By Joseph Eid

Beirut -- "Good morning! I'm an AFP photographer. Would it be alright to use your roof to take pictures of the garbage mountain in front of your building?"

"Welcome, welcome my dear, come in. Would you like some coffee? I can give you a full interview if you want. Will your pictures show how bad the smell is?"

Since Lebanon's trash crisis began last July, I have asked this question dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of times. I am greeted with the same enthusiasm each time, with residents eagerly ushering me onto their rooftops or near their windows to snap pictures of the piles of rubbish lining Lebanon's roads.

After several rounds of government deals on the issue, we thought the waste crisis had been brought under control. But over the past month, piles of garbage have once again invaded our streets and neighbourhoods, from Lebanon's rocky mountains to the capital's busy streets.

by Daily star lebanon BEIRUT: National Liberal Party head Dory Chamoun Wednesday called for presidential candidate Michel Aoun to release his medical …

By reuters - By Angus McDowall

From a sandbagged army post near the border with Syria, Lebanese soldiers gaze through tripod-mounted binoculars into hills where jihadist militants are entrenched, a forgotten front in Syria's civil war that has led to bombings inside Lebanon.

There is frequent fighting between the army and around 1,000-1,200 militants dug into the hills around Arsal in a large pocket of territory straddling the border, Lebanese General Youssef al-Dik said. Around 30 soldiers have been killed.

The Sunni militants are members of Islamic State and the former Nusra Front, groups fighting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. They regard the mountains along the Lebanese border as a strategic base and also consider Lebanon to be under the thumb of Assad's ally, Shi'ite Hezbollah.

"The clashes are ongoing day and night. We target any gathering, activity or anything we sense day or night with all kinds of weapons," he told Reuters during a visit last week.