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The long-anticipated Syrian peace conference commenced on Wednesday in Montreux, Switzerland. The opening day marked the first time Syrian government and opposition members came together in the same room. Each side blamed the other for the three years of bloodshed in Syria. NPR's Deborah Amos offers a recap and analysis of the day's events from Switzerland.

After the Target and Neiman Marcus data breaches compromised credit card data of more than 70 million American consumers, the banking and retail industries are coming to a consensus to move away from the swipe and signature system to the much more secure chip and PIN process available around the world.

The Olympic sport of curling is a combination of bowling, bocce ball, billiards and chess — all on ice, and with some sweeping involved. NPR's Tamara Keith spent some time learning how to curl, and put together this cheat sheet.

The British National Archives is posting 1.5 million pages of World War I diaries online. The personal accounts provide new insight into the lives of the troops who fought the war that began 100 years ago. "Everywhere the same hard, grim, pitiless sight of battle and war," reads one entry.

Texas has executed a Mexican national for killing a Houston police officer in 1994. Mexico opposes the death penalty and the execution revived a long-running diplomatic row between the United States and Mexico.

Opposition leaders have called on President Viktor Yanukovych to call early elections within 24 hours or face more popular rage. The ultimatum comes after at least 2 protesters were killed in confrontations with police in a escalation of a political crisis. Steve Inskeep talks to Will Englund, a correspondent with The Washington Post, who's in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Flames tore through a seniors' residence early Thursday in a town about 280 miles northeast of Montreal. At least three people were killed. Early reports from officials on the scene indicated that as many as 30 more people had not been accounted for in the hours immediately after the blaze.

Clashes with security forces turned deadly Wednesday. Two demonstrators were reportedly shot and killed. The body of another was later found. Protesters have been demanding that President Viktor Yanukovych hold early elections. They've given him one more day to agree.

It's a picture that's been swirling around the Web: side-by-side toilets in the men's room at one of the Winter Olympics sites in Russia. Should overly sensitive sorts just calm down? Or is this a symbol of an Olympics where much of the money has been figuratively flushed?

Justice says U.S. Investigations Services, the company that cleared both the NSA leaker and Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis, expedited hundreds of thousands of cases that weren't properly reviewed.