Reuters

Lebanon's army killed six gunmen and arrested 16 suspected militants, including a commander from the Islamic State group, in a raid in the town of Arsal near the border with Syria on Wednesday, it said.

An army statement said soldiers carried out a special operation against what it called a terrorist cell that was planning to attack army posts and kidnap people in Arsal.

Another army unit stormed an IS-run field hospital in the same area and detained 16 militants, it said, including a man named Ahmad Noun who was described as a "dangerous terrorist".

A security source said earlier that the army had arrested Abu Bakr al-Raqqawi, a local commander of the Islamic State group, and three high profile insurgents. It was not immediately clear if Raqqawi was Noun's nom de guerre.

VOA - Reuters

BEIRUT—

Beirut stinks. And now it's getting dangerous.

Six months ago, Lebanon's dysfunctional government shut the main landfill site for garbage from the capital, without providing an alternative.

Since then, rubbish collection has halted and festering trash has piled up in the city streets, causing what researchers and campaigners now say is a public health emergency.

Officials say they will resolve the crisis by paying a foreign company to ship rubbish abroad, although even the minister in charge calls the plan "crazy."

Activists say it is proof that a governing system, set up 25 years ago to share power among feuding sectarian groups and end a multisided civil war, has become so inefficient and corrupt that it is no longer capable of providing even basic services.

Halim Shebaya

Huffington Post

In potentially the most abrupt U-turn in Lebanese politics since the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in February 2006 between Hizbullah's Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the Free Patriotic Movement's former-PM General Michel Aoun, Lebanese Forces leader Dr. Samir Geagea stunned his March 14 allies by endorsing (see video below) Aoun's nomination for the Lebanese Presidency on the 20th of January 2016.

Lebanon has been without a President since May 2014. As per Lebanese custom, the President should be Maronite (Eastern Catholic) and is elected by the convening of Parliament with a minimum of a two-thirds quorum. This quorum has been unavailable since Aoun (backed by March 8 coalition) has refused to send his parliamentary bloc without the assurance that he - or someone he nominates - is elected as President.

by Francesca Fearon