(Zaman Al Wasl)- Bashar al-Assad has appointed Brigadier General Ahmad Ibrahim al-Khalil as head of the Military Intelligence Branch 243 in eastern Deir Ezzor province, replacing Yasin Dhahi, a pro-Iran general, sources told Zaman al-Wasl. The shift came over a Russian request to...

Some 500 Syrian Kurds have entered neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan over the past four days fleeing a Turkish invasion now entering its second week, officials said Wednesday. The refugees were taken to camps in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, an official in the border province of Dohuk told...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's brother entered prison Wednesday to begin a five-year sentence after he was convicted of corruption, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported, citing his lawyer. Hossein Fereydoun, who served as an aide to the president, was arrested in July 2017 and...

An Italian court is to rule Wednesday on whether Leonardo da Vinci's iconic Vitruvian Man drawing can be loaned to France's Louvre, bringing to a head a bitter cultural row. The Venice court last week suspended the loan of the world famous artwork, due to appear later this month in an...

The prospect that thousands of the world's most fanatic jihadists could break out in the chaos caused by Turkey's invasion of northeastern Syria is causing widespread alarm. The Kurdish administration guarding those suspected members of the Islamic State group is crumbling and their fate...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Samuel Fisher publishing house in Frankfurt, Germany, has recently published a novel to young Syrian writer, Nazir Hanafi Al-Ali, entitled Space Without Windows. The novel monitors issues of love, war, homeland, exile and human loss between injustice in his homeland...

Shares of Turkey’s Halkbank plunged as much 7% on Wednesday, despite a ban on short selling, after U.S. prosecutors charged the state-owned lender with taking part in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran The announcement from U.S. prosecutors came a day after...

Kuwait’s 90-year-old ruler Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah returned home on Wednesday after hospital treatment in the United States, state news agency KUNA said. Sheikh Sabah has ruled the U.S. ally and OPEC oil producer since 2006 and steered its foreign policy for more than 50 years....

 Democratic presidential hopefuls denounced President Donald Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops back from northern Syria, saying in an Ohio debate on Tuesday he had endangered America's longtime Kurdish allies while empowering foes Russia and Syria. In the first Democratic...

France said Wednesday that the security of Kurdish-run prisons holding suspected jihadists in northern Syria was "currently" not threatened by a Turkish military operation in the region. "To my knowledge, the Turkish offensive and the positioning of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) have...

Yemen's Saudi-backed government and southern separatists are expected Thursday to announce a deal to end a power struggle in the southern port of Aden that fractured an Arab coalition battling the Iran-aligned Houthi group, officials said. The UAE-backed separatist Southern Transition...

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed four pieces of legislation taking a hard line on China, three related to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and one commending Canada in its dispute over the extradition of a Chinese telecom executive. All four measures passed by...

Japan's government said Wednesday it would set aside millions of dollars to help areas devastated by Typhoon Hagibis, which killed more than 70 people across the country. Hagibis slammed into Japan on Saturday, unleashing fierce winds and unprecedented rain that triggered landslides and...

Police in Spain said Wednesday they arrested 30 people overnight across Catalonia for their roles in clashes with police during protests over the jailing of nine separatist leader over a failed 2017 independence bid. Pro-independence groups staged sit-ins outside Spanish government offices...

Russia's president Vladimir Putin spoke with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan about Syria by phone and invited him to visit Russia in the next few days, the Kremlin said late on Tuesday. The Kremlin said that in their phone conversation, Putin and Erdogan agreed to ensure Syria's...

Britain and Spain joined other major powers Tuesday in suspending military exports to Turkey following its incursion into northeastern Syria. Britain is carrying out a review of arms sales to its NATO ally, its chief diplomat said. "We will keep our defence exports to Turkey under very...

Turkey ignored U.S. sanctions and pressed on with its offensive in northern Syria Tuesday, while the Russia-backed Syrian army roared into one of the most hotly contested cities abandoned by U.S. forces in Donald Trump’s retreat. Reuters journalists accompanied Syrian government forces who...

 A court in Algeria Tuesday ordered the detention of a journalist and activist on charges of "undermining the morale of the army", according to a committee that defends detainees. A judge at the court in the western city of Oran placed Said Boudour in custody days after his arrest, the...

Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton declared in an Instagram post on Wednesday he worried about the "extinction of our race" if humans kept eating animals. "I'm sad right now with the thought of where this world is going," wrote Hamilton in a post he later took down. The...

Britain and the EU were seen to be closing in on a detailed draft Brexit deal on Tuesday, although officials voiced scepticism it would be ready in time for a key European summit this week. The pound jumped to its highest level in five months on cautious optimism voiced by both sides that...