BEIRUT: Andreas, a journalist working for a Danish newspaper, had been sending dispatches from Lebanon for several months before he was deported. “They have given me a week [to leave Lebanon]. They are doing that to everybody. They didn’t give a reason why,” he says. “I can’t live here as a journalist. I won’t be [...]

BEIRUT: It took the visit of a top Syrian official to quell the recent torrent of abuse aimed at Lebanon’s president, but even soothing tones from Damascus failed to completely silence the critics of Michel Sleiman. Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdel Karim Ali met on Tuesday with Sleiman and offered him Damascus’s full and [...]

BEIRUT: On the first Saturday of December, when Beirut was gearing up for its sixth-annual marathon, traffic cloyed heavier than usual at the capital’s streets. Barriers erected by inept race organizers blocked some of downtown’s busiest thoroughfares and Internal Security Forces (ISF) squads sanctioned to ease congestion were notable by their absence. One passenger wedged [...]

BEIRUT: As a small country, Lebanon punches above its weight in many spheres. Its financial sector is apparently invulnerable to global shocks; it has the largest stockpile of gold in the Middle East. Lebanon’s graduates are some to the best qualified on the planet; tri-lingual ex-pat businessmen and entrepreneurs frequently occupy top positions in corporations [...]

NABATIEH, Lebanon: Ali Murad smiles serenely as he tells of the day he lost his leg. Ali, 25, was working as a mine clearer close to the Blue Line that splits Lebanon and Israel and had not long been in the job. He was part of a 400-strong squad of clearance workers continuing the removal [...]

BEIRUT: We’ve been in Haifa Hospital for precisely seven minutes before the power cuts out. The clock on the wall by the reception booth sits proudly between a picture of Yasser Arafat and a plastic sign showing a Kalashnikov rifle struck through with livid red lines. No guns. This is a hospital, after all. “Electricity [...]