Source: BBC
Security & Justice
Captured Hezbollah Operative May Have Been Israeli Double Agent, Report Suggests
The alleged senior Hezbollah operative abducted by Israeli special forces last week in Batroun may have been operating as a double agent, according to a report by The Telegraph.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Lebanon’s Probe into Israeli Raid Expected to Take Days as Security Officials Weigh Theories
Lebanese authorities are ramping up investigations into an Israeli commando raid last week in the northern coastal city of Batroun, during which Imad Amhaz, a Hezbollah official, was snatched.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Opinion
The Emptying of Baalbek Is a Moment to Take Stock
“Large numbers of people continue to flee their homes every day, as Israel’s military operations in Lebanon have been going on unabated.” These disturbing words could be from almost any news report about Israel’s invasion of its northern neighbour over the past month. However, they can be found in a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre issued on July 27, 2006.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
A Future Without Hezbollah
At the end of September, when Israel’s campaign to destroy Hezbollah was reaching its height, I met one of the group’s supporters in a seaside café in western Beirut. He was a middle-aged man with a thin white beard and the spent look of someone who had not slept for days. He was an academic of sorts, not a fighter, but his ties to Hezbollah were deep and long-standing.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Sports
Tottenham Forward Son Heung-min Crowned Asia’s International Player of the Year
Tottenham forward Son Heung-min was crowned as Asia’s International Player of the Year for the fourth time by the Asian Football Confederation at its annual awards ceremony Tuesday.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Real Madrid Launch Investigation into Racist Insults After El Clasico Defeat
Real Madrid has launched an investigation into racist insults directed at players during Saturday’s 4-0 home loss to Barcelona in LaLiga, it said on Sunday.
Monday, October 28, 2024
Sunday 26 March 2023 12:28:00
Vatican Returns Parthenon Sculptures to Greece
The Vatican has returned three fragments of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece in a move that has been described as a "gesture of friendship".
The decision to return the 2,500-year-old marbles was announced by Pope Francis last year.
One is a chunk of a horses head, the other a bearded man and the third a head of a boy.
Greece hopes the move will spur other overseas institutions that hold Parthenon sculptures to return them.
About 50% of the Parthenon's original sculptures have survived and almost half of them are in the British Museum.
"The ceremony today... similar to the gesture by the government of Sicily and the Republic of Italy a few months ago, shows the road that we could follow, that everyone could follow, in order for the unity of the Parthenon to be restored," Greece's culture minister Linda Mendoni said on Friday.
As the marbles were returned, dignitaries exchanged hand shakes and smiled in front of the cameras, including the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos.
"My personal heartfelt wish is that this initiative is mimicked by others. Pope Francis showed that this is possible and significant," he said.
The marbles had been in the papal collection and Vatican Museums for centuries.
But Greece has been trying to recover them from the Vatican and other European collections since the beginning of the 20th century.
In the early 1800s dozens of marbles were taken from Greece's Parthenon on the orders of Scottish nobleman Thomas Bruce, known as Lord Elgin.
He then sold the marbles to the British government, who then displayed them in the British Museum.
Reports have suggested the British Museum's chairman, George Osborne, is close to agreeing a deal with Greece.
In January, the then UK culture secretary Michele Donelan said that the sculptures "belong here" in Britain.
The British Museum is prevented by law from permanently returning the artworks to Greece.
But there was speculation that a deal could involve the sculptures heading to Athens on loan in rotation, in return for classical objects that have never been seen outside Greece before.
