Over the weekend, Tohme, a native of Lebanon who claims to have helped Jackson rescue Neverland Valley Ranch from foreclosure last year, broke his silence about the death of his friend for the first time and spoke to The Associated Press, describing his relationship with the late singer and how he briefly entered the star's orbit.

Tohme, described by the news service as "a financier with a murky past," said he was contacted last year by Jackson's brother Jermaine, who asked if Tohme could help rescue Neverland from falling into foreclosure. The pair traveled to Las Vegas, where Jackson was living at the time, and Tohme said they instantly bonded. For the next year, Tohme would server as Jackson's final business manager and spokesperson.

"For the last year and a half, I was the closest person to Michael Jackson," said Tohme, who added that he was inspired to help because he saw that Jackson was a "wonderful human being" and a fine father to his three children. Tohme said he helped negotiate a deal with his close friend, the chairman of Colony Capital, who was hesitant to get involved until he was persuaded to go visit Jackson in person. Impressed by Jackson's "intelligence and focus," Colony agreed to buy the mortgage on the home and keep it out of foreclosure.

That deal brought Tohme, believed to be in his late 50s, and Jackson, 50, together in a partnership that included the contract for what was scheduled to be Jackson's triumphant return to the top of his game: a 50-show run at the O2 arena in London that was to begin next Monday.

He said Jackson was excited about the concerts because they would be a chance for his three young children to see him perform.

Though he's often described as being mysterious, Tohme — his double name is not uncommon in the Middle East — said he hates being referred to that way. "I'm a private man," he said, reportedly ignoring a barrage of cell phone calls during the interview, though taking one from the Reverend Jesse Jackson. "A lot of people like the media, and I don't. I respect the privacy of other people, but lately nobody respects mine."

Tohme would not reveal any information about his life or career other than to confirm that he is a U.S. citizen, a "self-made man" who works in the world of finance and was raised in Los Angeles. MTV News was unable to contact Dr. Tohme for comment for this story.

Denying he is affiliated with the Nation of Islam, Tohme said he actually fired some representatives of the religious sect who had taken over handling affairs for Jackson, who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. The AP report described him as being on the verge of tears several times while discussing Jackson's death and said he was breaking his silence now because it is what Jackson wanted.

"He always said to me, 'I want people to really know who I am after I'm gone,' " Tohme said, noting that he dropped everything else he was doing and took no salary while working with Jackson and that he helped to begin turning Jackson's finances around after years of poor management.

Among the deals he said he negotiated were ones for a "Thriller" Broadway show — the subject of a lawsuit from the director of the song's iconic video, John Landis — as well as one for an animated series based on "Thriller," a clothing line that was to include "moonwalk shoes" and other deals. He also said he was working to renegotiate the terms of some of Jackson's main assets, including the singer's share of the very lucrative Sony-ATV Music Publishing Catalog — which includes music by the Beatles, Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers — against which Jackson had taken out massive loans to support his expensive lifestyle.

One of the first things Tohme, an avowed music business neophyte, said he did when he took over was to fire many members of Jackson's staff, including security guards, in order to build a fence around the singer and protect him from nameless others who wanted to control the pop star's finances. He also claimed to have twice fired, on Jackson's orders, the longtime nanny of the singers' children, Grace Rawaramba.

Though he apparently uses the title "Dr." and has a medical degree, there is no record of Tohme practicing medicine in the U.S. He said he thought the singer was in perfect health the last time he saw Jackson, two days before his death, and that as far as he could tell, Jackson didn't use drugs and kept himself on a strict, healthy diet that included no red meat or alcohol.

It does not appear that Jackson will be buried at Neverland, but Tohme claimed that in the singer's final months, the two talked about the star's wish to create a special place "10 times bigger than Graceland" — referring to Elvis Presley's home/memorial — where fans could come to view Jackson's memorabilia and awards.

MTV

The aim of the event according Tollab public relations is to unite all Lebanese and Montrealers of all colors, religions, names or cultures, who are willing to participate.

Ya Libnan urges all the Lebanese students in Montreal to participate in this exciting event...any event that unites us all should be encouraged by every Lebanese that cares for his beloved country... especially Dabkeh!

The following is the press release issued by Tollab regarding this event

TOLLAB federation to insert new Montreal achievement in The Guinness World records

This project shall be a framework of the annual Lebanese festival in
Montreal, which TOLLAB takes part in for the second consecutive year. Details
on the project can be found at www.tollab.ca

This is perplexing -- and deeply ironic -- because Beirut has been named UNESCO's 2009 "World Book Capital City." Just last week "World Book and Copyright Day" was kicked off with a variety of readings and exhibits that honor "conformity to the principles of freedom of expression [and] freedom to publish," as stated by the UNESCO Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UNESCO's "Florence Agreement." The catch is that Lebanon has not signed the Florence Agreement, which focuses on the free circulation of print and audio-visual material.

Even a partial list of books banned in Lebanon gives pause: William Styron's "Sophie's Choice"; Thomas Keneally's "Schindler's List"; Thomas Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem"; books by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer. In fact, all books that portray Jews, Israel or Zionism favorably are banned.

Writers in Arabic are not exempt. Abdo Wazen's "The Garden of the Senses" and Layla Baalbaki's "Hana's Voyage to the Moon" were taken to court. Syria's Sadiq Jalal al-Azm was prosecuted for his "Critique of Religious Thinking."

Censorship is carried out by the Sûreté General, which combines the functions of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security. It does not post a list of banned works, much less answer questions. However a major book importer, in an email, provided a list of banned films and the reasons given by the Sûreté. Here are some: "A Voice From Heaven" (verses of Koran recited during dance scenes); "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (homosexuality); "Barfly" ( blacklisted company Canon); and "Daniel Deronda" (shot in Israel).

All of Jane Fonda's films are banned, since she visited Israel in 1982 to court votes for Tom Hayden's Senate run. "Torn Curtain" is banned: Paul Newman starred in "Exodus." And the television series "The Nanny" is banned because of Fran Drescher.

According to Beirut newspaper L'Orient, any one of the recognized religions (a system known as "confessionalism") can ask the Sûreté to ban any book unilaterally. The Muslim Dar al-Fatwa and the Catholic Information Center are the most active and effective. (The latter got Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" banned.) Even works by self-proclaimed Islamists such as Assadeq al-Nayhoum's "Islam Held Hostage," have been banned, and issued only when re-edited in sympathetic editions (in Syria).

Censorship is a problem throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Though a signatory of the Florence Agreement, the Academy of Islamic Research in Egypt, through its censorship board al-Azhar, decides what may not be printed: Nobel Prize winner Naghib Mahfouz's "Awlad Haratina" (The Sons of the Medina) was found sacrilegious and only printed in bowdlerized form in Egypt in 2006. Saudi Arabia sponsors international book fairs in Riyadh, but Katia Ghosn reported in L'Orient that it sends undercover agents into book stores regularly.

Works that could stimulate dialogue in Lebanon are perfunctorily banned. "Waltz with Bashir," an Israeli film of 2008, is banned -- even though it alleges that Ariel Sharon was complicit in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. According to the Web site Monstersandcritics, however, "Waltz with Bashir" became an instant classic in the very Palestinian camps it depicts, because it is the only history the younger generation has. But how did those copies get there?

The answer is also embarrassing. Just as it ignores freedom of circulation, Lebanon also ignores international copyright laws. Books of all types are routinely photocopied for use in high schools and universities. As for DVDs, you have only to mention a title and a pirated copy appears. "Slumdog Millionaire" was available in video shops before it opened in the U.S.

William Marling is a visiting professor of American Studies at the American University of Beirut and professor of English at Case Western Reserve University.

WSJ

The marriage sparked condemnations around the world from human rights groups and U.S. and other government officials when it first came to light in December.

Local media, which is highly regulated by the Saudi government, reported that the court in the city of Onaiza approved the divorce decree Thursday, and the divorce is final.

A source at the court told the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan that the divorce "came after a series of pleas made by a number of officials in the region to the husband."

CNN efforts to reach court officials, the husband and the girl's father have been unsuccessful.

According to the attorney for the young girl's mother, the father of the girl had arranged the marriage between his daughter and a close friend of his to settle his debts with the man.

When the mother went to court to try to get the marriage annulled, Saudi judge Habib al-Habib rejected the request on a legal technicality. The judge ruled that the mother -- who is separated from the girl's father -- was not the child's legal guardian and therefore could not represent her in court, according to the mother's lawyer, Abdullah al-Jutaili.

However, the judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty, al-Jutaili said. The lawyer said in the original marriage agreement, the father of the girl stipulated that the marriage would not be consummated until she was 18.

The judge also ruled that the girl could file a petition for a divorce when she reached puberty, al-Jutaili said.

The young girl lives with her mother, the attorney said, and was never told that she was married.

When the initial petition to annul the marriage was rejected, the mother appealed the verdict to an appeals court in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The appeals court declined to certify the original ruling, in essence rejecting al-Habib's verdict, and sent the case back to him for reconsideration.

Under the complicated Saudi legal process, the appeals court ruling meant that the marriage was still in effect but that a challenge to the marriage was ongoing.

Earlier this month, the original judge refused for a second time to annul the marriage.

Soon after that decision, Saudi Arabia's justice minister told Al-Watan that he planned to enact a law that will protect young girls from such marriages.

The law will place restrictions on the practice to preserve the rights of children and prevent abuses, Justice Minister Mohammed Al-Issa was quoted as saying. Additionally, al-Issa said there would be a study of a system that will include regulations for the marriage of minors and everything related to such unions, the newspaper reported. No details on the restrictions or regulations were mentioned.

The minister did not say whether child marriage would be abolished.

Responding to the justice minister's comments and the possibility of a new child marriage law, al-Jutaili told CNN at the time, "this is what we requested from day one, and we know that Saudi officials are working so hard on resolving this issue."

Al-Jutaili believes that such a law would help not only his defendant but many other Saudi minors facing a similar problem.

In Washington Monday, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns called the marriage a human rights abuse.

"Child marriage is, unfortunately, still common in much of Saudi Arabia and we have voiced our concern about this practice at the highest levels," he told a conference on U.S.-Saudi relations. "We were encouraged by reports that the Justice Ministry had begun to review the legal age of marriage."

After the divorce was denied for a second time, the head of the United Nations Children's Fund issued a statement expressing concern about the case.

UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said, "the right to free and full consent to marriage is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Consent cannot be free and full when either party to a marriage is too young to make an informed decision."

The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative Saudi kingdom recently. While rights groups have petitioned the government for laws to protect children from such marriages, the kingdom's top cleric has said that it's OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in January, according to the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong, and they are being unfair to her."

Al-Sheikh reportedly made the remarks when he was asked during a lecture about parents forcing their underage daughters to marry.

"We hear a lot in the media about the marriage of underage girls," he said, according to the newspaper. "We should know that sharia law has not brought injustice to women."

Sharia law is Islamic law, and Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism.

It's Obama's first visit to a Muslim country since his election. "I think that was a good decision," said financial analyst Burcu Eke. "Because Turkey is like himself — a mixture of cultures. He is like us. So I think he was very right to choose this place."

Others were more wary. Actress Funda Sirinkal said, "I love him because I still don't know him. We will see in time what is going to be."

But perhaps the sweetest expression of Turkey's attitude toward Obama comes from Istanbul's famed bakery, Karakoy Gulluoglu. Bakers there have created a portrait of the president out of baklava. Owner Nadir Gullu said it took five chefs working for two days straight to create the pastry portrait, which they've taken to calling — yes — Baracklava.

Obama arrived in Ankara

President Obama touched down in this Turkish capital Sunday night for a two-day visit at the tail end of a maiden overseas trip that has stretched from London to the western fringes of Asia

Air Force One landed in darkness at Ankara's airport just after 9 p.m. local time amid widespread Turkish hopes for improved relations with the United States, a powerful show of police force and plans for demonstrations against U.S. policies.

Obama's arrival was carried live on national television. For the first time on his trip, he appeared at the plane door without First Lady Michelle Obama, who left for Washington after the couple's visit to Prague earlier in the day.

The vast majority of Turks in this cheerful, bustling city seem to eagerly welcome Obama on his first visit as president to a predominantly Muslim country.

But police appeared to be taking no chances. Local press reports said police planned to use electronic jamming equipment to guard against the possibility of radio-controlled explosive devices along his motorcade routes.

Photo : Nadir Gullu, chef and baklava master of Karakoy Gulluoglu, shows off his portrait of President Obama made of baklava, also known as the Baracklava.

"I accept the responsibility. They were my men,'' Mehsud told reporters in Peshawar on phone from an undisclosed location.

Mehsud said the massacre was in revenge for the continued US drone attacks on Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan. The seven semi-autonomous tribal districts are known to serve as sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels.

The militant commander added that his men would hit US targets until Washington halted the missile strikes.

New York immigration center massacre

A lone gunman burst into a New York immigration hall with his guns blazing overnight, killing 13 people and injuring several more in the latest mass shooting to rock the US.

About 41 people in the American Civic Association in Binghamton were taken hostage when Asian gunman Jiverly Voong, 42, stormed into the building packing a terrifiying array of firearms, including a high-powered rifle.

Voong, recently sacked from computer giant IBM, shot himself in the head after his killing spree.

His dead body was found on the first floor of the building with a hunting knife jammed in the waistband of his pants, US media reported.

Authorities at the scene said the man had used his car to block the back door before walking through the front doors, firing as he entered.

Late yesterday, about 1pm, witnesses reported seeing police leading two men away in plastic handcuffs as police retrieved two handguns.

The nightmare started about 10.30am, local time, when screams and heavy gun fire shattered the peace in upstate New York.

Voong reportedly targeted rooms inside the centre where a citizenship test was being conducted.

Terrified hostages hid in the closet and the boiler room during the killing spree, according to local media.

Hostages cloaked in white sheets scrambled from the building in groups of ten, holding their shaking hands on their heads.

Police searched them as they exited, worried one might be the gunman trying to escape in disguise.

Members of the two hostage groups hugged as they were released thirty minutes apart, the first group shortly after noon.

Sharp shooters and specialist FBI hostage negotiators were on hand all morning as elite SWAT team officers surrounded the building wearing heavy ballistic vests.

A local Vietnamese translator was seconded to work with police.

Earlier, a local hospital said they were treating about six shooting victims aged between 20 and 50.

At least one person rushed to the Wilson Medical Center was critically injured.

Police locked down a nearby high school and local business, ordering residents to stay inside.

Rashidun Haque, who owns a nearby convenience store, said police instructed him and his customers stay inside and away from the windows.

"I'm really shaky because it's a small city, it's a beautiful city, nothing serious like this happens here," Haque said.

The immigration hall is a place where new arrivals sit citizenship tests and get help with translators.

New York Governor David Paterson said New Yorkers were reeling.

"This is a tragic day for New York," Paterson said.

"While the situation is still developing and details are being gathered, we do know that a gunman entered the American Civic Association in Binghamton this morning and that there are fatalities."

It is the fourth mass shooting in the US in as many weeks.

In North Carolina last Sunday, a 45-year-old man slaughtered 10 people in a nursing home.

On March 10, a 28-year-old man in Alabama killed 10 people, including his own mother, before taking his own life.

A few days later in Miami, a man shot and killed five people, including his estranged wife and himself.

Photo: Vietnamese gunman Jiverly Voong, 42 recently sacked from computer giant IBM, shot himself in the head after killing 13 others

adelaidenow

Multi-domiciled (New York, London, Paris, Beirut), automatically fluent in three languages (English, Arabic, French) and the literature thereof, exquisitely turned out, hospitable and generous by instinct, they conduct their lives in a physical setting so glamorous it rivals Istanbul. They should be U.N.-protected as international cultural treasures.

Conversing with them is a little like appearing in front of an Olympic committee that adjudicates finesse in everything from fine dining to dirty jokes. The financial and entertainment geniuses of the region, they're the last of the great historic Levantine communities, the kind Lawrence Durrell so loved. They speak a natural Esperanto, "Shu? Alors, what's it called, habibi, the tres gentil guy who owns Chanel here, my cousin's husband ... "

This has been my first visit to Beirut as a grown-up, indeed since the civil wars began in the mid-1970s. One week's past and already I've found myself trying to rejig my life so I can return incessantly again and again as the waves do below the Corniche, and as Beirutis never fail to do after each war.

I say this with gunfire crackling in nearby hills; it's a long weekend, and no doubt they're partying up in the Shouf mountains. In the space of two days, I've disputed over Foucault and Beckett, discussed Ottoman history, wine-tasted in the Bekaa, splashed into the Mediterranean, feasted like Xerxes, sung Anglican hymns at dinner, and witnessed furious political argument--all the while dazzled by the local beauties. Beirut invented the paradigm of the icy brunette, the unapproachable one in dark sunshades above perfect lips seemingly born into every VIP room and first-class lounge. Ahhh, Beirut.

Just before the Civil Wars intervened, I attended boarding school here at age 9 for perhaps the happiest year of my life, at the International College, the feeder school to the American University of Beirut (AUB). After that I left for the cold climes and grotty gruel of schools in England. As a boy, I remember watching a James Bond movie in a cinema up in the mountains in the morning and swimming at the legendary Saint George Hotel perched just above the sea and sun-dappled in the afternoon. And I knew what it might be like to live a James Bond life. My father tells me that at the Saint George we were once actually introduced to Bin Laden in his chain-smoking teenage playboy phase. I don't remember it at all.

It was of course absolutely imperative then, as it's always been in Beirut, to be encased in the grooviest garb. I still wear my father's suits from that time, beautifully tailored to suggest a hypothetical dinner-party evening somewhere between St. Germain and Fellini-era Piazza del Popolo. A year after my mother had purchased a shirt for me in a boutique on Hamra Street, I wore it to play at a park in a small town in England. A local scrubber (as such girls were dubbed) with a rare eye came up and gazed on me in awe. I was 10; she was 16 I wager. "Where'd you get that shirt, then, luv? It's gorgeous," she crowed in her local twang.

Recently I watched a documentary somewhere--in the U.S. I think--about the Black September gang, who caused the gruesome slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The ringleaders were a handful of privileged young lefty Beirutis, mostly Palestinian. (The Israelis killed them one by one in later years.) But the documentary showed a film clip of a Beirut press conference they gave then. They were so young and cool, so dazzlingly chic, with a kind of Cap d'Antibes glow. In those days, in Beirut, even warlords and terrorists had to keep up standards. I've racked my brain for years: What did it mean, that you could be at once so hip and so bloody?

Perhaps the chic-est of the warlords was Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, a hyper-intellectual, elegantly louche stoner of the time with long locks and a fab L.P. collection, or so one heard. He graduated from the AUB, as so many leftists did, and was resolutely anti-American. He joined the Socialist International. His Druze gunmen, belonging to a perennially embattled minority, were the fiercest fighters.

Jumblatt caused a sensation in a Playboy interview once when he said that crime in New York terrified him more than gun-battles in Lebanon--this was around 1984. The astonished interviewer pointed out that several of Jumblatt's nearest and dearest had been assassinated, including his father. Yes, he said, but in Lebanon you know who's trying to kill you; in the U.S. you don't. Jumblatt now declares himself to be anti-Syria, pro-U.S., pro the democracy movement. After all, the Syrians killed his father. But the shrug of his shoulders tells you something else, that you never know friend from foe here for very long, that it can all shift lethally in a trice.

And there's the rub. You would want that these heartbreakingly likable, erudite, cultivated people, many of whom went to school together, discoed and drank and wenched together, could look at each other and say, "Nah, I can't fight you, you're too fabulous. You're a Beiruti like me. Our first duty is to the muse of fabulousness--to conserve this lovely place and the life here, the intellectual brilliance, the exquisite brunettes, the mountain forests, the Ottoman houses, the almost derelict Saint George Hotel ... "

An impossible task, it would seem. Already, the reconstruction of recent decades followed by the influx of oil-money investment has wiped away swaths of old Beirut and replaced it with dense high-rise ugliness--always a sign of runaway municipal corruption.

Up into the mountains, and along the sea northward into the Christian area, helter-skelter urban sprawl shows how in this, as in other things, the locals haven't conserved their inheritance. In central Beirut, many say that the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri--who was blown up right beside the Saint George--played his part. He sold a chunk of that downtown area to his own private company, the story goes, and stood to profit from all development there.

That aside, political pressures on Lebanon from beyond its borders--from Syria, Israel, Iran and others--constantly pretzelize any internal will to leap forward. One half of Lebanon pulls toward the West, toward democracy, transparent government, cultural openness, fierce hard work, rule of law; the other half toward egregious regional habits, toward bureaucratic corruption, warlordism, political patronage, rule by the gun.

Lebanon has more of the West in it than any other Arab country. Beirutis know which way the solution lies; even Hezbollah has to operate with one eye on the democratic process. But there's no visible way to get there from here--at any rate none that involves a painless and risk-free passage. If progress means an Iraq-style nightmare en route, who would opt for it? Yet, there's no way back either--back to what or when? Thinking on that makes one feel for Beirutis all the more. In a purgatorial state--no looking back, no stable present, a crepuscular future--they keep returning, keep trying, living exquisitely well and setting an example for the Middle East, indeed for the world.

There is a way forward. The pro-democracy movement, the so-called Cedar Revolution, is not yet extinguished, despite the assassination of Hariri and his business shenanigans before that, despite the backstairs machinations among political factions since. There are poles of light still, not least the patriotic endeavors of former Speaker of Parliament Hussein al-Husseini, who helped the civil war factions compromise with the Taif Accords. It's a highly complicated challenge involving a very delicate political dance around minefields. But as the June 7 elections approach, we will all need to know its details. I will do my best to clarify its complications in future columns. Stay tuned to this space.

* Melik Kaylan, a writer based in New York, writes a weekly column for Forbes.com. His story "Georgia In The Time of Misha" is featured in The Best American Travel Writing 2008.

Forbes

Cedars also have played an integral part in Lebanon's volatile political life. Several Christian factions in the country's civil war adopted the cedar as their emblem; one called itself the Guardian of the Cedars. When Lebanese took to the streets to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005, their protest was dubbed the Cedar Revolution.

And such is the importance of the cedar that onetime Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt, now a leading politician, planted land mines around the trees in his Shouf mountain fiefdom during the civil war era, to protect them from loggers, militias and other marauders.

But the imposing, majestic tree that has defined Lebanon since biblical times now faces a potentially bigger threat to its existence than war or political overkill.

Global warming, the scourge of ecosystems worldwide, also is endangering the ancient Lebanon cedars that are native to the Mediterranean, by pushing ever-higher the snow line in the mountains where cedars thrive and jeopardizing the fragile environment that sustains them.

"Until now we don't have a direct impact, but all the indications and observations of scientists, and the monitoring of the environment, suggest that within the next 10 years we will see a major impact on cedars from climate change," said Nizar Hani, scientific coordinator of the Shouf nature reserve in Barouk, from which the land mines have been removed.

Here, on steep mountainsides dotted with cedars young and old, anecdotal evidence of the threat is clearly visible.

Deep snow covers the uppermost reaches of the reserve, as it normally would at this time of year. But lower down, the snow is patchy or non-existent.

Cedar cones need several weeks of snow cover every year to germinate properly. Yet this year's snow arrived late, in February instead of December, and many trees received only 10 days of cover or less, Hani said.

Typically, cedars thrive at an altitude of 4,000 to 6,000 feet. This year's snow descended only to a level of 5,000 feet, leaving lower trees without any cover at all.

Another problem is that the lack of snow encourages the proliferation of unwelcome pests. In the most alarming instance of the threat so far, scientists say, a plague of sawflies munched through the cedar forest of Tannourine earlier this decade, killing 12 percent of the trees before it was contained.

The infestation was a direct result of warmer temperatures on the life cycle of the cedar-eating Cephalcia sawfly, said Nabil Nemer, an entomologist at the American University of Beirut who is researching the still little-understood effects of climate change on the cedar forests.

The hardiness of the cedar is legendary, and no one is predicting its demise any time soon. The oldest tree in Barouk, with a trunk spanning nearly 50 feet, is estimated to be 2,000 years old. Several trees in reserves farther north are believed to be even older.

"This is a very strong tree," said Nora Jumblatt, the politician's wife and a leading figure in the cedar conservation effort. "It is a witness to history that personifies Lebanon and the Lebanese soul of resilience and endurance."

Bigger threats to their survival have already passed.

The Phoenicians chopped them down to build their ships. King Solomon had them felled to build the temple of Jerusalem, according to the Bible. The Pharaohs of Egypt plundered them for their tombs, the Romans exploited them to construct their empire and the Ottomans used them to build their railways.

Now just 5,000 acres of cedars remain, most of them contained in a handful of protected reserves high in the mountains. More research is urgently needed to understand the effects of global warming if these last trees are to be preserved, said Nemer, the entomologist.

"The cedar tree is the symbol of our country, and it would mean a lot if we were to lose it," he said. "It would be like losing our identity."

Chicago Tribune

After the massacre at the Albertville Realschule in Winnenden near Stuttgart, disgruntled former pupil Tim Kretschmer, 17, hijacked a car to flee a police dragnet.

At 12.31pm he shot himself in the car park of a shopping centre in nearby Weiblingen.

Friends described Kretschmer as a quiet, good-looking boy from a well-off family who had friends only interested in his money. Others said he had an arsenal air guns and hundreds of horror films in his bedroom and was a talented marksman. His father owns a "small arsenal" of at least 18 guns used for hunting. It is believed Kretschner used one of these weapons on his deadly rampage.

After the shootings, the killer escaped on foot and hijacked a black VW Sharan to escape through the dragnet of armed police. He told the shocked driver to "get me out of town". On the autobahn to Stuttgart 18 kilometres away, he released his hostage and drove off. The killer's body was found soon after.

The student was "known" to police through a long history of troublemaking. He left the school two years ago, it was reported.

Police stormed his home shortly after the killing spree and took his mother into custody for questioning. It was reported that his father is a wealthy businessman.

The shootings happened shortly after 9.30am in the town of 27,000. It is unclear what kind of weapon the gunman - who was masked - was using, although eyewitnesses said it was a rifle that he had slung over his shoulder.

One thousand pupils were in the school when the bloodbath began.

The killings took place in two classrooms and a corridor.

At least 16 people died at the scene, including at least one adult.

Frank Nipkau, who works for a local paper in the town, told a national TV broadcaster: "It is chaos. The school has been sealed off and the medics are in there. We are told that it is a gruesome sight. He just opened up at random.

Police spoke of the classrooms and corridor "running with blood" and an appeal went out to local people to donate blood for transfusions for the wounded.

Media reports spoke of girls and boys being among the victims.

A fleet of ambulances raced to the scene as police scrambled a helicopter and armed elite SEK units to pursue the gunman who fled into the old town district of Winnenden.

Psychologists were brought in by local authorities to deal with the shocked survivors who stumbled, many of them in tears, through the school gates.

They were taken to a local swimming pool where anguished parents arrived in droves praying that their offspring were not among the victims.

Police issued an urgent bulletin to motorists not to pick up hitch-hikers while the gunman had remained on the loose. But he still managed to escape the dragnet.

Jens Hoffmann, a prominent TV psychologist, said: "The criminal will be an intensely paranoid individual who feels the whole world is against him."

School shootings have been on the rise in Germany in recent years. In February 2002, a 22-year-old gunman killed the headmaster and seriously injured another person in a vocational training centre he attended at Freising, near Munich.

One of the worst occurred in April 2002 when expelled student Robert Steinhauser gunned down 16 people before turning his gun on himself.

In November 2006, a former student at a vocational school in Lower Saxony, in northwestern Germany, went a shooting spree in the establishment, injuring 37 people before turning his gun on himself.

The massacre was condemned worldwide

Lebanon's Democratic Gathering leader and head of the Progressive Socialist Party ( PSP) MP Walid Jumblatt sent a cable to German Chancellor Angela Merckel in which he denounced the crime , according to local media reports

Photo : Tim Kretschmer. Fired more than 100 shots on Wednesday and killed at least 15 , police say. He was treated between last April and September for depression

the age

The Faraya Intercontinental Mzaar resort is one of the most popular ski resort in Lebanon. At 2,438 meters above sea level (8,000 feet) and with chic five-star facilities it attracts Beirut's elite from the capital just 50 kilometers (around 31 miles) away.

Here are some more models displaying creations for K-Lynn Lingerie during the fashion show held March 7,2009 in Faraya Mzaar ski resort in Lebanon. ( Courtesy of AP and Reuters photographers )

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