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, 20200WASHINGTON, 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 height of 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...
August 14th, 20200BEIRUT — Another day of unrest and protests in Beirut on Thursday, as Lebanese security forces tried to stop angry protesters from approaching a meeting of MPs. The MPs gathered for the first time since the port side blast that killed 172 people on Tuesday, Aug. 4, with dozens still missing.
The death and injury toll (estimated...
August 10th, 20200BEIRUT — On Monday, Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced the official resignation of his government after a powerful Beirut port explosion sparked outrage and protests against the country’s leaders. The massive explosion that devastated the capital last Tuesday killed some 200 people and wounded 6,000 others.
Diab...
August 8th, 20200
BEIRUT — Aug. 4, 2020 was meant to be the happiest day of Israa Al Seblani’s life, but it quickly turned to be the most terrifying.
Al Seblani is the bride from the now viral video shoot taken during the explosion in Beirut that has killed more than 150 people and injured more than 5,000 more.
“The first thought that...
August 4th, 20200BEIRUT — A huge explosion in Beirut has caused at least 78 deaths and 4,000 injuries. The explosion sent a shockwave across the Lebanese capital, creating massive destruction, shattering windows and collapsing apartment balconies.
Social media became flooded with videos and photos from eyewitnesses on the ground soon after the...
August 3rd, 20200
BEIRUT (REUTERS) — Lebanon named the president’s diplomatic adviser as new foreign minister on Monday after Nassif Hitti quit the post, blaming a lack of political will to enact reforms to halt a financial meltdown, which he warned could turn Lebanon into a failed state.
Foreign donors have...
July 27th, 20200BEIRUT (Reuters) — Lebanon reimposed severe COVID-19 restrictions on Monday for the next two weeks, shutting places of worship, cinemas, bars, nightclubs, sports events and popular markets, after a sharp rise in infections.
Shops, private companies, banks and educational institutions would be permitted to open, but only on Tuesdays...
July 18th, 20200ROCHESTER — Majd Faraj, a second-year medical student at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine (OUWB), is leading a project to bring much needed medical supplies to Lebanon.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the Lebanese healthcare infrastructure this year. The problem has been compounded by an already...
July 17th, 20200
BEIRUT - Lebanon’s financial adviser Lazard will see if a government financial rescue plan can be adjusted to reach a compromise workable for the International Monetary Fund, two sources said on Friday, after the plan hit resistance from politicians, banks and the central bank.
The plan, which...
June 4th, 20200BEIRUT — Earlier in the week, Tania Saleh, a Lebanese singer and visual artist based out of Beirut, decided to show her support for international protests by photoshopping her face on that of another, presumably Black woman’s, face and posting it on her social media accounts.
The image, which may have been well-intentioned, was...
January 16th, 20200BEIRUT — An upsurge of violence in Lebanon’s protests against the ruling elite, with police meting out beatings and protesters hurling stones, has alarmed rights groups and whipped up public fury. After a brief lull in largely peaceful protests since October, people filled the streets again this week, angry at a political class that...
October 17th, 20190BEIRUT – Villages in the west of Lebanon, just south of Beirut, experienced intense wildfires on early Tuesday morning, forcing villagers to flee their homes, with the Lebanese government sending rescue missions to affected areas.
Described by officials as the worst wild fires to have hit the country in decades, the fires were...
August 30th, 20190BEIRUT — After The Arab American News published an article about "Islamophobia in the motherland", Coral Beach Hotel & Resort Marketing Manager Rana Younes reached out to us for a follow up apology and clarification.
The article focused on Marwan Faraj, a Dearborn man who visited Lebanon this summer with his family. He said...
March 9th, 20190BEIRUT — Lebanese artist Christina Atik has produced a series of digital pictures to illustrate sentences commonly used in Arab countries to criticize women with the aim of empowering Arab women.
The project tackles issues of female freedom, beauty and sexuality in societies traditionally dominated by men.
Atik, 27, said she...
August 17th, 20180BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah Party, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said on Tuesday his group was stronger than ever and would “very soon” celebrate victory in Syria, where it has been fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad government.
Nasrallah was speaking on live television to mark the anniversary of a 2006 war...
March 16th, 20180DEARBORN — A young Syrian refugee girl had no idea when she was selling gum on the streets of Beirut, but the cryptic expression of fear and confidence on her face would become part of a visual story of struggle that aims to connect everyone with a story to tell.
Mayssa Fakih, a 17-year-old art student at Mercy High School, an...
November 23rd, 20170Saudi Arabia added this week another political downfall to its long list of successive defeats in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Qatar and Palestine. The last blunder of the immature Saudi Crown Prince was holding the Prime Minister of Lebanon Saad al-Hariri hostage and forcing him to abruptly resign from a discreet place in his fumbling kingdom,...