Shady Srour sells “Holy Air”, his Nazareth-based film debuting in select American theaters
November 17th, 20170 NAZARETH—“You see them, you love them; they are human like you,” Shady Srour, writer and director of the film “Holy Air”, said about the movie’s two main characters, Adam and Lamia. “They are modern, they want to live.” Srour is a self-described minority inside a minority. He grew up an Arab living in Nazareth. He...
Lebanese president accuses Saudi Arabia of holding Hariri hostage
November 15th, 20170 BEIRUT - France said on Wednesday that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who Lebanon’s president says is being held hostage by Saudi Arabia, will visit France with his family in coming days. Hariri travelled to Riyadh on Nov. 3 before abruptly resigning in a televised statement a day later. He has stayed in Riyadh and top...
Lebanese president won’t accept or reject Hariri’s resignation until he returns home
November 6th, 20170 BEIRUT - Lebanon’s president appealed for national unity on Monday after Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri quit in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia, plunging the coalition government and country into political crisis. After Hariri’s shock announcement, political uncertainty deepened further when Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker said it...
Lebanese PM resigns, saying his life in danger
November 4th, 20170 RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Lebanon's prime minister Saad al-Hariri resigned on Saturday, citing an assassination plot against him and accusing Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world. His resignation thrusts Lebanon back into the frontline of Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry and seems likely to exacerbate...U.S. captures second suspected Benghazi attacker
WASHINGTON ― U.S. forces have captured a militant who is believed to have played a role in a 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, U.S. officials said on Monday. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that U.S....
Lebanese army gets two light-attack aircraft from U.S.
November 3rd, 20170 HAMAT, Lebanon ― The United States delivered two A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Lebanon’s army on Tuesday, a sign of continued U.S. support despite Israeli accusations that the Lebanese military is controlled by Hezbollah. The planes will be used as armed observation aircraft, a security source in Lebanon said, and...
Lebanese court issues death sentence over 1982 Gemayel assassination
October 22nd, 20170 BEIRUT ― Lebanon’s top court on Friday sentenced Habib Shartouni to death for the 1982 assassination of president-elect Bashir Gemayel, an event that was a turning point in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. Shartouni, a member of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP), admitted his part in the bombing in the 1980s and was tried...
Raqqa, ISIS’s Syrian HQ has fallen
October 17th, 20170 RAQQA, Syria ― U.S.-backed militias in Syria have declared victory over ISIS in its capital Raqqa, a milestone in the fight to roll back the theocratic “caliphate” declared in 2014. The city Sunni militant group ISIS overran Raqqa in January 2014, seizing control from rebel factions opposed to the rule of Syrian President Bashar...
Lebanon president: Syrian refugees should return to homeland’s calmer areas
October 16th, 20170 BEIRUT ― Lebanon can no longer handle vast numbers of Syrian refugees, its president said on Monday, urging world powers to help them return to the calmer parts of their war-torn homeland. More than six years into the Syrian war, 1.5 million refugees who fled the violence now account for a quarter of Lebanon’s population. Lebanese...
Woman’s murder prompts mass eviction of Syrians from Lebanese town
October 5th, 20170 MIZIARA, Lebanon ― Abu Khaled had lived in the Lebanese town of Miziara for almost 20 years until a woman’s suspected murder by a Syrian refugee led to his expulsion alongside several hundred other Syrians. “They gave us notice to evict at 2 a.m.,” said Abu Khaled, standing outside a bare building in a nearby village with some...
Syrian militias aim to push ISIS out of Raqqa within a month
September 29th, 20170 RAQQA ― U.S.-backed militias expect to push all ISIS fighters out of their former Syrian headquarters of Raqqa in less than a month, a Kurdish commander told Reuters on Monday. Under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the militias have hemmed the jihadists into a few districts in the north of the city. The Kurdish...
Baghdad piles pressure on Iraqi Kurds to reverse independence vote
September 29th, 20170 BAGHDAD/ERBIL ― Baghdad heaped pressure on Iraq’s Kurds on Wednesday, demanding they cancel their overwhelming vote for independence while parliament urged the Iraqi central government to send troops to take control of vital oil fields held by Kurdish forces. Stepping up efforts to isolate autonomous Kurdish-held northern Iraq,...
Egyptian court hands another life sentence to Muslim Brotherhood leader
September 29th, 20170 CAIRO ― An Egyptian court sentenced top Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie to another life term in prison on Thursday in the latest example of a crackdown against Islamists since the army overthrew President Mohamed Mursi. The sentence relates to violence that broke out in 2013 after the army toppled Mursi in the wake of mass...
Interpol approves membership for State of Palestine over Israeli objections
September 29th, 20170 JERUSALEM ― Interpol voted on Wednesday to admit the State of Palestine as a member over Israeli objections at the international police organization’s general assembly in Beijing. The decision came despite Israeli efforts to delay a vote and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the Palestinians’ joining the...
Germany’s Merkel hangs on to power but bleeds support to surging far right
September 29th, 20170 BERLIN ― German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term in office on Sunday but Europe’s most powerful leader will have to govern with a far less stable coalition in a fractured parliament after her conservatives poured support to a surging far right. Two years after Merkel left German borders open to more than 1 million......
ISIS releases audio recording of Baghdadi urging militants to keep fighting
September 28th, 20170 CAIRO ― ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has exhorted followers across the world to wage attacks against the West and to keep fighting in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. The message released on Thursday was his first purported audio communication in almost a year during which his jihadist group lost much of its self-proclaimed...
If threatened, Trump vows to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea
September 19th, 20170 UNITED NATIONS ― President Trump escalated his standoff with North Korea over its nuclear challenge on Tuesday, threatening to “totally destroy” the country of 26 million people and mocking its leader, Kim Jong Un, as a “rocket man.” In a hard-edged speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump offered a grim portrait...
Home-made bomb injures 22 on packed London commuter train
September 15th, 20171 A home-made bomb on a packed rush-hour commuter train in London engulfed a carriage in flames and injured 22 people on Friday in Britain's fifth major terrorism incident this year, but apparently failed to fully explode. Passengers heading into the British capital fled in panic after the blast as the train was about to depart Parsons...
Lebanon to complain to U.N. over Israel violating airspace
September 14th, 20170 BEIRUT ― Lebanon will file a complaint to the United Nations against Israel for violating the country’s airspace and causing damage by breaking the sound barrier in the south of the country, its foreign minister said on Monday. Israeli jets flew low over the southern city of Saida on Sunday, causing sonic booms that broke windows......
Saudi Arabia’s calls for social media informants decried as ‘Orwellian’
September 14th, 20170 Saudi Arabia ― The Saudi Kingdom has urged its people to report subversive comments spotted on social media via a phone app, a move denounced by a human rights watchdog as “Orwellian”. The appeal, announced on a Twitter account run by the interior ministry late on Tuesday, coincides with an apparent crackdown on potential...
Hezbollah declares Syria victory, Russia says much of country won back
September 13th, 20170 BEIRUT/MOSCOW — The Lebanese group Hezbollah has declared victory in the Syrian war while Russia said government forces had driven militants from much of the country where President Bashar al-Assad’s rule seemed in danger two years ago. The comments from two Syrian government allies mark the most confident assessments yet of......
Nasrallah declares victory: Lebanon fully liberated from ISIS terrorists
September 3rd, 20170 BEIRUT —A convoy of ISIS fighters and their families left the Lebanon-Syria border region on Monday under Syrian military escort, surrendering their enclave and traveling to eastern Syria after a week-long battle. A line of ambulances and buses were shown on Syrian state television driving slowly through the arid countryside, the...
ISIS forced out form Lebanon-Syria border, Nasrallah declares victory
August 29th, 20170 BEIRUT - A convoy of ISIS fighters and their families left the Lebanon-Syria border region on Monday under Syrian military escort, surrendering their enclave and traveling to eastern Syria after a week-long battle. A line of ambulances and buses were shown on Syrian state television driving slowly through the arid countryside, the......
