BEIRUT: Residents across Tripoli, Sidon, Beirut and Tyre gathered near Lebanon’s coast Sunday as an NGO that calls itself Beirut Celebrations attempted to form a human chain stretching from the northern city of Tripoli down to the southern city of Tyre. In Beirut, a mass of people gathered near the Al Hammam Al Aaskary […]

  BEIRUT: Police arrested Tuesday a gang operating in the southern city of Sidon that steals mobile phone SIMs from shops, the Internal Security Forces announced in a statement. Based on information about people selling extraordinarily cheap phone lines in Sidon, police arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who admitted to stealing and selling SIMs and […]

By Marta Jiménez

Istanbul, Turkey, Dec 1, 2014 / 02:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Living as a Catholic in the majority Muslim country of Turkey can be difficult, but it can also be a blessing and a call to witness, says Mexican priest Father Ruben Tierrablanca Gonzalez. A Franciscan friar who has served for 11 years at St. Mary Draperis Parish in Istanbul, Fr. Tierrablanca spoke with CNA Nov. 27. “Living as a Christian in Turkey is a huge challenge and a grace,” Fr. Tierrablanca said. “A grace because we live where the Church has its roots and the presence of Christians is important, since God himself wanted his Church to expand here. And a challenge because it has become de-Christianized, in terms of population. We are very few.”

“We are a minority within a religious minority,” the priest explained. “Of the 100,000 Christians in Turkey, 65 percent are Armenians and Catholics number only 25,000.” Christians came to Turkey 2,000 years ago, centuries before the birth of Islam. The early Christian communities in Asia Minor were founded largely as the result of St. John’s preaching in Ephesus, St. Philip’s in Hierapolis, and St. Andrew, who is considered the evangelizer of the region. Today, however, Christians are the minority in Turkey, where some 98 percent of the country is Muslim.

By Paul Wood, BBC

The Lebanese army’s Brig Gen Ali Mourad got a WhatsApp message from the Islamic State (IS). It was short and to the point. "We are the heroes of Qalamoun," it said, referring to the mountains on Syria’s border with Lebanon, "and we’re going to kill you."

Gen Mourad has a robust attitude to this threat.

"We want them to come, these terrorists," he told me, at one of the heavily fortified positions paid for by the British government.

"We are waiting for them [here].

"When we see them, we shoot them, all the time."

We were at Tango Ten, the 10th of 12 new posts built so far with UK money and expertise along Lebanon’s border with Syria. It looked down over a dusty plain to the snow-covered mountain that is controlled by various jihadist groups and used by them as a base to launch attacks.

The Lebanese soldiers at Tango Ten say they come under fire almost every night. They used to crouch behind a few tyres filled with concrete, "eyes like saucers, gripping the 50-cal [heavy machine gun," said one of the former British army officers advising the Lebanese. Now they have proper defences, and morale is good.

Tango Ten had shades of Northern Ireland in the guard tower and Afghanistan in the Hesco barriers – which are earth-filled defensive walls. There was even a fleet of Land Rovers parked inside. The UK has spent some £20m to stop the jihadists from invading Lebanon.

  BEIRUT: The Maharat Foundation, a media watchdog, slammed Monday a policy that forces detained bloggers and Internet activists to sign a “promise of silence” before being releases, saying such documents violated freedom of speech. Bloggers who are detained after a government official or a company file a complaint over comments on social media are […]

  BEIRUT: The biggest obstacle facing Lebanon’s economy lies in the fall of oil prices, which reduces the remittances it receives from Gulf countries, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh said. But he said the bank is introducing measures to prevent a crisis from erupting. “The most notable of economic challenges that Lebanon and the Lebanese […]

  Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi said politicians and judicial authorities were to blame for the procrastination to take into trial Islamist inmates at Roumieh prison. Rifi told al-Liwaa daily published on Monday that he came up with a plan to speed up their trials. “It is our duty to fix the flaws,” he said about […]

Reuters and Hunter Walker

An Egyptian court on Saturday dropped its case against ousted president Hosni Mubarak on charges of ordering the killing of protesters during the 2011 revolt that removed him from power.

About 800 people were estimated to have been killed as Mubarak’s security forces fought protesters prior to his resignation in February 2011. However, the charges against Mubarak only relate to the deaths of 239 protesters whose names were listed on court documents. 

Mubarak was initially convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for ordering the deaths of the protesters. That ruling was overturned on appeal and a retrial was ordered. 

The murder charges were made against Mubarak, his interior minister Habib el-Adly, and six top police officials who reported to el-Adly. The court also dropped the charges against El-Adly and his six aides.

Mubarak’s lawyers argued he was unaware of the full extent of the protests or the violent crackdown against them. Since his initial sentencing, Mubarak has claimed to have suffered a series of health problems and has been wheeled in to many of his court appearances on a hospital bed. 

  A French Foreign Ministry official is scheduled to arrive in Lebanon in early December to discuss the latest developments linked to the presidential elections, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday. It said that Director of the department of the Middle East and North Africa in the French Foreign Ministry Jean-Francois Giroud is expected […]

Vatican City, Nov 29, 2014 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During Pope Francis’ visit to Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, he paused for a moment of prayer alongside Ankara’s Grand Mufti – a moment of “interreligious dialogue” which mirrored that of his predecessor. “When they were under the Dome, the Pope insisted: ‘not only must we praise and glorify him, but we must adore him,’” Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. told journalists Nov. 29. “Therefore it is reasonable to qualify this moment of silence a moment of silent adoration.”

“(It was) a beautiful moment of interreligious dialogue, and it the exact same thing happened in 2006 with Pope Benedict, it was exactly the same.” Fr. Lombardi offered his statement to the head of the Holy See Press Office association of journalists by telephone. The message was then relayed to the journalists present in the press center in Istanbul. Pope Francis’ visit to the historic Sultan Ahmet Mosque, known as the “Blue Mosque” due to the blue tiles covering the inside, marks the third time a Pope has ever gone inside, the first being St. John Paul II in 1979.

In his statement, Fr. Lombardi said that upon his arrival, the Roman Pontiff was greeted in the Mosque’s garden by a group of 50-60 people coming from different Christian communities – including Latin, Coptic, Syro and Armenian – as well as their bishops. President of the Turkish Episcopal Conference Bishop Smirme Franceschini offered a welcoming address before the Pope went inside.