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By Bryan Logan

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has died, his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro, announced on state-run media. President Castro announced Fidel's death in a televised address. "At 10:29 in the night, the chief commander of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died," he said. "Ever onward, to victory."

Castro had been in failing health for years, and was the subject of death rumors for nearly as long. His cause of death was immediately unclear.

The Cuban revolutionary was born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on August 13, 1926, in the small eastern village of Biran. His father was a wealthy sugarcane farmer; his mother worked as a maid to his father’s first wife. Castro received a Roman Catholic education through high school. He later excelled as an athlete and went on to law school at the University of Havana, where he would find an interest in politics.

A more radical bent soon emerged, as Castro plotted and executed several attempts at overthrowing Cuban leaders and making an attempt at a bid for Cuba's House of Representatives. Following a series of offensives, he seized power in 1959 from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. He did not look back.

Fidel Castro. JFK Library

Though he was admired by leftists worldwide, Castro was demonized by the US and many of its allies. Castro moved quickly to nationalize businesses across the island, moving away from the US and toward the Soviet Union. The US officially cut all diplomatic ties with Cuba in January 1961.

To exiles who awaited Castro's death, the Associated Press reported, he embodied a heavy-handed regime that jailed political opponents, suppressed civil liberties, and wrecked the island's economy. After decades of political and military tumult, the tide began to shift in Cuba's ruling class. Cuba's insular policies began to thaw a bit in 1998, when Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the nation. Pope Benedict would follow more than a decade later. In 2003, Castro was confirmed as president for another five-year term. Then in the waning years of his rule, Castro oversaw several initiatives that led to a major crackdown on independent journalists, dissidents and activists, and a strengthening of ties with Venezuela. The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas was birthed from that, in which Cuba sent health professionals to Venezuela in return for discounted oil.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro looks out over a 3,000 stong crowd that screaming "Fidel, Fidel," in a concert hall were left-wing groups were holding a rally against the UN summit for Social Development in Copenhagen. Reuters/FOR P-BASE- FILE PH0TO

By 2006, Castro handed provisional control of Cuba to his brother, Raul, while Fidel reportedly recovered from a major intestinal surgery. That was the first time he surrendered control of his power in 47 years.

By Vishakha Sonawane Eleven members of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, have been arrested near Lebanon’s border with Syria, …

BEIRUT –  The last public beach on Beirut's heavily developed seaside could soon be squeezed out by yet another luxury resort, raising fears that residents could find themselves living in a coastal city without much of a coast.

The fight for Ramlet al-Baida beach has emerged as a new flashpoint between civil society activists and the entrenched political establishment over land management and public services in Lebanon's capital. It follows last year's trash crisis, in which mountains of garbage piled up for months, and a conflict over a local park that until recently was only open one day a week.

Activists say the Eden Rock Resort development, greenlighted by the city's governor in September, is the first step to transforming the city's last public beach into yet another exclusive resort.

"If this is how Beirut is going to be, then tomorrow, we're going to be sitting in a cage," said Nazih al-Raess, the custodian of the beach's public swimming zone. "The people who have money will be able to go out to smell the breeze and the people who don't ... will be buried at home."

The project has rekindled debate in this intensely stratified city over who has the right to its shrinking green spaces and shores. Many of Beirut's well-to-do have turned up their noses at Ramlet al-Baida — or pinched them, as the case may be — as municipal authorities have allowed sewage to pollute its once azure waters and white sands.