Lebanon’s newly elected President Joseph Aoun will visit Saudi Arabia at the invitation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Lebanese Presidency said on Saturday. The Saudi crown prince invited Mr Aoun to visit the kingdom during a phone call with the new president, the Lebanese Presidency said on X. No date was given for the visit. Lebanese lawmakers elected Mr Aoun as head of …

Lebanon and Syria will work together to secure their land borders, as well as to delineate both land and sea borders, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said during a visit to Damascus on Saturday. “It is among the priorities to draw up the land and sea borders between Lebanon and Syria,” Mr Mikati said at a joint press conference in the Syrian …

Residents of Idlib in north-west Syria still talk of the time when Bashar Al Assad’s father, Hafez, visited the city soon after seizing power in the 1970s. Instead of receiving a hero’s welcome, he was pelted with shoes and vegetables. Locals claim it was these events that led to the marginalisation of Idlib long before the province became the final redoubt for rebels seeking to …

Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa has said holding elections in Syria could take as long as four years. This is the first time he has commented on a possible electoral timetable since Bashar al-Assad was removed earlier this month . Drafting a new constitution could take up to three years, Sharaa said in an interview with the Saudi state-owned …

Many key political issues revealed in newly released cabinet papers from 2004 could easily have been ripped from the headlines of 2024. The National Archives released hundreds of papers on Wednesday from the year former Prime Minister  was at his political zenith after defeating Labor’s Mark Latham. The documents reveal the rationale for Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war which …

Former prime minister Scott Morrison and wife Jenny have rung in the New Year with the Trumps at a red carpet event in Palm Beach, Florida. The US president-elect and wife Melania hosted the gala at their opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, inviting around 300 guests. Attendees reportedly included the world’s richest person Elon Musk, the next vice president JD Vance and …

A US Army veteran who drove a pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans, killing 14 people, had originally planned to kill his family, says the FBI. But the terror suspect was concerned about the types of headlines such an attack would generate. So he changed his plans because he wanted the media coverage to focus …

As holidaying Australians switch off and welcome in the new year, a potentially treacherous 12 months of geopolitical events could await their return. From precarious, ongoing violence in the Middle East and Ukraine to rising tensions in the South China Sea, just how Australians will be impacted remains to be seen. International relations senior lecturer at Flinders University, Jessica Genauer, …

Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s ousted president, has denied claims that he fled the country amid the collapse of his regime, according to a statement posted Monday on the Syrian Presidency’s Telegram account. The authenticity of the statement remains unclear, as Assad has not publicly commented since his regime’s fall earlier this month. The post alleges that Assad left Damascus for Russia’s …

Toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad airlifted around $252 million in cash to Moscow in a two-year period when Syria was dependent on Russia for support. The Financial Times has uncovered records showing that Assad’s regime flew two tonnes of banknotes into Vnukovo airport in Moscow to be deposited at Russian banks between 2018 and 2019. The shipments came at a time …