Dina Hanna, a graduating
senior at the Lebanese American University (LAU), made a simple request
to her University: to provide her grandmother with a ticket to attend
the graduation ceremony. A day later, she received this email instead of
information about her grandmother’s ticket:

Dina was taken aback by the response, and took to Facebook to speak out  against the preferential treatment of relatives of “VIP” Lebanese:

“Dear LAU,

I
have been with you for five years now and will be graduating next week.
Funny thing is, you always were so keen on teaching us values and
principles. Everyday I would walk into your campus, smile, and say hello
to the janitor the same way I do to my teachers. However, this email
shows otherwise.
We have been trying to break stereotypes for so
long. Appearance isn’t everything. You accept students in spite of their
race, appearance and social status. I sent you an email yesterday
asking for an extra ticket for my grandmother to attend my graduation
and I got no reply back. I guess it matters more to send an email that
same week asking students who have ‘important’ parents to inform you so
that you can seat them upfront to ‘retain your image.’

Thank you for all the values you taught us.

MP Robert Fadel during press conference resigns as MP

In Tripoli Lebanon municipal elections preliminary results indicated that none of the 24 seats on the
council were won by members of the Christian or Alawite communities
which were both represented in the outgoing council. One analyst described the result as a sign of growing hardline
sentiment in the mostly Sunni city that is a historic bastion of Sunni
Islamist groups.

daily star.com.lb Tripoli MP Robert Fadel unexpectedly announced his resignation Monday,
hours after unofficial results from the city’s local elections held one
day earlier showed that probably no Christians will be represented in
the new municipal council. Fadel, an independent March 14 figure,
had backed the coalition list that took only six seats against the 18
captured by the ticket supported by resigned Justice Minister Ashraf
Rifi. In a news conference earlier in the day, Rifi had vowed to
preserve Tripoli’s coexistence, despite his list falling short of a
sufficient Christian and Alawite representation.

by Kim Ghattas – Foreign Policy

BEIRUT — They celebrated the results by gathering their candidates,
volunteers, and supporters at a seaside events hall here in the capital.
Several hundred people sang, cheered, and swayed to the traditional dabke line dance.

And yet Beirut Madinati,
or “Beirut My City,” a group of 24 citizens who had just run in the
city’s municipal elections — many of them young professionals, most of
them secular, half of them women — had actually lost. So what were they
celebrating?

The upstart movement, formed a few short months before the election
and with only a small, underfunded ground operation, had taken on
Lebanon’s entrenched political overlords and sectarian political
establishment and garnered a staggering 40 percent of the vote.

Reuters, Ministers and
members of parliament belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah could be
sanctioned under a new U.S. law targeting the group’s finances, a U.S.
Treasury official said on Friday.

The
U.S. Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act (HIFPA) passed in
December threatens sanctions against anyone who finances Hezbollah in a
significant way.

It has ignited an
unprecedented dispute between Lebanon’s most powerful group – the
heavily armed Hezbollah – and a central bank widely seen as a pillar of
the otherwise weak and dysfunctional Lebanese state.

by Hugo Shorter the UK ambassador to Lebanon

Lebanon “commemorates” today the two year anniversary since it last had a President.

Notre Dame University recently marked the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia.
Erasmus thought More’s genius was “such as England never had and never
again will have.” But beyond his national importance to my country, I
think Thomas More is relevant to modern-day Lebanon.

What
is Lebanon’s utopia? Today’s presidential vacuum is an unwelcome
reminder of the blockages in the sectarian system which can paralyse and
weaken the state. Undoubtedly, Lebanon’s utopia must be based on
co-existence. However the key thing is this: those who want to preserve a
form of co-existence should want a strong state.

by ABC news Tara Brown and Stephen Rice (R) were detained in Lebanon for weeks over the story.

The Nine Network today released its report into the bungled child recovery in Lebanon. A
statement from Nine said Rice, the producer of the story about Brisbane
mother Sally Faulkner and her bid to return her children to Australia,
would leave the company immediately.

Nine chief executive Hugh
Marks said the recovery operation exposed the crew to “serious risks”
and “significant reputational damage”. “We got too close to the story and suffered damaging consequences,” Mr Marks said. “Amongst
other elements of the execution of this story it was inappropriate, and
at odds with our standard procedure, for a payment to be made directly
by 60 Minutes to the recovery agency that had been independently
contracted by Sally Faulkner.

“It was also inappropriate, with the
risks involved for our crew, not to have consulted with Nine’s security
advisers before the story was finalised.”

Matar called for resolute action, saying that “if Christians in the Middle East are suffering today, the whole world will be suffering tomorrow”, adding that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is not like other Muslims. “There is no place for Christians in the Islamic State,” the Maronite clergyman said. He came to […]

24 May 2016 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the holding of municipal elections in Lebanon, which are expected to conclude on 29 May, urging all Lebanese leaders to act responsibly to elect the country’s President, a post vacant for two years, without a further delay, his spokesperson said today in a statement. “[The […]

Daily Star.com.lb, Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi
reaffirmed his staunch opposition to the naturalization of Syrians in
Lebanon Monday, voicing fears that a delayed solution to Syria’s
conflict would prolong the refugee crisis in Lebanon.

“We are
afraid of the Syrian refugees remaining in Lebanon, not because of the
UN’s politics or of the report issued by the UN Secretary General [Ban
Ki-moon], but because of the Syrian (refugee) status in Lebanon and the
Syrian war,” Azzi said.

The minister made his remarks during a joint press conference with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag. He
added that “the obstruction of political and necessary military
solutions in Syria will make the Syrians staying in Lebanon a
possibility, and the Lebanese must work to prevent this, not only to
protect Lebanon but Syria also.”