More than three-quarters of households in Lebanon, including nearly 100 percent of all Syrian refugees families living there, do not have food or money to buy food, the United Nations has warned.

Journalist Rami Khouri says the Beirut explosion that killed at least 135 and injured thousands is the latest "body blow" to the Lebanese after decades of crisis, but it could prompt political change. "Whether it's no garbage collection, no electricity, salty water, no jobs, poor education, closed banks, inflation, no money, poverty rising — all of these have been happening in succession and simultaneously in the last year," said Khouri, a professor of journalism and director of global engagement at the American University of Beirut.

Lebanon has become the first Arab country to legalise cannabis farming for medical and industrial purposes – a move that could generate lucrative exports and foreign currency as the country struggles to cope with a financial crisis. Although growing the plant was previously illegal, cannabis has long been farmed openly in the fertile and impoverished Bekaa Valley.

In mid-December, a month and a half into protests that have crippled Lebanon and placed its political class in the dock, a priest caused a stir by telling his congregation to start stockpiling food. The coming three years would be difficult, the cleric in the southern city of Sidon said. Citing the country’s Maronite Patriarch, he advised people to plant their own wheat. “His Holiness says the crisis will last for years, and famine is approaching.”

A Lebanese Uber driver has confessed to killing a British diplomat in Beirut, a judicial source has told the Guardian. The body of Rebecca Dykes was found on the side of a motorway in the early hours of Saturday morning. Local police suggested she had been strangled. Her body was found without any identity papers on the Metn highway, which leads out of the Lebanese capital to the north-eastern suburbs. A postmortem suggested she had died at about 4am on Saturday.

Lebanese security forces have fired tear gas and water canons at protesters near the US Embassy in Beirut during a demonstration against Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Demonstrators waved the Palestinian flag as they lit fires in the street and threw projectiles towards the security forces, who had barricaded the main road leading to the embassy in the Awkar area of the capital's north-east.

Saudi Arabia appears ready to sacrifice the country in its reckless bid to confront Iran. By Thanassis Cambanis.

When Saad Hariri’s jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3 November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon’s prime minister silenced. By Robert Fisk.

'Due to the circumstances in the Lebanese Republic, the kingdom asks its citizens who are visiting or residing' in the country to leave it as soon as possible.

Saudi Arabia said on Monday that Lebanon had declared war against it because of attacks against the Kingdom by the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah. Saudi Gulf affairs minister Thamer al-Sabhan told Al-Arabiya TV that Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanon's prime minister on Saturday, had been told that acts of "aggression" by Hezbollah "were considered acts of a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia by Lebanon and by the Lebanese Party of the Devil."

Lebanon's U.S.-backed army on Saturday launched its biggest military operation yet against Islamic State militants who in 2014 gained a foothold along the tiny Mediterranean country's border with Syria. The long-awaited campaign aims to defeat IS in the group's border enclave and put an end to a terror threat that has loomed over Lebanon.

US special forces were reportedly on the ground in Lebanon ahead of a push by the US-backed Lebanese army against the Islamic State jihadist group along its northeastern border with Syria. “I can confirm the presence of US Special Forces in Lebanon,” a Pentagon spokesman told the Al-Hurra TV network on Thursday. “Our special forces are providing training and support to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Push to boycott film reportedly prodded by BDS group, which cites ex-IDF soldier Gal Gadot’s expressions of solidarity with Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza. Lebanon’s ministry of economy is seeking to ban the 2017 Wonder Woman movie because its lead actress — Gal Gadot — is an Israeli, though a formal request for a ban has not yet been received, a Lebanese security official said Tuesday. A ban would require a recommendation from a six-ministry-member committee, a process that also has not yet began, the official said.

The Lebanese Army killed a Daesh (ISIS) emir (or prince) and arrested another 10 terrorists during a stealth operation in Arsal, Lebanon according to the Daily Star. The Lebanese Army confirmed the operation which killed Hasan al-Mallees, a Syrian Daesh emir who had taken part in the 2014 clashes with the Lebanese Army in Arsal. The army also ID’ed the ten “dangerous terrorists” as Syrians Syrians Fawzi al-Sahli, Alaaeddine Al-Halabi, Ahmad Miman, Abdullah Hesian and Mohammad al-Sahli.

The leader of Lebanon’s Shiite militant group and political party Hezbollah said having an "idiot" in the White House makes the group optimistic, a reference to President Trump. "We are very optimistic that when an idiot settles in the White House and boasts about his idiocy, this is the beginning of relief for the oppressed around the world,” Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Sunday, the Associated Press reports.

A judge in Lebanon has conceded that homosexuality should not be illegal in a landmark case that may change the future of LGBT people living in the country. Judge Rabih Maalouf declared that “homosexuality is a personal choice, and not a punishable offence” in the ruling which referenced Article 183. The article states that “An act undertaken in exercise of a right without abuse shall not be regarded as an offence.”

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the slaughter of between 762 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese Shia Muslim civilians, by a Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia assisted by the Israel Defense Forces, in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon. The massacre was presented as retaliation for the assassination of newly elected Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Kataeb Party. It was wrongly assumed that Palestinian militants had carried out the assassination.

Police said the latest batch of heroin discovered in Lebanon seems to be highly powerful. A 32-year-old Enfield man almost died Friday night at a home on Perley Avenue in Lebanon. Emergency personnel revived him, and police recovered several packets of a drug labeled “Game of Thrones.” “They recovered some packets of heroin at the scene. They also were able to make two arrests,” Lebanon Police Chief Richard Mello said.

BEIRUT (AP) — Beirut-based employees of the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya channel say the station has decided to shut down its Lebanon operation amid tensions between Riyadh and Beirut.

I confess to having recently purchased four children near Ramlet el Baida beach from a stressed-out Syrian woman. I am not sure if she was what she said or if she was a member of one of the human trafficking gangs that operate widely these days in Lebanon selling Syrian children or vulnerable adult women... By Franklin Lamb.