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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Hurst.

In Syria, opposition fighters have taken control of major cities and now say that

include homes as they inch closer to Damascus.

This is a bit to topple the regime more than a decade after the start of the unrest,

which started with widespread protests.

Empires, Jane Arraf, has more from the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which borders Syria.

In this region, Syria for centuries has been considered sort of a beating heart of the Middle

East. And between the civil war, the Syrian regime actions and sanctions, the country

has been shattered.

So for the opposition, it seems like the first time in a decade that there's a real chance

of building a new Syria.

But to do that, obviously, they'll have to include regime supporters and what is still a divided

opposition.

In Pierce, Jane Arraf, reporting, the rebel advances in protests were reported by both the rebels

and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is a war monitoring group that's based

in Britain. President-elect Trump said today that the U.S. should stay out of the fight.

In South Korea, a motion to impeach the president failed in parliament today. And Pierce

Anthony Kuhn reports opposition lawmakers tried to impeach the president for his unsuccessful bid this

week to put the country under martial law. Protesters, mostly calling for President

Yun Song Yol's impeachment, packed the streets around South Korea's parliament known as the National Assembly.

Opposition lawmakers argued that President Yun's declaration of martial law was illegal.

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