BEIRUT (Reuters) – A U.N. team investigating the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri will ask for an extension of its mandate until mid-December, the Lebanese premier said on Sunday.A U.N. team led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis is due to report to the Security Council by October 25 on the February assassination which plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.The Security Council has already extended the inquiry’s original three-month deadline once but Mehlis now looks set to ask for more time.
"I think (Mehlis) will take all the necessary measures so his mission continues until December 15, which was the period originally assigned to him by the Security Council," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters, giving no explanation. The Security Council ordered the U.N. investigation after a fact-finding mission concluded Lebanon was incapable of conducting a credible inquiry of its own.It gave Mehlis three months but he was allowed to ask for a maximum of three extra months, taking the probe to mid-December.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon has asked 11 countries and the United Nations to help train its security forces after a string of bombings and assassinations that have fuelled fears of a slide into chaos, the prime minister said on Thursday. "We have knocked on the doors of all the countries that could help us," Fouad Siniora told a news conference after the cabinet’s weekly meeting. "We are not facing an ordinary criminal…But we will gather all the tools, training and expertise we can obtain to live up to the challenge," he said. The countries which have responded positively to Lebanon’s plea were the United States, France, Russia, Egypt and Qatar, Siniora said. The government has also asked for help from six other states including Britain, Canada and China. Twelve explosions have rocked Lebanon since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which plunged the country into its worst political and security crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
DUBAI
BEIRUT – Defence Minister Elias Murr said insecurity in Lebanon was so rife that he has had to take refuge abroad, as Beirut prepares to seek US and French aid in bringing a halt to a series of bomb attacks. "I’m fed up after what happened to May Chidiac. We are all in the same boat," Murr said late Monday in a LBC television interview from Zurich. Chidiac, a leading Christian news presenter and political talk show host on LBC, was maimed when a bomb planted in her car blew up on the northern outskirts of Beirut on Sunday. Murr said he had been based in Zurich ever since a failed attempt on his life on July 12. And he has not resided full-time in Lebanon since January due to security fears, the minister revealed. He said he had had a fierce row with Syria’s military intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, before Syrian troops withdrew in April after a 29-year presence amid outrage over former premier Rafiq Hariri’s assassination.Ghazaleh figures among the Syrian officials on a witness list of a UN commission of inquiry into Hariri’s killing in a huge bomb blast. "I got information on threats against me personally," Murr told LBC.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon will ask the United States and France to help train its security forces following a string of bombings and assassinations that have fueled fears the country is sliding back into chaos. Prominent anti-Syrian news anchor May Chidiac was seriously wounded when her car exploded north of Beirut on Sunday, raising fears of more violence as Lebanon awaits the findings of a U.N. probe into the killing of a former prime minister.A close aide to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told Reuters the government would ask the Americans and French to help instruct its security services and provide logistical support."The issue has been on the government’s agenda and a list of needs has been made, but it is more urgent now after Sunday’s attack," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
BEIRUT (AFP) – A prominent Lebanese Christian journalist May Chidiac with the television station LBC has been seriously wounded as a bomb ripped apart her car north of Beirut, the private station said. May Chidiac, a presenter of news and a political programme for the station, was "wounded in the feet by the explosion of a bomb placed in her car" in Jounieh, it said Sunday."May’s condition is serious. She has had a hand and her left leg amputated," it said.The station said the bomb was placed under her car seat and the explosion occurred as Chidiac was driving out of a parking lot. "The car was ripped apart by the blast which was followed by a fire," it said.The explosion follows a string of bombings in the Lebanese capital in the wake of the February murder of billionaire ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and 20 other people in a huge blast.On September 17, one person was killed and 28 wounded in a bombing in a Christian section of Beirut. The blast struck just before midnight in a small side street in the Jeitawi quarter of east Beirut.It was the 12th bomb attack in Lebanon since the Hariri assassination. 
KIEV-ASTANA, September 24. KAZINFORM. – Up to 10 Ukrainian peacekeepers were involved in the fuel and money fraud in Lebanon, Acting Defence Minister Anatoly Gritsenko told journalists on Friday. According to him, the guilty will be sacked and some will stand trial. "There are grounds to believe that somebody will end up in jail," the Ukrainian acting defence minister said, Kazinform quotes Itar-Tass.
A1 Team Lebanon, the first ever national racing team to represent the country in international motor racing, took to the race track at Brands Hatch today for the first day of the inaugural A1 Grand Prix race weekend. Completing two practice sessions, the team’s two drivers, Basil Shaaban and Khalil Beschir, each took a turn behind the wheel for A1 Team Lebanon. Shaaban drove the A1 race car in the first session, with dry weather providing the young Lebanese with a good opportunity to gain more experience with the car and familiarize himself with the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. For the second session the weather changed drastically, with heavy rain at the start. Beschir took over driving duties, but the rain, and a number of red flags due to track incidents, forced him to a limited number of laps.
