Lebanon

24 Mar 2023; MEMO: A federal judge in New York has ordered Iran's Central Bank and a European intermediary to pay $1.68 billion in compensation to the family members of US Marines killed in the 1983 bomb attack on their barracks in Beirut, Reuters has reported.

BEIRUT (AP) — Saudi Arabia is in talks with Syria to reopen its embassy in the war-torn nation for the first time in a decade, state television in the kingdom reported late Thursday, the latest diplomatic reshuffling in the region.

23 Mar 2023; MEMO: Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, said Thursday that "the situation requires a quick emergency operation to save the country," stressing that the solution is to elect a president, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Mikati met with Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, at the assembly's headquarters in Beirut, according to a statement by Berri's office.

BEIRUT, Mar 23 (NNN-NNA) – The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), yesterday launched a project, with 2.2 million U.S. dollars in grant financing, to help revitalise the cultural life in Lebanon.

Implemented by UN-Habitat, the BERYT project is financed by the Lebanon Financing Facility (LFF), a multi-donor trust fund, administered by the World Bank, and UNESCO Beirut will oversee the implementation of the cultural and creative industries component.

BEIRUT (AP) — On a recent school day, the Rene Mouawad High School in Beirut was empty, its classrooms dark, just like all of Lebanon’s public schools have been for most of the past three months. Its striking teachers were protesting in front of the Education Ministry, not far away.

15 Mar 2023; MEMO: Lebanon's veteran Central Bank head, Riad Salameh, did not attend a hearing on Wednesday into accusations of embezzling public money after his lawyer objected to the presence of European investigators, two sources said, Reuters reports.

BEIRUT (AP) — Israeli missiles targeted a western Syrian city on Sunday wounding three Syrian soldiers, Syrian state media reported.

The official news agency SANA, citing a military source, said the missiles were fired at Masyaf in Hama province at dawn. Syria’s air defenses shot several of them down.

Syrian state media did not report any deaths.

7 Mar 2023; MEMO: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a "serious investigation" into the disastrous 2020 Beirut port explosion in a call that was echoed by dozens of other countries on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

BEIRUT, Mar 5 (NNN-XINHUA) – In the past weeks, since the massive earthquake hit Türkiye and Syria on Feb 6, Ebtisam Antar, a mother of two in Lebanon’s neighbouring Syria, goes to bed every night with intense fear that the roof of her 50-year-old house may fall over her head.

She told Xinhua that the quake on Feb 6, caused cracks in the wall of her balcony before another one two days later led to more fissures in her daughter’s bedroom.

BEIRUT, Mar 2 (NNN-NNA) – The Palestinian embassy in Beirut, yesterday denied an Israeli press report, claiming that, it is recruiting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to fight in Ukraine.

“The embassy is keen to strongly deny this insidious news, which is not surprising, as the source is one of the usurping entity’s media channels,” the embassy was quoted as saying.

The Israeli newspaper, Jerusalem Post, reported that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are being recruited to fight in Ukraine, by activists linked to the Palestinian Embassy in Lebanon, said the report.