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Four years after the 2008 economic crisis, not a single top Wall Street executive has gone to jail.

Delegates from 190 countries have gathered at the United Nations to begin talks on the first-ever global agreement regulating the arms trade.

After the discovery of large deposits of oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean, Lebanon is engaged in a struggle with both Cyprus and Israel to prevent encroachment on its maritime boundaries.

Discourse on Syria in recent months has been dominated by pundits of war from both sides of the fence.

Today, Thursday 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files – more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012.

This extraordinary data set derives from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, including those of the Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture.

Over the next two months, ground-breaking stories derived from the files will appear in WikiLeaks (global), Al Akhbar (Lebanon), Al Masry Al Youm (Egypt), ARD (Germany), Associated Press (US), L’Espresso (Italy), Owni (France) and Publico.es (Spain). Other publications will announce themselves closer to their publishing date.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said: "The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents. It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."

At this time Syria is undergoing a violent internal conflict that has killed between 6,000 and 15,000 people in the last 18 months. The Syria Files shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy, but they also reveal how the West and Western companies say one thing and do another.

The range of information extends from the intimate correspondence of the most senior Baath party figures to records of financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations.

The database comprises 2,434,899 emails from...

The army is not allowed to go where it decides. The Internal Security Forces have been hijacked by the sectarian cliques that prevail throughout. Anarchy rules on the security and political fronts.