Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros al-Rai arrived in Damascus on Saturday to attend the enthronement of Syria’s Greek Orthodox leader, Yuhanna X Yazigi, Syrian state television said. The Lebanese National News Agency meanwhile reported that Rai would hold mass at the Maronite cathedral in Damascus later in the evening.   The ceremony for the new Greek […]

  BEIRUT: Interior Minister Marwan Charbel quoted Friday Turkish officials as saying the head of the group behind the kidnapping of a Lebanese group in Syria in 2012 has been killed. But a mediator in the case denied Abu Ibrahim is dead. "I have received information from the Turkish side that Abu Ibrahim has been killed […]

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi revealed his intention to visit Damascus on Sunday to take part in the inauguration celebration of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of the Levant and Antioch Youhanna al-Yaziji, the An Nahar daily reported Saturday. Al-Rahi’s revelation came following a mass he held in the city of Tripoli on the occasion of Saint […]

  President Michel Suleiman said Thursday there are instructions not to deport any Syrian to his home country in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “The instructions are not to deport any Syrian to Syria in conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Suleiman on twitter. His tweet came in response to a […]

  BEIRUT: Khalid Hmayyed, the man whose arrest sparked recent clashes between the Lebanese military and gunmen in the eastern town of Arsal, was a member of Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front), a militant Islamist group with ties to Al-Qaeda, the head of Army Intelligence said late Monday.   “The wanted man was very dangerous: a […]

  The Bulgarian government said Tuesday that Hizbullah was behind a bomb attack in July that killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian. "We have information on financing and membership of Hizbullah for two people including the bomber," Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told reporters. "We have well-grounded reasons to suggest that the two were members of the […]

  Again and again, the nettle of civil marriage has poked through to Lebanon’s public sphere, and again and again, politicians have failed to grasp it. The past few weeks have been no exception. Calls for a large rally in Beirut yesterday afternoon in favour of civil marriage were merely the culmination of weeks of […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanon issued Monday an arrest warrant in absentia for Syrian general Ali Mamlouk for his alleged involvement in a plot to carry out terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Investigative Judge Riad Abu Ghayda referred the file to Military Prosecutor Saqr Saqr after completion of the investigation, judicial sources told The Daily Star.   They said […]