UNITED NATIONS (AP)

(Reuters) - A mortar fired from Lebanon slammed into a northern Israeli community on Thursday, an Israeli military source and witnesses said.Witnesses said the mortar struck a chicken coop, causing some damage but no casualties. An Israeli military source said that troops, investigating an explosion in Margaliot where smoke was seen rising, found a mortar had been fired from neighboring Lebanon. In Beirut in Lebanon, a spokesman for Hizbollah, a Shi'ite guerrilla group, said it had no information on the attack. Hizbollah was instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year military occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. It has since then seldom targeted Israeli civilian targets, but has clashed periodically with the Israeli military, mainly in a border area known as Shebaa Farms. The most recent lethal clash there was on June 30 when Israel said it killed a Hizbollah fighter in a helicopter strike near Kfar Shouba, a day after Hizbollah mortar and gunfire killed an Israeli officer in the Shebaa Farms area.

 (BUSINESS WIRE)  The long awaited ADSL service in Lebanon is to be launched in 2006. An immediate healthy uptake of the ADSL service is expected, which will contribute towards enhancing the position of the regulated legal ISPs. As expected from a country with a high educational level and a relatively open society, Lebanon has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the Arab World. The operations of the 6 main ISPs, in addition to the black market Internet providers contributed to the growth in Internet subscribers at a CAGR of 18.2% over the period 2000-2004. By end of 2004 the total Internet subscribers stood at around 195,000 (a penetration rate of 5.3%), of which some 70,000 were subscribers of black market ISPs.This 43-pages report, which has 30 detailed exhibits, provides a detailed analysis of the Lebanese Internet, Data and content markets and profiles all the major data operators and ISPs in the country.  "Between 2005 and 2009, we project Lebanon's Internet market to grow by a CAGR of 14.8% to reach 400,000 accounts in 2009 (a penetration rate of 10.1%). The number of Internet users is expected to reach the 1 million users milestone in 2009 (a user penetration rate of 25.2%) compared to around 656,000 in 2004 (a user penetration rate of 17.5%)." Mr. Andrawes Snobar, Arab Advisors Senior Research Analyst wrote in the report.

A Lebanese citizen picks up the shattered glass of a shop in the damaged shopping center in Zalka, in the northern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005, after an overnight explosion rocked the center and the Promenade Hotel. Explosives experts and judicial investigators inspected the debris Tuesday at the site in a Christian district of Beirut, which wounded at least five people. A series of blasts have hit Lebanon in recent months, the most devastating being the Feb. 14 bomb that assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 others. No arrests have been made in connection with the attacks. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

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