World

Why is the opposition capture of Hama in Syria so important?

Published

12 months ago

December 6, 2024

Why is the opposition capture of Hama in Syria so important?

Opposition fighters in Syria captured the strategic city of Hama on Thursday in a matter of hours.

Fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which means the Committee for the Liberation of the Levant, led the offensive as they stormed the city. Government forces quickly retreated.

Inhabitants appeared to welcome what many described as the liberation of their city from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s clutches.

One HTS fighter, who did not want to give his name, told Al Jazeera after entering Hama: “Thank God we liberated the city of Hama and now we are securing [it]. With God’s blessing, we will enter the city of Homs next.”

Analysts and observers believe antigovernment fighters could capture most of the country, but say Hama has a particular value for the Syrian opposition.

This is what we know about the strategic and symbolic significance of the city.

Why is Hama so significant in Syria?

The city witnessed one of the most brutal acts of repression in Syrian history, analysts and observers say.

In 1982, al-Assad’s father, Hafez, who was then president, ordered the killing of members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were occupying the city.

The targeted people were part of a movement trying to remove the al-Assads from power and had taken over the city after ambushing army troops.

They killed senior officers and leaders within the government and looted their homes, according to a report by the European Council for Foreign Relations, a think tank based in the United Kingdom.

The group’s operations attracted widespread support and triggered an uprising against the government in the city.

The government responded by bombing Hama for several days while Syrian troops moved in to crush the uprising.

Syrian opposition fighters standing on a mat bearing drawings of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his late father Hafez [AFP]

In the following weeks, Syrian forces laid siege to the city, going door to door to kill, torture and arrest any young men they believed to be with the opposition, according to Amnesty International.

It is estimated that between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed in Hama – the precise figure is still unknown.

“It was the awareness of the mass arrests and executions that terrified people,” said Robin Yassin-Kassab, an expert on Syria and the co-author of, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War.

“[The episode] made Syria a kingdom of silence,” he told Al Jazeera.

The 2011 Syrian uprising momentarily shattered that barrier of fear.

As protests swept the country, inhabitants of Hama gathered and sang “Yalla erhal ya Bashar,” which translates to “Come on and leave, Bashar!”

Protesters in Hama carried olive branches and crowds reached more than 500,000 people, activists told Al Jazeera in 2011.

What did the Syrian regime do to Hama in 2011?

All across Syria, government forces violently repressed demonstrations in 2011, including in Hama.

For more than a decade, the regime barrel-bombed cities and arrested and tortured activists and perceived opponents.

The government often relied on Alawi, as well as Shia, armed groups, both from Syria and across the region, to crack down on protesters.

The Alawi sect in Syria is an offshoot of Shia Islam to which al-Assad and his family belong.

Yassin-Kassab said many believe the barrier of fear has been shattered for a second time after rebel groups captured Aleppo and now Hama within days.

In Hama, scenes of prisoners of conscience being liberated from the central prison prompted celebrations by Syrians.

In the city, inhabitants tore down a statue of Hafez al-Assad.

“I presumed Hama is where [the government and its loyalists] would put up a serious fight … but they weren’t capable,” said Yassin-Kassab.

“After Hama [was liberated], I thought to myself: ‘The Syrian revolution is back.’”

An abandoned Syrian army armoured vehicle sits on a field controlled by Syrian insurgents in the outskirts of Hama, Syria — An abandoned Syrian army armoured vehicle sits on a field controlled by Syrian opposition fighters in the outskirts of Hama, on December 3, 2024 [Ghaith Alsayed/AP]

Is Hama strategically important?

Very much so.

The capture of Hama allows rebel groups to keep moving down the Aleppo-Damascus M5 highway towards Homs, which if captured, could split apart the regime’s strongholds.

Opposition fighters appear to have reached the outskirts of the city, according to reports, while thousands of people have fled.

Homs has a larger population of Alawis than Hama, but HTS has reportedly offered assurances that minorities in Syria will not be harmed.

The city is effectively a gateway to Syria’s capital, Damascus, as well as to the coastal provinces of Tartous and Latakia, which are Alawi heartlands and where Russian naval and air bases are located.

If Homs falls to the opposition, then opposition fighters are likely to push on to try to take Damascus, said Yassin-Kassab.

“I do think if Homs falls, then that will be the beginning of the end for the [Assad regime],” he told Al Jazeera.

Click to comment

World

Global futures reopen after exchange operator CME suffers multi-hour disruption

Published

13 hours ago

November 28, 2025

Press Room

Global futures reopen after exchange operator CME suffers multi-hour disruption

SINGAPORE/LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Global futures markets were disrupted for several hours on Friday after CME Group, the world’s largest exchange operator, suffered one of its longest outages in years, halting trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.

By 1335 GMT, trading in foreign exchange, stock and bond futures , , as well as other products had resumed, after having been knocked out for over 11 hours, according to LSEG data.

CME blamed the outage on a cooling failure at data centres run by CyrusOne, which said its Chicago-area facility had affected services for customers including CME (CME.O), opens new tab.

The disruption stopped trading in major currency pairs on CME’s EBS platform, as well as benchmark futures for West Texas Intermediate crude , Nasdaq 100 , Nikkei , palm oil and gold , according to LSEG data.

‘A BLACK EYE’

Trading volumes have been thinned out this week by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and with dealers looking to close positions for the end of the month, the outage posed a risk of spurring volatility, market participants said.

“It’s a black eye to the CME and probably an overdue reminder of the importance of market structure and how interconnected all these are,” Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI, said.

“We complacently take for granted much of the timing is frankly not great. It’s month end, a lot of things get rebalanced.”

Still, the timing of Friday’s outage, during a shortened U.S. equity trading session with thinner volumes, helped limit its market impact.

“If there was to be a glitch day, today’s probably a good day to have it,” Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey, said.

Futures are a mainstay of financial markets and are used by dealers, speculators and businesses wishing to hedge or hold positions in a wide range of underlying assets. Without these and other instruments, brokers were left flying blind and many were reluctant to trade contracts with no live prices for hours on end.

“Beyond the immediate risk of traders being unable to close positions – and the potential costs that follow – the incident raises broader concerns about reliability,” said Axel Rudolph, senior technical analyst at trading platform IG.

A few European brokerages said earlier in the day they had been unable to offer trading in some products on certain futures contracts.

“My anticipation is that life goes on but everybody will have yet another look at their data centre arrangements and invest more in ensuring reliable supply because the importance of data center uptime is higher and higher,” Mikhail Zverev, Portfolio Manager at Amati Global Investors in London.

Regulators are tracking the situation, with both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission confirming they are aware of the issue and conducting ongoing surveillance.

BIGGEST EXCHANGE OPERATOR

CME is the biggest exchange operator by market value and says it offers the widest range of benchmark products, spanning rates, equities, metals, energy, cryptocurrencies and agriculture.

Average daily derivatives volume was 26.3 million contracts in October, CME said earlier this month.

The CME outage on Friday comes more than a decade after the operator had to shut electronic trade for some agricultural contracts in April 2014 due to technical problems, which at the time sent traders back onto the floor.

More recently in 2024 outages at LSEG and Switzerland’s exchange operator briefly interrupted markets.

CME’s own shares were up 0.4% in premarket trading.

Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Laura Matthews in New York, Chris Prentice in Washington, Ankur Banerjee, Tom Westbrook, Rae Wee and Florence Tan in Singapore, Amanda Cooper, Lucy Raitano, Vidya Ranganathan and Alun John in London; Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Pranav Kashyap in Bangalore; Editing by Alison Williams, Elaine Hardcastle and Alistair Bell

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

World

Ukrainian official Yermak resigns as corruption probe encircles Zelenskyy

Published

15 hours ago

November 28, 2025

Press Room

Ukrainian official Yermak resigns as corruption probe encircles Zelenskyy

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that head of the office of the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, had written a letter of resignation.

“I am grateful to Andriy for always presenting the Ukrainian position in the negotiation track exactly as it should be. It has always been a patriotic position,” Zelenskyy noted, according to a translation of his comments in a video.

ZELENSKYY’S TOP AIDE ANDRIY YERMAK FACES CRITICISM AND SOME PRAISE AS WAR WITH RUSSIA DRAGS ON

Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak talks to the press at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, Sunday, Nov. 23, 2025. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

“But I want there to be no rumors and speculation. As for the new head of the office, tomorrow I will hold consultations with those who can head this institution,” the foreign leader noted.

Yermak’s home had been raided by anti-corruption investigators.

MOMENTUM BUILDS IN UKRAINE PEACE PUSH, BUT EXPERTS FEAR PUTIN WON’T BUDGE

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy participates in a briefing at the Office of the President following a staff meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2025. (Pavlo Bahmut/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“Today, NABU and SAPO are indeed conducting procedural actions at my home. The investigators have no obstacles. They were given full access to the apartment, my lawyers are on site, interacting with law enforcement officers. From my side, I have full cooperation,” Yermak noted the Ukrainian-language post on Friday.

‘GOLDEN TOILET’ SCANDAL: ZELENSKYY FACES DEEPEST CRISIS YET AS ALLIES ACCUSED IN $100M WARTIME SCHEME

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with President Donald Trump in Washington D.C., on Aug. 19, 2025. ( Ukrainian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

President Donald Trump’s administration has been aiming to help broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Fox News’ Yulia Wallenfang contributed to this report.

Alex Nitzberg is a writer for Fox News Digital.

World

Which EU countries have the biggest gender investment gap?

Published

17 hours ago

November 28, 2025

Press Room

Which EU countries have the biggest gender investment gap?

Only about one in five tech companies across Europe created between 2020 and 2025 included at least one woman founder, according to the European Commission’s The Gender Investment Gap report.

Even when adjusting for this disparity, companies with female founders also received less investment than firms with male founders.

The highest levels of gender diversity were found in Latvia, at 27%, Italy, at 25.9 %, and Portugal, at 25.2%. These rates represent the proportion of companies with at least one female founder.

In contrast, countries such as the Czech Republic (9%) and Hungary (14.4%) remain well below the European average (19.3%).

Equal participation by women entrepreneurs could increase EU GDP by approximately €600 billion, with countries like Poland seeing growth of 1.6% and the Netherlands up to 5.5% by 2040, according to the 2025 Frontier Economics study.

The gender investment gap refers to systematic disparities between women and men in accessing venture capital and participating in investment decision-making.

Among European small and medium-sized enterprises applying for bank loans, female-owned firms report loan-approval rates about five percentage points lower than male-owned firms. That’s even after controlling for age, size, and sector, according to the European Investment Bank.

Gender disparities also extend to capital ownership and investment behaviour, as data shows women are investing less in retail assets.

Female retail investors currently control about €5.7 trillion in Europe, a figure projected to rise to €9.8 trillion by 2030. If women invested on a parity basis with men, Europe could mobilise an additional €2 to €3 trillion in private investable assets.

“These findings point to an EU-wide economic shortfall well into the hundreds of billions of euros annually – capital that could otherwise be fuelling innovation, employment, green – and digital transitions,” the EC report stated.

What is behind this gender gap?

The gender investment gap has been put down to differences in risk appetite between men and women, as well as societal expectations and financial education.

Historically, entrepreneurship and venture finance have been male-coded domains associated with risk-taking, assertiveness, and individualism.

Decision-making bodies in venture capital and private equity remain male-dominated, reinforcing existing investment patterns.

Societal expectations around women’s caregiving roles and work-life balance continue to influence their access to entrepreneurial networks and capital.

According to the European Commission’s report, even in societies perceived as egalitarian, such as Nordic countries, the assumption that gender equality has already been achieved “can itself act as a barrier – masking ongoing structural biases”.

Across Europe, women also face a “double exclusion” of gender and geography.

European venture capital is mainly based in hubs in London, Paris, Berlin, and Stockholm, which leaves founders in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe structurally disadvantaged.