WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to mount two risky capture raids against Al Qaeda operatives in North Africa reflects a reduced role for lethal CIA drone strikes and a growing role for the Pentagon in leading counter-terrorism operations, U.S. officials said Sunday. In storming the coastal Somalia home of a leader of Shabab, the […]

President Michel Suleiman’s repeated denials that he is seeking the extension of his term does not mean that this possibility has been taken off the table, diplomatic sources told the Kuwaiti daily al-Anba on Sunday. They said that his term, which ends in 2014, may indeed be extended until the Syrian crisis is resolved. Foreign […]

By Brooke Anderson The Daily Star

KAWEISHRA, Lebanon: The Turkish-language signs and red flags bearing white crescents and stars in this small mountainous village might make you think you’ve made a wrong turn. In fact, you’ve just entered the town of Kaweishra – Kavashra in Turkish – one of Lebanon’s few Turkmen villages.

“We’re the last Turkmen village where everyone still speaks Turkish,” Kaweishra mayor Mustafa Khodar says, sitting at the local Turkish restaurant Yildizlar, one of several local businesses inspired by his ancestral homeland.

BEIRUT: The Beirut Municipal Council’s first public hearing to discuss urban planning Wednesday ended in a heated debate over a controversial plan to build an underground parking lot in Ashrafieh’s Jesuit Park. Signs written in English welcomed members of the public to the “town hall meeting,” where council members presented a series of projects aimed […]

The State Department says all non-emergency workers who were ordered out of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut last month are being allowed to return to their jobs. The department told all non-essential U.S. personnel to leave Lebanon on Sept. 6 because of fears that an American-led strike on neighboring Syria would unleash more bloodshed in […]

BEIRUT: The administration of the Beirut International Film Festival announced in a Thursday press release that Lebanon’s censor has denied permission to screen the Lebanese short “Wahibatouka al-Moutaa” (“I Offered You Pleasure”) and the French feature “L’Inconnu du Lac” (Stranger by the Lake). The 13th edition of the festival commenced Wednesday evening and will close […]

Big on promises but light on details, the Beirut Municipality unveiled numerous plans to improve the city Wednesday evening at a town hall meeting open to professionals by invitation only. Despite the hand-picked crowd of around 70 people, disputes still arose, but city council members showed little will to back down on two particularly controversial […]

The United States Capitol was placed on lockdown Thursday afternoon after a woman tried to ram a car into the White House gate, was chased by Secret Service and exchanged shots with police, sources said. The suspect — who sources said had a child in the car — was shot and killed, and a shelter-in-place […]

An obligation to the fallen, the survivors and the families involved in the 1983 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon. Tuesday, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Swansboro, Doolittle began a daily 12.5-mile walk in and around Jacksonville — and he will continue over the next 22 days, ending at Lejeune Memorial Gardens on Oct. […]

BEIRUT — Um Ali is one of more than a million Syrians who have fled the country since 2011, when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began. She left Aleppo with her husband and son four months ago to join her sister, mother and other family in Lebanon. Her son had just turned 18 — […]