BEIRUT: Lebanon’s private school teachers announced Monday that they would end their boycott of correcting official exams, while the secondary school teachers sent a contradictory message by announc ing their boycott would continue. "After discussion, the general assembly unanimously voted to continue with all forms of movement and escalation until the salary scale is […]

Hillary Clinton was expressing what has become Washington’s new conventional wisdom when she implied, in her interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, that “moderates” might have prevented the rise of the Islamic State. In fact, the United States has provided massive and sustained aid to the moderates in the region. Remember, the Islamic State, […]

  The Church of England has delivered a withering critique of David Cameron’s Middle East policy, describing the government’s approach as incoherent, ill-thought-out and determined by "the loudest media voice at any particular time". The criticisms are made in an extraordinary letter to the prime minister signed by the bishop of Leeds, Nicholas Baines, and […]

  EIRUT: Lebanese NGOs Wednesday called for the immediate release of 27 men who were detained on charges of being gay after police received a tipoff that a group of men were at a Turkish-style hammam in a Beirut neighborhood. On Aug. 9, a unit with the judicial police’s Moral Protection Bureau raided the Agha […]

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi criticized on Sunday the ongoing failure to elect a president, blaming lawmakers for the delay. He demanded MPs during his Sunday sermon “to halt the violation of the constitution and elect a president.” He warned that their actions are threatening to fragment Lebanon and “jeopardize its fate.” “The election of […]

  BEIRUT: The Lebanese government approved Thursday a $1 billion Saudi grant to modernize security services in their fight against terrorism, as the country’s military prosecutor charged 43 alleged militants with crimes connected to recent battles in the border town of Arsal.   But the charges appeared to set back negotiations to free Army soldiers […]

    The Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch took control over the Twitter account of the so-called Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade and uploaded a picture of the Lebanese flag on its header. The move came a day after ISF announced the arrest of the operator of the obscure group’s twitter account.   A picture of […]

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has suggested to bring together Lebanon’s top Christian political leaders in Rome but his proposal was rejected, An Nahar newspaper reported on Thursday. Al-Rahi wanted to put the officials under “moral pressure to convince them to agree on a candidate for the presidency and agree on holding the elections,” the daily […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanese architect Amale Andraos has been appointed as the new dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning at Columbia University in New York City. Andraos, who has been teaching at Columbia since 2011, is the first woman to become a dean at the school, according to the statement released by the […]

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Pope Francis, widely appreciated as a practical and realistic man, is calling for an end to the violence in Iraq. Referring to military action, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, the Vatican’s nuncio to Iraq, told Vatican Radio, "This is something that had to be done, otherwise [the Islamic State] could not be stopped." Such a call is virtually unprecedented for a papal envoy in modern times, but our age is an extraordinary one and the Islamic State has no interest in a bargaining table. Instead, the Islamic State is bent on genocide and barbarism, ruthlessly exterminating anyone who opposes them.

On Sunday, Pope Francis said he held "dismay and disbelief" over what is happening in Iraq. "The situation is going from bad to worse," he warned. Meanwhile, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad said, "There is a need of international support and a professional, well-equipped army. The situation is going from bad to worse."