A militant group issued a rare apology Saturday for a twin suicide bombing in Beirut that killed eight people and wounded dozens, including children from a nearby orphanage. The al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades issued the statement on militant websites apologizing for civilian deaths. It said a "technical fault" affected the second of two […]

    The privatization of public sectors would boost economic output and public access to services, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said Saturday. “We need to think seriously about re-studying subsidies policies in addition to adopting the right privatization methods in some sectors to improve productivity and reduce the burden for citizens,” he said. This is the […]

  President Michel Suleiman thanked on Monday Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, for Doha’s role in the release in Syria of more than a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns.   A Baabda Palace statement said that during phone conversations, Suleiman also thanked the Syrian government and other parties involved in the release of the […]

Washington D.C., Mar 7, 2014 / 03:13 pm (CNA).- A Catholic bishop and a Baptist pastor urged members of the U.S. Senate to address the “dire situation” facing Christians in the Middle East, proposing a special religious freedom envoy to the region. mIncreased “religious hostilities” around the world, “but particularly in the Middle East” leads Bishop Richard E. Pates and Dr. Russell D. Moore to “believe that a Special Envoy is needed to focus on the dire situation affecting religious minorities.”

Among the minority groups, Christians are “most targeted for harassment and attacks in the largest number of countries,” the authors said in a March 4 letter to Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mike Lee of Utah. Bishop Pates, of Des Moines, Iowa, is the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, and Moore serves as the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The religious figures encouraged Sens. Coburn and Lee to hold a vote on a senate bill to create a Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia. The senators have placed a hold on the bill, citing concerns over creating a new office when a religious freedom diplomatic position already exists that has remained vacant. The position of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom has remained unfilled since Suzan Cook resigned from the position in Oct. 2013.

  Maaloula is a Syrian town located 50Km North of Damascus. It is situated at an altitude of more than 1500 meters and is considered the most important Christian site in Syria and one of the very few remaining villages in the world that still speak Aramaic. Maaloula is a town where the language of […]

  Qatar’s intelligence chief and a Lebanese General Security team crossed into Syria on Sunday from the Bekaa town of Arsal to receive the Maalula nuns who will be freed by their abductors, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. “Qatari intelligence chief Ghanim al-Kubaisi and a General Security delegation have crossed Arsal towards the Syrian border ahead […]

  MIT was mourning on Friday the loss of a 23-year-old graduate student, who was found dead in his university-owned residence in Cambridge Thursday night, officials said. Hadi Kasab of Saida, Lebanon, was a second-year graduate student in MIT’s program in computation for design and optimization, the school said Friday. His body was found in his room […]

  Judicial police arrested over the weekend a 21-year-old man who posted a picture on the internet of himself kissing a statue of the Virgin Mary. In a statement, the Internal Security Forces said it apprehended Ali Itawi, a Lebanese citizen, in Beirut’s southern suburbs on March 9. The arrest came after President Michel Sleiman asked the […]

  Protesters took to the streets of Beirut Saturday on International Women’s Day to demand better protection for women amid an uproar over husbands murdering their wives. Artists perform as they hold up figures depicting the likeness of a couple during a sit-in in front of Beirut’s national museum against domestic violence against women, marking […]

  Protesters took to the streets of Beirut Saturday on International Women’s Day to demand better protection for women amid an uproar over husbands murdering their wives.   The march by some 4,000 women, men and children from the National Museum to the Palace of Justice, was led by mothers and other relatives of women […]