Reporter Rebecca Collard

Ali Nasri Shamas holds a Kalashnikov assault rifle outside his hashish factory in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Shamas says the region’s hash growers are ready to turn their weapons against any Islamic militants crossing the border from Syria. Credit: Rebecca Collard

Mia Khalife

BEIRUT — Lebanon is a small country with a population of just four million people, so when one of its own achieves success on the world stage it’s usually a cause for celebration.

But it appears there may be exceptions to the rule. The country that reacted with an outpouring of national pride when human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin (now Clooney) became a household name last year is not quite sure how to deal with the news that a Lebanese-American has become one of the most popular porn stars in the world.

Twenty-one-year-old Mia Khalifa, who was born in Lebanon but now lives in Miami, Florida, recently became the most searched for adult performer on the website PornHub.

Khalifa’s achievement has caused a bit of a stir in Lebanon, becoming a main topic of conversation on social media in the past few days. Some didn’t approve.

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  BEIRUT: Lebanon halted maritime traffic in its southern ports of Sidon and Tyre as a result of violent winds from an incoming storm which destroyed orchards, caused property damage and knocked out Internet in parts of the country Tuesday. Air traffic, however, was still operating normally. Fruits that had been blown off their tree […]

  The United States has expressed concern over a decision for Syrians to obtain visas that sharply limit the time they can stay in Lebanon but Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas reiterated that no Syrian would be deported from the country under the new rules. “We are very concerned new visa requirements for Syrians entering […]

  BEIRUT: ISIS and Nusra Front militants holed up in Syria’s Qalamoun area on the border with Lebanon do not exceed 3,000 and are too weak to wage a large-scale assault on the country, a report said Tuesday. “The efforts of the terrorists are currently focused on surviving (winter) storms and snow, a matter that […]

• Nicholas Blanford, Christian Science Monitor

A slump in global oil prices and nuclear-tied sanctions are squeezing the group’s patron Iran, which is already funneling billions of dollars to the Syrian regime.

As Iran tightens its belt, Hezbollah has had to impose salary cuts on personnel, defer payments to suppliers and reduce monthly stipends to its political allies in Lebanon, according to a wide range of political and diplomatic sources in Beirut, including friends and foes of the powerful Shiite party.

The financial difficulties do not pose an immediate threat to Hezbollah’s political and popular standing in Lebanon. Moreover, the flow of Iranian largesse is controlled by Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran’s supreme leader, and isn’t part of the government’s oil-dependent budget.

But the belt-tightening underlines just how reliant Hezbollah is on Iranian largesse to pay its ever increasing army of fighters, as well as to bankroll its massive social welfare network of schools and hospitals upon which much of its Shiite support base depends.

In the summer of 216 BC, during the Second Punic War, the Carthaginian military leader Hannibal, after his epic crossing of the Alps, led his numerically inferior army into a battle that would end with 50,000 Roman infantry killed.  The Battle of Cannae effectively destroyed the Roman army as a fighting force.

• Rishi Iyengar @iyengarrishi

The human-rights lawyer, who married Hollywood actor George Clooney last year, said the incident that led to an arrest warning from Egyptian authorities had nothing to do with her representation of Mohamed Famy

Amal Clooney, the international human-rights lawyer currently representing jailed al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Famy, called for his release in an op-ed on Sunday, while also clearing up a recent report that she was threatened with arrest by authorities in Egypt, where Famy is currently detained.

The op-ed, published by the Huffington Post and co-authored by Famy’s other counsel Mark Wassouf, expresses reservations against the proposed retrial of Famy following the cancellation of his and two colleagues’ jail sentences. “A re-trial process is lengthy and its outcome is uncertain,” the op-ed reads. “It is also not clear how a new process would fix any of the deficiencies in the original trial.”

by Matthew Olson – via: commdiginews.com FORT SMITH, Ark., January 4, 2015 – Lebanon, where Christians have concrete power in government, is America’s greatest friend in the Middle East. Under the Lebanese system, Maronite Catholic Christians control the presidency and the armed forces, while the Prime Minister is Sunni and leadership of the parliament belongs […]

  Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas has said new regulations to impose visa restrictions on Syrians are aimed at differentiating between refugees and visitors. The authorities are compelled to “organize the entry and exit of Syrians as part of the implementation of the new security strategy,” Derbas told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat in remarks published […]