Lebanon Day At the Races: No Peace at the Palace of Peace

In the mountains above Beirut, artillery thundered, but the 3,000 people assembled at Beirut's Palace of Peace race track scarcely paid heed to the rumble: they had come to enjoy an afternoon of horse racing at the oval, which had opened in September after being closed during more than two years of warfare and unrest. Everything went well until the third race, when the four favorite horses fell at the start, thereby enabling a 91-to-1 long shot named Commodore to romp home as the winner. At that, hundreds of losing bettors swarmed onto the track, trampling over fences and tearing down...