BEIRUT, (Xinhua) — Beirut airport’s manager and general director of civil aviation must be suspended from their jobs for failing to fulfill their responsibilities and duties, Lebanese anti-corruption official said Wednesday. A software error at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport (RHIA) led to flights delays, causing great chaos and congestion in the airport’s departure halls on […]

By Jeffrey T. Lewis and Luciana Magalhaes SÃO PAULO—Brazil’s leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in jail for corruption, on Tuesday formally gave up his quixotic battle to run again in October’s election from his cell, naming former São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad as his replacement in the campaign. “Starting today, Fernando Haddad […]

BEIRUT,  (Xinhua) — The Rafic Hariri International Airport in Lebanese capital Beirut is not in need for expansion but only needs to be properly organized to host increasing passengers, said Parliament Member Yassin Jaber on Tuesday. “It is not necessary to pay 100 million U.S. dollars to expand the airport in the midst of the […]

by middleeastmonitor.com — Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Monday that the US decision to cut funding for the UN refugee agency UNRWA was the beginning to settle Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Speaking to reporters during his flight from Lebanon to France, Aoun said he will discuss the UNRWA issue during his visit to the European […]

By Vivian Yee and Hwaida Saad —nytimes.com —  JIYEH, Lebanon — They call it the ladies’ beach. The name is demure; the scene, not so much — at least not once they pass the parking lot, the man checking tickets at the front gate and the dim corridor at whose far end blazes a rectangle of bronze sand and sea. Hijabs are unwound from heads, veils tugged from faces. Jeans and abayas evaporate, divulging string bikinis, tankinis and swim shorts. Under spindly cabanas by azure waves, two women lie chest down on lounge chairs, their bare backs implying bare fronts. All around them, gallons of tanning oil glisten on acres of copper skin. When a man on a Jet Ski buzzes past, a female lifeguard warns him off with a staccato of whistle blasts. “Men,” said Nada, a school bus supervisor from Beirut who was treading the Mediterranean just offshore, “are suffocating.”

In Lebanon, a sliver of a country on the Mediterranean coast where summer sticks to your skin like moist Saran wrap, the beach is less a luxury than a utility. It is hard to imagine going without. Public and pay-by-the-day beaches line the coast from Tyre in the south to Tripoli in the north, and every other billboard on the highways out of Beirut seems to display a bikini model promoting a tanning aid. (S.P.F., evidently, is not in style.) But many observant Muslim women consider it “haram” — forbidden — to expose their bodies in front of men who are not their husbands or, in some cases, close relatives. Other women may cover themselves in deference to conservative families and communities.

For them, a mixed-gender beach is to be avoided; those who go with their families roast in the sun fully clothed in hijabs and long-sleeved shirts and pants or abayas, the full-length caftans popular among devout Lebanese Muslim women. Hence the emergence of ladies’ beaches like this one, the Bellevue Beach Club in the seaside town of Jiyeh — a salt-tinged hiatus from the male gaze for $18 a day, just 20 minutes down a trash-perfumed highway from Beirut. “When you see me on Facebook, I look completely different,” she said, her hair loose and ropy in the water. “You wouldn’t recognize me.” After next year, when she planned to make the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim who can afford it is supposed to undertake at least once, she said she would avoid even the ladies’ beach; she, like many women who have completed the hajj, would adopt more modest attire. And she frowned on the women who had brought their young sons, who are allowed up to age 8 on the beach. She did not want her sons or grandsons to get used to seeing women’s bodies. But still. “I love to swim,” she said, smiling and shrugging, “so I have no other choice.” Nada and Ms. Amhaz agreed on one point: absolutely no beach selfies, not even to share with their husbands. “No, no!” they exclaimed, high-fiving. “My husband doesn’t need pictures,” Ms. Amhaz said. “He sees everything anyway.”

BEIRUT (Xinhua) — Lebanon has witnessed a remarkable growth in the number of Gulf tourists this summer season, said the Lebanese Investment Business Committee (LIBC) on Sunday. “The number of Gulf tourists in Lebanon surpassed 50,000 this summer,” said Rabih El-Amine, secretary of LIBC, quoted by the National News Agency. Amine said that Gulf tourists […]

CAIRO (Reuters) – A Lebanese tourist who was sentenced to eight years in prison for posting a video on Facebook the authorities claimed had insulted the country is set to walk free after a court cut the prison term and suspended it, the state-run MENA news agency said on Sunday. A Cairo court in July […]

by greekcitytimes.com — According to organisers, Lebanon will be this year’s honoured country at the 5th Athens International Tourism Expo ( December 7-9), participating with a large number of Lebanese tourism organisations and companies. This official state participation has been undertaken by the Lebanese Tourism Ministry, with the collaboration of the Embassy of Lebanon in […]

by Umer Jamshaid — BEIRUT, (UrduPoint) :A software error at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport led to flights delays, causing great congestion in the airport’s departure halls on Thursday and Friday, local media reported. “Damage to a software belonging to Sita, a baggage management company, took place at around 11 p.m. on Thursday, causing great congestion at the airport,” […]

BEIRUT, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) — Lebanese officials and experts refused Friday that the country’s economy is collapsing. “We cannot say that the Lebanese economy is deteriorating and our duty is to adopt reforms that were endorsed in the 2018 budget,” Ibrahim Kanaan, Head of Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee, was quoted by the National News […]