US, Israeli spy chiefs due in Doha Wednesday for Gaza talks

GENEVA: Nearly 200,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since the fall of Bashar Assad in early December, the UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said Saturday ahead of a visit to the region.
Between December 8 and January 16, some 195,200 Syrians returned home, according to figures published by Grandi on X.
“Soon I will visit Syria — and its neighboring countries — as UNHCR steps up its support to returnees and receiving communities,” Grandi said.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians had returned home last year as they fled Lebanon to escape Israeli attacks during its conflict with the Hezbollah militant group.
Those returns came before a lightning offensive by Islamist rebels late last year ousted Assad, raising hopes of an end to a 13-year civil war that killed over half million dead and sent millions seeking refuge abroad.
Turkiye, which shares a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Syria, hosts some 2.9 million Syrians who have fled since 2011.
Turkish authorities, who are hoping to see many of those refugees return to ease growing anti-Syrian sentiment among the population, are allowing one member of each refugee family to make three round trips until July 1, 2025 to prepare for their resettlement.

DAMASCUS: The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who was taken captive during a reporting trip to Syria in August 2012, arrived in Damascus on Saturday to step up the search for her son and said she hopes she can take him home with her.
Tice, who worked as a freelance reporter for the Washington Post and McClatchy, was one of the first U.S. journalists to make it into Syria after the outbreak of the civil war.
His mother, Debra Tice, drove into the Syrian capital from Lebanon with Nizar Zakka, the head of Hostage Aid Worldwide, an organisation which is searching for Austin and believes he is still in Syria.
"It'd be lovely to put my arms around Austin while I'm here. It'd be the best," Debra Tice told Reuters in the Syrian capital, which she last visited in 2015 to meet with Syrian authorities about her son, before they stopped granting her visas.
The overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December by Syrian rebels has allowed her to visit again from her home in Texas.
"I feel very strongly that Austin's here, and I think he knows I'm here... I'm here," she said.
Debra Tice and Zakka are hoping to meet with Syria's new authorities, including the head of its new administration Ahmed al-Sharaa, to push for information about Austin. They are also optimistic that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday, will take up the cause.
"I am hoping to get some answers. And of course, you know, we have inauguration on Monday, and I think that should be a huge change," she said.
"I know that President Trump is quite a negotiator, so I have a lot of confidence there. But now we have an unknown on this (Syrian) side. It's difficult to know, if those that are coming in even have the information about him," she said.
Her son, now 43, was taken captive in August 2012, while travelling through the Damascus suburb of Daraya.
Reuters was first to report in December that in 2013 Tice, a former U.S. Marine, managed to slip out of his cell and was seen moving between houses in the streets of Damascus' upscale Mazzeh neighbourhood.
He was recaptured soon after his escape, likely by forces who answered directly to Assad, current and former U.S. officials said.
Debra Tice came to Syria in 2012 and 2015 to meet with Syrian authorities, who never confirmed that Tice was in their custody, both she and Zakka said.
She criticised outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, saying they did not negotiate hard enough for her son's release, even in recent months.
"We certainly felt like President Biden was very well positioned to do everything possible to bring Austin home, right? I mean, this was the end of his career. This would be a wonderful thing for him to do. So we had an expectation. He pardoned his own son, right? So, where's my son?"
Debra Tice said her "mind was just spinning" as she drove across the Lebanese border into Syria and teared up as she spoke about the tens of thousands whose loved ones were held in Assad's notorious prison system and whose fate remains unknown.
"I have a lot in common with a lot of Syrian mothers and families, and just thinking about how this is affecting them - do they have the same hope that I do, that they're going to open a door, that they're going to see their loved one?"