed to reach a cease-fire agreement. 

Iran has been causing trouble in the region as Tehran cut off crude exports to Europe. United Nations nuclear inspectors are back in the country this morning for the second time in a month. This time they are seeking more talks about the country's nuclear program. Yesterday, Iran signaled that it was ready to hit back hard at sanctions threatening its economy by announcing it was halting its limited oil sales to France and Britain. James Reynolds is correspondent for our partner the BBC.

Last month, the Arab League sent a team of observers to Syria, where the government has been cracking down on protesters. Colum Lynch, who writes the Turtle Bay blog for Foreign Policy and reports on the United Nations for the Washington Post, explains what internal Arab League memos reveal about the mission in Syria. Plus, a look at why Russia opposed the United Nations Security Council measure to condemn the Syrian government during a meeting on Tuesday.

The General Debate of the 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly is happening in New York through September 30. The General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations, comprising all 193 Members of the United Nations. On this week's Please Explain we start off with Warren Hoge, Senior Advisor for External Relations for the International Peace Institute in New York and former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, covering the UN. Then we're joined by Vera Jelinek, Divisional Dean and Director of the Center for Global Affairs at New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Stanley Meisler, author of  The United Nations: The First Fifty Years, and  United Nations: A History, will tell us how the General Assembly works and what comes out of the sessions.

All week we've been reporting on the increasing violence in Syria. It has now been reported that thousands of Palestinian refugees have been forced to flee a camp in the Syrian port of Latakia after days of shelling by President Assad's troops. Syria says it is tackling gangs, but at least 30 people are reported to have died in Latakia in a three-day military attack. 

Following the NATO-led bombardment of targeted government buildings in the Libyan capital of Tripoli earlier this week, the United Nations called on both sides to pause their military assaults in order to ease the growing humanitarian crisis. Misrata, which has been under attack for weeks by pro-Gadhafi forces, is short of food, water and other basic supplies. An estimated 750,000 people have fled the country since the uprising began in February. NATO entered Libya to prevent a humanitarian crisis. But without Gadhafi’s forces letting up anytime soon, the fighting seems to only be escalating the humanitarian situation. So how do the United Nations and NATO collaborate on a joint humanitarian and military operation?

Officials from both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly faced with the question of whether coalition forces should intensify the campaign against Colonel Moammar Gadhafi by arming Libyan rebel fighters. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke yesterday at diplomatic meetings being held London to discuss the situation in Libya. She said it’s possible that UN Security Council Resolutions could allow certain countries to supply weapons to Libyan rebels.

Tuesday at Noon, join WNYC's Brian Lehrer, Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson, and It's A Free Country's Jody Avirgan for a live chat about the Libya intervention. We'll discuss US diplomacy, the UN military strategy, and what's next in the conflict.

»» Brian Writes: Here are a few of the questions on my mind today.

• Would Gaddafi's government simply crumble without him? If so, why not just arrest or kill HIM instead of ruining the country's military and killing OTHER people?
• Are civilians being killed?
• Who are these rebels we've never met and how do we know what do they want?
• How will we know victory when we see it?
• What's the best expert guess on how long this will take?

What basic questions do you have? Join us at noon!

Moammar Gaddhafi's government agreed to a ceasefire this morning, in a dramatic about face following the UN Security Council authorization of military action and a no-fly zone over Libya. Rami Khouri, director of the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, discusses events leading up to the ceasefire, and what it means for Gadhafi and the anti-government protests in Libya.

After Moammar Gadhafi made a defiant and rambling speech to the people of Libya yesterday, where he refused to step down and swore that he would die a martyr, the international community was left to decide exactly how to respond. German Chancelor Angela Merkel called the speech ‘alarming’ and threatened sanctions on the North African Nation. Meanwhile the head of Libya’s anti-Gadhafi delegation at the UN called on the Security Council to address the violence that he has unleashed on the Libyan people. Some are worried attacks on protesters by the Libyan air force could be next.

A year ago, when the monumental earthquake of January 2010 hit Haiti, 250,000 people died, even more were injured, and roughly one million were left homeless. But the tragedy didn’t end there. At the same time that millions of civilians mourned, over 4,000 prisoners escaped from the national penitentiary and began a reign of terror over the nation’s tent cities that continues today; raping women and children, brutalizing citizens, and controlling access to drinking water and electricity.

UN officials announced this week that cholera is now projected to spread across Haiti more than twice as fast as originally estimated, with more than 425,000 cases expected in the first six months since it appeared. The disease had officially infected 66,593 people and killed 1,523 as of Monday, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

As part of the U.N. General Assembly events, President Barack Obama is hosting a reception for visiting heads of state at the American Museum of Natural History Thursday night. The museum has been closed to the public all day in preparation.

President Barack Obama delivered remarks before the United Nations General Assembly this week, discussing Middle East peace talks during speech on Wednesday night, and delivering a longer address to the assembly on Thursday morning.