Kuwait's new emir has big shoes to fill and formidable issues to deal with -- balancing relations with regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran, steering the economy through crisis, and selecting a new crown prince. The hot topic of whether to establish ties with Israel, and how to...

The 13-year-old boy selling mangos at the market in Rio de Janeiro was the same age as Vanessa Cavalieri's daughter, studying in the same grade at school. But while her daughter was home taking classes online, the boy's schooling was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, showing how...

Lebanese stained glass artist Maya Husseini had hoped to retire after decades spent designing colourful windows, but she has been flooded with work since the blast that ripped through Beirut. "I can't possibly not try to restore what is gone," said the 60-year-old woman, her bright red...

Syria on Thursday reopened Damascus airport for regular international commercial traffic after a six-month halt due to the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had imposed strict health measures inside the facility. Airport officials said national flag carrier Syrian Airlines would initially...

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19 and were going into quarantine, upending the race for the White House. “We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” the president...

The US has repatriated and charged the last four Americans suspected of being Daesh members from northern Syria, the state Justice Department said in a statement yesterday. The four US citizens were among an estimated 2,000 prisoners from dozens of countries imprisoned in northern Syria...

The US Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey said Washington will normalise its relations with the Syrian regime of President Bashar Al-Assad after it adopts UN Security Council Resolution 2254 regarding the political process in the war-torn country. “Our goal is to ensure the launching of...

On September 30, 2015, the Russian Federation formally entered the Syrian civil war as President Bashar al-Assad’s rule was increasingly under threat. Since 2011, intense fighting and mass desertion had weakened the Syrian Arab Army. Even the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard...

The UN on Thursday sent 16 truckloads of humanitarian aid to Idlib, northwestern Syria, where millions of people need assistance due to the worsening internal conflict. The trucks carrying supplies entered the Idlib province through the Cilvegozu border gate in Turkey’s southern Hatay...

Iran’s currency dropped Thursday to its lowest value ever at 300,000 rial for each dollar amid severe US sanctions against the country. The rial has tumbled from a rate of around 262,000 in mid-September, a 12 percent drop. Iran’s currency was at 32,000 rials to the dollar at the time...

Sudan's government and rebels are to sign a landmark peace deal Saturday in a bid to end decades of war in which hundreds of thousands died -- a historic achievement, if it holds. Ending Sudan's internal conflicts has been a top priority of the transition government in power since last...

The Dubai-based construction company that helped build the world's tallest building and other engineering marvels in the United Arab Emirates announced Thursday it would enter liquidation, the final step in a long collapse from the country's economic crisis a decade ago hastened by the...

Madrid is to go into lockdown in the coming days after the region's leader reluctantly agreed Thursday to obey a central government order to ban non-essential travel in the Spanish capital that is Europe's worst COVID-19 hotspot. The Madrid region has 859 cases per 100,000 people, according...

Human Rights Watch lambasted Egypt in a report Thursday for routinely arresting, abusing and torturing LGBT people, including subjecting them to forced anal examinations. "Egyptian authorities seem to be competing for the worst record on rights violations against LGBT people in the region,...

Lebanon’s parliament speaker said on Thursday that a framework had been agreed for talks with Israel to end a long-running border dispute between the two nations that are formally at war. Nabih Berri, who said the army would lead the Lebanese team, told a news conference negotiations would...

The coronavirus may have been slow to reach the sealed-off Gaza Strip, but Palestinians in the densely populated enclave have been quick to embrace mask-wearing to try to contain its spread. Five weeks into an outbreak of COVID-19 among the general population in the territory, restaurants,...

The US President Donald Trump signed early Thursday a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown and keep it running into December.  The bill, which passed the US Senate earlier with 84-10 vote, will keep the government agencies funded at the 2020 fiscal year levels through...

Abdullah Abdullah, the man leading Afghanistan’s peace process, thanked Pakistan for efforts to forge a “new path” with its war-weary neighbor as he concluded a three-day visit to Islamabad late on Wednesday. Abdullah, the head of Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation,...

Google plans to invest $1 billion on partnerships with news publishers worldwide to develop a "Showcase" app to highlight their reporting packages, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement Thursday. "This financial commitment -- our biggest to date -- will pay publishers to create and curate...

(Zaman Al Wasl- Exclusive)- A well-informed source told Zaman Al-Wasl that Wagner Group, a Russian military security contractor, is recruiting Syrian mercenaries that will be trained and transferred to Belarus to protect the Russian interests as well as to stand with the regime of Alexander...