By Elise Harris
.- War in Iraq and Syria have taken a heavy toll on the Chaldean Christians of the Middle East. Now Chaldean bishops like Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq are asking what they can do to help Christian refugees survive and preserve their faith in times of trouble.
“For me, my plan is how to help the Christian families who decided to stay, to stay and live with dignity. That’s my big concern, the whole plan,” Archbishop Warda told CNA Oct. 28.
“To be honest, I cannot tell anyone to stay. There are hundreds of reasons which encourage people to leave. There is no one reason to really urge and help them to stay. But we hope and we have faith that this community would stay, and, please God, be strengthened by the prayers that we’ve receiving,” he said.Archbishop Warda was one of the bishops at the Chaldean Catholic bishops’ synod, which took place in Rome Oct. 24-29.
The Chaldean Catholic Church’s patriarchal see is Babylon, based in present-day Baghdad. The Church has a presence in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel and Egypt, as well as in France and the U.S. There are over 400,000 Chaldean Catholics around the world, according to the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.
Thursday, 5 November 2015
At least 10 were killed after a car bombing targeted an office belonging to Syrian religious scholars on Thursday in the northeastern town of Arsal in Lebanon near the Syrian border, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.
middleeastmonitor.com
Dozens of Lebanese women and their children have joined protests in central Beirut yesterday demanding the Lebanese law be amended to allow women married to foreigners to pass their nationality to their children.
The protest is part of a campaign titled “My nationality, a right for me and my family”.
The participants held banners that read “nationality is not identification papers” and “the mother is the origin”.
“We demand the Lebanese nationality law, which enshrines discrimination between women and men, be amended. We demand the law be amended so as to ensure full and complete equality between women and men and to give Lebanese women the right to grant citizenship to their families and children when the husband is a foreigner,” campaign coordinator Karima Shabbo told the Anadolu Agency.
ATHENS (Reuters) – Twenty-six people thought to be Lebanese and Syrian were winched to safety by helicopters off Cyprus in an overnight operation when their sailboat began to sink in rough seas, authorities said.
Radars picked up a distress signal from the boat sailing off the island’s south-eastern tip, which is prone to very strong sea currents. Police said a number of passengers required medical treatment for hypothermia. "The occupants of the sailboat said they had set off from Lebanon," a police spokesman said. Media reports suggested they were attempting to reach Greece, the primary gateway to the European Union for close to 600,000 migrants and refugees fleeing war this year.
mirror.co.uk
The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon were among the seven wonders of the ancient world.
And now a Middle Eastern businessman has recreated this marvel for the modern age by recreating it inside a petrol station.
The stunning picture of luxury cars being fuelled up under canopies of leaves and flowers has gone viral on imgur, having been viewed more than a million times.
It was snapped in the trendy bar nightlife spot of Mar Mikael in Beirut.
One commenter said it was the "most aesthetically pleasing one in all of Lebanon", adding the way they hold the foliage is through metal fencing, and it basically just loops around the metal wires."Another commented: "I love when everyday things are made beautiful."
Lebanon’s parliament speaker on Wednesday called parliament to convene next week in the first attempt for months to bring deeply divided politicians together to pass laws vital to keeping the paralyzed state afloat.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian state television on Tuesday claimed that a Washington-based Lebanese citizen missing in Tehran since September is actually an American spy now in the custody of authorities.However, those who know Nizar Zakka — who holds permanent-resident status in the United States — said an image of him in army-style fatigues shown on Iranian state TV came from him recently taking part in a homecoming parade as an alumnus of his military high school in Georgia.
Through a lawyer, the Zakka family said they were "shocked by these false accusations," and stressed that he has no "relation with any military, security institution or secret services whatsoever." The state TV report is the first official word in Iran about Zakka since his disappearance. It comes as four Americans are known to be held by Iranian authorities after the Islamic Republic struck a nuclear deal with world powers and amid increasingly hostile rhetoric against the U.S. in the agreement’s wake. Jim Benson, the president of Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, said state TV even identified the wrong man in the image as Zakka.
Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell, associated press
Iranian state television on Tuesday claimed that a Washington-based Lebanese citizen missing in Tehran since September is actually an American spy now in the custody of authorities.
However, those who know Nizar Zakka — who holds permanent-resident status in the United States — said an image of him in army-style fatigues shown on Iranian state TV came from him recently taking part in a homecoming parade as an alumnus of his military high school in Georgia.
The state TV report is the first official word in Iran about Zakka since his disappearance. It comes as four Americans are known to be held by Iranian authorities after the Islamic Republic struck a nuclear deal with world powers.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese judicial authorities charged a Saudi prince and nine other people with drug smuggling via Beirut airport, and referred the case to an investigating judge, judicial sources and the National News Agency reported on Monday.
The prince has been widely identified in Lebanese media and by security officials speaking anonymously as Abdulmohsen bin Walid bin Abdulmohsen bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
Lebanese authorities detained five Saudi citizens at the airport last week after finding two tonnes of Captagon amphetamine pills bound for Saudi Arabia on a private jet, security sources and the NNA said, the biggest smuggling operation ever discovered at the airport.
By Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese authorities scrambled on Monday to pay overdue salaries to the army, a crisis that has laid bare the extent of paralysis in government and added to criticism of the politicians whose rivalries are to blame.
The salaries were due last week but were delayed because neither the cabinet nor parliament convened to pass a decree needed to transfer the funds. Both bodies have been riven by political tensions linked to wider conflict in the region.
The finance minister said on Monday the problem had been resolved for this month with an exceptional measure that bypasses normal legislative channels. That leaves open the possibility that the problem could recur if the government does not convene to approve longer-term arrangements.
