BEIRUT: The U.N.’s special envoy to Syria arrived in Beirut early Monday and is expected to travel to Damascus for talks with officials, state media reported. The National News Agency said Staffan de Mistura flew into Beirut from Turkey and will travel overland to Damascus to follow up on his efforts at ending the […]

  The United States is reportedly reconsidering a decision to invite Israel to a conference expected to be held in Washington next week after Lebanon decided to boycott it over claims that it cannot take part in a meeting to confront terrorism with the Jewish state’s participation. According to As Safir newspaper published on Monday, […]

  BEIRUT: The situation along the Lebanon-Israel border is “under control” after the recent tit-for-tat attacks between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. spokesman Andrea Tenenti said Monday. “The situation at the border is stable and under control,” Tenenti told local daily As-Safir. He said U.N. peacekeepers were exerting “maximum efforts” along the Lebanese-Israeli border. (Link)

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is running its own Shariah court in the northeastern Lebanese border town of Arsal, Lebanon’s The Daily Star reported Saturday. It cited the case of Rawad Ezzedine, 21, who was reportedly kidnapped and beaten by dozens of militants and was later tried in the Shariah court after he used God’s name in vain during a verbal exchange with a Syrian adolescent.
Ezzedine’s trial was held on Jan. 30 in a bungalow-turned courthouse in the outskirts of the town that borders Syria, the daily said.

The environment makes all the difference, writes Tommy Weir, founder of the Emerging Markets Leadership Center.

For all practical purposes, Lebanon is still struggling from the effects of civil war that ended over two decades ago. Yet, today the country is without a president, shackled by continued corruption, weakening job prospects, and on-going strikes that are the only way for the working class voice to be heard. Roadblocks and tires burning in the streets are everyday forms of protest.

While it may not technically be a failed state, it certainly is a fragile state. It’s in a political stalemate, where opposing parties simply boycott votes they disagree with rather than represent the people who voted them into office.

(Reuters) – The United States delivered more than $25 million worth of military aid including heavy artillery to the Lebanese army on Sunday to help it fight jihadist groups which have repeatedly battled with security forces near the Syrian border.

The U.S. ambassador to Beirut, David Hale, said in a statement the weapons would be used to "defeat the terrorist and extremist threat from Syria".

"We are fighting the same enemy, so our support for you has been swift and continuous," Hale said at an event marking the delivery of the weapons in Beirut.

The Lebanese army has fought regular battles with armed groups including militants linked to Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front in areas near the Syrian border, most recently late last month when six soldiers were killed.

By Armin Rosen, Business Insider

Friday marked the death knell of the internationally-backed post-Arab Spring order in Yemen, whose parliament and government were finally dissolved by the Iranian-allied Houthi rebels who took over Sa’ana in late 2014.

The ousted president, Abd-Rabbouh Mansour Hadi, was a highly cooperative US counter-terror partner, and the UN had dispatched a special envoy entrusted with shepherding the country’s fragile transitional process. These efforts failed to prevent the full-on state collapse that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels finally completed on Friday.

But the biggest loser from the Yemeni government’s fall is Sa’ana’s wealthy, powerful, and perpetually insecure neighbor to the north: Saudi Arabia. In recent years, Saudi policy towards Yemen has been built around the need to stabilize the government in Sa’ana while sealing off the two countries’ over 1,000-long and minimally policed frontier.

(Reuters) – Lebanon has begun removing political posters and party banners from neighborhoods of the capital in a move to unify a country still divided from a civil war, following an agreement between the militant and political group Hezbollah and its rivals.

Beirut is fragmented into fiefdoms where political banners and photographs of dead fighters and warlords have marked territory controlled by various groups since the start of the civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990.

The poster ban was agreed by Lebanon’s main political groupings after gun battles, car bombs and skirmishes on the border with Syria highlighted the need for reconciliation.

  The Governor of Beirut ordered on Thursday the closure of the fish market in Karantina for not meeting health standards, three months after he gave similar instructions to shut the slaughterhouse in the same area for renovations. Governor Ziad Shebib visited the market and gave the fish traders until Friday to sell their catch. […]

  BEIRUT/TRIPOLI/SIDON: Municipality workers began removing political signage and party banners in Beirut and Tripoli Thursday, in line with an agreement reached during dialogue sessions between the Future Movement and Hezbollah to defuse sectarian tensions. Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib and political figures watched as the campaign for clearing the city from all political signs and […]