September 1st, 20210BEIRUT — The Lebanese government has received no request for fuel to be imported from Iran, the caretaker energy minister said on Wednesday, appearing to confirm that the Shi'a group Hezbollah has bypassed the state with a move to import Iranian fuel.
Hezbollah, a heavily armed group founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982,...
August 26th, 20210DUBAI – Starting Thursday, Aug. 26 through Sept. 30, Emirates airline's economy class passengers traveling to Beirut from the U.S. and some other countries via Dubai will be eligible to carry an additional piece of luggage totaling 50 lbs.
The additional baggage allowance will help customers pack extra items to support family and...
August 10th, 20210BEIRUT — On Tuesday, President Michel Aoun condemned criticism of Lebanon's Christian Maronite patriarch after he expressed opposition to the Iran-backed Shi'a group Hezbollah, warning that insults must be avoided to safeguard national unity.
Following a cross-border salvo between Israel and Hezbollah, Patriarch Bechara Boutros...
August 3rd, 20210BEIRUT — A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday concluded there was strong evidence to suggest some Lebanese officials knew about and tacitly accepted the lethal risks posed by ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut port before the fatal blast there on Aug. 4 last year.
HRW called for a U.N. investigation into the...
August 1st, 20210BEIRUT — The amount of ammonium nitrate that blew up at Beirut port last year was one fifth of the shipment unloaded there in 2013, the FBI concluded after the blast, adding to suspicions that much of the cargo had gone missing.
As the first anniversary approaches on Aug. 4, major questions remain unanswered, including how a huge...
July 26th, 20210BEIRUT — Wealthy Lebanese businessman Najib Mikati secured enough votes in parliamentary consultations on Monday to be designated the next prime minister.
Mikati, who has been prime minister twice before and unlike many Lebanese leaders does not hail from a political bloc or dynasty, received 72 votes out of a total of 118 members...
July 6th, 20210BEIRUT — Lebanon is a few days away from a social explosion, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab warned on Tuesday, calling on the international community to save a country in deep economic crisis.
The World Bank has called Lebanon's crisis one of the worst depressions of modern history. The currency has lost more than 90 percent...
May 7th, 20210BEIRUT – Lebanon's lights may go off this month because cash for electricity generation is running out, a lawmaker said on Thursday, as the country grapples with a deep economic crisis.
Lebanon's parliament had approved a $200 million emergency loan to finance fuel imports for power generation in March, but a committee reviewing the...
April 28th, 20210BEIRUT — Samir Sfeir, a well-known Lebanese music composer, is believed to be detained in Saudi Arabia for unknown reasons, according to local media and international news sources.
Sfeir has sung about Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun and is said to be close to the president’s party. He is from Ajaltoun, Lebanon.
The Lebanese...
April 2nd, 20210BEIRUT — Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday the country could face chaos before it can recover from a financial meltdown.
Crushed under a mountain of debt and decades of graft, Lebanon has plunged into its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Aoun, a former army commander, and Saad al-Hariri, a three-time...
March 27th, 20210BEIRUT — Lebanon’s largest Christian bloc, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), warned prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri on Saturday against sidelining President Michel Aoun and other parliamentary blocs in talks over forming a cabinet.
Hariri and Aoun have been at loggerheads over the cabinet for months, dashing hopes of a...
March 12th, 20210BEIRUT — Growing resentment and outrage among the Lebanese led to eight days of protests this week, with protesters using burnt tires to block roadways across the country in anger over the nation's economic meltdown and political deadlock amid a pandemic lockdown.
The Lebanese army said on Wednesday it had started clearing...
March 6th, 20210BEIRUT — Protesters blocked some roadways in Lebanon for a second day on Wednesday, after the currency’s fall to a new low further enraged a population long horrified by the country’s financial meltdown.
In the past year, Lebanon has been through a popular uprising against its political leaders, the bankruptcy of the state and...
February 12th, 20211NORTH CAROLINA — Toni Breidinger, 21, a rising star in the car racing world, is set to become the first Arab American female driver to compete in a NASCAR national series.
Breidinger, who is also a successful model, hails from the Bay Area in California. Her mother was born in Beirut and Breidinger currently has family in...
February 5th, 20210BEIRUT — Activist, publisher and filmaker Lokman Slim was found dead in a car in Southern Lebanon on Thursday.
Slim died from four bullets in the head and one in the back. Slim’s sister Rasha al-Ameer suggested he had been murdered because of his ardent criticism of Shi’a Hezbollah. He was last seen after visiting a poet...
January 28th, 20210TRIPOLI — A man was killed in the Lebanese city of Tripoli on Thursday in clashes between security forces and protesters angry over a strict lockdown that has cut off livelihoods in a collapsing economy.
Omar Taybah, 30, was hit by a bullet overnight, according to a local hospital that treated him, a security source and...
January 18th, 20210BEIRUT — COVID-19 patients wait on pavements outside hospitals in Beirut, where emergency rooms are packed and intensive care beds full.
Inside, exhausted healthcare workers are succumbing themselves — doctors at one hospital, asking not to be named, said around 40 percent of staff were sick or in isolation.
Countries...
January 4th, 20210BEIRUT - Lebanon announced a full lockdown for three weeks, including a night curfew, to stem a rise in COVID-19 infections that threatens to overwhelm hospitals in a country already facing financial meltdown.
Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan said the lockdown would start on Thursday and run until Feb. 1, with further details on...
December 20th, 20200BEIRUT — The head of Lebanon’s airline said on Sunday the carrier would at some point need to demand payment for tickets bought in Lebanon using “fresh dollars”, or recently transferred currency that is not subject to restrictions imposed since a financial crisis.
Middle East Airlines (MEA) Chairman Mohamad El-Hout did not...
December 16th, 20200BEIRUT — Two former Lebanese ministers charged with negligence over a huge explosion at Beirut port in August that killed 200 people snubbed a judge on Wednesday by not turning up for questioning.
Judge Fadi Sawan charged three former ministers and the caretaker prime minister last week, sparking fierce debate about whether he had...
November 9th, 20200BEIRUT — President Michel Aoun said on Saturday that Lebanon would seek evidence and documents from the United States that led Washington to impose sanctions on his son-in-law, Gebran Bassil, a prominent Christian politician.
On Friday, the United States blacklisted Bassil, leader of Lebanon’s biggest Christian political...
November 4th, 20200Why does Israel hate Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf?
On October 16, Avi Dichter, Israeli member of Parliament from the right-wing Likud Party, announced that Assaf’s special permit to enter the occupied Palestinian West Bank would be revoked.
Assaf, originally from Gaza, now lives with his family in the United Arab Emirates....
October 28th, 20200BEIRUT — The first of many warnings about a deadly cargo in Beirut’s port came in February 2014, about three months after its arrival. It was made by Colonel Joseph Skaf, described by his family as a diligent customs official.
Skaf, then the head of the anti-narcotics and money laundering division, informed the customs authority...
August 21st, 20200DEARBORN — Jackie Ayoub, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has set up a GoFundMe page to accept donations that will go towards helping patients of the pediatric oncology unit at Saint George Hospital in Beirut.
The unit was badly damaged along with the hospital in the Aug. 4 explosion at the city's port. Now...
August 20th, 20200WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) and Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn) are co-leading an effort to put pressure on the Trump administration to use its powers to defer deportation of Lebanese nationals in light of the Aug. 4 Beirut explosion.
The relief effort for the people of Lebanon comes after the Beirut...
August 19th, 20200DETROIT — The ART X Detroit (AXD) festival, a twice-yearly festival showcasing works from Kresge Foundation fellows conducting projects in Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck, celebrated those works in a virtual celebration on Wednesday evening.
AXD organizers say the 22 commissioned pieces showcased this year reflect on “the...
August 18th, 20200By Laura Albast
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Between 50 and 60 individuals from the Lebanese diaspora gathered in front of Lebanon’s Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Sunday afternoon. They demonstrated to show solidarity with, and demand justice for, the victims of the Beirut blast.
Compared to the demonstrations held last year at the...
August 18th, 20200LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands — On Tuesday, a U.N.-backed tribunal convicted Salim Jamil Ayyash, allegedly a member of the Hezbollah group, of conspiring to kill former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in a 2005 bombing that set the stage for years of confrontation between Lebanon’s political forces.
Hariri, a Sunni Muslim...
