AP, BEIRUT –  The Lebanese cabinet has failed to agree on a solution for the country’s growing garbage crisis, postponing discussion until next week as trash piles up on the streets.

The main company in charge of collecting trash stopped its work last week amid a dispute over the country’s largest trash dump. Mountains of trash have collected in the capital and suburbs meanwhile.

Following a Cabinet meeting Thursday, Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk estimated the amount of trash currently on the streets to be at 22,000 tons.

Beirut (AFP) – Preliminary investigations into the kidnapping of five Czech citizens in Lebanon last week suggest the case is criminal, Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq said on Wednesday.

"We’ve arrived at the beginning of the end of the thread (of investigations), and it relates to mafias, drug trafficking and weapons," the official National News Agency quoted him as saying.

Mashnuq, who was speaking during a visit to France, did not elaborate further on any leads in the case.

Anthony H. Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Much of the criticism of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran has focused on the fact that it would allow conventional arms transfers to Iran in five years if Iran fully complies with all other aspects of the agreement.

In practice, this does not obligate any country to sell arms to Iran, nor does it affect US and European constraints on arms sales.

It could, however, lead to significant arms sales on the part of Russia and China, and potentially other states. Iran badly needs to modernize its aging air force, surface-to-air missile defenses, and many other elements of its weapons systems – as well as acquire the technology for a wide range of new sensors, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and other improvement in its war fighting capabilities.

BAALBECK, LEBANON—

On a sweltering afternoon at one of the Middle East’s historic treasures, preparations are in full swing to bring visitors back to Baalbeck’s Roman ruins.

“Baalbeck International Festival has become a brand,” said Nayla de Freige, president of the renowned cultural gathering set to kick off next Friday in Lebanon’s Beq’aa region. “When you go outside Lebanon, many people know about it. It’s more than just a festival.”However, the festival’s fortunes have been mixed of late.

Sara Aridi, Christian Science Monitor

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been called the caliph of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), has reconsidered the terrorist group’s gory media strategy.

Mr. Baghdadi banned the dissemination of the group’s infamous execution videos in a report issued to ISIS media offices in Syria and Iraq, according to local news sources. 

While the militant leader made no suggestion of curbing the group’s atrocities, he demanded that any released footage of beheadings should exclude scenes of the actual execution and only expose moments before and after the act takes place.

• Barbara Tasch

ISIS has announced it is going to shut down private internet access in Raqqa, the eastern Syrian city that functions as the extremist group’s de-facto capital, the Financial Times reports.

The move will make it harder for residents to keep in contact with the world beyond ISIS’s self-proclaimed "caliphate," as the only Internet connections left would be accessed through ISIS-controlled internet cafes, according to activists.

Parts of northern Syria, including Aleppo, have been without access to internet since March now.

The group circulated leaflets informing internet providers they had fours days to cut off private wifi connections, according to the Daily Telegraph. “The following is obligatory on all Internet providers: the removal of Wi-Fi connections distributed outside of Internet cafés and private connections, including for Islamic State soldiers,” the leaflet read.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Lebanon survives against all odds in a troubled environment thanks to a remarkable immune system, but that resilience has become an excuse for a dysfunctionality and laissez-faire attitude by its political class that could ultimately prove the country’s undoing. Its Syrian neighbour, conjoined as if a Siamese twin, is drowning in blood, pushing waves of refugees across the border. Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political party and armed movement, has been drawn into an increasingly vicious, costly and desperate regional sectarian struggle. Internally, stakeholders, fearing collapse of a flimsy political equilibrium, have failed to elect a president or empower the prime minister, preferring paralysis to anything they believe might rock the boat. Syria’s conflict is bringing out all kinds of problems, old and new, which in the long term have every chance of proving destabilising. Despite the urgency, expecting bold measures is unrealistic, but politicians could and should take a small number of concrete steps that together would help reduce tensions while waiting the years it may take for the Syrian conflict to abate.

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate has offered to release three Lebanese soldiers in exchange for an ex-wife of the leader of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group and four other female prisoners.Al-Nusra Front, which along with ISIS has held 25 Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage for almost a year, issued the offer in a statement aired on Lebanon’s MTV television on Saturday night.“If five of our sisters leave prison… we will hand over three soldiers in exchange,” said Abu Malek al-Shami, Al-Nusra’s “emir” in the Syrian region of Qalamun bordering Lebanon.