Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
Coming to you live from London with me, Sean Lay.
Tim Franks is in Syria.
In just over ten minutes' time,
we'll also hear about another remarkable White House news conference,
this time involving President Trump and the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney,
which also included a big, unexpected foreign policy announcement.
But before all that, let's hear from Tim in Syria.
We're here in the Syrian capital for our second day of broadcasting from a country trying to emerge from the ruin of civil war and the chokehold of dictatorship under the Assad's.
The question we've been trying to get answers to
while we're here is whether the rebels turned rulers can take this country towards stability,
recovery, openness and democracy.
As you'll hear, there's some deep scepticism, including from those who call themselves well-wishers,
about whether the one-time Sunni fundamentalist militants now in charge are really one-time,
or whether they're just a different shade of authoritarian.
One of the most constant refrains we've heard from Syrians
while we've been here is that just scraping by remains tough.
The economy is enfeebled.
14 years of war have seemed to that,
along with the legacy of the previous corrupt and ravenous regime.