Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar expects to reach an agreement soon with the OPEC group over increasing Iraq's crude oil exports, state news agency INA cited him as saying Thursday. OPEC's second-biggest producer, Iraq has failed in the past to fully comply with OPEC oil output...

 A well-informed source told Zaman al-Wasl that the Syrian opposition’s platforms, Cairo and Moscow, and the National Coordination Committee are seeking to disrupt the work of the High Negotiations Committee, under the direction of Saudi Arabia and Russia.    Following the...

The Syrian government insists that each Syrian national entering Syria must exchange US$100 for Syrian pounds at the official rate. The policy was put in place in July, ostensibly to help the government replete its foreign currency reserves amid an unprecedented economic crisis. But in...

An estimated 14.6 million new internal displacements have been recorded across 127 countries and territories in first half of 2020, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said Wednesday. “The staggering figures recorded in the first six months of the year are testament to the...

A group of Saudi dissidents, most of them in exile, Wednesday announced the formation of a party to push for political reform in Saudi Arabia in defiance of de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has moved to crush any dissent. The world's top oil exporter and US ally is an...

Arab leaders voiced fears Wednesday before the United Nations of new conflict in the region as tensions soar between Iran and the United States. The annual extravaganza of international diplomacy at the UN General Assembly has been turned into a virtual affair this year, with leaders...

Luis Suarez left his last Barcelona training session in tears on Wednesday as he prepares for a move to La Liga rivals Atletico Madrid. Spanish television channel Gol showed the Uruguayan striker wiping away tears with his sleeve as he drove off after saying his last goodbyes. Suarez...

The US ambassador to Turkey said Wednesday companies will consider abandoning its market if it fails to fully meet debt payments to American pharmaceutical firms, and he criticised a new Turkish law clamping down on big social media sites. Addressing a trade conference streamed online,...

Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Wednesday called for a comprehensive solution on Iran, disarming its affiliate Hezbollah in Lebanon, and expressed support for US efforts to start talks between Israel and the Palestinians during his first address to the United Nations General Assembly....

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard force has managed to fly a surveillance drone over the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier which last week transited through the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian news agency said Wednesday. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is considered close to the...

Two oil-rich Arab Gulf states suffered severe economic blows Wednesday, as a major credit agency downgraded Kuwait for the first time and the United Arab Emirates acknowledged its economy would contract to a level last seen in 2009. The agency, Moody’s Investors Service, cut Kuwait’s debt...

The bomb threat for Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower turned out to be a false alarm, a police official told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.  The official, who asked not to be named, said the historic landmark of French capital reopened for visitors under security measures.  Eiffel...

He bought it in the United States, shipped it to a friend through Europe and into Lebanon, and found a way to smuggle it by road into Syria. But this was a piece of contraband only made illegal by the United States’ cruel policy of sanctions toward Syria—a critical part needed to fix a broken...

Throughout the past nine years of conflict, the Syrian military has been instrumental in ensuring the survival of the Bashar al-Assad regime—not because of its performance on the battlefield, but rather due to its consistent loyalty. Unlike other state militaries that faced regime challenges by...

Johnson & Johnson is beginning a huge final study to try to prove if a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine can protect against the virus. The study starting Wednesday will be one of the world's largest coronavirus vaccine studies so far, testing the shot in 60,000 volunteers in the U.S., South...

Iraqi doctor Tariq Al-Sheibani remembers little else beyond cowering on the ground as a dozen relatives of a patient, who had just died of COVID-19, beat him unconscious. About two hours later the 47-year-old director of Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Najaf woke up in a different...

Four mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group were killed when a helicopter carrying ammunition crashed in central Libya, the Libyan army said on Wednesday. "A helicopter carrying Russian mercenaries and ammunition fell in the town of Sukna, in the city of Al-Jufrah,” military spokesman...

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus was sworn in for a new term Wednesday in an inauguration denounced as illegitimate by the opposition, which called for more protests against his 26-year rule. The sudden ceremony, which would normally be publicised as a major state occasion but was...

The European Union's executive proposed Wednesday overhauling the bloc's broken migration and asylum rules, seeking to end years of feuds and bitterness over the many people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. The most contentious element would impose a legal...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Senior officer in the Military Intelligence Division was wounded Tuesday when unknown assailants attacked his convoy in the southern province of Quneitra, sources told Zaman al-Wasl. Bri. Gen Saleh Al-Ali, the deputy head of the Military Security Branch in...