Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

Coming to live from London, I'm Sean Lay.

And Tim Franks is in Syria.

We'll hear from Tim in a moment.

Also coming up in about 10 minutes time.

This explains the handcuffs.

It's still not clear why he's here.

If we want to bring the world back from the break, we have to deal with him.

Should he choose to accept?

Mission Impossible, the final reckoning.

But is it Mission impossible for the Trump administration

when the president says films like that one shot overseas could be hit with the tariff of 100%. Before that,

though, let's hear from newshouse Tim Franks in Syria. I'm in Damascus because five months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, five months after

Syrians escape the clutches of a choking family dynasty-turned dictatorship, many Syrians

seem caught between hope and fear. They have a new president who, for many, is something of an

enigma, this one-time militant Islamist rebel leader, Ahmed Ashara.

They've also, in recent weeks, seen some terrible sectarian bloodletting.

Syria is a mosaic of sects and ethnicities.

Syrians often proudly use that term, mosaic, where the most colourful place on earth, they say.

But they also know that that mix of Sunni, Alawite, Kurd, Druze and Christian can also fracture as it has in the past,

tear itself back into conflict with all that that might mean for the entire Middle East.

We're going to begin with the most recent events.

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