By Christine Petré wagingnonviolence.org . A black-and-white mural with the text “Salam,” peace in Arabic, with a hand wrapped in barbed wire making the peace sign, covers a wall in one of Tripoli’s more troubled areas. Its artist, Hayat Chaaban, who has lived in Lebanon’s second largest city her whole life wants to put art to the battered facades of Tripoli and defy the violence. By doing so she is not only challenging the city’s rough reputation, but also the perception that graffiti is a male-oriented activity.

AFP Washington: A day trip to a crowded State Department office full of unfamiliar faces and smells might have upset some dogs, but then Astra’s day job is itself pretty terrifying.

The seven-year-old German Shepherd mine-clearance expert ignored the defused weaponry arrayed on the conference table, but perked up when a box of donuts was opened.

Over the past five years she and her handler, Lebanese army sergeant Ahmad Solh, have scoured the battlefields of Lebanon for land-mines and unexploded bombs.

Named by anti-landmine group the Marshall Legacy Institute as the champion mine-clearers of the year, they came to the US capital to promote their work.

International Business Times

TRIPOLI, Lebanon -- For the first time in her three short years, Hanan didn’t wake up in a country at war. The night before, on Saturday evening, Hanan’s parents bundled her up to execute their escape from the ruins of Aleppo in northwestern Syria. The little girl took only what she considered essentials: white, gemstone-encrusted shoes, earphones and purple polka-dotted sunglasses. By the morning, she was listening to music with her parents, sitting at a pink plastic table at a makeshift cafe outside the port in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli.

Many Syrians have fled war-torn cities before them. But unlike the 1.7 million Syrians who have settled in for a long stay in Lebanon, Hanan’s family is just stopping in Tripoli for one day before joining the mass exodus of refugees taking ferry boats to Turkey, hoping to reach northern Europe.

Since January, more than 640,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe, more than half of whom are Syrians “moving from host countries in the region or from Syria transiting through host countries in the region,” with a “spike” in refugees coming from Syria directly, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Doug Bandow 

Forbes BEIRUT—Lebanon’s destructive civil war ended a quarter century ago. The capital has been rebuilt. New buildings are rising and shoppers throng luxury shops. Trendy young Lebanese fill restaurants and bars at night. Lebanon is the Middle East’s only melting pot. Never has the region more needed a peaceful oasis.

However, the country is a sectarian volcano. Barely a generation ago Lebanon was torn apart in a bloody civil war which drew in America for a short time. Today cars race by buildings damaged still. Bullet pockmarks subtly mark many structures, including where I stayed.