BEIRUT // On the chaotic streets of Lebanon’s capital, pavements – let alone bike lanes – are nearly nonexistent.
In any space where a vehicle is not moving through, another vehicle is parked. Beat-up sedans, luxury cars, motorcycles and pedestrians dart around the parked vehicles, sometimes only missing each other by a few centimetres.
Traffic signs are not even viewed as a suggestion – they are ignored.
In this environment, walking is considered a dangerous enough activity. Few dare to cycle.
Yet slowly, a cycling culture is emerging in Beirut. Bikers crowd the seaside corniche, one of the few paved areas where no cars are found. On quiet weekend mornings, cyclists meander through the usually crowded, narrow streets of Beirut’s quainter quarters, such as Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael in east Beirut.
Syrian refugees struggle to keep warm during winter in Lebanon
While the world has focused most of its attention on the Syrian refugee crisis’ effect on Europe, the biggest crisis is actually in the country’s neighbors, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Lebanese documentary filmmaker Zakaria Jaber has released a new, reproduced version of “Zaalan: The Rose of Hamra Street,” which was originally made in 2014
Read more
It’s ‘hell’: How ISIS prevents people from fleeing its ‘caliphate’
Pamela Engel
ISIS has been tightening security along the borders of its "caliphate" to prevent people from fleeing, according to locals familiar with the terrorist group’s territory.
And ISIS — aka the Islamic State — seems to be keeping a closer watch over its populace.
People who live in Raqqa, Syria, the de-facto capital of the group’s territory, which it calls its "caliphate," are now reportedly forced to register with the militant government.
There are restrictions on what people can take in and out of ISIS-held cities. And women aren’t allowed to go anywhere without a male relative escort.
"Leaving the city is now really hard," Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, an activist with the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, told Business Insider recently. "The problem is not going to Raqqa, it’s how to get out." Raqqa is the center of ISIS’s operations in the Middle East. Raqqawi — who uses a pseudonym — still travels back and forth from the city with the help of smugglers, he said. His family remains there.
Read more
Special Report: Lebanon now home to over 1.2m Syrian refugees
Lebanon is just over half the size of Leinster, but by virtue of its proximity to neighbouring Syria, it has borne the brunt of the number of refugees fleeing across the border to escape civil war, writes RTÉ’s Aengus Cox.
At the beginning of December 2015 there were an estimated 1.2m displaced Syrians spread across Lebanon, comprising more than a quarter of the country’s population.
With the high number of refugees, traditional camps have not proven sufficient to cope with the escalating crisis.
In Lebanon there is now an established profile of both rural and urban refugees.
The capital Beirut, for example, is now home to at least 50,000 Syrians who have fled their homeland.
Read more
Lebanese Shi’ite council condemns Saudi execution of prominent cleric
Reuters Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shi’ite Council condemned the execution of a prominent Shi’ite cleric in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, saying it was a "grave mistake". "The execution of Sheikh Nimr was an execution of reason, moderation and dialogue," the council’s Vice President Sheikh Abdel Amir Qabalan said in a statement. Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr […]
Read more
The 10 foods people went crazy for in 2015
Kathryn Chou
This year has been a roller coaster of food trends.
It seems like everything from fried octopus balls to Spam made an appearance on the table and on Instagram feeds across the country.
These are the 11 foods people went crazy for in 2015.
Read more
They ‘can go viral in a matter of seconds’: An inside look at how ISIS sympathies spread in the US
Pamela Engel
A recent report has shown the extent to which ISIS’ influence has extended into the US, with hundreds of Americans following pro-ISIS accounts on social-media platforms.
The terrorist group, also known as the Islamic State or ISIL, recruits people from all over the world, including the US. Thousands of people from Western countries are thought to have joined the group’s ranks in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS has forcefully established a self-declared Islamic caliphate.
But for many Westerners, the radicalization process starts online, where it’s not difficult to find ISIS supporters who pull people in to extremist ideology.
In its report, the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University said the US was "home to a small but active cadre of individuals infatuated with ISIS’s ideology," some of whom had left their homes to travel to ISIS territory or mount attacks on the home front.
Read more
Snowstorm hits Lebanon, cutting off roads and villages
A snowplow opens a road in the north Lebanon village of Turza, in the district of Bsharri
BEIRUT (AP) — A snowstorm engulfed Lebanon on the first day of the new year, cutting off mountain roads, isolating villages and worsening living conditions for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.
Many refugees, living in tents and huts in the eastern Bekaa Valley, only came briefly out of their shelters on Friday to clear the snow so their dwellings would not collaps
Elsewhere, Syrian children were seen tossing snowballs at one another and playing in the snow. A child ran around in flip-flops, unfazed by the cold.
In the eastern town of Al-Marj near the Syrian border, the refugees said their biggest worry was the water, from rain or snow, leaking into the tents.
"We don’t know when the tent will collapse on us," said a Syrian woman, who identified herself as Um Abdou. "When it’s windy, we cannot sleep because we are scared that the tent will be blown away."
Read more
