Lina Sinjab meets Madina FM’s delightful breakfast presenter Honey Al-Sayed and looks at how Syria’s media environment is opening up. Then she talks to Forward magazine’s Abdulsalam Haykal to discuss economic liberalisation, visiting Amjad Maliki’s new venture, The Khan, just off Medhat Pasha and City Centre mall. And in the Guardian, Stephen Starr and John Wreford have ...

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One of CNN’s most senior reporters has been sacked after mourning the death of a Muslim cleric. Octavia Nasr was the news network’s most senior Arab journalist, joining in 1990 after making her name in Lebanon when she became the first female reporter to interview Shia leader Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. Two decades on, and a ...

CNN’s Senior Editor of Middle East Affairs, Octavia Nasr, is coming under increasing pressure for a comment she made on Twitter. She tweeted: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot,” following the spiritual leader’s death on Sunday. Israel-apologists are ...

Syrian photographer Ketan Gajria posts one of his pictures from inside the Ummayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria. The mosque is a major tourist attraction for the country.  ...

Just a month after a Lebanese girl won the Miss USA competition, a Damascus-born woman has won Germany’s Top Model 2010 contest. 20-year-old Alisar Ailabouni was born in Syria, and moved to Austria with her family.Forward Magazine reports that she beat 23,000 rivals to win the contest, and has already appeared on ...

Syria has stopped issuing visas to US citizens at its border crossings. Official policy has always been easy to understand: if there is a Syrian embassy in your home country, then you can not get a visa at the border. Yet many took a risk and set out on the Beirut-Damascus ...

An excellent, must-read editorial in the WaPo today on the Obama administration's cluelessness on Syria: Don't expect progress from talking to SyriaFriday, February 19, 2010THE NOTION that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad can somehow be turned from his alliance with Iran and sponsorship of terrorism is one of the hardiest of the Middle East. ...

Following peace-envoy Mitchell’s most recent trip to Israel and Syria, both Middle East countries began to threaten war and accuse the other side of fanning the flames of conflict. Neither Syria nor Israel have an interest in war; nor does Hamas or Hizbullah. They are jockeying for position should Washington ...

Zain, the Kuwait-based pan-Arab mobile phone network, is trying again to launch in Syria. After last year’s botched takeover of Syriatel, the company is now in talks with the Syrian government to bid for the third Syrian mobile license. There are currently two operators: Syrian-owned Syriatel, and South African network MTN. Zain offers free calls ...

Hariri said Monday he made a mistake when he accused Syria of involvement in his father's murder and condemned false witnesses for misleading probes and ...

(RTTNews) - The United Nations atomic watchdog says its two-year investigation into Syria's covert nuclear activities has made little progress as Damascus ...

DAMASCUS — Four consecutive droughts since 2006 have triggered "significant losses" of crops and livestock in Syria, mostly in the northeast of the country ...

Israel is particularly concerned about a possible transfer of such weapons from Syria to Lebanon's Hezbollah. Another issue is the transfer of S-300 air ...

(Source: Datamonitor)Kulczyk Oil Ventures, an oil and gas exploration and development company, has announced that MENA Hydrocarbons Syria, a wholly owned ...

In August, I visited my family in Syria and Jordan, where they have been residing since they fled Iraq in 2007 after a series of threats and losses of loved ...

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad had shattered the prime minister's imagination about the new world being built after 9/11 by saying: "We cannot accept ...

The ministry has decided that 700 Druze men would be allowed to visit Syria for four days once a year, in order to visit the tomb of Prophet Habil. ...

“Not acting now is unacceptable,” stated the expert, speaking at the end of a mission to Syria, which has been affected by severe drought. ...

Syria -- a nation-state with a significant portion of its territory under Israeli occupation since 1967, the provenance of which not even the most ...