BEIRUT,(Xinhua) — The Vessel Beijing Bridge of Cmacgm arrived to Lebanon’s Tripoli port on Thursday from China passing through Suez Canal to unload 800 containers of products, local media reported. “After the opening of the maritime line between Lebanon and China, Tripoli port will become a central port for transit in the Mediterranean sea,” Tripoli […]

By Ayat Basma BYBLOS, Lebanon (Reuters) – Locked away safely in an academic’s study in Lebanon is a plant that researchers hope to transform from one of the country’s most notorious exports into a lucrative pharmaceutical. Cannabis is cultivated openly, but illegally, in parts of Lebanon, especially the Bekaa Valley where a Roman temple in […]

BEIRUT,  (Xinhua) — Lebanese authorities should consider re-opening Rene Mouawad Air Base to reduce traffic at Rafik Hariri International Airport (RHIA), President of the French-Lebanese Businessmen Association Antoine Menassa said Monday. “Rene Mouawad Air Base is a very important facility socially and economically as it can facilitate travel and shipping especially during holidays when traffic […]

  cnbc.com — The British royal family has an estimated net worth of $88 billion, according to business consultancy firm Brand Finance. Still, that monarchy is far from being the richest royal family in the world. That distinction likely goes to the House of Saud, the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. Comprising 15,000 family […]

by Naharnet –– Hariri is also “following up on the issue of the Syrian refugees in light of the Russian initiative,” political sources told Kuwait’s al-Rai daily in remarks published Sunday. “By relying on an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the PM-designate is trying to protect the country from any plunge into the conflict […]

(MENAFN) Lebanon’s Byblos Bank Real Estate Demand Index was unveiled to have recorded a 31.8 percent boost during the second quarter of this year. The rise has been driven by a plan to invest USD0.66 billion to subsidize interest rates on housing loans, as explained Byblos Bank Group’s chief economist and head of the Economic Research […]

by AP – By Hamza Hendawi, The Associated Press — The passengers’ chatter on the Beirut-bound flight was far from reassuring. Taxi drivers were striking. Traffic was going to be bad. Add the heat and suffocating humidity of a typical summer day and you’re hit with a powerful urge to get out of town. The mountains? Absolutely. […]

by euronews.com — The Baalbeck International Festival, one of Lebanon’s most popular and acclaimed cultural events, kicked off on July 8th and will run until August 18th. The lineup of artists this year includes Georges Khabbaz, the Lebanese actor, writer and comedian known for his dark humour. His play ‘Ila Iza’, meaning ‘Except if’ is […]

BEIRUT, (Xinhua) — The Lebanese army received on Sunday the fourth batch of eight Bradley fighting vehicles from the United States, local media reported. “The Lebanese army received eight Bradley vehicles within the framework of the U.S. military assistance program for Lebanon,” according to Lebanon Files, a Lebanese news website. On June 13, the United […]

By PHILIP ISSA BEIRUT (AP) — It was supposed to be a goodwill gesture from an energy company in Turkey. This summer, the Karadeniz Energy Group lent Lebanon a floating power station to generate electricity at below-market rates to help ease the strain on the country’s woefully undermaintained power sector. Instead, the barge’s arrival opened a Pandora’s box of partisan mudslinging in a country hobbled by political sectarianism and dysfunction. There have been rows over where it should dock, how to allocate its 235 megawatts of power, and even what to call the barge. It has even driven a wedge between Lebanon’s two dominant parties among Shiite Muslims: Amal and the militant group Hezbollah.

Amal, which has held the parliament speaker’s seat since 1992, revealed sensationally last week it had refused to allow the boat to dock in a port in the predominantly Shiite south, even though it is one of the most underserved regions of Lebanon. Power outages in the south can stretch on for more than 12 hours a day. Hezbollah, which normally stands pat with Amal in political matters, issued an exceptional statement that it had nothing to do with the matter of the barge at Zahrani port. A Hezbollah lawmaker went further to say his party disagreed on the issue with Amal. Ali Hassan Khalil, Lebanon’s Finance Minister and a leading Amal party member, said southerners wanted a permanent power station, not a stop-gap solution, in an implied dig at the rival Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian party that runs the Energy Ministry. But critics seized on the statement as confirmation that Amal’s leaders were in bed with the operators of private generators, who have been making fortunes selling electricity during blackouts at many times the state price. “For decades there’s been nothing stopping them from building a power plant,” said Mohammad Obeid, a former Amal party official, in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV station. “Now there’s a barge that’s coming for three months to provide a few more hours of electricity — and that’s the issue?” Hassan Khalil, reached by phone, refused to comment.

Nabih Berri, Amal’s chief and Lebanon’s parliament speaker, who has long been the subject of critical coverage from Al Jadeed’s, sued the TV channel for libel on Wednesday for its reporting. Energy Minister Cesar Abi Khalil, a Christian, lashed out at Amal, saying the ministry even changed the barge’s name from Ayse, Turkish for Aisha, a name associated in Lebanon with Sunnis, to Esra Sultan, which does not carry any Shiite or Sunni connotations, to try to get it to dock in Zahrani. Karadeniz said the barge was renamed “out of courtesy and respect to local customs and sensitivities.” “Ayse is a very common Turkish name, where such preferences are not as sensitive as in Lebanon,” it said in a statement to The Associated Press. Finally, on July 18, the barge docked in Jiyeh, a harbor south of Beirut but north of Zahrani, and in a religiously mixed Muslim area. But two weeks later it was unmoored again, after Abi Khalil, the energy minister, said the infrastructure at Jiyeh could only handle 30 megawatts of the Esra Sultan’s 235 capacity. With Zahrani closed to the Esra Sultan, it could only go to Zouq Mikhael, a port in the Christian-dominated Kesrouan region in the north, where it was plugged to the grid Tuesday night, giving the region almost 24 hours of electricity a day.