Fighting In Syrian Capital Remains Intense  Copyright 2014 NPR.
To see more, visit      And I'm Renee Montagne. A prominent
human rights group has put the death toll in Syria at 42,000
people killed in the nearly two years of fighting there; which
began with a series of political protests, and turned into an
armed rebellion. Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
held an emergency meeting with her Russian counterpart, in
Dublin, to try to reach a consensus on how to end the Syrian
conflict.  NPR's Kelly McEvers is monitoring the news from
Beirut, just next door to Syria, and joins us to talk about it.
Good morning.   MONTAGNE: First, inside Syria, fighting is still
very intense in the capital. Is there any sense of who's got the
upper hand there, in Damascus?  MCEVERS: In the past week, the
rebels - fighting to bring down the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad - have made a pretty major push in the capital,
Damascus. They've seized new bases; they've seized weapons that
once belonged to the reg