I know, unrest in Lebanon doesn’t really count as news but the government is showing signs of finally standing up to Hizbullah now that they’ve closed the airport:

Youth and Sports Minister Ahmad Fatfat told The Daily Star that the Lebanese Army and security forces would not hesitate to open the airport road in a timely manner.
“Hizbullah’s actions are an open attack against the state,” he said. “What Hizbullah is doing reminds the Lebanese people of what Israel did to the airport in the summer 2006 war,” he added, referring to the Jewish state’s bombing of runways and fuel tanks.

I’d have more sympathy for Lebanon if they’d realize that Hizbullah is probably a bigger threat to them than it is to the west or Israel. But they don’t seem to mind much as long as Hizbullah sticks to kidnapping and blowing up westerners or firing rockets at Israel.

This campaign’s aim…

… was to attack Boris [Johnson] as an Islamophobe; swing Muslim voters unanimously behind Livingstone; deliver the election for him; emerge, thereby, as a leading force in British Islam, and thus send an uncompromising message to the main political parties – follow our line, or there’ll be electoral consequences.
Its first shots were fired in January, when it was claimed that over fifty Islamic organisations in London had written to the Guardian endorsing Livingstone. (It later emerged that some of the letter’s signatories had written only in a “personal capacity”.) Its final salvo was the desperate advert, placed recently in the London Bengali paper “Janomot”, implying that Boris, as Mayor, would ban the Koran.
So who was behind this advert, and the campaign as a whole? It was produced by a group called the British Muslim Initiative (BMI). BMI’s website contains a section headed “About Us”. Readers who click on it will learn that the organisation was “formed by justice, peace and human rights campaigners”.
So who was behind this advert, and the campaign as a whole? It was produced by a group called the British Muslim Initiative (BMI). BMI’s website contains a section headed “About Us”. Readers who click on it will learn that the organisation was “formed by justice, peace and human rights campaigners”.
These campaigners presumably include Azzam Tamimi and Anas Tikriti, whose Guardian columns are prominently advertised on the site. Also advertised on the site is “Muslims 4 Ken”, whose leading lights, according to the Evening Standard, are…Anas Tikriti and Azzam Tamini.
Tikriti is a former President of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) – which is, in effect, the British branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and which, therefore, has links to Hamas. It’s been claimed that Tamini issued communiques on behalf of Hamas during the 1990s. He’s certainly on record as supporting suicide bombings against civilians in Israel.

h/t