Angry voters make some lawmakers think twice about granting themselves a massive pay raise;  Syria’s civil war goes sectarian and villagers are massacred;  And we’ll find out why the US says “no” to a town leveled by an industrial blast.

Kenya’s Members of Parliament have significantly cut back plans to give themselves a hearty raise, after peaceful but angry protests.  Instead of passing a law giving them more than A$10,000 per month, MPs will make $6,300 per month.  Still pretty good work if you can get it.  Meanwhile, the average annual salary for a worker in Kenya is $1,700 in a country that suffers 40 percent unemployment.

Greek workers will stage a nationwide strike to protest the government’s sudden shutdown of the country’s only public broadcaster.  Critics say Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's decision to close down ERT was less of a money-saving maneuver than a “coup-like move.. to gag unbiased information.”

A Myanmar man has been sentenced to 26 years in prison for the attack that sparked months of Buddhist-versus-Muslim violence.  The 48-year old Muslim set a Buddhist woman on fire at a petrol station, an act which inspired weeks of anti-Muslim violence.  43-people died in the violence, mostly Muslims. 

Syrian Rebels reportedly massacred at least 30 Shia Muslim residents of the remote village of Hatlah in the oil-rich east.  And they posted the gruesome, not safe for work (NSFW) video online.  It shows several battalions of Sunni rebels, including members of extremist Islamist groups, storming the village and setting fires, as well as bodies of victims.  It shows how the Syrian conflict has strayed into sectarian warfare from its beginning as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Despite the rise of sectarian violence, the United States is still considering “what more it can do” to support the Syrian rebels.  This is despite the aforementioned rise of sectarian violence, and atrocities by the rebels including the now-infamous video of a rebel leader cutting out and eating the heart of a government soldier (icky video).  But the US opposes Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and his forces have gained the upper hand in recent weeks, especially with the entry of Iran-backed Hezbollah on his side.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not provide relief funds to the town of West, Texas after the massive fertilizer plant explosion leveled half the town and killed 15 people.  FEMA is providing funds to individual residents.  Critics have pointed the finger at Texas’ lax enforcement of weak safety regulations as a component of the blast, saying that is not a “natural” disaster.