Beirut, 14 Dec. (AKI) – Nineteen-year-old Samer Qays, on Wednesday refused to join the thousands who on turned out to pay their last respects to murdered anti-Syrian politician Gibran Tueni. While Beirut’s Christian districts came to a standstill for the funeral procession, life in the city’s eastern, mostly Hezbollah dominated areas, like Qays’s neighbourhood Haret Hreik, went on as usual. "Joining the procession today means believing the lies fabricated by the Israelis and the Americans," said Qays.
"Our martyrs are not those who work for the Americans," he said, pointing to the photographs of Hezbollah fighters killed in clashes with the Israeli army. "Syria has nothing to do with the attack against that journalist (Tueni), it is Israel that killed him."Sharing this view is Abu Abbas, 67, a Shiite Muslim jeweller, whose shop is situated in the main street of Ghbeiri, a district near to Haret Hreik. "Israel is behind all this, there is no doubt on that," says Abu Abbas, adding that it is the "Israelis who want to control Lebanon," and not the Syrians. But another Ghbeir resident, Wassim al-Utr, 35, disagrees. "I think it was the Syrians [who killed Tueni]. Syria will not leave the country (Lebanon) without leaving it in flames".
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hundred of thousands of Lebanese bid farewell on Wednesday to anti-Syrian publisher and lawmaker Gebran Tueni, turning his funeral into an outpouring of anger against Damascus, which they blame for his murder.Tueni’s assassination on Monday has caused serious political rifts in Lebanon, bringing the government to the verge of collapse.
BEIRUT -Once a sleepy backwater where a whole day could pass without a single share changing hands, the Beirut bourse has shaken off political turmoil to approach new highs, as petrodollars flow in from the booming Arab Gulf.Beirut
BEIRUT, Dec 13 (Reuters) – It has become all too familiar in Lebanon. An anti-Syrian politician or journalist is killed, condemnations pour in from friends and foes alike, the funeral attracts thousands, while officials urge unity. Yet the longer a U.N. inquiry into the murder of ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri drags on, the more every assassination threatens to rekindle sectarian divisions between the mostly Shi’ite Muslim supporters of Damascus and its Christian, Sunni and Druze opponents. 
SYDNEY, Australia — Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Monday condemned a day and night of race riots in Sydney’s beachside suburbs, but said he did not believe Australian society had an undercurrent of racism. Howard was speaking as police formed a strike force to track down the instigators of the running battles that involved drunken mobs of white men yelling racial slurs, young men of Lebanese descent and hundreds of police. 
Beirut – The Lebanese cabinet decided late Monday to call on the United Nations to investigate a wave of killings of anti-Syrian individuals and to form an international court to investigate the murder of former premier Rafik Hariri. Pro-Syrian Hezbollah and Amal deputies suspended their participation in the Lebanese government to protest a vote calling for an international tribunal and to ‘widen the mission of the U.N. investigative team to cover all the assassinations that took place since October 2004’. 
December 12: Prominent anti-Syrian MP and journalist Gibran Tueni and three others are killed in a car bomb attack as they travel through the Mekallis area of eastern Beirut. 
