Kurdistan (Kurdish: Kurdistan/كوردستان, literally meaning "the land of Kurds", Ancient: Corduene, formerly Curdia, Curdistan) is an extensive plateau and mountainous area in Middle East, inhabited mainly by Kurds. It covers large parts of eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and smaller parts of northern Syria and Armenia. It roughly includes Zagros and eastern Taurus mountain ranges.From a political standpoint, Iraqi Kurdistan is the only region which has gained official recognition internationally as an autonomous federal entity.

Corruption Index Map - TI Ethiopia ranks 138 in Corruption Index - TI Ethiopia is as corrupt as Pakistan, Cameroon, Paraguay and Syria which all share the 138th place in the 2007 Transparency International (TI) corruption index. But Ethiopia is still less corrupt than Russia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, Venezuela and more

Israeli officials vowed to wipe Syria off the map if it is attacked with chemical weapons like one that reportedly exploded in July at a secret Syrian base staffed with Iranian engineers.

Google added 54 MORE COUNTRIES TO GOOGLE MAPS, including war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq, and -- more interestingly -- authoritarian countries like Cuba, Iran, Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar), Syria and Venezuela. Best of all, now everyone can join the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan!

If you ever wanted to know which countries limit access to the great bountiful flow of information we call the World Wide Web, you only need glance at the gaping black holes in the above map. Reporters Without Borders has compiled the following list of 15 countries that restrict the Internet: Maldives, Tunisia, Belarus, Libya, Syria, Vietnam, Uzbek

Nestled at the foot of Syria's coastal mountains, an ancient citadel has been put on the tourist map by restoration and excavation that revealed mysteries of the medieval Assassins sect, once based here. "Anyone who tried to take the Assassins' castle would be dead the next day," said Haytham Ali Hasan, an archaeologist involved in the restoration