BEIRUT: Beirut’s Publications Court Tuesday ordered former General Security chief Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed to pay a LL12 million ($7,981) fine after being convicted of libel and slander charges. He was fined another LL2 million for making threats against former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and "undermining national unity." Judicial sources told The Daily Star […]

  Head of the parliamentary energy committee MP Mohammed Qabbani stressed that the delay in exploring Lebanon’s offshore gas and oil exploration is due to technical obstacles and other unannounced interests as officials are at loggerheads over the demarcation of the 10 maritime oil exploration blocks. “We have agreed to open the tenders for three […]

  BEIRUT: Rifaat Eid, a leading member of the pro-Assad Arab Democratic Party was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment Monday for inciting clashes in the northern city of Tripoli, judicial sources said. According to the source, Lebanon’s Military Court sentenced the fugitive to life in prison and hard labor after he was convicted of […]

  The judges of the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon have approved at a plenary meeting amendments to the tribunal’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence, the court said in a statement on Monday. “The amendments are designed to improve and streamline the Tribunal’s procedures,” the statement said. “Specifically, they address the excusal and disqualification of […]

  The Council of Maronite bishops welcomed on Friday the dialogue among the country’s different factions, hoping that it would lead to the election of a new president, and urged the Lebanese to back the state at this critical stage. The bishops hoped in a statement following their monthly meeting in Bkirki that “talks among […]

  BEIRUT: Ten people were injured when a passenger van collided with a car in the north Lebanon district of Akkar Saturday morning, the National News Agency reported. The NNA said a Hyundai van collided with a Renault at the entrance of Qobeiyat, northeast of Tripoli. The report did not specify the severity of injuries. […]

  BEIRUT: Snowstorm Windy died down overnight Saturday, but schools and nurseries remained closed as icy mountain roads and fear of mudslides persisted. Sunshine brought a welcomed change to two days of heavy blizzards that buried villages across the country over Thursday and Friday. But roads in high altitude regions remained blocked, and others were […]

(Reuters) – More than 1,500 children are living or working on Lebanon’s streets, nearly three-quarters of them Syrian and most scraping a living by begging or roadside vending, a study published on Monday showed.

The number of children begging in Lebanese cities is one of the most visible signs of the country’s refugee crisis. Lebanon hosts more than 1.5 million Syrians from the civil war next door, the highest refugee population in the world per capita.

A total of 1,510 children were found to be living or working on the streets according to the study from the International Labour Organisation, the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF and charity Save the Children International.

These children earned an average of less than $12 per day and more than half of them were aged between 10 and 14 years old, it said.

  Bkirki spokesman Walid Ghayad stressed on Friday that the Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi informed a French diplomat, who is following up the presidential deadlock, that the crisis is not only linked to the Christians. Ghayad said that al-Rahi stressed during a recent meeting with Jean-François Girault, Director of the Department of the Middle East […]