U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Syria on Sunday for talks on the country's crisis, Agence France Presse reported.

Brahimi entered Syria via a land border crossing with Lebanon after arriving earlier in the day at the Rafik Hariri International Airport from Cairo.

While doomsayers hunkered down to await the coming apocalypse, others took a more lighthearted view Friday of a Mayan prophecy of the world's end and marked the event with stunts and parties.

Interpretations of the Mayan "Long Count" calendar point to an era of more than 5,000 years coming to a halt on December 21, although in Sydney it was business as usual.

Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Nawwaf al-Moussawi slammed on Thursday claims by defected Syrian cleric Abdul Jalil Saeed that Syria was planning on assassinating Mufti of Tripoli and the North Sheikh Malek al-Shaar.

He said: “The claims are lies and baseless.”

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun slammed on Tuesday the March 14 camp's obstruction of parliamentary work, accusing the “minority of practicing a dictatorship” in Lebanon.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc's weekly meeting: “I assure the people that no unrest will take place if the parliamentary elections are not staged due to the March 14 camp's obstruction.”

U.S. journalist Richard Engel, who was freed after being held hostage for five days in Syria, said Tuesday that his captors were taking him to an alleged Hizbullah stronghold when he was set free by rebels.

"This was a group known as the shabiha. This is a government militia. They are loyal to President (Bashar) Assad," Engel said about his captors.

The United States on Monday named former information minister Michel Samaha a "specially designated global terrorist" for allegedly aiding the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad to launch attacks in Lebanon.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a statement saying that Samaha, pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13441 which targets persons "undermining Lebanese sovereignty, including those who are supporting attempts by the Assad regime to incite violence inside Lebanon", is now a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under E.O. 13224.

Stone-throwing clashes broke out Friday in the Egyptian city of Alexandria between Islamists and opposition protesters, on the eve of a highly charged referendum on a new constitution, witnesses and state media said.

Fifteen people were wounded, according to medics, and several cars set on fire in the violence in the Mediterranean city, Egypt's second largest.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun criticized on Tuesday the government's failure to follow up on various development projects in Lebanon, including the completion of the Jal el-Dib bridge.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc's weekly meeting: “The bridge should have been completed by now.”

U.S. authorities said a medical helicopter has crashed in northern Illinois, killing all three people on board.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported the helicopter crashed Monday night while traveling from Rockford, near the Wisconsin border, to a hospital about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south in Mendota.

The army on Sunday deployed heavily in the Tripoli neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen and its entrances, ending the deployment of gunmen there, in the first phase of its plan to restore security in Tripoli, state-run National News Agency reported, after six people were killed and 40 others wounded on Sunday alone.

“The second phase will be the deployment of the army in Bab al-Tabbaneh and all the frontiers of the clashes,” NNA said.