Al-Hayat: Blanford told Mirza names of Lebanon’s TIME reporters

TIME magazine reporter Nicholas Blanford told Attorney General Judge Said Mirza during their meeting last week the names of TIME reporters working in Lebanon, Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Friday based on unnamed sources. (more…)

Syria’s Assad on the Ropes?

By: Patrick Seale
President Bashar al-Assad is fighting for his political life, perhaps even for life itself. His brutal repression of the protest movement in Syria has earned him international condemnation.

US sanctions forced Syria to stop all US dollar transactions

Syrians will have to tighten their belts if protests against President Bashar Al-Assad remain unabated and US and European sanctions bite, the country’s top banker told AFP in an interview.

“It will be more and more difficult because of sanctions and the events. We will have to tighten our belts,” said Adib Mayaleh, the governor of Syria’s Central Bank. (more…)

Political Cartoonist , Ali Farzat is brutally beaten in Syria

Beirut, Lebanon — Masked gunmen severely beat Syria’s best-known political cartoonist on Thursday, breaking his hand and leaving him to bleed on the side of a road in Damascus, activists said. (more…)

Some in Iran urge caution in aiding Assad

BEIRUT, Lebanon – The European Union imposed new sanctions on Iran’s elite al-Quds Force, clandestine arm of the Revolutionary Guards, for helping Syrian President Bashar Assad, Tehran’s strategic ally, crush a 5-month-old insurrection. (more…)

Fatfat: Hezbollah is hiding its indicted members

March 14 MP Ahmad Fatfat said that Hezbollah’s denial of the TIME interview with one of four Hezbollah members indicted in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri means that Hezbollah knows where the indicted people are and is hiding them. (more…)

Cheney says he advised Bush to bomb Syria, report

Former Vice President Dick Cheney writes in his new memoir that President George W. Bush rejected his advice in 2007 to bomb a suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Cheney says he was “a lone voice” for military action against Syria. (more…)

Apple’s Steve Jobs: “Unfortunately, that day has come”

Ever since his surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, Steve Jobs has dismissed questions about his health as irrelevant. In a manner both imperious and, given the circumstances, understandable, Jobs said that he would know if or when he was unable to fully execute his duties as Apple’s (AAPL) chief executive officer. “Unfortunately, that day has come,” wrote Jobs to the company’s board of directors and “the Apple Community” on Aug. 24. (more…)

3 Druze Sheiks attacked by armed men at a cemetery in Beirut

Armed men entered on Wednesday the cemetery of the Druze in Beirut and assaulted three Druze Sheikhs, National News Agency reported on Wednesday (more…)

Earthquake-damaged Washington Monument closes indefinitely

Visitors to one of the capital’s most iconic monuments — the Washington Monument — are out of luck: The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that was centered in Virginia on Tuesday and rocked the East Coast from the Carolinas on up to Boston and beyond also caused lasting damage to the world’s tallest obelisk. (more…)