By Laure Delacloche — BBC — Sonia Constantin’s fridge and water boiler are plugged in. Sitting on her sofa with her sister, she appreciates the rediscovered comfort of her home in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital – now fully supplied with electricity. A Lebanese professor of educational sciences, Constantin decided to invest $6,500 (£5,140) of her savings in nine solar panels and a battery last September. “We are not looking for a life of luxury, we simply want dignity,” she tells me. The investment allowed her to unsubscribe from the privately owned diesel-powered generators which supply power to most households in Beirut. “I have since resumed a normal life: I can charge my phone whenever I want.”

Lebanon’s national grid has struggled to meet the population’s full electricity requirements since the country’s civil war began in 1975, forcing consumers to rely on expensive neighbourhood generators to fill the gaps. The civil war ended in 1990 but the grid problems continued. The state provider, Electricity of Lebanon (EDL), ceased supplying power altogether in 2021, when it ran out of fuel, plunging the country into near total blackouts. In Beirut, the blackouts continued for over a year and a half, with EDL only able to provide electricity for an average of 3-4 hours per day.

 by al-monitor.com — BEIRUT — The death of a Lebanese man in Emirati custody earlier this month has sparked controversy in Beirut, as his family attempts to retrieve the body while United Arab Emirates (UAE) officials deny any wrongdoing in the case. The spat led to a call between the foreign ministers of Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates over the weekend. This past March, UAE authorities arrested Lebanese citizen Ghazi Ezzedine, 55, along with eight other people including his two brothers, on unknown charges, according to the human rights organization Amnesty International. Local reports say Ezzedine died in police custody on May 4 and was buried in the UAE. The family was only notified days later after his son, Fadel, was asked to identify his body at a cemetery in the UAE. He was only allowed to see his father’s face, while the body was kept covered.

The case of Ezzedine, a Shiite who had been working in real estate in the Gulf nation for 30 years, raised questions about the circumstances of his death. In a statement last week, a committee of family members of Lebanese citizens detained in the UAE claimed that Ezzedine died under torture. “If it is found that his death was indeed unlawful, they must ensure that all those suspected of torture and unlawful killing, including those with command responsibility, are held accountable,” Sima Watling, a researcher with Amnesty International, told The Associated Press last Friday. For its part, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called for an “immediate and transparent investigation” into the death of Ezzedine. “The UAE authorities had previously been involved in the illegal detention of foreigners, investigating them and detaining them in inhumane conditions, subjecting them to psychological and sometimes physical torture, and deporting them from the country under broad and unfair security pretexts,” Euro-Med Monitor added in a press statement released last Thursday.

By Saundra Latham, Editor at LinkedIn News — What’s a lonely person to do in modern times? Google how to find friends, of course. Loneliness-related searches including “where to meet people” spiked in the past week, according to the search giant. The trend underscores a Surgeon General report describing an “epidemic of loneliness” affecting half […]

By Saundra Latham, Editor at LinkedIn News –– It’s official: Twitter has a new CEO. Linda Yaccarino, head of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, will take over the top job from Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October for $44 billion. Musk confirmed Yaccarino’s hiring Friday, saying she will “focus primarily on business operations, […]

khazen.org offers its condolences to a Hero, amazing patriot Minister Sejaan Azzi. He will be greatly missed. We would wait for his analysis every week.  by today.lorientlejour.com — BEIRUT — Former Lebanese Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi died on Thursday at the age of 71 after a long illness, people close to him told L’Orient-Le Jour. […]

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN –— A massive new US embassy complex in Lebanon is causing controversy for its sheer size and opulence in a country where nearly 80% of the population is under the poverty line. Located some 13 kilometers (about 8 miles) from the center of Beirut, the US’ new embassy compound in Lebanon looks like a city of its own. Sprawling over a 43-acre site, the complex in the Beirut suburb of Awkar is almost two-and-a-half times the size of the land the White House sits on and more than 21 soccer fields. Many Lebanese on Twitter questioned why the US needs such a large embassy in their capital. Lebanon is smaller than Connecticut and has a population of just six million. Few American tourists go to the country as the State Department has placed it on the third highest travel advisory level, but it does have a sizeable population of Lebanese American residents. “Did the US move to Lebanon??” tweeted Sandy, a social media activist. “Maybe you’ll have enough room to work on all those pending visa applications,” tweeted Abed A. Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, responding to the grandiosity of the new complex.

Lebanon’s soul has been eviscerated by its financial crisis. Not even the children want to play Computer-generated images published by the embassy show an ultra-modern compound, hosting multi-story buildings with high glass windows, recreational areas, and a swimming pool surrounded by greenery and views of the Lebanese capital. The compound includes a chancery, representational and staff housing, facilities for the community and associated support facilities, according to the project’s website. From the pandemic to the 2020 Beirut blast, Lebanon has been assailed by a number of crises that have left its economy in ruins. Many Lebanese are unable to afford basic commodities, including food, medicine and electricity. “Let them eat concrete,” another user tweeted. Plans for the embassy complex were announced in 2015 and it is reported to have cost $1 billion.

By Cate Chapman, Editor at LinkedIn News — The Biden administration proposed a rule Wednesday that would bar federal agencies from using salary history to set the pay of full-time workers. Experts argue that using this history to determine compensation has perpetuated inequity — effectively anchoring workers to lower-than-average pay throughout their careers. Because the […]

By Ruiqi Chen, Editor at LinkedIn News — Some Uber customers will soon be able to use the app to book flights. The ride-share giant announced a partnership with Canadian travel agency Hopper on Wednesday, offering national and international flights to all U.K. users in the next few weeks, The Verge writes. A general manager […]

By Maha El Dahan DUBAI, (Reuters) – A consortium led by TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) will start drilling for oil and gas off the coast of Lebanon at the beginning of September, the country’s caretaker energy minister Walid Fayyad said on Tuesday. The consortium, which includes Italy’s partners ENI (ENI.MI) and QatarEnergy [RIC:RIC:QATPE.UL], has assigned a rig for the offshore southern bloc known as Bloc 9. “The rig will start working in Lebanon in September … before the end of the year we will know if there is a discovery,” Fayyad told reporters on the sidelines of the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi. The minister said he was hopeful that if a discovery was made, it would unlock more investments in Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas sector.

Fayyad said a potential discovery could impact whether a deadline for applications to explore in eight additional offshore blocs is extended yet again, past June. “I have been hearing from players in the field that they are keen to see the result of the drilling in Bloc 9 before they make decisions as to further investments or commitments in Lebanon,” he told reporters. “In the end if we don’t have enough interest and players, we must adapt,” Fayyad said. The minister said a World Bank-funded deal to receive electricity from Jordan and gas from Egypt through Syria had yet to progress as the financing body had requested more reforms before committing. But he said Lebanon would aim to boost imports from Iraq by bumping up the volume of an existing swap deal and through new commercial agreements.

by middleeasteye.net — The embassy is expected to cost $1bn and will occupy 43 acres in a country facing financial collapse. Photographs of the new US embassy compound under construction in Lebanon shared on Twitter on Friday have sparked questions, conspiracies, and some jeers as a result of its massive size. As of Monday, the photographs, posted by the US embassy in Beirut with the caption, “things are progressing at our new compounds”, had gotten 2.1 million views by the time of publication. The US announced plans to build the new embassy in 2017 and the compound has been under construction ever since.

Many have questioned why the US needs to build what will be the world’s second-largest embassy in the world after the American embassy in Baghdad, given that the Mediterranean country is home to only six million people and is currently facing a financial crisis. “This is bigger than the Pentagon,” one Twitter user said. “ What’s planned for this compound other than issuing visas???” “Room for hundreds of spies and infiltrators? A weapon factory too? another Twitter user asked. “Any secret bio labs tucked away in that military complex-like building?” asked another. The embassy is expected to cost $1bn and will occupy 43 acres once completed. The price tag has also raised eyebrows because it comes as Lebanon is facing an economic implosion.