Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted to Monday’s assassination of Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, by vowing to redouble efforts to normalise relations between their countries.Ties have been strained by the war in

The collapse of insurgent resistance in eastern Aleppo to the Syrian army and its allies has delivered a major blow to relays of insurgents who have occupied this sector since July 2012.The groups that initially seized the eastern districts associated itself with the Free Syrian

Three relatively recent US presidents have campaigned and won the top job promising “change” and reform.The first two were men of vision, politicians experienced in the ways of Washington; the third is a rank outsider who promises to “drain the swamp” created by corruption, lobby

Since his triumph in the US presidential election, Donald Trump has disavowed some of the pledges he made during the campaign.He said he would not prosecute his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for her ill-advised use of a private, rather than government, e-mail server and could

If Daesh were left free to roam the region, among its priority targets for destruction would be Jordan’s Petra, the magnificent rose stone Nabataean city, and the curve of columns at the amphitheatre in Greco-Roman Jerash, iconic relics of ancient civilisations that exist in the

If US President-elect Donald Trump sticks to his pledges to rectify relations with Russia and give priority to the fight against Daesh, rather than the Syrian government, these developments could mark welcome changes in US policy.Securing rapprochement with Russian President Vlad

At long last the campaign to drive Daesh from Raqqa, the cult’s self-proclaimed capital, has begun.Daesh seized this north Syrian city from Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra and groups claiming affiliation with the Free Syrian Army in January 2014.Until insurgents captured Raqqa during

If Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had ran against Republican Donald Trump in Germany, she would have won by a “landslide”, reported Philip Olterman in Berlin in a pre-election article published in The Guardian.Indeed, pollsters found 86 per cent of German voter

On October 12, infant Walid Shaath became the two millionth citizen in the Israeli-besieged and blockaded Gaza Strip, a land the UN declares will be rendered “unliveable” by 2020. He was followed by the birth of Lana Ayad.