New government announced under PM Saad al-Hariri

Lebanon acquired a new 30-minister government led by Saad al-Hariri, bringing together the entire political spectrum except for the Christian Phalangist party that rejected the portfolio it was offered.

The new cabinet, which was announced on state television on Sunday evening, will keep Gebran Bassil as foreign minister, Ali Hassan Khalil as finance minister and Nouhad Machnouk as interior minister.

The cabinet will also include Yacoub al-Sarraf as the new defence minister and Cesar Abou Khalil as the new energy and water minister, two of the other most important jobs.

"This is a government of entente," Hariri said of the new line-up, formed six weeks after the election of President Michel Aoun .

New portfolios include an anti-corruption post and, for the first time, a minister of state for women's affairs.

Hariri said the Phalangist party had been offered a minister of state post but had turned it down.
'Preserve security'

The new government will have "at the top of its list of priorities to preserve security against the fires ravaging our region," Hariri told reporters.

He stressed that the government would act to "preserve our country from the negative consequences of the Syrian crisis".

On November 3, former prime minister Hariri was nominated to form Lebanon's next government, but the process was seen as likely to be hampered by deep differences with Hezbollah, an influential Shia movement.

Hariri, 46, is anti-Syria and a fierce opponent of Hezbollah, members of which have been accused by an international court of involvement in his father's 2005 assassination.

Saddam Hussein warned the US it could not govern Iraq

Saddam Hussein warned the Americans they would be unable to run Iraq after the 2003 war because they did not understand the language, the history, or the "Arab mind".

After he had been captured in December 2003, the toppled Iraqi president was interviewed by John Nixon.

Mr Nixon, who was a senior analyst with the CIA, has now written a book about his encounter with the man who had been in power in Iraq for more than 20 years.

In an article in Time magazine, Mr Nixon writes: "When I interrogated Saddam, he told me: 'You are going to fail. You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq.'

"When I told him I was curious why he felt that way, he replied: 'You are going to fail in Iraq because you do not know the language, the history, and you do not understand the Arab mind.'"

Mr Nixon says some of what the Americans thought before the Iraq War started in March 2003 was wrong.

He writes: "I heard over and over from counterparts in the military and the Bush administration that if we caught Saddam we would be able to nip the growing Iraqi insurgency in the bud.

"This presupposed that Saddam had an iron-like control over the Sunni insurgency (he didn't) and that decapitating the Baathist regime would make Iraq a peaceful country (it didn't).

"This was the underlying ethos of the Bush administration's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom."

In his book, Mr Nixon ponders what might have happened had Saddam remained in power.

Concerning Islamic State, he says: "Saddam felt that Islamist extremist groups in Iraq posed the biggest threat to his rule and his security apparatus worked assiduously to root out such threats."

Addressing the region's balance of power, he says: "Saddam also would have inevitably maintained a hostile stance toward Iran … Iraq is now very much the junior partner to a much emboldened Iranian regime that has expanded its military and security influence in the chaotic aftermath of Saddam's overthrow and the aborted Arab Spring."

Mr Nixon says that "Saddam's leadership style and penchant for brutality were among the many faults of his regime".

Nevertheless, he observes: "Although I found Saddam to be thoroughly unlikeable, I came away with a grudging respect for how he was able to maintain the Iraqi nation as a whole for as long as he did."

Tourists trapped with gunmen in Karak Castle in Jordan

Several tourists are believed to be trapped within a castle in southern Jordan where gunmen have taken refuge after shooting dead five people.

A Canadian woman was among those killed in the shootout between the armed men and police.

The other four killed were police officers.

Nine people were injured.

The attackers then hid in the grounds of Karak Castle, a Crusader fort around 70 miles south of Jordan's capital city, Amman.

Special forces have been sent to hunt the gunmen and security officials are not ruling out the possibility that the shooting was a coordinated militant attack.

The Public Security Directorate said on Sunday that events began when a police patrol received reports of a fire at a house in the town of Qatraneh, in the Karak district.

When the officers arrived, they were shot at by people inside the house.

Two officers were injured and the shooters fled in a car.

Jordan police patrols attacked in Al-Karak

Unidentified fighters have attacked several police patrols in drive by shootings in the southern Jordanian city of Al-Karak with reports of several casualties, according to security officials.

Heavy fighting was reported after Sunday's attacks, as witnesses posted purported amateur videos and images of the shootings on social media.

Government considering oath of allegiance to British values

Every public office-holder may have to swear an oath of allegiance to British values, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has indicated.

The pledge would be expected to cover elected officials, civil servants and council workers.

The proposal from Mr Javid is in response to a report on social cohesion by Dame Louise Casey, which warned some sections of society did not accept British values such as tolerance.

He said he was "drawn" to Dame Louise's recommendation to bring in an oath of allegiance because it was impossible for people to play a "positive role" in public life unless they accepted basic values like democracy and equality.Writing in The Sunday Times, Mr Javid said: "If we are going to challenge such attitudes, civic and political leaders have to lead by example.

"We can't expect new arrivals to embrace British values if those of us who are already here don't do so ourselves, and such an oath would go a long way to making that happen."

Mr Javid said his aim was not to create a "Government-approved one size fits all identity" where everybody listens to the Last Night of the Proms, but "without common building blocks of our society, you'll struggle to play a positive role in British life".

'Buses attacked' amid Syria evacuation stand-off

Convoys of buses set to evacuate people from two besieged villages in Syria have been attacked, say reports.

The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights says some of the vehicles moving people from Al Foua and Kefraya have been burned.

Some buses, as well as Red Crescent vehicles, reached the entrance to the villages.

The coalition of forces fighting for the government of President Bashar al Assad are demanding people to be allowed to leave the two villages in exchange for allowing evacuations of rebels and civilians from east Aleppo.

Syrian state media reported that "armed terrorists" - a term it uses for insurgent groups fighting against Assad's rule - attacked five buses and burned and destroyed them.

Rebel officials claim an angry crowd of people, possibly alongside pro-government forces, carried out the attack.

A resident in the area said it was not carried out by the group formerly known as the Nusra Front, which previously said it had not agreed to the evacuation of the two villages.

The stand-off has meant the evacuation operation has been suspended since Friday.

Meanwhile, the head of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has said western intervention in Syria would make matters worse.

The 28 NATO members belong to the US-led coalition fighting IS but they are not directly involved in the conflict in Syria.

Mr Stoltenberg said there were times where military intervention is necessary but Syria was not one of them

Boy, 3, shot dead in Little Rock road rage attack

A three-year-old boy has been shot dead by a driver who thought the car the child was travelling in "wasn't moving fast enough".

The boy, who has not been named, was on a shopping trip with his grandmother in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Saturday when they reached a stop sign.

A man, apparently furious at the delay, got out of his car with a gun and opened fire on them.

The grandmother was unhurt but at least one bullet hit the child.

She drove away and called police from a shopping centre. The child died in hospital a short time later.

The gunman has not been found and police say they are looking for an older black Chevrolet Impala driven by a tall black man.

Lieutenant Steve McClanahan said the grandmother and child were "completely innocent" and have no relation to the suspect.

It is the second time a child has been shot dead in an apparent road rage attack in Little Rock in recent weeks.

In November, a two-year-old girl was killed by someone from another vehicle shooting into her car. No arrests have been made.