• Barbara Tasch

ISIS has announced it is going to shut down private internet access in Raqqa, the eastern Syrian city that functions as the extremist group's de-facto capital, the Financial Times reports.

The move will make it harder for residents to keep in contact with the world beyond ISIS's self-proclaimed "caliphate," as the only Internet connections left would be accessed through ISIS-controlled internet cafes, according to activists.

Parts of northern Syria, including Aleppo, have been without access to internet since March now.

The group circulated leaflets informing internet providers they had fours days to cut off private wifi connections, according to the Daily Telegraph. “The following is obligatory on all Internet providers: the removal of Wi-Fi connections distributed outside of Internet cafés and private connections, including for Islamic State soldiers,” the leaflet read.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Lebanon survives against all odds in a troubled environment thanks to a remarkable immune system, but that resilience has become an excuse for a dysfunctionality and laissez-faire attitude by its political class that could ultimately prove the country’s undoing. Its Syrian neighbour, conjoined as if a Siamese twin, is drowning in blood, pushing waves of refugees across the border. Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political party and armed movement, has been drawn into an increasingly vicious, costly and desperate regional sectarian struggle. Internally, stakeholders, fearing collapse of a flimsy political equilibrium, have failed to elect a president or empower the prime minister, preferring paralysis to anything they believe might rock the boat. Syria’s conflict is bringing out all kinds of problems, old and new, which in the long term have every chance of proving destabilising. Despite the urgency, expecting bold measures is unrealistic, but politicians could and should take a small number of concrete steps that together would help reduce tensions while waiting the years it may take for the Syrian conflict to abate.

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate has offered to release three Lebanese soldiers in exchange for an ex-wife of the leader of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group and four other female prisoners.Al-Nusra Front, which along with ISIS has held 25 Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage for almost a year, issued the offer in a statement aired on Lebanon’s MTV television on Saturday night.“If five of our sisters leave prison... we will hand over three soldiers in exchange,” said Abu Malek al-Shami, Al-Nusra’s “emir” in the Syrian region of Qalamun bordering Lebanon.

By ANNE BARNARD BEIRUT, Lebanon — Five Czechs and their Lebanese taxi driver disappeared in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on Saturday in an …