by Michael Karam

I was having dinner in Beirut with a young Lebanese couple.
He had Canadian citizenship from his father, who had studied in Montreal
in the ‘70s. She was able to claim the Portuguese nationality from her
maternal grandmother. Their kids would be Portuguese, being ineligible
for Canadian citizenship, as successive generations cannot be born
outside Canada to a foreign mother.

The Lebanese know their way
around nationality rules and any loopholes. Just ask those West African
expats with British Protected Persons status and their dependents who
pounced on full UK citizenship after the Nationality, Immigration and
Asylum Act was passed in 2002, without having set foot in Great Britain
or in many cases were unable to speak a word of English.

The
Lebanese love, or should I say, need, a foreign passport. The Lebanese
one has been ranked by Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index “a
global ranking of countries based on the freedom of travel for their
citizens,” among the top 10 worst passports to own because of visa
restriction issues.

By Ahmed Abbas, Egypt is
committed to enforcing economic cooperation with Lebanon, President
Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said during his meeting with Lebanese parliamentary
speaker Nabih Berri. Al-Sisi praised the activities of the Lebanese workers abroad, especially in West Africa.

Berri said the next few years should see more investments between
Egypt and Lebanon, pointing out that Lebanese investors are eager to
benefit from investment opportunities in Egypt, especially as Lebanese
investors are active in Africa. Regarding Lebanon’s internal position, Berri emphasised the
importance of ending the conflict between opposing Lebanese parties and
electing a president as soon as possible.

Police have shut down 3 night clubs in Lebanon’s red-light district,
allegedly used as brothels, at the request of Mount Lebanon’s general
prosecutor, a security source told The Daily Star Tuesday. The
venues are among the 13 nightclubs and cabarets under inspection in
Maameltein in the city of Jounieh. Authorities will later decide whether
to shut down the remaining 10 after inspections are over.

The
decision to close the venues came after inspections showed an alarming
spread of different sexually transmitted diseases – such as HIV/AIDS –
due to the lack of check-ups for the women working there, the security
source said. LBCI reported Monday that authorities have recently
discovered that 50 girls were being used as sex slaves at the 13
nightlife venues. The report said the cabarets will be forced to close,
and girls transferred to different NGO’s.

By Natasha Bertrand

Syrian President Bashar Assad is growing only more defiant as
negotiators prepare to descend on Geneva once again in an attempt
to broker the terms of a political transition and end the five-year
civil war. The opposition’s central demand heading into the negotiations is that
the embattled Assad relinquish his hold on power and cease bombing
rebel-held territory. On the contrary, the regime will hold parliamentary elections on Wednesday and is evidently preparing a major new offensive to retake Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, from opposition forces.

As such, it appears that Russia’s attempt last month to force Assad into a corner — by announcing a partial withdrawal
of advisers and warplanes — has backfired. Assad appears to have
realized that Russia’s reputation as a leader in the Middle East
depends, at least for now, on maintaining the status quo and keeping the
regime intact.

Ali Al-Amin

CCTV

•   Authorities say they have evidence Channel Nine paid for the abduction
•     Say they have a signed statement from a member of the ‘recovery team’
•     Nine reportedly paid $115,000 for the operation, but this is unconfirmed  
•     CCTV footage shows two children being snatched off the street in Beirut
•     The mother, Sally Faulkner, has been arrested in Lebanon after the incident
•     Australian journalist Tara Brown and her crew also detained in Lebanon
•     They were filming a story about the recovery of two Australian children
•     Brown, producer Stephen Rice and sound operator are being held by police
•     The children’s father, Ali el-Amien, slammed the alleged kidnapping
•     Mr el-Amien said it endangered the lives of Noah, 4, and Lahela, 5

The guardian- The partner of an Australian mother arrested in Lebanon over a bungled attempt to allegedly snatch back her two children says she is being “treated right” by authorities. Sally Faulkner is in custody in Lebanon along with a Nine Network TV crew
and members of an international child recovery agency after an attempt
to snatch back her children Noah, four, and Lahela, six, from her
ex-husband, Ali el-Amien. Her current partner, Brendan Pierce, says he and the Brisbane woman’s
family are coping with the ordeal and that Sally is being treated well.

By
Roman St Clair

Reuters, DUBAI
|
By Sami Aboudi

Ahmed, a Lebanese
worker living in the United Arab Emirates, closed down his Facebook
page and started to shun some of his compatriots.

His
intention was to sever all links to people associated with Lebanon’s
Hezbollah after Gulf Arab states classified the Shi’ite Muslim
organization as a terrorist group.

Ahmed, a medical worker in his early 50s who declined to give his full name, is not alone.

Anxiety
and apprehension are unsettling many of the up to 400,000 Lebanese
workers living in the Gulf after last month’s announcement by the Gulf
Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

By Reuters News Agency

A Lebanese military court on Friday increased to nearly 10 years the
jail term for a former minister convicted last year of smuggling
explosives and planning attacks, in a case that has underscored the
country’s sharp political divisions.

Former Information Minister
Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
was detained in August 2012 and confessed to involvement in a plot for
which Damascus’ security chief Ali Mamluk was also indicted.

Reuters, Lebanese police
have detained an Australian film crew and accused them of involvement in
a kidnapping of two children from their Lebanese father on behalf of
their Australian mother.

“Four
Australian nationals have been stopped on suspicion of kidnapping the
two children,” the Lebanese internal security services said on their
Twitter account.

CCTV footage
broadcast on Lebanese TV appeared to show the two children, who the
father said were aged five and three, being bundled into a car by
several attackers on a busy street in southern Beirut. The children’s
grandmother told media she had been hit on the head with a pistol during
the abduction.

The father, Ali
Zeid al-Amin, said by phone that he was scared for the children’s safety
but that they were with their mother. “It’s their mum that kidnapped
them, and that’s what we know. She contacted me and told me she has the
kids,” he said.