By Natasha Bertrand

Syrian President Bashar Assad is growing only more defiant as
negotiators prepare to descend on Geneva once again in an attempt
to broker the terms of a political transition and end the five-year
civil war. The opposition’s central demand heading into the negotiations is that
the embattled Assad relinquish his hold on power and cease bombing
rebel-held territory. On the contrary, the regime will hold parliamentary elections on Wednesday and is evidently preparing a major new offensive to retake Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, from opposition forces.

As such, it appears that Russia’s attempt last month to force Assad into a corner — by announcing a partial withdrawal
of advisers and warplanes — has backfired. Assad appears to have
realized that Russia’s reputation as a leader in the Middle East
depends, at least for now, on maintaining the status quo and keeping the
regime intact.

Ali Al-Amin

CCTV

•   Authorities say they have evidence Channel Nine paid for the abduction
•     Say they have a signed statement from a member of the ‘recovery team’
•     Nine reportedly paid $115,000 for the operation, but this is unconfirmed  
•     CCTV footage shows two children being snatched off the street in Beirut
•     The mother, Sally Faulkner, has been arrested in Lebanon after the incident
•     Australian journalist Tara Brown and her crew also detained in Lebanon
•     They were filming a story about the recovery of two Australian children
•     Brown, producer Stephen Rice and sound operator are being held by police
•     The children’s father, Ali el-Amien, slammed the alleged kidnapping
•     Mr el-Amien said it endangered the lives of Noah, 4, and Lahela, 5

The guardian- The partner of an Australian mother arrested in Lebanon over a bungled attempt to allegedly snatch back her two children says she is being “treated right” by authorities. Sally Faulkner is in custody in Lebanon along with a Nine Network TV crew
and members of an international child recovery agency after an attempt
to snatch back her children Noah, four, and Lahela, six, from her
ex-husband, Ali el-Amien. Her current partner, Brendan Pierce, says he and the Brisbane woman’s
family are coping with the ordeal and that Sally is being treated well.

By
Roman St Clair

Reuters, DUBAI
|
By Sami Aboudi

Ahmed, a Lebanese
worker living in the United Arab Emirates, closed down his Facebook
page and started to shun some of his compatriots.

His
intention was to sever all links to people associated with Lebanon’s
Hezbollah after Gulf Arab states classified the Shi’ite Muslim
organization as a terrorist group.

Ahmed, a medical worker in his early 50s who declined to give his full name, is not alone.

Anxiety
and apprehension are unsettling many of the up to 400,000 Lebanese
workers living in the Gulf after last month’s announcement by the Gulf
Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

By Reuters News Agency

A Lebanese military court on Friday increased to nearly 10 years the
jail term for a former minister convicted last year of smuggling
explosives and planning attacks, in a case that has underscored the
country’s sharp political divisions.

Former Information Minister
Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
was detained in August 2012 and confessed to involvement in a plot for
which Damascus’ security chief Ali Mamluk was also indicted.

Reuters, Lebanese police
have detained an Australian film crew and accused them of involvement in
a kidnapping of two children from their Lebanese father on behalf of
their Australian mother.

“Four
Australian nationals have been stopped on suspicion of kidnapping the
two children,” the Lebanese internal security services said on their
Twitter account.

CCTV footage
broadcast on Lebanese TV appeared to show the two children, who the
father said were aged five and three, being bundled into a car by
several attackers on a busy street in southern Beirut. The children’s
grandmother told media she had been hit on the head with a pistol during
the abduction.

The father, Ali
Zeid al-Amin, said by phone that he was scared for the children’s safety
but that they were with their mother. “It’s their mum that kidnapped
them, and that’s what we know. She contacted me and told me she has the
kids,” he said.

Reuters – DUBAI: A United Arab Emirates court sentenced two Lebanese
nationals and a Lebanese-Canadian citizen to six months in jail
followed by expulsion for setting up a group affiliated to the Lebanese
Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, local media said on Monday.

• Pamela Engel
  

As a US-led coalition hammers ISIS’s oil infrastructure and other
financial institutions in the Middle East, the terrorist group has cut
salaries and infighting has broken out within the rank and file and
senior leadership.

Reports of infighting within ISIS — aka the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh — aren’t new, but increased financial and territorial losses might be worsening the stress fractures that are splintering the group. The Washington Post reported on Monday
that ISIS is now facing an “unprecedented cash crunch” as the coalition
ramps up strikes on its sources of wealth. Strikes have been hitting
oil refineries and tankers as well as banks and buildings that hold hard
cash.

by Elizabeth Dias
@elizabethjdias

Sept. 11, 2014

While the nation watched President Obama primetime address the threat
of ISIS Wednesday night, something else was happening in Washington:
Senator Ted Cruz was getting booed off the stage of a Christian event.

Cruz is often considered a rising darling of the American Christian
right. He speaks at evangelical gatherings in the country, talks to
groups of conservative pastors and headlines events with the Family
Research Council. But Wednesday night, his Christian audience was
largely Eastern and Arab. The brand of conservative, American
evangelicalism that Cruz often champions—one that often aligns itself
with the state of Israel’s interests—did not sit well with everyone in
attendance.

Cruz was keynoting a gala for In Defense of Christians (IDC), an
advocacy and awareness group that aims to bring the U.S.’s attention to
the plight of ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, and to
protect the rights of other religious minority groups in the region.
This week, IDC is hosting a three-day Summit, a conference bringing
together a range of Middle Eastern Christians—Orthodox, Catholic,
Coptic, Syriac, Lebanese, Assyrian, to name a few—to foster a new sense
of unity in the midst of a politically fraught season. Most of the
panels at the summit are of a religious nature, but a handful of
political leaders are slated gave remarks as well, including Senator Rob
Portman (R-OH). Former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was
Wednesday’s gala’s master of ceremonies, but Cruz was tapped to give a
keynote.