Twins!

Sydney (our resident bird) has had a rough time of it over the last few months. She hatched two chicks in February/March time, but sadly the rain and cold weather got to them, and they died. Then she seemed to be abandoned by her uncaring partner and looked a bit miserable. Happily though, they seem to have patched up their differences, and Sydney is the proud mother of two new chicks! Photos hopefully will follow. As with Jemimah last year, she has been sitting on them for the last few days, but soon we think they will be allowed to sit unsupervised. Poor Sydney is finding it all very hard, and she has lost a lot of weight. (Really, she has!). Anyway, any suggestions for names for the birds will be gratefully received. Tempted as I am by Hassan and Nasrallah, I am not sure that those names will be entirely appropriate, nor do I want to saddle these poor chicks with such connotation-driven names.

Anyway, in other news that has been slightly more high profile in Lebanon, the Hariri tribunal resolution was passed by the UN last night. A couple of countries abstained - Russia, China (expected), and South Africa and Indonesia. But the Lebanese government now has until June 10 to ratify the resolution but, if they don't, I think it will go ahead anyway. Anyway, this means that people are generally nervy (as if the recent bombs weren't enough), and everyone is expecting some sort of trouble over the next week or two.

But, of course, it may not happen. I am not sure, for all their posturing, if the political leaders here are actually that bothered about the tribunal. Yes, the March 14 block want justice for Hariri, but I think all parties actually want to resolve the stalemate that has been going on for the last 6 months (the tent protesters will have been there for 6 months tomorrow), and now that the UN vote on the tribunal is out of the way, they can start quietly discussing how to solve this messy deadlock they have got themselves into.

And in the north, there is still deadlock in Tripoli. The Lebanese army has not yet entered the camp to finish off the mililtants (although many have been killed trying to escape), but it's generally expected that they probably will. And the main concern is that if the entry is bungled in any way, whether the other camps in Lebanon (about 11 others) will start to rise up against the army. At the moment, it seems unlikely, but almost anything can happen here!

So, the latest travel advice (along with the rest of the Armageddon-like advice concerning Lebanon on the website) is to avoid large crowds. Not hard at the moment as it is rare that you see more than 5 people in any one place, but we are duly scampering out of the way of people that look like they are beginning to mass...