by  Florence Massena

Samir Rebeiz, a conservator who was born in the house and lived there for 65 years, was expelled from it by members of his family who were given the property by their elderly uncle. “After months of discussions, I received a court order at the end of January 2016 telling me to evacuate, so I did,” Rebeiz told Al-Monitor. “I don’t mind moving, but the house was in perfect shape and condition. I was maintaining everything — it’s my job after all — living in basic conditions and not having done anything to modernize the house in order to keep it intact.” When the owners asked for a demolition permit in January 2016, the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA) — a technical unit of the Ministry of Culture in charge of the promotion, protection and excavation of all heritage sites of Lebanon — started an investigation. In March 2016, it established that the Red House is a part of the city's cultural heritage and that it should not be demolished. The owners appealed this decision.

Rebeiz talked about acts of vandalism, saying, “I saw people who were starting to dismantle the house from the inside, so I called the DGA,” who sent the police. For a month, all was quiet. “But the windows and tiles were gone as well as most of the decorations that made the house valuable,” such as tiles, windows and arcades. In July 2016, the minister of culture signed decree No. 95, but it did not stop the vandalism.

PARIS (Reuters) - Centrist Emmanuel Macron, running on the "En Marche!" platform, and far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen are set to face each other in a May 7 runoff for the French presidency after coming first and second in Sunday's first round of voting, according to multiple projections. The result makes Macron most likely to become the next president of France.  Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, opinion polls in the run-up to the ballot have consistently seen him easily winning the final clash against the 48-year-old Le Pen. Sunday's outcome spells disaster for the two mainstream groupings that have dominated French politics for 60 years, and also reduces the prospect of an anti-establishment shock on the scale of Britain's vote last June to quit the EU and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. The euro currency was quoted higher immediately after the first projections were issued, with banks quoting the US dollar at around $1.092 versus $1.072 on Friday evening, according to Reuters data. In a race that was too close to call up to the last minute, Macron, a pro-European Union ex-banker and economy minister who founded his own party only a year ago, was projected to get 24 percent of the first-round vote by the pollster Harris, and 23.7 percent by Elabe.

Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-EU National Front, was given 22 percent by both institutes. At least three further pollsters all projected broadly similar results. Macron's supporters, gathered at a Paris conference center burst into singing the national anthem, the Marseillaise, a few seconds after results came through. Many were under 25, reflecting some of the appeal of a man aiming to become France's youngest head of state since Napoleon. Le Pen, who is herself bidding to make history as France's first female president, follows in the footsteps of her father, who founded the National Front and reached the second round of the presidential election in 2002. Jean-Marie Le Pen was ultimately crushed when voters from right and left rallied around the conservative Jacques Chirac in order to keep out a party whose far-right, anti-immigrant views they considered unpalatably xenophobic. His daughter has done much to soften her party's image, and found widespread support among young voters by pitching herself as an anti-establishment defender of French workers and French interests.

Beirut, Lebanon. Forty-two years after the civil war began in Lebanon, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls on the …

by english.aawsat.com, The Lebanese army intelligence on Saturday killed an ISIS leader and arrested ten terrorists after they came over the northeastern …