By Nada Bakri,  BEIRUT: Columnist and political activist Alia Solh, who was the eldest daughter of former Prime Minister Riad Solh, died on Thursday in Paris. She was 75. Solh died of a heart attack a few days after checking in to the American Hospital of Paris. Known as "the daughter of independence," Solh was heir to the towering legacy of Lebanon's first prime minister, a politician who helped lead the struggle to drive French troops out of Lebanon. her father was also widely considered to be a pillar of the pan-Arabism movement.

Alia Solh started a long career of advocacy, writing about and influencing Lebanon's po- litical life from the campus of the American University of Beirut in the early 1950s. On campus she was known for leading demonstrations for women's rights, and she wrote extensively about Lebanese and Arab causes for a variety of publications.

When the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War entered its eighth year, Solh left Beirut to settle in Paris. "I preferred to leave and to take my memories with me, so I could tell the world about them and the Lebanon I knew, so that people would not forget the pearl that lies under the dirt," she said during a 2001 interview published by The Daily Star.

By Robert Fisk in Beirut , Walid Jumblatt may be one of the more charismatic figures in Lebanese political life but when he tells his people to avoid violence, they do as they are told. And so another sectarian killing - the murder of a 12-year-old Sunni boy and his neighbour, their bodies dumped outside Sidon on Thursday night - was transformed into a reminder that the post-civil war Lebanese can remain united.

JERUSALEM, April 28 (UPI) — An Israeli board of inquiry says Israel’s prime minister was rash in going to war against Lebanon …

PARIS, April 24, 2007 (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac, who leaves office next month, is to move from the Elysee palace to a chic apartment on the capital's Left Bank, a French newspaper reported Tuesday.
    The apartment is being lent to the Chiracs by the family of the former Lebanese president Rafic Hariri, who was assassinated in Beirut in February 2005. Chirac was a close personal friend of Hariri.
    Bernadette Chirac is already overseeing the moving of their furniture and possessions to the 180 square-metre (1,900 square-feet) apartment, which has a view across the River Seine to the Louvre museum, said the daily Le Parisien.
    The building lies not far from the historic Ecole des Beaux Arts (Fine Arts School) in a neighbourhood known for up-market antique dealers and art galleries. However it is north-facing and fronts onto the Quai Voltaire, which is a major traffic artery.
    According to Le Parisien, several photographers stationed outside the apartment were told to leave by police Monday after a complaint from Bernadette Chirac.