Syria News Wire

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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 [...]

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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 the cover [...]

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A couple of recent articles you may have missed on Syria and Lebanon. In ‘Russia shows US how to deal with Syria‘, James Denselow looks at some interesting details of the Russian-Syrian relationship over the past fifty years. It’s a relationship that’s rarely been written about since the fall of the Soviet Union. Deen Sharp [...]

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News translation service Mideastwire is starting its first Damascus Exchange allowing students from the west to gain first hand experience inside Syria. Along with 20 hours of language tuition, the $2000 program provides meetings with political, religious and social figures. It runs from 1-15 August, with applications accepted until 20 June. Mideastwire has been running [...]

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Syria has finally got its own national flag, on Shukri Al-Quwatli Street, between the Dedeman Hotel (the former Meridien) and Jisr Al-Rais. The problem is that you can’t really see it from anywhere except Jisr, and Sahat Al-Nejmeh. Unlike many flags flying around town, this one is pristine, and flutters elegantly in the wind. Here’s [...]

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Superstar photographer John Wreford snaps Damascus at Easter. (His new website is up and running at www.johnwreford.com).

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If you love reading Arab blogs, you need to be reading Toot. It’s not an aggregator (like Syria Planet, which simply lists every single blogpost), instead Toot handpicks its favourite Arab blogposts every day. Membership of this exclusive club isn’t easy to achieve. And that’s all the better for the readers. Every post they recommend [...]

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This is very very exciting news if you’re in Boston or London. Damascus, the play by Scottish playwright David Greig is showing at the Briggs Opera House in New Hampshire. Now, as is well known, I have never been to America. But Google Maps tells me that it’s only about 100km from Boston. Well worth the journey. In [...]

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I’ve been on a Beirut-reading binge: I’ve just finished three new books set in Beirut over the past few years, and all three have astonishingly similar endings. Sabra Zoo If you know me at all, you’ll know that I’ve been raving about Sabra Zoo since I got my hands on an advance copy last month. [...]

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