(Middle East Eye)- Russia has agreed the United States should be involved in talks on Syria's future planned for later this month, Turkey's top diplomat said, as a series of explosions rocked Damascus.  Moscow and Ankara last month brokered a fragile ceasefire for the war-torn country,...

(The Guardian)- In the valleys between Damascus and Lebanon, where whole communities had abandoned their lives to war, a change is taking place. For the first time since the conflict broke out, people are starting to return. But the people settling in are not the same as those who fled...

The United States has not received a formal invitation to Syria peace talks being organized by Russia and Turkey to be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, the U.S. State Department said Friday. "To my knowledge we have not received ... a formal invitation to the talks," State...

Israel's UN ambassador on Friday raised concern over what he said were moves at the Security Council to adopt a new measure to build on the Paris Middle East conference. Sweden's Ambassador Olof Skoog, who holds this month's presidency of the Security Council, said however that there were no...