worldfinance.com

Despite the deteriorated conditions in the Middle East, which subdued growth in Lebanon, the country’s banking sector has proven itself to be remarkably resilient to external shocks. Banks in Lebanon have, despite the adverse conditions, continued to pursue expansion.

The sector’s size is 3.6 times larger than the rest of the economy. Banks’ domestic assets reached $180bn at the end of June 2015, an increase of 49 percent over the past five years, whereas GDP has been growing at an average annual rate of 2.1 percent over the same period. Deposits have grown 50 percent between 2010 and 2015, while loans to the private sector have increased by 63 percent. Like much of Lebanese society, the country’s financial institutions have proven themselves to be remarkably resilient, weathering crisis after crisis and continuing to function in the face of adversity.

New York Times By RACHEL DONADIO

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Aishti Foundation, a splashy new waterfront art space and shopping mall that opened on Sunday, showcases the blue-chip contemporary art collection of a Beirut luxury retail magnate. Massimiliano Gioni, the globe-trotting artistic director at the New Museum in New York, assembled the first exhibition. The prominent architect David Adjaye designed the building.

All that star power has helped confirm Beirut’s place on the international art and fashion map. But Aishti is just one of several art spaces that have opened recently or are planned here, enlivening an already rich cultural ecosystem. This month, the Sursock Museum, with a collection of Lebanese art in a historic mansion, reopened with fanfare after an eight-year renovation, while a museum of the City of Beirut is under construction, and a new contemporary art space and an archaeological museum are being planned, among other projects.

The creative ferment is happening even as unrest in the region and domestic political instability have ground the economy and tourism to a near halt and threaten to embroil Lebanon in new conflicts. Beirut is also a city where luxury towers are redrawing the skyline while the arrival in recent years of an estimated 1.5 million refugees from neighboring Syria has strained the infrastructure of a country of 4 million. A crisis over garbage collection recently plagued the city, but seems to have subsided.

By Michael Karam, .thenational.ae

By Sylvia Westall

BEIRUT, Oct 26 (Reuters) – Four decades ago, Lebanon used to export power to its larger neighbour Syria. Now it barely generates enough electricity to keep street lamps on at night.

The situation is so bad that even people fleeing the conflict in Syria have been heard to complain.

Outages have plagued Lebanon since its own 1975-1990 civil war and the power crisis is a legacy of that conflict, with the country now shackled by paralysis in government and widely perceived corruption that has put a brake on development.

"The situation (with electricity) is not bearable for the Lebanese people any more," said Mustafa Baalbaki, the creator of a phone app, Beirut Electricity, which tracks outages and is used by 15,000 people daily.

International Business Time

 By Alessandria Masi

NABATIYE, Lebanon – Hundreds of bloodied faces fill Nabatiye Square on a Saturday morning in southern Lebanon, some belonging to children too young to walk. Boys and men are casually wielding swords large enough to be visible from a second floor balcony. In the sun, their open wounds ooze, and the air is rancid with raw flesh, a heaving mass that smells like a butcher’s shop.

This bloody spectacle is an annual tradition on the Day of Ashura, the tenth day of the first month in the Islamic calendar, when members of the Muslim Shia sect come together to mourn, with self-inflicted punishment, the battlefield death of Imam Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. In the town of Nabatiye, men show solidarity with Hussein by making small cuts to the crown of their heads before repeatedly striking themselves  to ensure the incisions do not clot. The practice is symbolic, to express regret that the mourners are not able to fight alongside Hussein. But this year, the self-flagellation has taken on a more desperate quality — many in attendance believe they are continuing Hussein’s fight for Shiite Muslims on the battlefields of Syria, where the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah has been fighting alongside the Syrian regime.

Security forces in Lebanon interrogate a Saudi prince on charges of carrying drugs on his private plane, Lebanese media say. Abd al-Muhsen bin Walid bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud was detained on Monday at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, while in possession of 24 bags and eight suitcases full of narcotics. […]

albawaba.com

If you thought the idea of giant piles of trash lining the streets of Beirut was pretty gross, imagine if those piles became mobile, soggy waste with a questionable-looking surface shine. Sound fun? Yeah, we didn’t think so either.

That’s the scene in Lebanon’s capital city right now, as an early winter storm of rain and hail reaked havoc across the Levant on Sunday.

Palestinian social media users shared videos of baseball-sized hail hitting cities in the West Bank, while Israeli media reported several were injured and one killed after accidents around Tel Aviv.

So Beirut isn’t the only one that’s knee-deep in the first stages of MENA’s winter months, but it’s probably the stinkiest. Lebanon’s trash saga began in July, when maintenance workers went on strike over the government’s failure to replace the dramatically-overfilled Naameh landfill. What ensued was the steady build-up of towers of plastic, food and metal waste all over Beirut. 

By Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer, Gulf News

Cheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah militia leader, emphasised the necessity for dialogue among rival Lebanese politicians during his latest television appearance to mark the end of the annual Ashura commemorations.

Inciting emotionally-laden crowds who repented their forefathers’ alleged failures to assist Hussain Bin Ali at the battle of Karbala in 680, Nasrallah fell back on irony to criticise Lebanese elites. “They have waited for the Iranian nuclear agreement to be finalised thinking that Iran would abandon us, and it did not,” he hammered. “They have waited for the fall of Syria, but Syria will not fall,” he said. “They shall not benefit from this opportunity,” he drove the point home, declaring: “In Lebanon we are the masters of our decisions.”

by Mona Sukkarieh

catholicherald.co.uk

Gathered around the Holy Father Francis, we the Synod Fathers, along with the fraternal Delegates and Auditors participating in the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, turn our thoughts to all the families of the Middle East.

For years now, due to bloody conflicts, they have been victims of unspeakable atrocities. Their conditions of life have been further aggravated in recent months and weeks.

The use of weapons of mass destruction, indiscriminate killings, beheadings, kidnapping of human beings, trafficking in women, the enrolment of children into militias, persecution on the basis of religious belief or ethnicity, the destruction of cultural heritage and countless other atrocities have forced thousands of families to flee their homes in search of refuge elsewhere, often in conditions of extreme precariousness. Currently they are prevented from returning and from exercising the right to live in dignity and safety on their own soil, contributing to the reconstruction and the material and spiritual well-being of their respective countries.