U.N.-Arab League Special Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan on Thursday held talks with President Michel Suleiman at the Baabda palace on his peace plan for strife-torn Syria and the issue of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims abducted on May 22 in the Syrian province of Aleppo.

During the talks with Suleiman, Annan “evaluated his plan for Syria and the stages it has gone through,” NBN television reported.

Turkey's Islamist-rooted ruling party is preparing a bill to slash the time limit for abortions, party sources said, after the prime minister triggered outrage for likening abortion to murder.

Abortion has been legal in Turkey since 1983, allowing women to terminate a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks, but under the proposed bill the Justice and Development Party (AKP) wants to drastically reduce the time limit.

Cabinet criticized on Wednesday the Electricite du Liban contract employees’ recent protests, saying that they have violated the principles of peaceful demonstrations.

Information Minister Walid al-Daouq said: “Anyone who will deign to violate the law will be arrested.”

Japan and Turkey lined up on Wednesday with many of their Western allies who have kicked out Syrian diplomats as international outrage grows over brutal mass slayings blamed on the government in Damascus.

Japan has told the Syrian ambassador in Tokyo to leave the country, the foreign ministry said.

Turkish authorities have informed Speaker Nabih Berri, Premier Najib Miqati and Hizbullah that Ankara will exert every effort to resolve the case of 11 Shiite pilgrims, who were kidnapped in Syria last week.

The information was relayed to the officials by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu through ambassador to Lebanon Inan Ozyildiz on Tuesday.

The online gaming market is booming in the Arab world, according to a statement issued last week by the Arab Advisors Group. According to the report, the number of online Arabic games went from 1 in September 2007 to 135 as documented November 2011.

The report also observed that as of late last month, the total number of users of Arabic games on Facebook averaged at 2.89 million per month.

Turkish court on Tuesday ordered the detention of six former generals accused of involvement in a military coup in 1997, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The detentions are part of a probe into the bloodless coup that toppled the country's first Islamist-led government and come amid a growing standoff between the powerful military and the current Islamist-led rulers.

Israel expects foreign diplomatic pressure on Turkey to stop it trying four Israeli commanders over the killing of nine Turkish activists in a 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound ship.

"I imagine that diplomatic pressure will be put on Turkey to withdraw this action... foreign not Israeli," deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon, told state-run Channel One TV on Monday.

Syrian al-Ahrar party secretary general Ibrahim al-Zohbi announced that his mediation with the abductors of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims in Aleppo has ended.

“I ended my meditation for several reasons, mostly because the Lebanese government is dealing in an unprofessional manner with the incident,” according to a statement issued by his press office.

Speaker Nabih Berri sought on Monday to appease the angry families of Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria, saying sources from the Syrian opposition and Turkish officials have confirmed that they are still alive.

In remarks to several Beirut dailies, Berri said reports and “rumors” that the 11 men, who were kidnapped in the northern province of Aleppo last week, were executed are baseless.