By Dominic Evans and Hadeel Al Shalchi, Reuters, August 15, 2012

BEIRUT/ALEPPO -Saudi Arabia has told citizens to leave Lebanon after a mass kidnapping in retaliation for events in Syria raised fears that violence may be spilling across a region riven by sectarian rancor and great power rivalries.

On a day when Lebanese captives held by Syrian rebels were among the wounded in a deadly air strike by government forces, citizens of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, key backers of the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgency, were seized along with about 20 Syrians by Beirut Shi'ites in an area run by Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Their threat to take more Saudi, Turkish and Qatari hostages to secure the release of a kinsman held by Syrian rebels in Damascus bore ominous echoes of still deeply polarized Lebanon's own, long civil war - and Gulf Arab governments lost no time in urging visitors to leave Beirut's popular summer tourist haunts [....]

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where do I begin
As'ad AbuKhalil, Angry Arab News Service, August 15, 2012, 9:44am

There are days that I wake up and there is so much news that I get overwhelmed: where do I begin? Lebanon? Syria? Egypt?  I need to write something on the kidnappings in Lebanon for AlAkhbar English but now time for blogging.  See you.