International Business Time

 By Alessandria Masi

NABATIYE, Lebanon – Hundreds of bloodied faces fill Nabatiye Square on a Saturday morning in southern Lebanon, some belonging to children too young to walk. Boys and men are casually wielding swords large enough to be visible from a second floor balcony. In the sun, their open wounds ooze, and the air is rancid with raw flesh, a heaving mass that smells like a butcher’s shop.

This bloody spectacle is an annual tradition on the Day of Ashura, the tenth day of the first month in the Islamic calendar, when members of the Muslim Shia sect come together to mourn, with self-inflicted punishment, the battlefield death of Imam Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. In the town of Nabatiye, men show solidarity with Hussein by making small cuts to the crown of their heads before repeatedly striking themselves  to ensure the incisions do not clot. The practice is symbolic, to express regret that the mourners are not able to fight alongside Hussein. But this year, the self-flagellation has taken on a more desperate quality — many in attendance believe they are continuing Hussein’s fight for Shiite Muslims on the battlefields of Syria, where the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah has been fighting alongside the Syrian regime.

Security forces in Lebanon interrogate a Saudi prince on charges of carrying drugs on his private plane, Lebanese media say. Abd al-Muhsen bin Walid bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud was detained on Monday at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, while in possession of 24 bags and eight suitcases full of narcotics. […]

albawaba.com

If you thought the idea of giant piles of trash lining the streets of Beirut was pretty gross, imagine if those piles became mobile, soggy waste with a questionable-looking surface shine. Sound fun? Yeah, we didn’t think so either.

That’s the scene in Lebanon’s capital city right now, as an early winter storm of rain and hail reaked havoc across the Levant on Sunday.

Palestinian social media users shared videos of baseball-sized hail hitting cities in the West Bank, while Israeli media reported several were injured and one killed after accidents around Tel Aviv.

So Beirut isn’t the only one that’s knee-deep in the first stages of MENA’s winter months, but it’s probably the stinkiest. Lebanon’s trash saga began in July, when maintenance workers went on strike over the government’s failure to replace the dramatically-overfilled Naameh landfill. What ensued was the steady build-up of towers of plastic, food and metal waste all over Beirut. 

By Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer, Gulf News

Cheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah militia leader, emphasised the necessity for dialogue among rival Lebanese politicians during his latest television appearance to mark the end of the annual Ashura commemorations.

Inciting emotionally-laden crowds who repented their forefathers’ alleged failures to assist Hussain Bin Ali at the battle of Karbala in 680, Nasrallah fell back on irony to criticise Lebanese elites. “They have waited for the Iranian nuclear agreement to be finalised thinking that Iran would abandon us, and it did not,” he hammered. “They have waited for the fall of Syria, but Syria will not fall,” he said. “They shall not benefit from this opportunity,” he drove the point home, declaring: “In Lebanon we are the masters of our decisions.”

by Mona Sukkarieh

catholicherald.co.uk

Gathered around the Holy Father Francis, we the Synod Fathers, along with the fraternal Delegates and Auditors participating in the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, turn our thoughts to all the families of the Middle East.

For years now, due to bloody conflicts, they have been victims of unspeakable atrocities. Their conditions of life have been further aggravated in recent months and weeks.

The use of weapons of mass destruction, indiscriminate killings, beheadings, kidnapping of human beings, trafficking in women, the enrolment of children into militias, persecution on the basis of religious belief or ethnicity, the destruction of cultural heritage and countless other atrocities have forced thousands of families to flee their homes in search of refuge elsewhere, often in conditions of extreme precariousness. Currently they are prevented from returning and from exercising the right to live in dignity and safety on their own soil, contributing to the reconstruction and the material and spiritual well-being of their respective countries.

Natalie Walters

McDonald’s Hamburger University is no joke.

With a selection rate of 1% at its Shanghai campus, the intense, week-long training program is more exclusive than Harvard, reports Bloomberg.

Students at the American campus can earn up to 23 credits toward their Hamburgerology degree, according to CNN, or toward an associate’s or bachelor’s degree at 1,600 US colleges and universities, the American Council on Education reports. 

The program currently has seven campuses worldwide in Oak Brook, Illinois, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Munich, São Paulo, and Shanghai, with an eighth campus opening scheduled for Moscow later this year. 

Founded in 1961, Hamburger University now has more than 275,000 graduates and will celebrate its 55th anniversary next year. Here’s a look at how it started and how it’s evolved.

Vivian Giang contributed to a previous version of this article.