Author: Steven Sahiounie

About 500 people and around 100 families have returned to their homes in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor Governorate under the supervision of Russian military police. Abdullah Sheikh Salahal, the local elder, told reporters that the operation to ensure their return lasted more than three months. “People submitted the lists to Syria’s Reconciliation Committee. They were checked in a computer database. It turned out that all of them are civilians,” TASS quoted him as saying. For his part, Deir ez-Zor Governor Abdul Majeed al-Kawakibi added that “thanks to Russia, more than 15,000 people have returned to their homes over the past two…

Nearly a dozen people have lost their lives when a powerful car bomb explosion ripped through a northern Syrian border town seized by Turkish military forces and their allied militants in the aftermath of a cross-border incursion against militants from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Witnesses and a rescuer said a car rigged with explosives went off in Tal Abyad, located about 500 kilometers (310 miles) northeast of the capital Damascus, on Saturday, leaving people ten people dead. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at nine, saying two children were among those killed…

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi minces no words as he lashes out at the United States over Washington’s one-sided approach to world politics and its adversarial attitude towards Beijing. “It (the US) has already become the world’s biggest destabilizing factor,” China’s Foreign Ministry cited the top diplomat as saying on the sidelines of a Group of 20 ministerial meeting in the city of Nagoya in southern Japan on Saturday. He went on to explain how Washington’s policies were making waves across the international stage, saying, “The United States is broadly engaged in unilateralism and protectionism, and is damaging multilateralism and…

By Dr. Leon Tressell The Trump impeachment hearings give the illusion that voters in the United States have a choice between two different political parties: the Democrats and Republicans. The daily impeachment hearings dominate news headlines. Meanwhile, politicians of both parties have unanimously passed the Hong Kong Human Rights And Democracy Act revealing how both wings of the American elite share the same visceral fear of China’s challenge to the American empire. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, sums up nicely the flagrant hypocrisy of the American political elite with her declaration: “The Congress is sending an unmistakable message to…

by Tim Korso The US established what it calls a “maritime coalition” to ensure the safety of shipping routes in the Persian Gulf after at least six tankers suffered attacks there this year. Iran has argued that local forces are more than capable of ensuring the maritime security in the region without external help. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Major General Gholam Ali Rashid has cautioned foreign states hostile to Iran against acting irresponsibly in the Persian Gulf region, stressing that the message is mostly directed at the US. He added that otherwise, the safety of their military contingency could not be…

Iraqi Kurdistan is not presently considering at closing its border with Syria given the continuous flow of refugees, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman stated. When asked whether there are any talks about closing the border with Syria, Rahman said, “Not at the moment”. Rahman noted that the KRG has never closed the border to refugees. “Even when we were being flooded with refugees and displaced people, we kept the border open”, she said. Rahman said earlier that Iraqi Kurdistan received 16,700 Syrian refugees after Turkey’s military operation in northeast Syria, but refugees…

Kazakhstan will host a fresh round of Syria peace talks sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran on December 10-11, Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi told reporters on Friday. UN special envoy Geir Pedersen said on November 8 that a UN-backed panel on Syria will meet again in Geneva later this month, after it met for the first time seeking political reconciliation, Reuters reported. “The two co-chairs have agreed to meet here again in 14 days. The next round of discussions will start on November 25,” Geir Pedersen said of the Constitutional Committee. The Syrian Foreign Ministry appealed to the international community…

Tech titans Google and Facebook employ “surveillance-based business models” that threaten human rights and erode privacy worldwide, Amnesty International said in a new report, calling for an end to the data-grabs. Published on Wednesday, Amnesty’s “Surveillance Giants” report outlined how Facebook and Google, and their many affiliated platforms, operate in ways that are simply incompatible with the right to privacy and pose a “systemic threat” to free expression on the internet, World News reported. “Despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost,” the report added.“The companies’ surveillance-based business model forces…

Sa’ada, Yemen – At least 10 African refugees have been killed and 35 others wounded after mortar shells fired by Saudi-backed militiamen targeted a district in Manba border town in Yemen’s northern province of Sa’ada. According to the Yemeni Al-Masirah television network, the shells hit the al-Raqo district on Wednesday. Last month, Saudi forces fired artillery rounds at al-Maton district in the northern Yemeni province of al-Jawf, killing at least one African refugee and injuring three others. Despite the ongoing Saudi-led military campaign and escalating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, this year has seen a spike in the number of arrivals of…

With national expertise and through Syrian cadres, WDRVM company for renewable energy and heavy industries has succeeded in manufacturing, assembling, installing and operating a wind turbine with all of its components for the first time in Syria, the Middle East, the Gulf and North Africa. Syrian experts of engineers, technicians and workers have overcome all obstacles encountered in the current circumstances, unilateral coercive measures and the economic siege imposed on the Syrian people as they were able to complete the manufacturing of the turbine with all its components from the tower and blades and control devices with high accuracy. The…