Greg Myre

Syria's war has reached another grim milestone: Two United Nations agencies announced Friday that 1 million Syrian children have now fled their homeland in an uprising and civil war that's well into its third year.

The accompanying slide show provides a glimpse of some of these children and ...

When Hosni Mubarak was whisked out of prison by helicopter on Thursday, he did not become a free man. The former Egyptian leader, 85, was taken to a military hospital in Cairo, where he's under house arrest and still faces criminal charges.

But to many, the move was ...

For two years, the conversation on Egypt centered on how to build a democracy. Suddenly the discussion has turned much darker, with some wondering aloud whether the largest Arab nation is hurtling toward civil war.

The bloody crackdown by Egypt's security forces has raised the specter of a protracted conflict ...

Egypt suffered a day of terrible violence Wednesday, and the bloodshed was compounded by several developments that suggest more confrontations are ahead.

Egypt's security forces reasserted their authority on a number of fronts and gave every appearance that they would press ahead with a crackdown against the Muslim ...

When the Israelis and Palestinians signed an interim peace agreement on the White House lawn in 1993 amid soaring optimism, the Jewish settlers in the West Bank numbered a little over 100,000.

As renewed peace talks open Wednesday in Jerusalem, the settlers now total more than 350,000. Their number is ...

Almost every time the U.S. government gets wind of a potential terrorist attack, it faces a tough choice: It can quietly pursue the suspected plotters, or it can go public in the belief that public awareness can discourage or thwart the attack.

In the current episode, the Obama administration has ...

As the ailing Nelson Mandela turned 95 this month, the international community celebrated his legacy and rooted for his recovery.

Just to the north in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe, 89, is running for re-election this week. He's looking to extend his 33 years in power, which have been marked by ...

To figure out which countries dislike the U.S., one quick way is to simply look at which ones are getting the largest dollops of U.S. aid.

This wasn't the focus of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. But it did emerge when Pew spoke to people ...

Nothing ever seems to come easy in the Middle East, but Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that there was "a basis" for a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, which would be the first such talks in several years.

Kerry made the announcement in Amman, Jordan, after a ...

China has supplanted or soon will supplant the U.S. as the world's leading superpower. That's the headline from a survey by the Pew Research Center, which put this proposition to people around the world.

In 23 of the 39 countries surveyed, majorities or pluralities said China has overtaken ...

Egypt's crisis has ignited a familiar debate over U.S. foreign policy where the combatants cluster around two basic viewpoints: The U.S. is doing too little, and the U.S. is doing too much.

So which is it? Is America shrewdly orchestrating events behind the scenes, or is it just an impotent ...

Two years ago, the Arab Spring was a fountain of hope. Autocratic leaders whose rule was measured in decades were suddenly ousted, raising the possibility of political, economic and social change in a region that was lagging.

But with a coup in Egypt on Wednesday and Syria's civil war raging, ...

On Christmas Eve 1986, a South Africa prison commander responsible for watching over Nelson Mandela casually asked the world's most famous prisoner, "Mandela, would you like to see the city?"

Mandela was completely surprised, but agreed. The prison commander, Lt. Col. Gawie Marx, promptly put Mandela in his car for ...

One of the most remarkable days of Nelson Mandela's extraordinary life was Feb. 11, 1990, when he walked out of prison after 27 years behind bars. Greg Myre, the international editor of NPR.org, covered Mandela's release for The Associated Press and recounts that day.

The evening before his release ...

China appeared perfectly happy to let Edward Snowden slip away despite a U.S. request for his arrest. Russia appears to enjoy thumbing its nose at Washington as Snowden cools his heels at a Moscow airport. Ecuador is toying with the notion of granting him asylum.

Why ...

Ever since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the U.S. has been in search of moderate Iranian leaders who could steer the country away from its hostile standoff with America.

To cite one famous example, President Ronald Reagan's administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in the mid-1980s in the belief it could ...

Now that President Obama's administration says it's prepared to arm Syria's rebels, this raises a question relatively few people can answer: Who exactly are these guys?

The rebels have been fighting President Bashar Assad's regime for about two years, and more than 90,000 people have died in Syria's civil war. ...

Let's say you are an American facing prosecution and you want to escape the long arm of the American law. Where's the best place to go?

Iceland, perhaps, and we'll get to that in a moment.

Edward Snowden, who faces potential prosecution after declaring that he leaked details of a ...

Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. search for a coherent counterterrorism strategy has revolved around three basic questions:

1. How do we locate suspected terrorists?

2. Once located, how do we go after them?

3. If captured, what do we do with them?

In a major speech at ...

Here's the paradox with international news.

In our wired and rapidly shrinking world, there is no distant war, no isolated economic crisis and no social trend that observes national borders.

When a building collapses in Bangladesh, photos of the dead and grieving appear instantly. When a battle takes place in ...