The Government may well have acted beyond the law in cancelling the passports of New Zealanders intending to join rebel groups fighting the Assad regime.

Bryan Gould asks, "Is the Govt acting on advice from another authority and if so which? Does our Govt claim the right to tell us which causes we are allowed to support and which not?

Kiwis who travel to Syria to fight with rebel forces against the Assad regime are being misinformed by recruiters over social media, a Syrian living in Auckland says.

Aid workers braved mortar and small arms fire to evacuate Syrian civilians from a besieged area of the city of Homs.

Prime Minister says Kiwis returning from Syria deemed to have been `radicalised' will be monitored.

John Key says there are New Zealanders fighting in anti-government forces in Syria, while others have been blocked from going there by having their passports cancelled.

New Zealand has agreed to take 100 refugees from Syria after the United Nations called on the international community for help.

Syrian negotiators have reached their first deal in peace talks in Geneva, an agreement to allow women and children to escape the siege of rebel-held districts of the city of Homs.

How one of Osama bin Laden's personal envoys, Mohammed Bahaiah, ended up in an Assad regime dungeon is a long story with several details missing.

The United Nations has launched the biggest aid appeal in its history, calling for more than $7.9 billion to be dedicated to the crisis in Syria.

The United Nations has said it will need nearly $13 billion in aid in 2014 to reach at least 52 million people in 17 countries, including the millions of Syrians who have been displaced by their civil war.

A Paris-bound flight was rescheduled after Venezuela grounded an Air France plane that French authorities said terrorists might have been planning to blow up.

New Zealanders are fighting against the Assad regime in Syria and could pose a serious terror risk when they return home, it has been reported.

At this sprawling desert camp in Jordan, home to thousands of children who fled Syria's civil war, a few found a moment to smile over the weekend while watching a troop of clowns.

Professor William Harris sips his cup of tea in a small cafe in southern Turkey and recounts meeting Yasser Arafat, the former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

The mission to destroy Syria's poison gas stockpile was dealt a serious blow when Albania refused to host the destruction.

At least 30 journalists currently are reported missing while covering Syria's civil war. The widespread abduction of journalists is unprecedented.

Israeli warplanes attacks shipment of Russian missiles inside Syrian government stronghold, a development that threatens to add another volatile layer to tensions.

Syria has completed the destruction of equipment used to produce chemical weapons, a global watchdog has said, meeting another deadline in an ambitious timeline to eliminate the country's entire stockpile by mid-2014.

The UN has confirmed an outbreak of polio in Syria for the first time in over a decade, warning the disease threatens to spread among an estimated half-million children who have never been immunised because of the civil war.

"Of course there is hatred in my heart," a Syrian father tells Newstalk ZB host Rachel Smalley. "They destroyed my home, my dream, my life."

He's practically a one man band, but Rami Abdurrahman's influence extends far beyond his modest home in this small English city.

Amid all the bloodshed, confusion and deadlock of Syria's civil war, one fact is emerging after 2 1/2 years - no conflict ever has been covered this way.