By Joseph Winters

Last summer, gas masks were a common sight on the streets of Beirut.
But residents weren’t wearing the masks to protect themselves from a
chemical attack or toxic pollution; rather, they were to combat the
stench of a quickly growing pile of garbage. “We are coughing, we have
allergies and there are mosquitoes and flies in our homes,” one Beiruti told the AP.
With the 2015 closure of one of the city’s largest landfills, citizens
were left with no functioning waste disposal system, and large heaps of garbage began to appear on roads, along river beds, and in nearby forests.

Many Lebanese have taken to the streets to protest the garbage
crisis, but it is just one symptom of a governing elite that many
citizens feel have lost touch with the people’s concerns. Lebanese
politics are, by design, rife with sectarianism; top politicians have
continually used their status for personal gain; over the past six
years, parliamentary elections have twice been unconstitutionally postponed due to the fear of political tensions escalating to sectarian violence. To top it off, Lebanon has been without a president since 2013.
Beirut’s garbage problem cast light on a government that has
preoccupied itself with political distractions, while remaining largely
apathetic to the grievances of the people it represents.

By Shagun Shah

It may have been on the global radar for over a decade, but Lebanon’s fashion scene
is having another moment. The country first stole international style
headlines when designers like Elie Saab, Zuhair Murad, Reem Acra and
Rabih Kayrouz began making couture gowns for Hollywood celebs. Elie
Saab, Zuhair Murad, Rabih Kayrouz, a trio of Lebanese designers whose
unique couture and ready-to-wear creations have taken the international
fashion scene by storm.What is it like to live in a pressure cooker? If
you want a real answer to that question, you might want to ask someone
from Lebanon.

Although it is one of the Middle East’s
most beautiful countries – after all, Beirut was known as the “Paris of
the Middle East” in the 1970s – it has also been ravaged by war for
decades. Beyond their heritage, these designers are tied together by a
common thread: their creations are magically spun from glittering
embroidery and embellishment. They truly create magic! The Middle East
is known for its artisans and craftsmanship. They work on embroideries
and hand works of all sorts. In Lebanon, we they’re a salad bowl of so
many communities and each one specialized in some craft: from the
Armenians to the Druze and  to people in Saida or
Tripoli or Baalbeck. There is so much to explore. Plus, they’re
survivors. So they teach themselves skills and professions to stay
afloat and that is an advantage!

BY Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer – Gulf News

Beirut: Three years after the August 23, 2013 simultaneous bombings of
Al Taqwa and Al Salam mosques in Tripoli that left 42 individuals dead
and more than 600 injured, Judge Alaa Al Khatib issued a detailed
indictment of two Syrian intelligence officers who apparently supervised
the operations.

This condemnation is a first for the Lebanese
judiciary, given that senior magistrates seldom complete their
investigation due to political pressure. Judge Al Khatib
identified the two Syrians by name — Mohammad Ali Ali, a captain serving
in the Military Intelligence Brigade 235, also known as the Palestine
Branch, and Nasser Juban, an official in the Political Security
Division.

Arrest warrants for the two suspects were duly issued
along with the establishment of a permanent investigation cell to
uncover the identities of any senior officials who may have given orders
and orchestrated the attack, whether they were foreign nationals or
Lebanese citizens. Al Khatib, who delivered his 44-page report to
Minister of Justice Ashraf Rifi, clarified that his investigations led
to the orders that were issued by a senior security branch in the Syrian
Intelligence, though he refrained to reveal that individual’s name.

Five Lebanese suspects were also indicted although only one suspect
was charged for the crime, Yousuf Diab — who hails from Tripoli’s Jabal
Mohsen — was arrested.

Reuters – Lebanon indicted
two Syrian intelligence officers on Friday in connection with twin
bombings at mosques in Tripoli in 2013, state media said, the deadliest
attack in the city since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990.

The
two blasts, at the Sunni Muslim Taqwa and al-Salam mosques in the
northern Lebanese city, happened within minutes of each other in August
2013 and killed more than 40 people and injured hundreds.

A
Lebanese military court accused Syrian intelligence officers Muhammad
Ali Ali, of the “Palestine Branch”, and Nasser Jubaan, of the “Political
Security Directorate,” of planning and overseeing the attacks,
Lebanon’s National News Agency said.

The
court ruling announcing the indictment said investigators were still
trying to uncover the names of the officials responsible for giving the
two officers their orders.

By Tom Perry- Reuters

BRIH, Lebanon – It took more than three decades and an unexpected death to bring the village of Brih back together. Nestled
among fruit trees and olive groves in a rugged valley, Brih was
populated for generations by both Christians and Druze – adherents to a
small but influential offshoot of Islam that emerged in the 11th
century.

But when Lebanon descended into civil war in the 1970s,
the two communities found themselves pitted against each other. In 1983,
when the last Christians fled, Druze villagers moved into abandoned
Christian houses; others were razed.

Then last November, Georges
Chalhoub, a 56-year-old shopkeeper whose forefathers had come from Brih
but who had lived near Beirut for much of his life, was killed in a car
accident. Chalhoub had dreamed of moving back to his ancestral village
and so his family decided to bury him there.

by AFP

A garbage crisis has returned to Lebanon
with trash piling up in regions north of Beirut months after the
government headed off a political crisis over uncollected waste. The
local council in the suburb of Bourj Hammoud, where a temporary dump is
located, have for the past week denied access to garbage trucks on the
grounds that the authorities had failed to honour a commitment to open a
waste-treatment plant. In
March, after an eight-month crisis which led to mass street protests,
the government approved a “temporary plan” to open two new landfills,
one in Bourj Hammoud to the north and another south of the capital.