A Hong Kong university campus under siege for more than a week was a deserted wasteland on Saturday, with a handful of protesters holed up in hidden refuges across the trashed grounds, as the city’s focus turned to local elections. The siege neared its end as some protesters at Polytechnic...

Secret recordings, powerful media moguls, illicit gifts of cigars and champagne, betrayals by trusted aides. The three corruption cases against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have all the makings of a political thriller. On Thursday, after more than three years of investigations,...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Four civilians, including a child, were killed Friday in fresh Russian airstrikes on the northern province of Idlib, Rescuing group said. The aerial bombing targeted the villages of al-Fatira and Mareaian in the southern countryside of Idlib, according to the White...

Kazakhstan will host a fresh round of Syria peace talks sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran on December 10-11, Kazakh foreign minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi told reporters on Friday. Tleuberdi provided no details about the agenda or participants in the talks.

The Trump administration is withholding more than $100 million in U.S. military assistance to Lebanon that has been approved by Congress and is favored by his national security team, an assertion of executive control of foreign aid that is similar to the delay in support for Ukraine at the...

Syrians who had fled to Turkey from their homeland in formerly Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria have started to return on Friday to areas, following the Turkey military operation, Turkish news agency said. Around 70 Syrians, including women and children, living in Turkey’s...

A Russian-speaking man who filmed the torture and killing of a prisoner in Syria has been identified as a member of Wagner, a Russian private military company with ties to the Kremlin that has aggressively expanded into the Middle East and Africa in recent years. The video, which...

An FBI lawyer is suspected of altering a document related to surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, a person familiar with the situation said Friday. President Donald Trump, who has long attacked as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia...

Joe Biden has made his presidential bid official in South Carolina. The former vice president filed his paperwork as a candidate in next year’s Democratic primary during a stop Friday at a soul food restaurant in Abbeville. Surrounded by a crush of media and lunchtime patrons at...

A US court on Friday ordered the government of Iran to pay nearly $180 million in damages to an Iranian-American journalist who was jailed by Tehran on espionage charges in 2014. A US District Court judge ordered the damages be paid to Jason Rezaian and his family in compensation for...

Iraqi security forces killed three protesters in Baghdad on Friday and forcibly dispersed protesters blocking the country’s main port near Basra, as the country’s top cleric warned nothing but speedy electoral reforms would resolve unrest. Security forces opened fire and launched tear...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Six troops of the Syrian regime’s elite forces were killed in a rocket attack by rebels in coastal Latakia province as Damascus seeks to take strategic Kabana hilltops, military sources said Friday. Nine more troops were wounded in the attack on the bastions of the 4th...

A number of orphaned British children caught up in the war in Syria are to be brought home to the UK, the foreign secretary has said. They will be the first UK citizens to be repatriated from the area of north-eastern Syria formerly controlled by the Islamic State (IS) group....

Lebanon’s top politicians made their first joint appearance since massive anti-government protests erupted last month, attending a military parade as the country marked 76 years of self-rule on Friday. Protesters staged their own celebrations to mark a first year of “real independence”....

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq could start delivering 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil to the Baghdad federal government by early 2020, Iraq's oil minister said. The oil would be delivered to state oil marketer SOMO which would export it via pipeline through the...

Iraqi security forces opened fire and launched tear gas on Friday at protesters on a bridge in central Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 22 others, police sources said. One death was caused by bullets and the other by a tear gas canister launched directly at the head, the sources...

A fractured spine, paralysed leg, hole in the back: Hamza took to the streets of Iraq's capital to demand a better life but now he has even less than ever. "This is my sacrifice for Iraq," said the 16-year-old, his strained voice barely audible over the phone in Baghdad. "If I...

Iran's Basij militia said the nationwide unrest sparked by fuel price hikes amounted to a "world war" against the Islamic republic that had been foiled. The protests erupted across the sanctions-hit country on Nov. 15, after the price of petrol was raised by as much as 200 percent....

By Ethar Abdul Haq (Zaman Al Wasl)-A leaked document issued by the top Syrian security body eight years ago showed how Bashar al-Assad’s regime had issued an amnesty for hundreds of terrorists and jihadists just a week after the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011. ...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Syrian National Army on Thursday destroyed an Iranian site including weapons depot south of Aleppo, killing 4 militants, military sources told Zaman al-Wasl. The Turkish-backed forces launched a Grad missile attack on the site near the town of al-Hadher in the...