The week at a glance...International

Ankara, Turkey

Fury at Syria: In retaliation for the downing of one of its warplanes by Syria, Turkey will now fire on any Syrian force that approaches its border. “The rules of engagement of the Turkish armed forces have changed,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “Turkey’s wrath is just as strong and devastating as its friendship is valuable.” Turkey’s NATO allies condemned the attack. Analysts said Syrian forces may have mistaken the plane for a Syrian military plane trying to defect to Turkey, where the rebel Free Syrian Army is based, since in the past week at least a dozen high-level officers have defected. Turkey said its plane was testing Turkish air defenses last week when Syrian anti-aircraft guns shot it down in international airspace, presumably killing the two pilots.

Damascus, Syria

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Civil war declared: Syria is at war, President Bashar al-Assad said this week as rebel forces struck at Damascus itself in the worst fighting of the 16-month conflict. Until now, Assad has insisted that the insurgency was the work of foreign-funded terrorists. But in a long, rambling televised speech this week, he said the country was in “a real state of war from all angles” and would pour all resources into winning. Meanwhile, insurgents attacked a Republican Guard base near the presidential palace, and regime forces responded by shelling surrounding neighborhoods, killing dozens. Gunmen also stormed the headquarters of a pro-Assad TV channel, bombing studios and shooting dead seven employees. A new U.N. report said rebel forces “have effectively challenged” the regime’s authority in Damascus, Homs, Hama, and the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Female athletes, in theory: For the first time, Saudi women will be allowed to compete in the Olympics, national authorities announced this week. But it’s unclear whether any Saudi women will actually participate in the London Summer Games, which begin in late July. The only Saudi female athlete of Olympic caliber is Dalma Rushdi Malhas, a 20-year-old equestrian. But she can’t go because her horse was injured during the qualification period. Few Saudi women get any sports experience whatsoever, and training has become even more difficult since the government shut down all women’s gyms two years ago.

North Waziristan, Pakistan

Taliban block vaccines: The Taliban have blocked the distribution of polio vaccines in tribal regions of Pakistan, saying the program is a U.S. spy effort. Taliban leaflets claimed that health-care workers administering the polio drops were gathering information for the U.S. and questioned why the U.S. would seek to save the lives of Pakistani children when it kills scores of them through drone strikes. The leaflets also mentioned Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who served the CIA by running a hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abbottabad as a cover for scouting out Osama bin Laden’s household. Pakistan is one of the few places in the world where the crippling polio virus still exists.

Pocheon, South Korea

Live-fire war games: The U.S. and South Korea enraged North Korea this week by staging the biggest live-fire war games since the Korean War and by using the North Korean flag as a target. South Korea said the flag was used for the first time as a demonstration of its determination to strike back at any North Korean aggression. It was unclear whether the flag was actually hit. “It is an extremely grave military action and politically motivated provocation to fire live bullets and shells at the flag of a sovereign state without a declaration of war,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said, adding that the country would “further bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense as long as the U.S., the world’s biggest nuclear-weapons state, persists in its hostile policy.”

Sydney

Mining for influence: The Australian government has accused billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart of trying to turn the country’s leading newspapers into a mouthpiece for the mining industry. Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, bought a big chunk of Fairfax Media, which owns The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, and promptly demanded the right to hire and fire editors. Rinehart has been an irate critic of the Labor government’s taxes on coal and iron ore, and says she wants to influence the debate. “That has very big implications for our democracy,” said Treasury Minister Wayne Swan.

Harare, Zimbabwe

Snipped for health: At least a dozen members of Zimbabwe’s parliament got circumcised last week as an HIV-prevention measure. The men underwent the procedure in a surgical tent set up in the parliament building. Blessing Chebundo, who went first, said he had been “a bit scared, but after they had explained the process, I felt at ease.” He said he hoped other Zimbabwean men would choose the procedure, which reduces by 60 percent the chance of getting HIV from heterosexual sex. President Robert Mugabe recently called on politicians to get tested for HIV and go public with their status to help reduce the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. Some 14 percent of Zimbabwean adults are HIV-positive.