Al Mayadeen

Al Mayadeen (Arabic: الميادين ; English: The Plazas) is a pan-Arabist satellite television channel launched on 11 June 2012 in Beirut, Lebanon. Its programming is predominantly news. It has news reporters in most Arab countries. In the pan-Arab TV news market it competes against Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and also against Sky News Arabia and BBC Arabic Television. At its founding in 2012, many of Al-Mayadeen's senior staff were formerly correspondents and editors at Al Jazeera.

The channel is part of Al Mayadeen satellite media network, including a production company, a radio station, a website, an advertising company and other media-related projects.

Besides the headquarters in Beirut, Al Mayadeen has a wide-ranging news network and three regional offices, one in Tunisia, another in Cairo with three reporters and a big studio, and a third in Tehran.

Staff

Ghassan bin Jiddo is the head of the board of directors and program director of the channel. He is the former head of Al Jazeera’s Iran and Beirut offices and a former talk show host in the channel. He resigned from the Qatar-based Al Jazeera in 2011, criticizing its reporting of the Syrian civil war. Jiddo seemingly accused Al Jazeera of deviating from "professional broadcasting standards", emphasizing that Al Mayadeen would remain objective and unbiased. Nayef Krayem, the owner of the Lebanon-based Al Ittihad TV and former director of the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV, was designated as the general manager of the channel, but he resigned one month before its launch.

Chris de Burgh

Christopher John Davison (born 15 October 1948), known professionally as Chris de Burgh, is a British-Irish singer-songwriter and instrumentalist. He is an art rock performer who also writes pop-oriented material. Only having had two top 40 hits in both the UK and the US, he is more popular in other countries, particularly Norway and Brazil. He is most famous for his 1986 love song "The Lady in Red", which reached number one in several countries. De Burgh has sold over 45 million albums worldwide.

Early life

De Burgh was born in Venado Tuerto, Argentina, to Colonel Charles Davison, a British diplomat, and Maeve Emily de Burgh, an Irish secretary. His maternal grandfather was Sir Eric de Burgh, a British Army officer who had been Chief of the General Staff in India during the Second World War. He took his mother's name, "de Burgh", when he began performing. His father had substantial farming interests, and Chris spent much of his early years in Malta, Nigeria and Zaire, as he, his mother and brother accompanied Colonel Davison on his diplomatic and engineering work.

Lebanese Armed Forces

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) (Arabic: القوات المسلحة اللبنانية | Al-Quwwāt al-Musallaḥa al-Lubnāniyya) or Forces Armées Libanaises (FAL) in French, also known as the Lebanese Army according to its official website (Arabic: الجيش اللبناني or "Armée libanaise" in French), is the military of the Republic of Lebanon. It consists of three branches, the army, the air force and the navy. The motto of the Lebanese Armed Forces is "Honor, Sacrifice, Loyalty" (Arabic: "شرف · تضحية · وفاء" - Sharaf.Tadhia.Wafa^_'). The Lebanese Armed Forces symbol consists of a Lebanon cedar tree surrounded by two laurel leaves, positioned above the symbols of the three branches: the ground forces represented by the two bayonets, the navy represented by an anchor, and the air force represented by two wings.

General overview

The Lebanese Armed Forces' primary missions include defending Lebanon and its citizens against external aggression, maintaining internal stability and security, confronting threats against the country's vital interests, engaging in social development activities and undertaking relief operations in coordination with public and humanitarian institutions.