BEIRUT (AFP) – A Lebanese judge turned down a request to release two of four high-ranking security officials detained for their alleged role in the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri, a judicial source told AFP. Investigating magistrate Elias Eid turned down the request by lawyers representing former head of Lebanese military intelligence Raymond Azar and the head of President Emile Lahoud’s presidential guard, Mustafa Hamdan.They were arrested in August along with former general security chief Jamil al-Sayed and ex-internal security head Ali al-Hage following recommendations made by an initial UN probe into Hariri’s February killing.

SULTAN YACOUB, Lebanon (Reuters) – Three gunmen pop up behind some rocks near Lebanon’s rugged border with Syria.  "Go back. This area is off limits," one bellows down the hillside, which conceals a network of tunnels used by a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction to shelter weapons and fighters.A roadside bomb made from an artillery shell and connected to a wire peeks out of a small ditch near the entrance to the base controlled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), ready to repel any attack.

Hidden in remote valleys or perched on strategic hills, guerrilla positions run by Damascus-based Palestinian groups dot Lebanon’s frontier with Syria, among the last remnants of its military and political domination of its smaller neighbor. Lebanese have long turned a blind eye to these posts, but they have been in the spotlight since a U.N. resolution last year demanded foreign troops withdraw from Lebanon and militias — a reference to Palestinian factions and Hizbollah — disarm.

 Syria has called through its state-controlled Damascus daily Tishreen for a massive demonstration in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Thursday, to overthrow premier Fouad Siniora’s government. The call was widely dubbed by the Lebanese media as a flagrant intervention in Lebanon’s domestic affairs in defiance of the global pressure on the Al-Asad regime to take its […]

Beirut, 15 Nov. (AKI) – The leader of Lebanon’s largest opposition party, General Michel Auon, was set on Monday to begin an official visit to the United States, a trip in which the former prime minister is expected to try to win Washington’s backing of his candidature in any eventual presidential election in Lebanon. "Aoun was formally invited by the American authorities, but for the moment we cannot provide any detail on the length of the visit or the meetings which the General will hold with officials in Washington," Aoun’s spokeswoman, May Aql, told Adnkronos International (AKI).

Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement won 21 seats in parliamentary elections in May, is seen as a possible successor to Lebanon’s besieged president, Emile Lahoud. While his term in office only expires in 2007. "What is certain is that during this trip Aoun will try to establish direct, high level contacts with American officials ahead of eventual presidential elections," says Saad Kiwan, a journalist with the Lebanese newspaper, as-Safir, told AKI. Aoun returned to Lebanon just before the May elections after spending almost 15 years in exile in Paris. He fled Lebanon in 1991 after Syrian troops defeated his forces during one of the closing battles of Lebanon’s civil war.

BEIRUT, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Lebanon detained on Monday a Lebanese Muslim cleric accused of carrying out acts of terrorism on the orders of a Syrian intelligence officer, a judicial source said. The source said the Syrian officer had ordered Sheikh Hassan Mazloum to carry out bomb attacks and shootings in Lebanon, but did not […]

TEHRAN, Nov. 13 (MNA) — Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora urged Iran on Sunday to act as an intermediary between Lebanon and Syria, the Al-Manar television network quoted informed sources as saying. He made the call in a meeting with Masud Edrisi, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.  Siniora noted that the Middle East is in […]

CTV.ca News StaffResidents of a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia neighbourhood woke up Sunday morning to anti-Lebanese graffiti scrawled on more than 20 businesses and homes stretching across several blocks. Many of them began working quickly to remove the offensive messages from the walls.The messages contained racial slurs and politically charged statements, many too offensive to publish. They were hand-written in magic marker and appeared to be carefully conceived and well-scripted.

"Isn’t it nice how their children mix with the white folks of Halifax," read one of the messages. Another claimed that local Lebanese-Canadian owned businesses are "turning the neighbourhoods into ghettos."A representative of local Lebanese Canadian business owners told CTV he is concerned the racist graffiti could just be the beginning. "It’s a very personal attack on the Lebanese people in general, and the Lebanese business people," said Sid Chedrawe, from the Canadian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce. "The unknown is will they keep it to writing on the walls and defacing property or will they take it a step further."

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Kenya’s Francis Kamau won the Beirut International Marathon on Sunday in 2 hours, 19 minutes, 20 seconds. Kamau was followed by last year’s winner, Eshetu Bekele of Ethiopia, in 2:19:38. Petrus Jacobs of South Africa was third in 2:20:26. More than 17,000 runners from 77 countries took part.

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BAALBEK, Lebanon, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Hundreds of people demonstrated on the streets of the ancient Lebanese town of Baalbek on Saturday, blocking roads with burning tyres to protest against rising heating fuel prices.Chanting "Heating fuel, people are dying" and anti-government slogans, the demonstrators blocked the main highway leading to the town in the eastern […]

All eyes are fixed on Syria following Security Council Resolution 1636 calling on Damascus to fully cooperate with UN Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis’s investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri. But political powerbrokers in Lebanon are wasting no time preparing for the implications of this pressure on Lebanon’s future.

In Lebanon, the presidential race is back in the news, as well as speculations about the location and format of an international or local trial of suspects in the crime. The question of the presidency took on an unexpected twist as news circulated of a possible meeting between embattled President Emile Lahoud and primary candidate for the post Michael Aoun.

A meeting that did take place between high-profile Christian leaders former president Amin Gemayel and freed Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea to discuss the presidency file had considered the possibility of a national conference to form a consensus on the issue. Aoun has not ruled out any negotiations between him and other factions on this file, but he seemed less keen on tackling the subject at this point in time, and he told the BBC he will not vote for any other candidate if other parliamentary blocs don’t support his nomination.