BEIRUT
(AP) — An Australian mother and TV crew detained in Beirut amid a
botched attempt to take the woman’s two children from their Lebanese
father were released on bail Wednesday, in a dramatic climax to a
high-profile child custody battle that has spanned two continents.

Ali
al-Amin, the father of the two children, aged 3 and 5, announced he has
dropped attempted kidnapping charges against his estranged Australian
wife Sally Faulkner and the Channel 9 TV crew, because he “didn’t want
the kids to think I was keeping their mother in jail.” Lawyers and the judge involved in the case would not comment about whether any compensation was involved. Faulkner
and the four-person TV crew, led by prominent Australian TV journalist
Tara Brown, left a jail in Baabda, a Beirut suburb, in a white van,
escorted by an Australian Embassy car. Once inside the vehicle they
embraced one another.

BBC News, A Lebanese man whose estranged
Australian wife has been charged with attempting to kidnap their
children has said he will not drop the charges.

The two children were allegedly snatched off a Beirut street earlier this month at their mother’s behest. The operation was being filmed by four Australian journalists with Channel 9’s 60 Minutes programme. The mother, Sally Faulkner, was soon arrested, as were the journalists, two British men and two Lebanese men. The children were returned to their father’s custody.

The judge overseeing the case has warned that he views the “child recovery” operation as a criminal case. ‘This is not a custody case’ Ms
Faulkner had said she had not seen the young children since her
estranged husband, Ali al-Amin, took them from Australia to Beirut on
holiday.

BBC By Hugh Sykes

Beirut is an essential listening
post for journalists and diplomats trying to work out what is happening
in Syria, and what may happen there next. The Syrian capital,
Damascus, is 85 miles (137km) from Beirut. You can still get there by
taxi. For $150 (£105). But unless you are willing to submit to (or
perilously dodge) the severe restrictions of Syrian intelligence, there
is little point.

A common belief in Beirut is that President
Bashar al-Assad and his army, supported by Russian air strikes, will
move on from driving the so-called Islamic State group out of Palmyra –
and defeat them all the way to their headquarters in Raqqa. Several
Beirut analysts I met believe Western nations have reached the
reluctant (and so far unannounced) conclusion that the least-worst
option for Syria is that Bashar al-Assad should stay on as president –
supported by Russia and Iran, and by Hezbollah.

By Benjamin Zhang

The Mercedes-Maybach S600 is one of the finest luxury limos money can buy. The Maybach name returned last year after a brief hiatus as the
flagship model of Mercedes’ S-Class line instead of a standalone brand.

Now Mercedes has a new armored version of the Maybach called the “Guard” edition. According to Mercedes, the Maybach Guard is the first civilian vehicle to be certified with VR10-level ballistics protection.  That means the Maybach’s body and windows are designed to withstand hardened-steel-core bullets fired from assault rifles.  And that’s exactly what they did. The company published a photo of a
bullet-riddled test car this week, complete with markers to identify
each bullet hole. 

SAO PAULO – Washington Post – When Brazilian Vice
President Michel Temer from Lebanese Origins complained to embattled President Dilma Rousseff
that he didn’t like being a “decorative” figure, he was serious. Now he
could take her job. Temer and Rousseff always made an awkward couple. As head of the
centrist PMDB party, Temer represented the biggest force in the leftist
Rousseff’s shaky coalition.

For years, the PMDB has played that kingmaker role, and it worked.
But in March, the party voted to quit the government and go into
opposition, supporting the rush to impeach Rousseff. Impeachment is edging closer, with a crucial vote on Sunday in the
lower house of Congress, which will decide whether to push for an
impeachment trial in the Senate. A last-ditch appeal to the Supreme
Court by Rousseff failed early Friday.

That leaves the dour Temer closing in on the interim presidency, as
required under the constitution should Rousseff be suspended or removed
from office.

Naharnet, The government is expected to agree on Monday on a solution to the controversial issue of the State Security agency, ministerial sources said. The
sources told An Nahar daily that the government will likely approve the
allocation of funds to State Security, which tops the agenda of the
cabinet session.

The move will facilitate the discussion of other urgent matters following weeks of wrangling among ministers on the matter. The
sources said that the government will likely approve the funds for
State Security and form a committee to discuss ways to organize its
leadership structure.

Shane Snow, Contributor

Until a decade ago, there was one way to perform a heart bypass surgery: by stopping your heart. The surgery, called Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting, is a heart
attack prevention method that basically calls for a doctor to install a
new tube for blood to flow to the heart because the old tube is clogged
from too many cheeseburgers. Because the heart needed to be stopped to install the new tube, the surgery often led to complications.

There was good news. At the turn of the millennium, doctors figured out a new way to do the surgery without stopping the heart. This would help a whole lot of people live complication-free lives
and not die from heart attacks — if doctors could learn to do it. But the tricky new CABG surgery took practice. A group of business researchers started following heart surgeons
around the U.S. as they practiced the technique in order to answer a
pressing question: How do people learn from their mistakes?

ABU DHABI, 17th April, 2016 (WAM) — The Sheikh Zayed Book Award
announced today the decision of its board of trustees and scientific
committee naming Lebanese-born French novelist Amin Maalouf winner of
this year’s Cultural Personality of the Year Award in recognition of his
achievement as a novelist who has conveyed in French some key moments
in the history of Arab and other Eastern peoples to the entire world.

He shed light on distinguished personalities dedicated to promoting
harmony and dialogue between the East and the West. The award is given
in recognition of Maalouf’s ability to recreate unique experiences and
adventures in an extraordinary literary style that amalgamates
distinctly Arabic narrative and modernist Western styles in creative
works and intellectual research.

Naharnet, French President Francois Hollande concluded on Sunday a two-day trip to Lebanon where he met with senior officials and visited a Syrian refugee camp in the eastern Bekaa region.

In the morning, he held separate talks with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi and later Army Commander General Jean Qahwahi. Al-Rahi reiterated during the meeting the need to elect a a president to fill the vacuum that has persisted since 2014.

He revealed according to Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) that he sensed a “seriousness” from Hollande to end Lebanon’s crisis. “Officials
should search for the real reasons why parliament has not been able to
hold electoral sessions,” he remarked from the Snoubar residence, the
headquarters of the French ambassador to Lebanon.