As the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child marks its 20th anniversary Friday, the head of United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) in Lebanon said he is encouraged by the country's dedication to protecting younger citizens.With 193 ratifications, the convention is the most widely upheld international human-rights treaty in history.

Partial smoking bans in Lebanon have had some success but are undermined by lack of enforcement and wide acceptance of public smoking, a study by the American University of Beirut (AUB) has found.Researchers at the university's Department of Health Behavior and Education are expected to issue their study.

Departure lounges at the Rafik Hariri International Airport are bustling with activity as hundreds of pilgrims begin their journey to the holy city of Mecca.The pilgrims are all hoping to fulfill their religious duty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia before the coming of Eid al-Adha on November 27.

A woman and her three children were found dead in their home in the Metn town of Bhersaf, a security source toldThe Daily StarThursday night. The sources added that Paul Jalkh returned home to find his wife Grace, 40, and his three daughters Melissa 13, Madison 10, and Alfreda 7 all dead with fruit salad bowls next to them.

Indonesia is deploying more peacekeepers to Lebanon to join the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Some 1,125 army, navy and air force personnel will arrive next week, replacing the current 1,000-strong contingent. The first group of 225 replacements left Indonesia on Thursday and will join roughly 13,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

The government commissioner at the Military Tribunal Judge Saqr Saqr filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the suspected killer, after last week's murder of First Adjutant Charbel Jarjoura. Saqr filed a case against a Jordanian suspect of Palestinian origins, Youssef Ali Mahmoud Iyad, who escaped after having shot Jarjoura on the Jal al-Dib highway last week.

The Internal Security Forces (ISF) arrested on Thursday in the southern suburbs of Beirut a notorious car thief, security sources reported. The 23-year-old suspect had allegedly organized a large number of car thefts and kidnappings and had several arrest warrants issued against him. The suspect was later transferred to the ISF barracks for further investigations.

The body of Aoun Chekri Bou Aoun - born 1950 in Kartaba - was found in a park 5 meters away from his home in the village of Mghayri, near the coastal town of Byblos, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday. The NNA report added that Bou Aoun was stabbed in the chest and killed, adding that two blood stains were found in his Subaru vehicle.

Specific traffic measures are to be taken Friday and Sunday in Beirut for the Independence Day military show and its rehearsal, the Internal Security Forces announced in a communique on Thursday.During rehearsal Friday from 5 a.m. until the end of the show, cars will not be allowed to park on Chafic Wazzan Street from the intersection of George Haddad to the Beirut International Exhibition.

Officials from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) tasked with prosecuting suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri visited Lebanon last week, the court's Defense Office said Wednesday.François Roux, head of the Defense Office, and his team visited Lebanon to meet with Leba nese lawyers, academics and other members of civil society to brief them about their work.

Lebanon's Hizbullah announced on Thursday that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been re-elected as the Shiite Muslim group's leader for a sixth term.A Hizbullah statement did not say when the group's top officials voted to re-elect Nasrallah, who has held the post since an Israeli helicopter gunship killed his predecessor, Sheikh Abbas Mousawi. No one ran against Nasrallah.

The ministerial committee tasked with drafting the policy statement for Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's newly formed government is holding extensive meetings to finalize its mission before Independence Day on November 22.However, the issue of Hizbullah's arms seems to be the main topic of contention, which is delaying the finalization of the political section of the statement.

Internal Security Forces (ISF) arrested a Tebnine teacher on suspicion of spying for Israel, media reports said Thursday. The reports added that ISF had put the man under close watch for seven months prior to his arrest Wednesday afternoon. Al-Akhbar newspaper quoted sources at the ISF directorate as saying that the 54-year-old man admitted to spying for Israel, adding that he was recruited by a man who fled to Israel.

Commander of the UNIFIL Major General Claudio Graziano said the peacekeeping forces, in collaboration with the Lebanese Armed Forces, will continue its work to stop war provocations in south Lebanon. Speaking following a meeting with Prime Minister Rafik Hariri at the Grand Serail, he said there was "optimism and a general desire to keep the situation under control."

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri pledged on Thursday to establish a new economic order in Lebanon through which all Lebanese will be able to benefit from the prosperity opportunities that are going to be witnessed in the coming period of time."All the Lebanese will be able to benefit from the prosperity opportunities and this can be achieved.

Figures released by the central bank of Lebanon show that the number of credit and debit cards issued in Lebanon reached 1.61 million cards at the end of September 2009, constituting a 1.3 percent decrease from end-June 2009, a 2.7 percent rise in the first 9 months of the year and a 4.2 percent rise on a yearly basis, as reported by Lebanon This Week, the economic publication of the Byblos Bank Group.

A $30 million line of credit agreement was signed in Beirut on November 18, 2009, between the Arab Trade Financing Program (ATFP), based in Abu Dhabi, and Bank Audi sal - Audi Saradar Group, a designated national agency of the Program in Lebanon.The agreement was signed by Jassim al-Mannai, chief executive chairman of the board, on behalf of the program, and Georges Achi.

The economies of Gulf oil producers are expected to witness a full recovery in 2010 amid a net increase in petrodollars from high prices and an increase in their oil output.Oil prices could average nearly $72 a barrel in 2010, compared with nearly $62 in 2009, a global economy starts to recover, said a report released by the Institute of International Finance (IIF), published by Bank Audi MENA Weekly Monitor.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was sworn in for a second term on Thursday and vowed to combat corruption, bring security and reach out to political rivals, under Western pressure to restore legitimacy.Karzai took the oath of office as the US-led war stretches into a ninth year, leaving record numbers of soldiers and civilians dead and with Taliban control extending deeper into the country after an election mired in fraud.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a courthouse in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing 19 people in the latest attack in an onslaught by Islamist militants retaliating against an army offensive near the Afghan border.The bombing was the seventh militant strike in less than two weeks in and around Peshawar, the largest city in the northwest. The attacks have killed more than 80 people.

Horrific new allegations suggesting children as young as 5 were ordered to murder a man have emerged in a case already involving claims of ritualistic child sex abuse.Details of the so-called "Mohler case" were first revealed last week, when authorities arrested a 77-year-old man and his four sons and filed a string of sex-abuse charges, including rape, sodomy and bestiality, against them.

More secret information relating to the alleged torture of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee should be disclosed, Britain's High Court ruled Thursday.Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammad claims the US and Britain were complicit in his torture in Pakistan and Morocco, and his lawyers are pressing for Britain to release a seven-paragraph summary of US intelligence files on his detention.

raqi lawmakers, failing to resolve differences over an election law, said that they would meet on Saturday and send the law for approval as it stands, keeping on track plans for a January vote and a partial US troop withdrawal later next year.Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president vetoed the election law on Wednesday and sent it back to parliament.

Israel no longer trusts Turkey to mediate peace talks with Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, signaling how much relations have deteriorated between the regional allies in recent months.Erdogan singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to trust Ankara, unlike his predecessor Ehud Olmert, and also said.

Visitors to Rier, in southern Sudan, are welcomed by a large rectangular tank and a freshly-painted sign trumpeting the White Nile Petroleum Operating Company's (WNPOC) initiative to supply drinking water.But the inhabitants of this festering clutter of tumbledown straw huts and rubbish now complain that the promise of peace.

There's a swirl of activity in a spacious, modern kitchen as final meal preparations are made.An older man tries to swipe a felafel off an appetizer plate but instead gets a loving hand slap from a woman. The happy, well-dressed guests move to a table full of food in a dining room adorned with Middle Eastern wall-hangings.

Yemeni government troops have killed a leader of Shiite rebels and Saudi forces backed by helicopters have attacked the insurgents across the border, state media said on Thursday.Saudi television said Saudi forces combed the mountainous Jabal Dukhan region, where the Yemeni rebels launched an attack on Saudi border guards earlier this month.

Israeli warplanes bombed two smuggling tunnels and a military training compound in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, wounding three people, said officials in the Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.An Israeli Army spokeswoman confirmed the air strikes against the smuggling tunnels and said strikes had also been carried out against.

World powers could have a package of measures against Iran "within weeks," US President Barack Obama said on Thursday, warning Tehran of consequences for its failure to respond to an offer of a nuclear deal.However, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed talk of further punitive sanctions, saying the West had learned from past failures.

Egypt on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Algeria for consultations as part of a growing diplomatic row caused by a bitter soccer rivalry between the two Arab nations that has sparked violence among fans.Egyptian fans were attacked after Algeria won a make-or-break World Cup qualifying game Wednesday in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

A unit of General Electric is expected to close the order books on Thursday on a five-year fixed-rate dollar denominated sukuk, or Islamic bond, as the US conglomerate looks to diversify its investor base, bankers said.Unofficial price guidance for General Electric Capital Corp (GECC)'s Reg S sukuk is between 165 basis points (bps) and 175 bps over US Treasuries.

After a radical overhaul, a leaner Sony Corp. is back on track to become a world leader in networked gadgets that can download games, music and movies, chief executive Howard Stringer said Thursday. Stringer, a Welsh-born American who became the first foreign chief at one of Japan's most famous companies in 2005, wants to meld its strengths in televisions and other gadgets with its content.

The biennial Dubai Airshow ended on Thursday, fulfilling pessimistic analyst forecasts, as sales of only a bit more than $14 billion dimmed against $155.5 billion in 2007."The declared on-site order book for Dubai Airshow 2009 is now over $14 billion [9.3 billion euros]," the organizers' website said, with final figures expected in the coming days.

Why does the International Monetary Fund make it so hard for people like me to love it?The IMF has said and done all the right things since the crisis. It has acted as quickly as any international bureaucracy can to establish new lines of credit for battered emerging-market countries. It revamped its loan conditions to fit the times.

Recently, I saw four boys sitting at lunch near Bliss Street. They were talking about politics and student elections before moving to a conversation about civil war. Though only about 20 years of age, they discussed violence with a sense of normalcy, their debate echoing confessional odium and distrust.

I hesitate to use the phrase "a moment of truth" when referring to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But we have finally arrived there. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas' threat to resign and not seek another term, US President Barack Obama's failure to convince Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's complete yet.

The leaders of Hizbullah and Amal have endorsed a seemingly non-monolithic step: inviting the police and security forces to take action in Beirut's southern suburbs, where crime and related social problems seem to have overwhelmed the ability of the resistance to cope.Naturally, people can have a field day with such a policy: