Masnaa (Lebanon) (AFP) - A convoy of more than 120 rebels and wounded from the flashpoint Syrian border town of Zabadani crossed into Lebanon on Monday as part of a UN-backed truce, an AFP journalist said.

The convoy included seven buses and 22 ambulances and was accompanied by Lebanese security forces from the Masnaa border crossing, the journalist at the scene said.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, the evacuees will travel from the Beirut airport to Turkey, and will then cross into rebel-held territory in Syria.

The operation was to be matched by a similar evacuation from Fuaa and Kafraya, the last two regime-held villages in Syria's northwest Idlib province.

Nathan McAlone

Since it launched in 2013, Product Hunt has become the go-to place to find the next big app, gadget, or service.

Here's how it works.

A new tech product gets added, and then people vote on whether they like it or not. In this way, the site functions a bit like Reddit, though there is a heavy element of curation by Product Hunt's team, which decides what gets featured on various pages.

This year, Product Hunt decided to hold its first annual awards for the coolest things to come out in the year, named "The Golden Kitty Awards." Starting December 9, Product Hunt invited its users to nominate and vote for the best products in a variety of categories, from best maker to most WTF product.

Now the voting has closed. To find the best of the best, we took a look at the "Tech Products of the Year" category. Here are the 11 tech products that rose to the top:

Maxwell Tani

Earlier this spring, Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Florida) pollster publicly laid out a potentially harsh truth: By his calculations, the eventual Republican nominee would need to capture 40% of the Latino vote in order to win in 2016.

“Un­less you count on the Re­pub­lic­an getting Ron­ald Re­agan-like num­bers among whites, you’re go­ing to have to be some­where in the mid-forties with Hispanics,” Whit Ayres said, according to the National Journal.

Though somewhat shocking in its candor — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) carried just 23% of the Latino vote in 2012 — Ayres' comment emphasized what the Republican establishment has known for some time.

In a now infamous Republican "autopsy" report after the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee declared that the party needed to make significant inroads among Latinos — one of the largest and fastest-growing demographics in the US — if it hoped to be competitive in future elections. The party's standing with the bloc had crumbled since President George W. Bush carried 44% of the Latino vote in 2004.

by Naharnet Newsdesk