The summer festival – which has been headlined by Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Joan Baez and other music giants – has historically been hosted in the ancient Roman ruins in the Beqaa Valley, only 40 kilometres from the Syrian border. The conflict forced organisers to cancel the event for two years, and then temporarily relocate […]

By Sam Bourgi – .economiccalendar.com/

Sluggish economic conditions are expected to weigh on the Lebanese
economy for the foreseeable future, as political instability and
spillovers from the war in Syria drag on the fragile Mediterranean
country.

Lebanon’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 1% in 2015. Real GDP
growth has weakened in each of the past four years to only a fraction of
the post-2006 boom period, where growth averaged more than 9% annually.

The Lebanese economy faces a myriad of challenges that mostly stem
from political instability and the ongoing war in neighbouring Syria.
This uncertainty has become a drag on foreign direct investment and
tourism, two key pillars of the economy.

Business conditions deteriorated sharply at the end of the second
quarter, according to the Markit/BLOM Lebanon purchasing managers’ index
(PMI). A sluggish tourism sector was cited by businesses as one of the
main factors undermining the economic outlook.

By AP: BEIRUT –  Hamada Bayloun is not
particularly religious, but across his entire upper back spreads a large
tattoo of the most revered saint in Shiite Islam, Imam Ali.

He is one of a growing number of Shiite Muslims in
Lebanon who have inked themselves with Shiite religious and political
symbols as a show of pride in their community since neighboring Syria’s
civil war broke out in 2011, fanning hatreds between Shiites, Sunnis and
other faiths across the region. The 30-year-old Bayloun got his tattoo a few months
after the war began, partly as a response to attempts to bomb Shiite
shrines in Syria and Iraq.

“We can’t respond with car bombs, but (through
tattoos) we can show our strength and love for the prophet and his
family,” he said, referring to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, who was Ali’s
cousin and father-in-law. The Syrian conflict, which began with government
forces crushing protests against President Bashar Assad, became a fight
between predominantly Sunni rebels against Assad’s minority Alawite
sect, an offshoot of Shiism. The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has
sent thousands of its fighters to Syria to support Assad, alongside
Iranian, Iraqi and other Shiite militias.

gulfnews.com

Beirut: The founder of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), the
82-year-old former Lebanese Commander of the Lebanese Army General
Michel Aoun, confronted a defining challenge as the party he created in
2005 expelled three leading members over policy differences.

Media
reports confirmed that a senior FPM official sitting on the party’s
disciplinary committee called Ziad Abs, Naim Aoun and Antoine Nasrallah
to inform them of their expulsions, after it determined that all three
tarnished the group’s reputation.

In remarks made to New [Al
Jadeed] Television, Abs, a key FPM official in Beirut’s Ashrafieh area
corroborated that he had been expelled from the FPM along with Naim Aoun
and Antoine Nasrallah. Previously, Abs ran into an open confrontation
with the FPM’s current president, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jibran
Bassil (who happens to also be General Michel Aoun’s son-in-law), as he
expressed a wish to run for party office.

By Natasha Bertrand

Al Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, formally
severed ties with the global terror organization Thursday in an
attempt to “unify” as a distinct Islamist brigade with its own
revolutionary goals and vision.

In its mission to rebrand itself, al-Nusra — now identifying
as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — has clearly indicated
that it is not committed to Al Qaeda’s brand of global
jihad, but to the singular goal of a fomenting an Islamic
revolution inside Syria.  The break was made easier by the fact that, since its emergence
in 2012, Nusra has woven itself into the
fabric of Syria’s communities and established military alliances
of convenience with many mainstream rebel groups in the name of
toppling Syrian president Bashar Assad. But it also confirms that Nusra has no intention
of distancing itself from the revolution’s non-jihadist
rebel groups, many of whom are backed by the US and its
allies.

By The Independent — Men in Iran are wearing hijabs in a display of solidarity
with women across the country who are forced to cover their heads
in public.  Wearing a headscarf is strictly enforced by so-called ‘morality
police’ in Iran and has been since the Islamic Revolution in
1979. Women who do not wear a hijab or are deemed to be wearing
‘bad hijab’ by having some of their hair showing face punishments
ranging from fines to imprisonment.  

State-funded adverts appearing on billboards in Iran present
those who do not cover their hair as spoiled and dishonourable.
Women are also told that by not complying, they are putting
themselves at risk of unwanted sexual advances from men.  But women are leading protests against enforced hijab
across the country and some have resorted to shaving their hair in order to
appear in public without wearing a veil. 

by: catholicherald.co.uk

The two men who killed Fr Jacques Hamel in a French church filmed
themselves and gave “a sort of sermon” in Arabic before murdering the
85-year-old, a nun who witnessed the atrocity has said.

Fr Hamel was celebrating Mass for three nuns and two parishioners on
Tuesday morning in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray when the attackers burst in
and forced the priest to his knees before slicing his throat, according
to authorities and the nun who escaped.

Sister Danielle, speaking on BFM television, described seeing the
attackers film themselves and give a sermon in Arabic around the altar
before she fled. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the other
hostages were used as human shields to block police from entering. One
86-year-old parishioner was wounded.“They forced (Fr Hamel) to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that’s when the tragedy happened,” said Sister Danielle.

She added that the attackers filmed themselves and “they did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It’s a horror.”The two attackers were killed by police as they rushed from the
building shouting “Allahu Akbar,” Molins said. One had three knives and a
fake explosives belt; the other carried a kitchen timer wrapped in
aluminum foil and had fake explosives in his backpack.

By Carine El Khazen Hadati : Link newsweekme.com/serving-up/

Article published in Newsweek

Eating disorders can be life threatening. In fact, they are the
deadliest of all mental health disorders: 5 to 20 percent of anorexics
will die from this illness. The causes of eating disorders are numerous
and intertwined; they are usually an interplay of several factors:
biological vulnerability, psychological traits, cultural and social
pressures that usually act as triggers.

Among those triggers, dieting is the number one risk factor for
developing an eating disorder. All eating disorders start with a diet
and 35 percent of occasional dieters progress to pathological dieting
(disordered eating) and as many as 25 percent progress to full-blown
eating disorders.

Who can say that they have never attempted dieting? Perhaps no one!
In our culture, dieting has become the norm. Up to 50 percent of women
are on a diet at any given time. Up to 90 percent of teenagers diet
regularly, and up to 50 percent of younger kids have tried a diet at
some point. Each year, more and more adults are trying to lose weight:
in 2000, 24 percent of American adults were dieting; in 2004, 33 percent
were dieting and in 2015 roughly 50 percent of the American population
is on a diet, with every adult making, in general, four dieting attempts
per year.

By english.ahram.org.eg

Google’s famous doodle on Wednesday celebrates Ounsi el-Hajj, a famed
Lebanese writer, poet and translator who was born in 27 July 1937 and
passed away on 18 February 2014. El-Hajj was one of the most influential Lebanese poets of the second
half of the twentieth century and a key contributor to Lebanon’s
cultural and poetic renaissance.

He also wrote columns for Annahar and Al-Akhbar daily newspapers. Ounsi translated several plays by Shakespeare, Ionesco, Camus and Brecht into the Arabic language.His first poetry collection, Lann (Not), was published in 1960 and sparked controversy because of its style.

Naharnet,

Prime Minister Tammam Salam and the Lebanese delegation
attended the Arab League summit in the Mauritanian capital on Monday but
were not expected to spend the night there, the Associated Press
reported on Monday, shortly after Health Minister Wael Abu Faour
questioned the impoverished African nation’s ability to host top
delegations.

The comments by Abu Faour on a local TV show triggered a
spat between Lebanon and Mauritania, where Lebanese officials were
attacked by journalists and on social media.

“They don’t have the infrastructure and it’s miserable,”
said Abu Faour. “The summit will be held inside a tent,” he added,
apparently comparing it to previous summits that were held in five-star
hotels or luxury conference centers.

The minister later clarified on TV that his statements
were not meant against the people of Mauritania and said he got his
information from a Lebanese delegation that went to inspect where the
summit will be held and where the official delegations will be staying.