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'Youthquake' named Oxford Dictionaries' word of 2017

"Youthquake" was crowned Friday as Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year 2017, following a five-fold increase in usage. The word is defined as "a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people". It first rose during...

In Beirut, play about Syria’s war gets as close to home as it can

A play about Syria’s war, told through one family’s tragedy, made its Lebanon debut on Friday, the closest it will ever get to being staged on home soil, its Syrian director said. “It would be impossible to perform it in Syria. There are red lines, and the censorship that was...

UK police seek 1987 Palestinian cartoonist's killer

British police relaunched an investigation Tuesday into the murder of a Palestinian cartoonist 30 years to the day after he was shot dead in a London street. Naji Salim Hussain Al-Ali, a political cartoonist for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas, was shot in the back of the neck as he...

'Moments from Syria' first art exhibition in Eastern Ghouta

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The "Spring Revolution Rally" in the town of Yalda, south of Damascus, held an art exhibition, the first of its kind in Syria, entitled “Moments from Syria” on Friday. The exhibition includes photographs taken by young people from various parts of Syria and...

Kurdish forces saved 160 antiques from looting in 6 years: sources

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have saved at least 160 antiques from looting acts during the 6-year-old conflict, source told Zaman al-Wasl. Asayish, the domestic security forces, said the artifacts are strictly controlled and protected by Kurd and Arab...

Green Poison, Film About Al-Waer’s Displacement and Suffering

By Faris Rifai (Zaman al-Wasl) In the “Green Poison” a short film, the young Syrian activist and director, Hamam Abu Zein, captures the suffering of displacement experienced by Syrians in general, and his family in particular, the last time they were in al-Waer neighborhood before...

Book Review: 'Tiger and Clay' Rana Abdulfattah digs deeper in Syria's fragments

(Zaman Al Wasl)- “In the clay there is a tiger and the problem is neither in the question nor is in the text. It is in the interpretation. You can listen or read the answer in folk literature or Sufi music. To belong is to have grammar and in grammar there are exceptions. You can never...

Ramses the Great rises from watery grave after discovery in Cairo

(Middle East Eye)- Dig deep in an English backyard and you might snaffle a stone arrowhead, and the odd bit of pottery. Do the same in Egypt and you could hit paydirt with a 25-foot colossus of an ancient god-king. That is exactly what happened on Thursday in Cairo, when a statue of ancient...

Footage: Treasures of Palmyra Museum Before Destruction

By Ethar Abdulhaq (Zaman Al Wasl)- An exclusive video footage obtained by Zaman al-Wasl shows the artifacts of Palmyra Museum that were displayed in its halls and courtyards and those stored in the museum warehouse. The footage was filmed in spring 2015 while the Islamic State forces...

Shooting Syria: documentaries from the most dangerous place on earth

(The Guardian)- Wars are defined by the way they are covered. In the 1930s, it was the Leica that brought the Spanish civil war to readers, while the second world war was seen through black-and-white newsreels. After the colour TV footage of Vietnam, which introduced war to every living room,...

Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt dies aged 68

Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt died in hospital on Saturday after suffering a severe infection, his family said. The veteran rocker, who had survived numerous health scares, was 68. He was taken into hospital in Marbella on the south coast of Spain on Thursday due to complications with a...

George Clooney to make movie about Syria's White Helmets

George Clooney is to make a fictional film about the White Helmets – the Syria Civil Defence whose approximate 3,000 volunteers act as first responders in the war-torn country. Clooney is said to be using as his source Netflix’s documentary short The White Helmets, which was released in...

Kurdish war history preserved through art

(Al Jazeera)- Thirty years ago, Ako Ghareb joined the Kurdish rebellion against Saddam Hussein's regime, in a bid for Kurdish independence. At the age of 23, he fled to the Jafaiti Valley and surrounding mountains in northern Iraq, where he remained entrenched with the Peshmerga for seven years....

Bob Dylan, Titan Of American Music, Wins 2016 Nobel Prize In Literature

(NPR)- Bob Dylan has won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. In doing so, the prolific musician became the first American to win the prize in more than two decades. Not since novelist Toni Morrison won in 1993 has an American claimed the prize. Dylan won the prize "for having created new...

Pulitzer-winning playwright Edward Albee dies at 88

New York (AFP) - Pulitzer-winning US playwright Edward Albee, author of such masterpieces as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" died at age 88, his personal assistant said in a statement. Albee died at his home in Montauk, New York after a short illness, according to his longtime personal...

Transgender patients face fear and stigma in the doctor's office

Tanya Walker had lung cancer and was coughing up blood, but she says her emergency room doctor kept asking about her genitals. "It seemed like they weren't going to treat me unless I told them what genitals I had," Walker, a 53-year-old transgender woman, activist and advocate, said about...

New French movie addresses racism against Syrian refugees in Europe

By Faris Rifai (Zaman Al Wasl)- Actor Wasim Majid starred as the lead actor in the French film Syrian which recounts in the language of high end cinema one of the stories of the thousands of the suffering of Syrian refugees crossing to Europe on a daily basis. The film approximates some of...

'The Blind Orchestra' takes top prize at Carthage film festival

Moroccan director Mohammed Mouftakir's "L'Orchestre des Aveugles" (The Blind Orchestra) took the Tanit d'Or Saturday at the Carthage Film Festival, blighted earlier in the week by a suicide bombing in the Tunisian capital. The Tanit d'Argent was awarded to "The Endless River", by South...