Hariri to Assad: Syrian People Will Be Victorious over Hizbullah, Iran

Head of the Mustaqbal Movement MP Saad Hariri remarked on Tuesday that the Syrian people “will be victorious” against Iran and Hizbullah in the ongoing conflict in their country.

Charge d’Affaires Ambassador Richard H. Jones visited on Tuesday Beirut Air Base to witness the latest of the continuing deliveries of U.S. military assistance to the Lebanese army, announced the U.S. embassy in a statement.

The United States provided sophisticated mapping equipment valued at more than $3.6 million that will improve the the army's ability to plot Lebanon’s terrain.

The Internal Security Forces arrested several individuals in Beirut's southern suburb of Haret Hreik after shooting firearms into the air during a funeral, an ISF statement said on Tuesday.

“During a funeral ceremony in the neighborhood of Haret Hreik near al-Musharrafiyeh some civilians fired arms into the air,” said the statement.

French President Francois Hollande told al-Mustaqbal Movement chief MP Saad Hariri that the only solution to the presidential impasse is through the election of founder of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Michel Aoun, al-Akhbar daily reported on Tuesday.

“During Hariri's latest visit to France in May, Hollande told the Mustaqbal chief that the solution to the internal crisis can only come from Aoun's side,” March 14 sources told the daily on condition of anonymity.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement chief MP Saad Hariri is expected to launch a series of positions during the Ramadan iftar banquets at the Center House, mainly after the fiery statements of Interior Minister Nouahd al-Mashnouq, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Tuesday.

Hariri's stances will be the first since Mashnouq declared in a televised interview that Saudi Arabia was behind his nomination of Marada chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency. The stance was deeply resented by Hariri according to sources close to the ex-PM.

Veteran Hizbullah military commander Al-Sayyed Khalil Ali al-Sayyed Hassan has been killed in clashes in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, media reports said on Monday.

Iranian authorities have postponed the trial of detained Lebanese information technology expert Nizar Zakka, which was supposed to begin Monday, media reports said.

Marwan Abdullah, a nephew of Zakka, told An Nahar newspaper that the latter's health has deteriorated in prison, quoting the detainee's wife who visits him once a week.

General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim warned Monday that stability in the country is in a “critical situation,” citing the regional conflicts, the presidential void and the threats at the eastern, northern and southern borders.

At the eastern edge of the rural Bekaa Valley, where the rocky hillsides are stippled with cherry trees, a generations-old kinship with Brazil has imbued two Lebanese villages with a Latino spirit.

Lusi and Sultan Yaacoub are home to more than one thousand Brazilian nationals, many of whom speak Portuguese as fluently as they do Arabic.

Thirteen-year-old Ali Rajab is on his feet an average of 12 hours a day, cleaning, filling perfume bottles and helping sell mobile phones at the shop in Beirut where he works.

Still, he prefers it to his previous, more physically demanding jobs, which included even longer hours pushing a vegetable and fruit cart and making supermarket home deliveries.