Qamishli - Kamal Sheikho On the first day of the new school year this Sunday, more than 3.65 million students from various educational levels will attend 13,660 schools and institutes in the areas controlled by the Syrian regime, according to a statement by the Ministry of Education....

Returning to their orchards after years of war, Syrian pistachio farmers hoping to revive their valuable crop have had their hopes dashed by scorched trees and the ravages of climate change. Laden with maroon-colored bunches of nuts that are harvested in summer, the pistachio tree is known...

 In a region where the first Arab immigrants arrived in the 19th century and an estimated 18 million people have Middle Eastern roots, Arabic food has become an integral part of the local cuisine in several Latin American countries. A new generation of Arabs on the continent is now seeking...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — One, two, three, stop. Five, six, seven, stop: A group of young Syrian men and women step, sway and twirl to the backdrop of salsa music, dancing their worries away. For an hour a week in a Damascus studio, their instructor Adnan Mohammed, 42, teaches a class the...

NEW YORK CITY: The four million people in northwest Syria who rely on international aid to survive are unsure whether there will be bread on their tables after July 10. That is when an increasingly fragile UN cross-border mechanism for delivering aid to Syria is set to expire. Its renewal is...

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — As Russian artillery pummeled the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in April, one family decided to flee, walking for miles with three young children in tow to a nearby village. But it was thanks to a volunteer driver who crossed the front line that they managed to...

Syrian-American artist Omar Offendum sets about reviving New York's “Little Syria” neighbourhood in a new music show, curated by American artist and music writer Hanif Abdurraqib and directed by Texas-native Josiah Davis. Offendum engages with the themes of heritage, uprootedness, and...

Awatef Massud is longing to reunite with her Iraqi family after years spent in Syria, but first she must do time in a vetting camp to ensure she has no links to jihadists. The 35-year-old mother of five fled to neighbouring Syria in 2014 to escape violence at home after the Islamic State...

In rebel-held northwestern Syria, damage caused by Russian and Syrian government forces means the farmlands of Ahmed al-Amin and his neighbours are no longer suitable for cultivation. "A Russian ballistic missile fell last month, destroying olive trees that are about 30 years old," Amin told...

BEIRUT (AP) — Umm Khaled hardly leaves the tent where she lives in northwest Syria, and she says she doesn’t pay attention to the news. But she knows one reason why it is getting harder and harder to feed herself and her children: Ukraine. “Prices have been going up, and this has been...

Christians in Syria's northwestern Idlib province have been performing their religious duties freely, said Hanna Celluf, the archpriest of Qunayah Church. Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Celluf said: "No one disturbs us while we are performing our prayers. No one harasses us. We don't come...

Syrians could be jailed for up to 15 years for minor criticism of the Assad regime following amendments to existing cybercrime laws. The draconian new changes were announced this week, laying out harsh penalties for vaguely worded offences including online criticism of the president,...

DAMASCUS, SYria (AP) — At the children’s cancer ward in a hospital in the Syrian capital of Damascus, children walk down brightly painted corridors, hooked up to IV needles delivering critical treatment into their bloodstream. Nurses tend to babies and teenagers getting chemotherapy sit in...

When Afraa Hashem thinks back about living through the siege of Aleppo, she remembers how inventive everyone was. In late 2016, Syrian government forces had sealed off Aleppo's rebel-held eastern half, with 270,000 people inside, and for months they and Russian warplanes blasted it to...

UDUPI, India (AP) — When Aliya Assadi was 12, she wore a hijab while representing her southern Indian state of Karnataka at a karate competition. She won gold. Five years later she tried to wear one to her junior college, the equivalent of a U.S. high school. She never made it past the...

Syrian doctor Ossama Jari fled Damascus in 2014 to find peace with his Ukrainian wife in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv. But now war, and Russian bombs, have caught up with him. In an ophthalmology clinic in the northeast Ingulski district of the city, Jari huddled for safety with other...

In a square that a few years ago was a grim stage for the Islamic State group’s brutal rule in the Syrian city of Raqqa, Mahmoud Dander sat deep in thought. He wants to leave Syria, but has a problem: The 75-year-old has no money. He recalled the old days before protests and wars led to his...

It was night when Zakia Kachar heard the sounds of footsteps approach her tent in a detention camp for foreigners affiliated with Islamic State group extremists. With rocks in their hands, the wives of IS fighters had come for her. She fled with her children to another area of the Roj Camp...

Roda Aftan Shlash fled Islamic State militants in eastern Syria with her family five years ago, leaving behind the hardline militants but not the trauma of living under their brutal rule. The 42-year-old mother of four children spent the next two years on the move before settling near the...

At Hammam Bakri in Damascus' Old City, Syrian men wrapped in towels from the waist down lie down on a scalding marble floor. Masseurs vigorously scrub their skin with a soap-soaked loofah and wash them down with hot water. Around a hexagonal fountain outside — traditionally found in old...