Source: Washington Post

The official website of the Kataeb Party leader
The Israeli military said Monday it carried out a series of airstrikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa area, hitting what it described as Hezbollah training camps used by the group’s elite Radwan Force to prepare attacks against Israel.
Monday, October 6, 2025
Lebanon has stepped up efforts to secure the extradition of Russian national Igor Grechushkin, owner of the ship RHOSUS that carried the ammonium nitrate linked to the 2020 Beirut port explosion, dispatching Judge Mirna Kallas of the Public Prosecution Office at the Court of Cassation to Bulgaria to provide formal assurances that he will not face the death penalty if returned to Lebanon.
Monday, October 6, 2025
Nearly a year after the end of Syria’s civil war and the fall of the Assad dictatorship, the country has embarked on a long and complex reconstruction process. The destruction is staggering: entire neighborhoods lie in rubble and basic infrastructure (roads, power grids, and water systems) has collapsed, and public institutions are dysfunctional. Millions of Syrians remain displaced inside and outside the country, schools and hospitals are incapacitated, and what remains of the economy is crippled by unemployment, inflation, and the lingering impact of sanctions (even as many have lately been eased). Ongoing sectarian violence and a deepening humanitarian disaster, with more than 14.5 million Syrians facing food insecurity, compound the crisis. As the international community re-engages in Syria, reconstruction will require many hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and investment as well as assistance to restore governance, security, and stability.
Thursday, September 25, 2025
Recently, during the session of a Lebanese parliamentary committee on a new election law, two of the country’s Shiite parliamentarians, one from Hezbollah and the second from the Amal Movement, floated an idea the government in Beirut should examine closely. The two MPs, Ali Fayyad and Ali Hassan Al Khalil, called for reform of the political system and full implementation of all the stipulations of the Taif Accord of 1989 – the agreement that ended Lebanon’s civil war and sought to update its confessional political model.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola says the club expects to learn the outcome of the hearing into its 115 charges of alleged Premier League financial rule breaches "in one month".
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Former Brazil and Real Madrid defender Marcelo has announced his retirement from football, bringing the curtain down on a trophy-laden career that included five UEFA Champions League triumphs.
Friday, February 7, 2025
Friday 24 June 2022 14:53:59
A veteran Palestinian American journalist was killed by Israeli forces while covering a military raid in the occupied West Bank, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday, summarizing the results of the office’s investigation into the fatal shooting in May of Shireen Abu Akleh, a correspondent for Al Jazeera.
Abu Akleh was not shot “from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities,” Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement.
A correspondent with decades of experience for Al Jazeera news network covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abu Akleh was fatally shot in the head early on the morning on May 11, while reporting on an Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Jenin. Witnesses said the fire appeared to come from a convoy of Israeli military vehicles, but Israeli officials initially said she was likely killed by Palestinian gunfire, before reversing course and saying it was possible she unintentionally been shot by an Israeli soldier.
The U.N. conclusions — which included the finding that “several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets” were fired at Abu Akleh and three other journalists from the direction of Israeli forces — mirrored the conclusions of several independent investigations, including a review by The Washington Post, which found that Israeli troops likely fired the fatal shot.
On Thursday, 24 U.S. senators sent a letter to President Biden urging that the United States be “directly involved in investigating” Abu Akleh’s death. The letter, citing a lack of progress toward the establishment of an independent investigation — and the fact that Abu Akleh was an American — said the U.S. government “has an obligation to ensure that a comprehensive, impartial, and open investigation into her shooting death is conducted.”
On the day Abu Akleh was killed, Israel Defense Forces spokesman spokesperson Ran Kochav first acknowledged the incident in a 7:45 a.m. tweet, saying: “The possibility that journalists were injured, possibly by Palestinian gunfire, is being investigated.”
Later that morning, he told Army Radio that it was “likely” that a Palestinian gunman was responsible. By the end of the day, Defense Minister Benny Gantz walked back those assertions and said an Israeli soldier could have also been responsible for firing the fatal shot.
A week after the killing, however, the army said that it had not found evidence of criminal conduct in the killing and so there would be no military police probe.
“More than six weeks after the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and injury of her colleague Ali al-Samoudi in Jenin on 11 May 2022, it is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation,” the statement from the U.N. Human Rights Office said.
The Post’s examination — based on a review of five dozen videos, social media posts and photos of the event, two physical inspections of the area and two independent acoustic analyses — found that an Israeli soldier likely shot and killed Abu Akleh. The audio analyses of what was likely the fatal gunshots pointed to one person shooting from an estimated distance that nearly matched the span between the journalists and the IDF convoy.
The Post’s review found no evidence of activity of armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the place where Abu Akleh, and a group of other journalists, were standing before the killing.
“Perpetrators must be held to account,” said the U.N. statement.
The official website of the Kataeb Party leader