FOR YEARS, President Obama has been claiming credit for “ending wars,” when, in fact, he was pulling the United States out of wars that were far from over. Now the pretense is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.   On Monday, a loathsome offshoot of al-Qaeda, the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, captured […]

  Over a million Syrian refugees have arrived in Lebanon, fleeing the conflict in their country. Syrians now make up a quarter of the population of this tiny Mediterranean country. Many were forced to leave with only what they could carry, and are living in desperate poverty. Finding work is difficult, and many families are […]

  Sometimes I think that the greatest tragedy of this place is not what it has become, but what it could have been. The greatest rupture in the Middle East was the destruction of the train route from Alexandria to Istanbul – precisely where Israeli existence takes place, spatially and linguistically. “From Yaffa to Beirut,” […]

  Work has finally finished on Zaha Hadid’s new Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). The practice landed the 3,000 m² project more than eight years ago following an international competition. The long-awaited scheme, with its huge cantilever, was originally scheduled to complete in 2008 […]

  The government of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell overnight to the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, also called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Mosul’s panic-stricken Christians, along with many others, are now fleeing en masse to the rural Nineveh Plain, according to the Vatican publication Fides. The border […]

  Al Qaeda-inspired militants in Iraq vowed Thursday to march against Baghdad after seizing two key cities in the north of the country this week.    A spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) said in audio posted on militant websites commonly used by the group that the fighters have old […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities will hand over Friday former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s senior aide, who has been in detention here over alleged links to the mafia. A high-ranking judicial source told The Daily Star that the handover would take place after midday at Beirut airport. The source said Lebanon sent a letter to the Italian […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanon is again on the radar of potential investors following a report carried by CNN Money that ranked Beirut among the best real estate investment destinations in the world on its list of “Up and Coming Cities For the Rich.”   But this report, which was prepared by Savills World Research, Candy & […]

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi urged on Wednesday the March 8 and 14 alliances to make “brave initiatives” to resolve the country’s crises, saying the failure to elect a president is a violation of the Constitution.   At the start of the synod of Maronite bishops in Bkirki, al-Rahi prayed for the immediate election of […]