We hope it's "plane" to see how much we enjoy your iReport introductions. I am Carl Azuz. It's Friday. This is CNN Student News.

First up today, we're heading to the Middle East.

Syria's government has wrapped up an investigation into last weekend's massacre in the city of Houla. The government report says terrorists are responsible for killing more than 100 civilians there. But an American official says the report is, quote, "a blatant lie."

Syrian officials have blamed armed terrorists for the violence that's been raging in the country for more than a year now. Rima Maktabi looks at the different groups involved in the fighting.

Let's take a look at the Syrian population. The sweeping majority of Syrians are Sunni, ruled by an Alawite minority for more than 40 years.

The Alawites are an Islamic sect, an offshoot of Muslim Shia that believes in the divinity of Ali, the prophet Mohammed's cousin. They comprise around 16 percent of the population and occupy higher ranks in security and intelligence.

President Bashar al-Assad and his family are Alawites. As for the players in Syria, there are two obvious conflicting groups. The Syrian army and government forces defending the Bashar al-Assad regime and the Free Syrian Army, a group made up largely of army defectors supporting the uprising.

Yet the bloodiest atrocities are done on the hands of paramilitary forces. On the Syrian government's side, there are the shabiha, described as a group of armed thugs, many of them Alawites with no official position in the military command structure.

The shabiha are widely blamed for committing the bulk of the killings at Houla and across Syria.

On the opposition side, there are numerous armed groups of Sunni extremists. Their aim is to bring down the Assad regime. To an Arab world that has grown accustomed to sectarian wars, these images of the Houla massacre could prove to be the point of no return for the regime and its enemies.

A U.S. federal appeals court says a national law is unconstitutional. The law is called DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. It defines marriage as exclusively being between a man and a woman.

This case has to do with federal benefits. Can the U.S. government deny those to same-sex couples who live in states where they can legally marry?

According to this ruling, the appeals court says no. Same-sex marriage is legal in six states right now. Others have approved laws or state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. The appeals court said the controversial issue could ultimately end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.