After years of war, the scent of laurel oil once again wafts from a small soap workshop in Aleppo, signalling the revival of a landmark trade in the battered northern city. Surrounding soap workshops in the Al-Nayrab district still lie in ruins, badly damaged in the four-year battle for the...

The Palestinian Authority faces a suffocating financial crisis after deep US aid cuts and an Israeli move to withhold tax transfers, sparking fears for the stability of the West Bank. The authority, headed by President Mahmud Abbas, announced a package of emergency measures on March 10,...

At least 79 people died when an overloaded ferry carrying families on an outing sank in the Tigris river in Mosul in northern Iraq, medical sources told Reuters on Thursday. Most of the casualties on the ferry were women and children who could not swim, said the head of Mosul’s Civil...

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967, marking a dramatic shift in U.S. policy and giving a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of his re-election campaign....