by Kim Ghattas – Foreign Policy

BEIRUT — They celebrated the results by gathering their candidates,
volunteers, and supporters at a seaside events hall here in the capital.
Several hundred people sang, cheered, and swayed to the traditional dabke line dance.

And yet Beirut Madinati,
or “Beirut My City,” a group of 24 citizens who had just run in the
city’s municipal elections — many of them young professionals, most of
them secular, half of them women — had actually lost. So what were they
celebrating?

The upstart movement, formed a few short months before the election
and with only a small, underfunded ground operation, had taken on
Lebanon’s entrenched political overlords and sectarian political
establishment and garnered a staggering 40 percent of the vote.

Reuters, Ministers and
members of parliament belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah could be
sanctioned under a new U.S. law targeting the group’s finances, a U.S.
Treasury official said on Friday.

The
U.S. Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act (HIFPA) passed in
December threatens sanctions against anyone who finances Hezbollah in a
significant way.

It has ignited an
unprecedented dispute between Lebanon’s most powerful group – the
heavily armed Hezbollah – and a central bank widely seen as a pillar of
the otherwise weak and dysfunctional Lebanese state.

by Hugo Shorter the UK ambassador to Lebanon

Lebanon “commemorates” today the two year anniversary since it last had a President.

Notre Dame University recently marked the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia.
Erasmus thought More’s genius was “such as England never had and never
again will have.” But beyond his national importance to my country, I
think Thomas More is relevant to modern-day Lebanon.

What
is Lebanon’s utopia? Today’s presidential vacuum is an unwelcome
reminder of the blockages in the sectarian system which can paralyse and
weaken the state. Undoubtedly, Lebanon’s utopia must be based on
co-existence. However the key thing is this: those who want to preserve a
form of co-existence should want a strong state.

by ABC news Tara Brown and Stephen Rice (R) were detained in Lebanon for weeks over the story.

The Nine Network today released its report into the bungled child recovery in Lebanon. A
statement from Nine said Rice, the producer of the story about Brisbane
mother Sally Faulkner and her bid to return her children to Australia,
would leave the company immediately.

Nine chief executive Hugh
Marks said the recovery operation exposed the crew to “serious risks”
and “significant reputational damage”. “We got too close to the story and suffered damaging consequences,” Mr Marks said. “Amongst
other elements of the execution of this story it was inappropriate, and
at odds with our standard procedure, for a payment to be made directly
by 60 Minutes to the recovery agency that had been independently
contracted by Sally Faulkner.

“It was also inappropriate, with the
risks involved for our crew, not to have consulted with Nine’s security
advisers before the story was finalised.”

Matar called for resolute action, saying that “if Christians in the Middle East are suffering today, the whole world will be suffering tomorrow”, adding that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is not like other Muslims. “There is no place for Christians in the Islamic State,” the Maronite clergyman said. He came to […]

24 May 2016 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the holding of municipal elections in Lebanon, which are expected to conclude on 29 May, urging all Lebanese leaders to act responsibly to elect the country’s President, a post vacant for two years, without a further delay, his spokesperson said today in a statement. “[The […]

Daily Star.com.lb, Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi
reaffirmed his staunch opposition to the naturalization of Syrians in
Lebanon Monday, voicing fears that a delayed solution to Syria’s
conflict would prolong the refugee crisis in Lebanon.

“We are
afraid of the Syrian refugees remaining in Lebanon, not because of the
UN’s politics or of the report issued by the UN Secretary General [Ban
Ki-moon], but because of the Syrian (refugee) status in Lebanon and the
Syrian war,” Azzi said.

The minister made his remarks during a joint press conference with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag. He
added that “the obstruction of political and necessary military
solutions in Syria will make the Syrians staying in Lebanon a
possibility, and the Lebanese must work to prevent this, not only to
protect Lebanon but Syria also.”

Naharnet, The Interior Ministry announced Monday that the candidate for the vacant parliamentary seat in Jezzine, Amal Abou Zeid, has won the by-electionsAbou Zeid, fielded by the Free Patriotic Movement, was elected for the seat that was left vacant after the death of Change and Reform local MP Michel Helou. He was facing other candidates […]

• Pamela Engel

Experts have been warning for a while now that Al Qaeda is still very much a presence as a jihadist group, posing perhaps an even bigger long-term threat than ISIS.

And now, Al Qaeda is planning to challenge ISIS in its stronghold — Syria.

American and European officials told The New York Times recently
that Al Qaeda has started moving veteran operatives to Syria as the
group plans to escalate its fight with ISIS (also known as the Islamic
State, ISIL, or Daesh), which operated under the Al Qaeda umbrella until
the two groups split off and became rivals.

And though ISIS has been grabbing most headlines with its gruesome propaganda machine
and bold proclamations about building a “caliphate” that will take over
the world, Al Qaeda has been quietly focusing on its strategy to be the
last group standing when the dust settles.