by NAJIA HOUSSARI -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: Residents of Tfail, a Lebanese farming community on the border with Syria, say they are powerless to stop their farmland being destroyed by bulldozers watched over by gunmen who appear intent on taking control of the town. According to anxious residents, confusion over the boundary between Lebanon and Syrian is adding to the problem, with many sections of the border yet to be demarcated. The issue has drawn the attention of Lebanese leaders, with former prime minister and head of the Future Parliamentary Bloc Saad Hariri last Tuesday voicing his “deepest concerns” over developments in the village. Hariri suggested the threat to Tfail might be part of “a dark scheme of displacing its inhabitants as part of plans to make demographic changes in the region.”

The Lebanese-Syrian border is 380 km long, but only a 40 km section was demarcated in 1935 after greater Lebanon was established. The war in Syria has stalled attempts to demarcate the rest. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem said 10 days ago that his country “will not demarcate the borders with Lebanon, neither will it accept the deployment of international forces on the borders, for this is only done among enemies.” Tfail resembles a peninsula within Syrian territory, and there is no access to the town from the Lebanese side. In order to get to other Lebanese cities or towns, residents have to go to Damascus before heading to their destination in Lebanon and vice versa. However, the war in Syria, and particularly the battles in the Syrian Qalamoun mountains, led to the displacement of Tfail’s residents, Lebanese or Syrian refugees who headed to various Lebanese regions via the town of Brital. Tfail residents work in agriculture or serve in the Lebanese army. Most of the townsmen are Sunnis.

by NAJIA HOUSSARI -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: Lebanon’s banks will ease restrictions on US dollar withdrawals following a surprise announcement on Thursday by the head of the country’s banking association. Salim Sfeir, chairman of the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL), said that US dollars will be supplied by the banks with the support of Lebanon’s central bank. Lebanese banks last November imposed strict limits on US dollar transfers amid an economic and political crisis that led to the collapse of the Lebanese pound. The curbs were introduced as the government and central bank struggled to ease the worst economic crisis since country’s civil war. Sfeir made his announcement after meeting Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid bin Abdullah Bukhari as part of an ABL delegation.

Following the meeting, Sfeir said that he wanted to put the Saudi ambassador “in the picture of the current economic situation in Lebanon.” He praised the Kingdom’s generosity and said “economic life will be back to normal in Lebanon.” The US dollar exchange rate reached its highest level on Thursday, scoring between 9,500 and 9,600 Lebanese pounds, while money dealers adopted a rate of between 3,850 and 3,900 Lebanese pounds. Riad Salame, the central bank governor, told a government session that “the volume of US dollars circulating on the black market does not exceed 5 percent (of the hard currency market) and does not reflect the actual exchange rate of the US dollar.” Meanwhile, Lebanese political leaders held a series of meetings on Thursday amid growing popular demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government.

by reuters.com -- TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - For Amer al Dahn, the idea of eating meat is now a dream. Today, he can’t even afford bread and depends on credit from the local grocer to feed his wife and four children in the Lebanese city of Tripoli.“We can no longer buy meat or chicken. The closest we get to them is in magazines and newspapers,” said Dahn, 55, leafing through a supermarket brochure in his cramped apartment. Living in one of the poorest streets of Lebanon’s poorest city, Dahn and his family are feeling the full force of a financial meltdown that is fuelling extreme poverty and shattering lives across the country.

In the capital Beirut, a 61-year-old man shot himself in the head on the busy Hamra street on Friday. Reuters could not establish his motives, but local media attributed the suicide to hunger. Struggling to walk because of diabetes, Dahn already faced a difficult life before the crisis which has sunk the Lebanese pound by 80% since October, driving up prices in the import-dependent economy. “Life has become very difficult. The dollar is still climbing and the state is incapable of providing a solution.”  Even chickpeas, beans and lentils - a traditional part of the Lebanese diet - are out of reach for some.

Associated Press  -- BEIRUT: Major retailers in Lebanon announced Thursday they will temporarily shut down in the face of an increasingly volatile currency market and their inability to set prices while the Lebanese pound plunges against the dollar. Later in the day, owners of the businesses rallied in central Beirut to denounce the government’s inability to handle a deepening economic and financial crisis, and urging others to join them. "The company is losing and ... (the customers) think we are robbing them," Samir Saliba, owner of sportswear retailer Mike Sport, told The Associated Press. "We want a clear economic policy to know how to move forward and not buy our dollars from the black market and be humiliated with the brokers and money changers." The protesters called on the government to resign and urged other stores to join their protest shutdown.

The Lebanese pound recorded a new low Thursday, selling at nearly 10,000 for a dollar and maintaining the downward slide that saw the national currency lose about 85% of its value over the past months. Despite government and central bank efforts to regulate the foreign currency rate, a parallel market has thrived and inflation is soaring as the dollar becomes increasingly scarce. Amid the tumbling pound, prices and inflation have soared. Power cuts have also increased, as the government struggles to secure fuel and diesel, while grocery stores began imposing a limit on how many items customers can buy amid a rush to hoard basic goods.