A parole committee has decided to grant early release to Israeli ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is serving a 27-month prison sentence for corruption, his lawyer said Thursday. "The committee accepted all our arguments," Olmert's lawyer Shani Illouz told public radio. "As of now, Olmert...

Egypt's Cairo airport has started screening passengers arriving from Sudan for signs of cholera because of a reported outbreak there, the head of airport quarantine said on Wednesday. Similar measures are already carried out in Cairo airport for people arriving from Yemen due to an epidemic...

Syria’s former defense minister Mustafa Tlass, a close friend of President Bashar Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez, died in Paris Tuesday, his son Firas said. He was 85. Tlass, whose other son Manaf was among the most high-profile regime officials to defect during the early days of...

( The Guardian )- For the 10 months I spent as a detainee in the prisons of Bashar al-Assad, I only saw my family in my dreams. At night, the screams would stop for an hour or two, and I could close my eyes and remember what it was like to be human. When I slept, I would return to my life....