BEIRUT— Following eight years and nearly $14 million in renovations, Lebanon’s iconic Sursock Museum reopened its doors to the public earlier this month in Beirut.
  In doing so, it has given another boost to a resurgent cultural scene that is flourishing despite the instability of the country that spawned it.

Originally the home of aristocrat Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock — bequeathed to the city upon his death —  the museum opened in 1961 and quickly became a place where visiting dignitaries and leading creative artists mingled.

It endured the country’s civil war, which ended in 1990, but major work was needed.

The result is a hugely increased capacity for Middle Eastern art, sculpture and photography stretching back to the mid-19th century.

Most of the expansion was done beneath the mansion, where the addition of a subterranean library and exhibition space are among the reasons it is now effectively five times larger.

The Guardian

On a Friday night in Beirut, tiny figures weave in and out of the traffic between moving cars. They stand on tiptoes to peer through vehicle windows in an attempt to charm drivers out of a dollar or two.

The children are Syrian refugees, often the sole breadwinners for their families, working through the night selling flowers and shining shoes. They come from families stuck in limbo in Lebanon, and whose parents desperately want to go back to Syria.

A group of young boys between 11 and 19 seem to have marked their territory along the stretch of bars and restaurants between the Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael neighbourhoods in the north-eastern part of the Beirut.

Mike Bird, Tech Insider

One of China’s totemic social policies is about to be abandoned.

The "one child policy" which, as the name suggests, limits each couple to one child, is going to be dropped. 

According to Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese communist party’s central committee has scrapped the stricture. Couples will now be able to have two children.

The rule was brought in back in 1978, and fully implemented in 1980, to tackle the country’s perceived overpopulation.

There have always been some exemptions to the rule, and it has been relaxed in recent years, but not totally abandoned.

Al Jazeera

Beirut, Lebanon – The "You Stink" protest movement has been raging for the past several months in Lebanon, demanding that the government do something about the country’s massive rubbish problem – and calling for an end to the political dysfunction and corruption many say caused the trash crisis.

The movement has been energised by thousands of Lebanese, many of them young, who are hoping for a radical change in the country’s politics and an end to the constant dysfunction.

Interestingly, a Lebanese satire series called "Electrifying" has for the past three years been exploring this same possibility: What might happen if Lebanon suddenly changed for the better, and how would people react?

Lifelong friends Omar Ghosn and Khalil Bitar, the creators of the series, said they were inspired when they found themselves together during an electricity blackout – a daily occurrence in Lebanon.

When the power outage started and the generator stopped working, they said they strangely felt relieved: "Instead of being aggravated because we could not work, we were glad not to have the noise of the generator in the background. This got us thinking of how tense and conditioned our lives were by this basic utility," Bitar told Al Jazeera.

www.hrw.org – Human Rights Watch

(Beirut) – The government of Lebanon should use the United Nations Human Rights Council review of its record to pledge concrete measures to address its longstanding human rights issues.

Lebanon will appear for the country’s second Universal Periodic Review on November 2, 2015, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Lebanon accepted many recommendations following its first review in 2010 but has failed to make progress on many of them.

“Lebanon missed many opportunities in the last five years to finally move forward on its human rights record,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director. “As the country’s challenges add up, it can’t afford to procrastinate or delay essential reforms to end impunity and ensure basic rights for many marginalized residents – nationals and foreigners alike.”

daily start.com.lb Lebanon’s ranking in the World Bank’s annual report Doing Business, which measures ease of doing business in 189 economies, slipped from 121 in 2014 to 123 in 2015, a sign that the country did not make any serious efforts in introducing reforms and improving the business climate. Ghobril said that Lebanon’s ranking is […]

Doug Bandow

Lebanon is the Middle East’s only melting pot. Never has the region more needed a peaceful Arab oasis.

However, the country is a sectarian volcano. The capital is but a short drive away from the Syrian imbroglio. A fourth of Lebanon’s current population is refugees. Sectarian fractures are widening as the government faces paralysis.

But Lebanon has not yet erupted, so it receives little attention from a U.S. administration overwhelmed with crises in the Middle East. If the country crashes, so will the only Middle Eastern model for tolerant coexistence. Lebanon desperately needs statesmen willing to look beyond their personal and group interests.

Modern Lebanon emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire with France controlling former Ottoman provinces dominated by Maronite Christians and Druze, a Shia Muslim off-shoot.

catholicherald.co.uk

The British government has agreed to consider if the slaughter and expulsion of Christians from the Middle East by Islamist terrorists constitutes genocide, but said it was reluctant to use the term. Baroness Anelay of St Johns, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, told the Lords that she would “reflect” on whether brutality inflicted on minorities by ISIS amounted to efforts to eradicate them completely.

She said the Government acknowledged that ISIS was “persecuting individuals and communities on the basis of their religion, belief or ethnicity, and its murderous campaign has resulted in the most appalling humanitarian crisis of our time”.

But she said the Government was reluctant to profess the view, held by Pope Francis, that the persecution was genocidal, but added: “I will certainly continue to reflect on that.”

By Tamara Pupic

Having founded the MENA’s first freelance marketplace to provide a solution for the growing unemployment challenges back in 2012, Loulou Khazen Baz, founder of Nabbesh.com, has now set her eyes on creating virtual jobs for young people in Palestine.

Partnering with Qatar-based social imitative Silatech, Nabbesh has launched Fursati, meaning ‘my opportunity’, a pilot social programme to connect Gulf-based businesses with qualified Palestinian freelancers.

Baz has been reported as saying that the programme is a business opportunity with immense impact since 52 percent of Palestine’s university graduates were unemployed in the second quarter of 2015, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Joseph A. Kechichian Senior Writer

“Any Lebanese cannot but feel insulted by the scenes of the garbage that floated in Beirut’s streets and the rest of the regions,” declared former prime minister Sa’ad Hariri in a statement released by his press office, as he reiterated his support to the incumbent, Tammam Salam, caught in a particularly vicious Catch-22 situation. The Future Movement leader blamed Hezbollah for the on-going freeze of major socio-political institutions, and pledged that he would not allow the “Party of God” to “undermine dialogue”.