BEIRUT (Reuters) – In an Arab world engulfed in political tumult and, in many cases, economic distress, U.S. President Barack Obama’s words can seem lofty, but limp.

“By the time we found (Osama) bin Laden, al Qaeda’s agenda had come to be seen by the vast majority of the region as a dead end, and the people of the Middle East and North Africa had taken their future into their own hands,” Obama declared.

NAHR AL-BARED, LEBANON (Reuters) – Like the crowds of Palestinian refugees who rattled Israel’s border fences this week, Subhia Loubani yearns to return to the homeland she had to flee when the Jewish state was created in 1948.

Even though, unlike most of them, she has a brand-new house.

Loubani, 72, received a key last month to one of the first few homes built by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, in north Lebanon’s Nahr al-Bared camp, which was utterly destroyed in fighting nearly four years ago.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The fate of Bahrain’s protest movement is a stark reminder of how Western and regional power politics can trump reformist yearnings, even in an Arab world convulsed by popular uprisings against entrenched autocrats.

Bahrain is not Libya or Syria, but Western tolerance of the Sunni monarchy’s crackdown suggests that interests such as the U.S. naval base in Manama, ties to oil giant Saudi Arabia and the need to contain neighboring Iran outweigh any sympathy with pro-democracy demonstrators mostly from the Shi’ite majority.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The fate of Bahrain’s protest movement is a stark reminder of how Western and regional power politics can trump reformist yearnings, even in an Arab world convulsed by popular uprisings against entrenched autocrats.

Bahrain is not Libya or Syria, but Western tolerance of the Sunni monarchy’s crackdown suggests that interests such as the U.S. naval base in Manama, ties to oil giant Saudi Arabia and the need to contain neighbouring Iran outweigh any sympathy with pro-democracy demonstrators mostly from the Shi’ite majority.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Seven weeks of protests in Syria. Seven weeks of bloody repression.

International criticism has mounted. The United States has tightened sanctions. The European Union may impose its own.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Seven weeks of protests in Syria. Seven weeks of bloody repression.

International criticism has mounted. The United States has tightened sanctions. The European Union may impose its own.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Some Arabs have misgivings about how U.S. forces summarily killed Osama bin Laden and disposed of his body in the ocean, even if many are far more preoccupied by the popular uprisings convulsing the Middle East.

Questions have multiplied since the White House said the al Qaeda leader was unarmed when U.S. helicopter-borne commandos shot and killed him on Monday at the fortified villa where he had been hiding in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

BEIRUT, May 3 (Reuters) – Deeply divided Lebanon, with no
government since January, now faces extra risks from instability
in its powerful neighbour Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad
is staging a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The domestic political crisis and the spillover effects of
the turmoil in Syria are damaging the Lebanese economy, expected
to grow only 2.5 percent this year, down from 7.5 percent in
2010, according to the International Monetary Fund.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Osama bin Laden, slain by U.S. forces in Pakistan on Sunday, seems curiously irrelevant in an Arab world fired by popular revolt against oppressive leaders.

“Bin Laden is just a bad memory,” said Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, in Beirut. “The region has moved way beyond that, with massive broad-based upheavals that are game-changers.”

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Osama bin Laden, slain by U.S. forces in Pakistan on Sunday, seems curiously irrelevant in an Arab world fired by popular revolt against oppressive leaders.

“Bin Laden is just a bad memory,” said Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, in Beirut. “The region has moved way beyond that, with massive broad-based upheavals that are game-changers.”