Top news: A months-long effort to take action against the Syrian regime in the U.N. Security Council collapsed yesterday after Russia and China vetoed a resolution that included the possibility of sanctions against Bashar al-Assad's government. Nince countries voted for the measure while Brazil, India, South Africa and Lebanon abstained.

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin described the measure as "against the peaceful solution of the crisis on the basis of a Syrian national dialogue." An unusually strident U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said that "the people of the Middle East can now see clearly which nations have chosen to ignore their calls for democracy and instead prop up desperate, cruel dictators."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that, despite the veto, his country would push ahead with planned sanctions against Syria. Turkey military has also begun running exercises near the Syrian border this week.

The Syrian government itself announced on Tuesday that it was lifting a ban on imported consumer goods. The ban, which was imposed last week, was meant to protect the country's foreign currency reserves but also sent prices skyrocketing and provoked anger among the country's business community. 

Nobel Prizes: An Israeli researcher won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work on quasicrystals.