Saad Hariri

Iran, reacting to the cutoff of U.S. aid to the Lebanese military, told Lebanese officials Tuesday that it would make up the potential $100-million loss. The promise came one day after disclosures that Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, decided to freeze the money because of concerns that the U.S. aid might be buying arms that could be turned against Israel.

An Ethiopian Airlines plane with 90 people aboard crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after taking off from Beirut international airport early today. Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said rescue workers had located the crash site about two miles offshore. Search and rescue operations were underway, he said. The Boeing 737-800 went off the radar about five minutes after takeoff, shortly after its scheduled 2:10 a.m. departure. Aridi confirmed that the plane took off in stormy weather but said it was too early to say what caused the crash.

Syria's president paid a one-day visit to Iran on Saturday to discuss "the exceptional ties" between the two countries, but the meeting came amid a cluster of regional developments that could divide them. The substance of the talks between Bashar Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unclear, but on the agenda were the Iranian leader's upcoming visit to Lebanon and the intensified power struggles over the formation of a new government in neighboring Iraq. Assad's visit to Tehran also comes after a recent improvement in U.S.-Syrian relations that is worrying to Tehran, which views Damascus as one of its strategic partners in its ideological campaign against the West.

Kuwait on Thursday named its first ambassador to Iraq since Saddam Hussein's forces invaded the oil-rich country in 1990 and set off the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The announcement came as Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government is reaching out to its Sunni Arab neighbors in a bid to ease tensions and secure investment to rebuild the nation. U.S.

Comments by a leading Lebanese politician published Thursday have stirred speculation that he is considering a break with the country's U.S.-backed political alliance, which is locked in a power struggle with the camp led by the pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah. Walid Jumblatt, the colorful and outspoken leader of Lebanon's Druze community, accused his coalition's leader, Saad Hariri, of trying to build a militia and allying with Islamic extremists. In comments to a newspaper, he lampooned Hariri's leadership skills, likening his U.S.-backed Future Movement to a "troop of camels all walking together."

Four Lebanese generals with ties to Syrian security services were freed Wednesday for lack of evidence after spending nearly four years in custody on suspicion of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A United Nations-backed tribunal ordered the release of the generals, who were being held in a Beirut prison.

Two Red Cross workers were killed and a third was severely wounded Monday when a mortar shell hit just outside a battle-scarred Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The two Lebanese aid workers were standing at a northern entrance to the camp when they were killed by a round apparently fired from inside the camp, military and Lebanese Red Cross officials said. The International Committee of the Red Cross identified the slain workers as Haitham Suleiman, 26, and Boulos Maamari, 25.

Lebanese and Syrian authorities on Monday each placed blame for recent bombings in their countries on Islamic militants tied to Al Qaeda and probably based in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. On Monday, a roadside bomb struck a bus in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, killing four Lebanese soldiers and a civilian and injuring 30 people, Lebanese officials said. The attack came two days after a 440-pound bomb detonated in a pedestrian area of Damascus, the Syrian capital, killing 17 people.

Arriving amid heated preparations for Lebanon's parliamentary elections, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed support Sunday for a Western-backed coalition in a close race against an alliance led by Hezbollah and supported by Iran and Syria. Clinton's brief visit to Beirut, the first since President Obama took office, was a sign of how important it is to Washington that Lebanon not return to factional fighting. The three-hour stopover came as the U.S.

Rescue workers found no one to save. They could only retrieve the corpses of those aboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea early Monday during a fierce winter storm. The Boeing 737-800 bound for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, was carrying eight crew members and 82 passengers when it crashed shortly after takeoff from Beirut amid hail and thunder. The U.S.-born wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon was among the passengers. By nightfall, rescue workers had recovered about 25 bodies, the Lebanese transportation minister said.