Al-Jadeed TV denied on Tuesday that its reporter Youmna Fawwaz was kidnapped in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo while covering the severe fighting between government troops and armed rebels.

Fawwaz headed from Syria towards the Turkish territories on Monday night, al-Jadeed said. “She contacted us at 7:00 am from Turkish territories where she is being interrogated by security authorities on how she entered Syria.”

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Lebanon next month will go ahead as scheduled, the Vatican said on Monday, despite tensions in the country linked to the raging conflict in Syria.

"The preparations for the visit are going ahead without any uncertainty on the part of the Vatican," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has described as “very foolish” a decision by Air France to land a plane in Damascus following tensions near the Beirut airport on Wednesday.

In remarks carried by Le Parisien on its website on Saturday, Fabius said: “Imagine for a second if the Syrian authorities decided to inspect the plane to check the identities of the passengers.”

As Muslims the world over geared up for Eid, the celebrations marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Syrians faced another daily cycle of bloodshed on Saturday.

Local Coordination Committees said that the number of people killed by the Syrian regime forces rose to 160 in Damascus and its suburbs.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday noted that “what happened in the past two days was out of Hizbullah and AMAL’s control,” warning that his group would make lives of Israelis "a living hell" if Lebanon is attacked.

“It’s untrue that Hassan al-Meqdad is a Hizbullah member,” Nasrallah said of a Lebanese man abducted near Damascus on Tuesday by a Syrian armed group which claimed that he is a Hizbullah sniper.

The United States has expressed deep concern on the Syrian civil war’s spill over into Lebanon and called on all sides to exercise restraint following a string of kidnappings.

“We are deeply concerned about spillover from the Syrian crisis that could impact on the stability, on the sovereignty of Lebanon, and we firmly condemn kidnapping as a tactic,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Thursday.

Air France said Thursday it will resume its flight to Lebanon, a day after it was forced to land briefly in Syria and then head to Cyprus after protesters blocked the road leading to the Beirut airport.

A spokeswoman said the plane took off Wednesday from Paris, but was diverted when it was an hour from Beirut because of concerns passengers would be trapped if it landed.

Families of victims of a deadly 1983 bombing of U.S. Marines in Lebanon filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to hold Standard Chartered Bank and its New York branch accountable.

They claim in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the bank conspired with Iran and its agents to hide Iran's assets from them. They're seeking to trace assets as they try to enforce a $2.6 billion judgment against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The United States Air Force planned a key test Tuesday of an experimental aircraft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound, which is about 3,600 mph (6,000 kph).

The unmanned X-51 WaveRider was expected to reach Mach 6 after being dropped by a B-52 bomber and taking flight off the Southern California coast near Point Mugu. Engineers hoped the X-51 would sustain its top speed for five minutes, twice as long as it's gone before, NBC reported.

The Mustaqbal bloc noted on Tuesday that former minister Michel Samaha’s arrest uncovers to the entire world the Syrian regime’s “criminal intentions” towards Lebanon.

It therefore demanded after its weekly meeting “the suspension of the security agreement between Lebanon and Syria.”