Hariri slaying hurt Lebanon’s economy By United Press International , May 23, 2005 Related Articles Central Bank: Lebanon debt rises $1 billion …

Lebanese women seek their place in parliament

Lebanese women who won the right to vote in 1953 are calling for more seats in male-dominated parliament.

"In countries like ours, women enter politics in mourning clothes". Christian opposition MP Nayla Moawad, who made the comment, is one of a few women running for a seat in Lebanon's male-dominated parliament.

She was propelled onto the tribal political scene by the 1989 murder of her husband, president Rene Moawad.

Most female candidates for the four-stage polls that open May 29 are, like Moawad, linked to male political figures.

Bahia Hariri, who will be running for the fourth time in south Lebanon, is the sister of Rafiq Hariri, the five-time former reformist prime minister murdered last February 14.

Lebanese army kills man as rival Christians clash May 23 , 2005 BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese soldiers inadvertently shot dead one man …

Lebanon's Election: Free but Not Fair

May 22, 2005

Every week, my husband and I take a rickety old taxi to Hezbollah country. The emerald city of downtown Beirut, with its glittering luxury towers, drops away behind us; ruined buildings, their shell-shocked hulks festooned with laundry, loom ahead like ghost ships.

We soon leave Beirut proper and reach the dahiya -- the dense and sprawling Shiite crescent, half suburb, half slum, that cradles the city's southern borders. In the dahiya, home to my in-laws and a large swath of Beirut's population, the recent anti-Syrian protests that became known as the Cedar Revolution seem like a fairy tale. "As an area, as dahiya, we're not concerned about what's happening in downtown," one college student told me in March while demonstrations raged in Martyrs' Square. "We regard what's happening as a joke."

Around the world, however, the candy-cane banners and multilingual college kids of the uprising caught the imagination of millions. Holding parliamentary elections on time, free of Syrian influence, became democracy's new rallying cry. President Bush cautioned against delaying the poll, scheduled to run on four consecutive Sundays beginning May 29.