The United Nations’ Committee against Torture is holding a series of contacts with the Lebanese government in light of the recent abuse scandal at Roumieh Prison, reported al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday. Diplomatic sources present in Geneva told the daily that the committee was informed of the video clips showing torture at the facility and […]

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi urged the rival March 8 and 14 alliances on Thursday to officially announce the name of their presidential candidates and elect a new head of state. “It is a shame that the presidential vacuum crossed the one-year mark,” al-Rahi told a delegation from the Maronite League that visited him in […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanon’s business leaders warned Thursday of dire consequences on the country’s struggling economy if the yearlong presidential vacuum persists and the Cabinet remains paralyzed as a result of a widening rift over the appointment of senior military and security officers. The Economic Committees, the country’s private sector, teamed up with labor unions to […]

  German federal prosecutors have said they have filed terrorism charges against four men, among them three Lebanese, on allegations they supported an ultraconservative Syrian rebel organization, Ahrar al-Sham. Prosecutors said Thursday that Lebanese nationals Kassem El R., 32 and Hassan A.S., 29, German Nuran B., 49, and Ali F., 30, who has dual Lebanese-German […]

 BEIRUT: Hezbollah-planted land mines and mortar attacks left at least nine Nusra Front militants dead outside an east Lebanon border village Friday, a source close to Hezbollah told The Daily Star. The incident occurred on Syrian territory on the eastern outskirts of Maaraboun, which is southwest of the border enclave of Tfail, in southern Qalamoun. […]

  Lebanese authorities should adopt wide-ranging measures to combat torture, including creating a national monitoring body for detention facilities, Human Rights Watch said Friday. The Lebanese government should further bring national laws and practices in compliance with its international obligations to prevent and combat torture, the New York-based rights group said on the International Day […]

  BEIRUT: Education Minister Elias Bou Saab announced in a news conference Friday the results of official exams for Grade 9 students, saying the results for Grade 12 would be out next week. “Teachers have been working since the early morning to release the results for the middle school exams on time,” Bou Saab said […]

By Sulome Anderson

The nail salon in the picturesque village of Ras Baalbek looks like any other nail salon in Lebanon. Located in the northeast of the country, close to the Syrian border, the predominantly Christian town is quiet today, drenched in June sunlight. A group of women chatter excitedly as they fan their freshly painted fingernails and examine their pedicures.

“You can’t see that color on your nails,” a pretty girl in her 20s says to her middle-aged, heavyset aunt, who is drying her toes. “You should have picked a different color.”

Fulya Ozerkan and Emmanuelle Baillon, AFP

Gaziantep (Turkey) (AFP) – She wanted to move to a land where "the laws of Allah apply" but found herself trapped in a world of arbitrary beatings and violence where women are treated as sexual objects.

Nadia (not her real name), a 21-year-old French woman, was recruited earlier this spring by Islamic State (IS) jihadists on Internet chatrooms and then travelled to the militants’ self-declared capital of Raqa, in Syria.

But she quickly grew disenchanted, finding the highly-radicalised militants "fantasise more about the Kalashnikov than the Koran".

During a tumultuous three months with IS in Raqa, she married and then separated from a jihadist, was twice thrown in jail and then managed to cross into Turkey where she was detained by police.

  EU foreign ministers have “strongly” reiterated their call on all the rival political parties to “take decisive action” to elect a new president and put Lebanon’s stability and national interest ahead of partisan politics. “The EU restates its call to all members of the parliament to uphold Lebanon’s long-standing democratic tradition and to convene […]