NEED TO KNOW

Emergency crews worked through the night and into the morning Tuesday, trying to find survivors of a massive, mile-wide tornado that touched down in Oklahoma, killing a feared 91 people and flattening neighborhoods whole.

Most of the damage appears to be in the suburb of Moore, where at least 20 of those who died are said to be children. Oklahoma resident David Massey posted several powerful videos of damage from the tornado using the video sharing app Vine.

Israeli and Syrian forces have exchanged fire across the cease-fire line in the occupied Golan Heights. Syria said it destroyed a vehicle that crossed the line overnight, and Israel acknowledged returning fire. While sporadic gunfire from Syria’s civil war has spilled over into Israel on occasion, this marks the first time that Syria has admitted to intentionally firing on Israeli forces.

WANT TO KNOW

As expected, Obama urged Myanmar’s president Thein Sein to tame anti-Muslim violence in his troubled country during an historic visit. But the White House also acknowledged what Myanmar observers have noticed for a while: diplomats (including Obama) are more often using the word “Myanmar” though official policy favors “Burma,” a colonial title that (to some) signifies a stance against the military rulers who switched the name more than 20 years ago.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Would-be grooms in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are posting photos of themselves with their home’s toilet to woo brides. Millions of poor and rural Indians still defecate under the open sky because their homes and sometimes even their villages lack facilities. The local administration has made the picture of the groom along with the toilet a mandatory requirement for getting registered for mass marriage ceremonies and available benefits.

ATTN: Our Syria correspondent Tracey Shelton is now taking your questions over on Reddit.  Ask her anything!  http://glpo.st/16xdDHm

“Our husbands are always gone. We must deal with everything alone,” says Muna Basham, a 30-year-old primary school teacher and mother of four. “With no electricity, our work at home has become so hard. We must wash by hand and cook by fire. We must take care of children who have become obsessed by war. We’re not used to these things.”

Across the country, tens of thousands of women have lost their children, husbands, homes and lives. Thousands more live in tents amid the mud and misery of border camps.

Syrian conflict exacts heavy toll on women

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

JERUSALEM — Israel and Gaza have exchanged some of the heaviest airstrikes since the truce negotiated in November which ended Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense on the Strip.

The Israel Air Force launched its first airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since the cease-fire late on Tuesday night, responding to three mortar shells which were fired at the Negev on Tuesday.

Palestinian militants fired two more rockets from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, which exploded on open ground near the Israeli town of Sderot, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israel, Gaza exchange heaviest strikes since cease-fire

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

GlobalPost’s Bridgette Auger reports on Syrians in Exile

Actually, the spring makes me feel sad now, in a funny way, because I remember Damascus. And I miss the smell of jasmine.

You just feel guilty for being safe, or being alive, or having a normal life in a different country…

The problem is, I have nostalgia for something that maybe does not exist anymore.

- Wasim Mussa, Artist

Watch their stories

ALGIERS, Algeria — Amid the wrangle over who will be Algeria’s next president, anxieties are stirring about a mighty force that could shake things up, if not take over entirely: the Algerian military.

Seventy-nine-year-old Abdelaziz Bouteflika is the country’s longest-serving president, in office for nearly 14 years. But concerns over his health are mounting as politicians and security officials debate the wisdom of the aging leader running for a fourth term in fresh polls slated for 2014.

Speculation is rife that the army, which staged a coup after democratic elections in 1992, sparking a years-long civil war, could again seize the helm to steer the country through a potentially volatile succession crisis that could destabilize Africa’s largest country.

Will Algeria’s army be the dark horse in next election?

Photo by Getty Images

IDLIB PROVINCE, Syria — Fatima Harmadi doesn’t seem very different from most children.

The 8-year-old with dark curly hair and a sweet smile laughs and jokes with her friends as they begin their walk to school at 7 a.m. in the rain, excited to be returning after two weeks away.

“I love my school,” she says, skipping through her village’s streets. “But when the planes come, it’s scary and we all have to stay at home.”

Fatima lives on the edge of Idlib city, which is controlled by government forces. Their bombs and artillery have bombarded her village for the past fortnight, forcing her to stay home.

It’s a wonder her school, one of only a handful still operating in Idlib province, is open at all.

The amazing story of how a school in Syria stays open

Photo by GlobalPost

ALEPPO, Syria — The small dirt track bustled with activity. Men wheeled carts of produce as women shuffled past with heavy loads balanced on their heads. Children selling snacks pestered the passing crowds.

The track wound through a green field of grazing goats. At one end, fighters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) stood guard. To the left, snipers of Bashar al-Assad’s government were said to be monitoring activity.

At the other end, caught in the middle of these two opposing sides, the buildings of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrefeya — Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods — towered over the scene. A third force guarded the entry to this region: the Democratic Union Party, a Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the backbone of a Kurdish coalition that now controls much of Syrian Kurdistan.

VIDEO: Kurds in Syria: A struggle within a struggle

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

WEST BANK — Though couched in the language of modest expectations, US President Barack Obama’s four-day barnstormer of the Eastern Mediterranean concealed important ambitions — many of which it appears were achieved.

Obama visited sites spanning almost all of known human history, ending his tour at a spot of mystery, ancient culture and great beauty: the hidden Nabataean city of Petra, which is carved out of red rock.

The president described the site as “amazing” — which is similar to what he had said at the start of the trip in Israel Wednesday, when presented with the US-funded Israeli high-tech anti-missile system known as Iron Dome.

Between those two bookends, Obama got a lot of business done.

Takeaways from Obama’s Mideast trip

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt’s economy is edging closer to collapse, and now there is one less place the government here can turn to for much-needed financial aid.

After promising $5 billion in soft loans and grants to help curb the Egyptian pound’s recent slide against the dollar, the tiny but vastly wealthy Gulf nation of Qatar is now backing off pledges of any further funding for the cash-strapped nation.

Observers saw Qatar and its royal family as initial backers of the Muslim Brotherhood government and its president, Mohamed Morsi, providing substantial funds and deposits to Egypt’s Central Bank. But earlier this month, the Qatari finance minister said there were no plans to inject more cash into Egypt’s flagging economy — crippled by a massive budget deficit. The finance minister did not give a reason.

Is Qatar abandoning Egypt?

Photo by AFP/Getty Images