by AFP - Bulldozers worked atop the roof of the Brasserie du Levant on Wednesday, knocking down portions of the massive concrete building as neighbours looked on quietly. Established in the 1930s, the factory brewed the Lebanese beer Laziza for decades before closing in the mid-1990s. In its place will come "Mar Mikhael Village" -- dozens of apartments and townhouses, as well as retail spaces, named after the eastern district that has become a hybrid of loud bars and sleepy residential streets. Residents of the neighbourhood have already begun complaining about the noise pollution and dusty construction site created by the project. In designs posted on the architectural firm's website, the sleek development continues to feature the arched sign reading "Levant Brewery" that hung at the complex's entrance for decades. But a video posted online by local activist Ghassan Salameh on Tuesday showed bulldozers knocking the sign back down onto the roof, producing a cloud of dust. "It got really real when we started seeing the sign come down and the windows being dismantled," Salameh told AFP.

Speaking in an interview on MTV Lebanon on Friday, Lebanese Tourism Minister and Deputy Chairman of Tashnag, a Lebanese Armenian party, Avadis …

BAR ELIAS, LEBANON: by reuters --  At the entrance of a rural town in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, a blue sign says “Welcome to Bar Elias, population 50,000” but in the past six years, that number has more than doubled with Syrians seeking shelter from the war across the border. “They are our guests,” said Mayor Mawas Araji. “But we don’t have the capacity to serve them as we should.” The refugee crisis has drained public services in the historically poor area in Lebanon’s farming heartland, Araji said. Yet perhaps the most glaring strain has been the garbage mountain rising among the hills, or the open water canals overflowing with trash in the winter. With the influx of people, Bar Elias now handles 40 extra tons of refuse every day, in a country that already had no national waste disposal plan. Since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, at least 1.5 million people have poured into Lebanon — around a quarter of the country’s population — where most languish in severe poverty.

Makeshift settlements have popped up all around the country as the Lebanese government has long rejected setting up refugee camps. To stem the flow of Syrians making the perilous journey to Europe by boat, the EU has funneled billions into Syria’s neighboring countries, giving Lebanon €147 million ($157 ) between 2014 and 2016. For government officials, the need for foreign funding is clear in cases like Bar Elias, where aid groups have warned of dire environmental hazards. The EU funded a €4.5 million ($4.8 million) waste management facility set to open next month in the town, around 12 km from the Syrian border. The massive hangar will process 150 tons of waste daily from Bar Elias and two nearby towns, creating several jobs, Araji said. “For us, this was a dream.” Nestled between the fields of Bar Elias, Hassan Ibrahim, 62, lives amid hundreds of cramped tents pitched haphazardly in the mud. “We’ve appointed someone here to collect the garbage ... so when the municipality comes, everything is ready,” said Ibrahim, who escaped shelling in Aleppo five years ago. But in another makeshift camp a few streets away, Maamar Al-Alawi seems less cheerful. Across from her tent, a large cesspit is brimming with sewage water and rubbish.

During heavy rainfall, the gutters also spill over with floating plastic bags. “It’s all garbage on top of garbage,” said Al-Alawi, who cleans around her family’s spot every day in vain. “You go into the tent, and it stinks.” As well as the dangers of open dump sites and burning waste, trash also often fills irrigation canals that feed nearby vegetable fields, according to the EU-funded agency that designed the Bar Elias facility. Lebanon has been plagued by a waste disposal crisis, regardless of refugees, with politicians repeatedly failing to agree a solution, sparking several mass protests in recent years.