By Dalia Mortada (follow) 

Just trying to pay for juice I have to switch back and forth from English to Arabic. The stand clerk starts in Arabic, “Here you go,” before switching in English, “these two [juices]?”

Pia Bou Khater is at the market with me. At the juice stand, she switches too. “Oh, I think I have change,” she says in English, before she continues in Arabic, “3000.”

Codeswitching this way is one of the characteristics that defines life in Beirut for visitors and for many Lebanese.

“When I’m interacting with people, like buying things or trying to bargain, I rarely switch,” Pia explains. “I do try to often figure out what the green leafy thing in question is, like, oh, is this the same as that in English? And then the word in French comes up,” she laughs, “and I’m like oh no I don’t know it in French, please stop making this difficult.”

AFP Beirut: Five Lebanese army soldiers were wounded Wednesday when a mortar crashed into their base in the eastern town of Ras Baalbek near the Syrian border, a military source told AFP.

“Five soldiers were wounded after a mortar shell landed inside their base,” the source said, adding that it had been fired by “terrorist groups outside Ras Baalbek”.

“There are no clashes but we are responding now,” the source said.

Militant groups are entrenched in the mountainous border area near Syria and have used the arid terrain to launch attacks on Lebanese security forces.

Earlier this year, five Lebanese soldiers died in clashes with around 200 gunmen who entered Lebanon from the Qalamoun region of Syria.

Pamela Engel

ISIS has been met with some popular support in Iraq and Syria, but much of it might come from people’s desire for survival rather than authentic support for the militants’ ideology.

Reporters for The Washington Post interviewed dozens of people who have lived under ISIS’s rule in Iraq and Syria and found that many people join the terror group out of desperation and a lack of other options.

The quality of life for ISIS fighters and their families much better than it is for those who simply live under the terrorists’ control in the group’s self-declared "caliphate."

Experts and caliphate residents told Newsweek last month that there is a widening income gap between ISIS fighters and average civilians, who pay taxes to the caliphate’s authorities to fund ISIS fighters’ salaries.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

A tribal elder says Islamic State (IS) militants have massacred 70 members of a Sunni Arab tribe in Iraq’s western province of Anbar.

Sheikh Naim al-Gaud said the 70 members of the Bu Nimr tribe were found shot dead in the village of Khanizir, a day after they were abducted northeast of the provincial capital, Ramadi.

He said the tribesmen were killed because they had relatives serving in Iraq’s security forces.

Sheikh Gaud also said they had fled to Khanizir with their families from their homes in Ramadi after IS fighters captured the city in May.

sputniknews.com

A woman reporting for the Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen was shot in the face and wounded by Israeli forces while reporting from an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem.

catholicherald.co.uk

ISIS militants have blown up the 2,000 year triumphal arch in Palmyra, it has been reported.

The latest act of destruction was reported by Syria’s head of antiquities, Maamun Abdulkarim, who reported that the terror group had detonated a bomb they had laid several weeks ago.

“We have received news from the site that the Arch of Triumph was destroyed yesterday (Sunday). ISIS booby-trapped it several weeks ago,” antiquities director Maamun Abdulkarim told AFP.

ISIS has already destroyed the shrine of Baal Shamin and the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel. The group also murdered the city’s 82-year-old former antiquities chief.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb went off in Lebanon on Monday targeting a minibus transporting passengers to Syria, and a second explosive device was found near a Lebanese customs office at the Syrian-Lebanese border and defused, a security source said. There were no casualties from the roadside explosion near the bus in the town of […]

Reuters

BEIRUT, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Rival Lebanese lawmakers nearly came to blows on live TV on Monday, shoving and shouting at each other in a vivid illustration of political conflict that is paralysing decision-making and fuelling public discontent.

After arguing for several minutes at a parliamentary committee on public works and energy, one MP threw a water bottle, before scuffling with another. The fight was quickly broken up and the meeting abandoned.

Monday’s altercation began when MP Ziad Aswad, a member of Christian politician Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, objected to corruption allegations raised against the minister of energy – who belongs to his political bloc – by a member of a rival alliance led by Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri.

Naharnet

Pope Francis has reportedly sent a letter to Christian Lebanese leaders appealing for unity to elect a new president and fill the vacuum at Baabda Palace.

As Safir daily on Monday quoted high-ranking sources as saying that the pope sent the letter to the unidentified Maronite officials around ten days ago.

He asked them to “unite for the sake of electing a Lebanese president,” said the sources.

As Safir also quoted high-ranking French diplomatic sources as saying that President Francois Hollande’s visit to Beirut, which was scheduled to take place in October, has been postponed indefinitely.

Azza El Masri – Buzzfeed In the Arab world, traditions and customs have taught us that young people have a responsibility to get married as soon as possible in order to fulfil their responsibility in contributing to society through childbirth and rearing. This prospect for many millennials has become daunting, especially due to economic hardship. […]