The headlines. The context. Every source in view.
NOW Lebanon: Watch Lebanese social media today and you would think Beirut had its own polling station in Tel Aviv. Hot takes, exit-poll threads, victories declared in advance. The Lebanese are following Israel’s election as if their names were on the ballot. In a sense,…
NOW Lebanon: Two aviation stories kept the Lebanese talking recently. On September 30, President Donald Trump signed a decision lifting restrictions on flights between the United States and Lebanon. The second story was that a technical mission from the International…
NOW Lebanon: The Lebanese have good reasons to fear another civil war. That fear should impose obligations on those capable of provoking conflict. Too often, it becomes an obligation on everyone else to accommodate them. The cabinet’s handling of the Dahr al-Baidar…
NOW Lebanon: The Lebanese government has chosen to shield Hezbollah from accountability, postponing the referral of the Dahr al-Baidar explosives case to the Court of Justice even after the group publicly claimed ownership of the shipment. What the cabinet presented as a…
NOW Lebanon: Tom Barrack is supposed to speak for the United States. Listen to him long enough and you start wondering who he is speaking for. Take his latest sit-down with an influencer. America’s man on Syria told his host that what worries him in the south is not…
NOW Lebanon: Turn this crisis around. Stop trying to manage it. And mark its resolution as your legacy. Leadership does not require making everyone happy. Insistence on state procedure is impossible under these circumstances. The President and Speaker are buying time. The…
NOW Lebanon: For nearly three thousand years, Baalat Gubal, the Lady of Byblos, presided over one of the oldest cities in the world, receiving offerings from Egyptian pharaohs, Byblian kings, and ordinary worshippers. Today a single rusted panel beside the ruins of her…
NOW Lebanon: The scenes of protest, rioting, and vandalism coming from France have captured the world’s attention. In a climate of intense political polarization, these scenes have spurred conversations that reached much beyond France, conversations which sought to…
NOW Lebanon: The explosives seized at Dahr al-Baydar expose Lebanon’s predicament with brutal clarity. Hezbollah moves its instruments of death across the country, while the state waits for a shipment to fall into its hands. Then come the questions that should hardly…
NOW Lebanon: In its July 3, 2026 Universal Periodic Review response, Lebanon officially supported recommendations on journalist safety, civil society protection, torture prevention, and refugee safeguards, while noting or partially addressing proposals concerning criminal…
NOW Lebanon: Iran is fighting for Lebanon the way empires fight for provinces they fear are slipping away. The regime faces an existential challenge here, perhaps its hardest battle since it lost Syria, because what is at stake is fifty years of investment in a proxy that…
NOW Lebanon: Earlier this month, security forces stopped a truck at the Dahr al-Baydar checkpoint on the Beirut-Bekaa road. It was carrying hundreds of kilograms of TNT and C4. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called it a “criminal operation.” Days later, Hezbollah MP Hassan…
NOW Lebanon: The Lebanese state should not have to negotiate its way into a medicine warehouse. Yet the confrontation in Galerie Semaan on October 16 exposed how easily an ordinary public responsibility becomes a dispute over political territory. According to the Internal…
NOW Lebanon: Hezbollah’s demand for the return of explosives seized by Lebanese authorities has sharpened the dispute over who controls the country’s weapons and military operations. The group’s MP Hassan Fadlallah acknowledged that the shipment belonged to Hezbollah,…
NOW Lebanon: Lebanon’s general amnesty law has cleared a major hurdle after the Constitutional Council rejected a challenge to the legislation on October 12, allowing the law to proceed towards implementation. But the decision has left questions over how some of its…
NOW Lebanon: Seven years on, I do not measure 17 October 2019 by the size of the demonstrations, the governments that fell or the parliamentary seats that followed. I measure it by the freedom I recovered. The freedom to think without seeking permission. To speak without…
NOW Lebanon: Beirut, Lebanon — The Department of History and Archaeology and the History and Archaeology Student Society at the American University of Beirut will host a public discussion of Nada Abdel Samad’s book, When the Jewish Balconies of Wadi Abu Jamil Went Dark .…
NOW Lebanon: Drive north out of Beirut at rush hour and Dbayeh passes in a blur of towers, malls, and a marina. Within a short walk of the highway, Ramesses II, Assyrian kings, a Roman emperor, a Mamluk sultan, and WWI and II soldiers have all left their mark. Few places…
NOW Lebanon: The Trump administration is outraged. It should be. But outrage without accountability is nothing more than diplomatic theater. The complaint filed against Lebanon’s ambassador to Washington, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, one of Lebanon’s most effective diplomatic…
NOW Lebanon: Last week, a vehicle carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives was stopped at the Dahr al-Baydar checkpoint. The seizure of the illegal ordinances has caused renewed fears of political assassinations in Lebanon. Two Hezbollah-affiliated members were…
NOW Lebanon: Vernacular sung poetry forms part of the cultural heritage of every country. In Lebanon and the Levant, it takes the name of zajal , a living art celebrated at weddings, village gatherings, and poetic contests. International recognition came in October 2014,…
NOW Lebanon: In late September, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI appointed the country’s first female Prime Minister, Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri. She now has to form a new governing coalition. El Mansouri’s appointment is “definitely a huge win”, women’s rights expert Lina…
NOW Lebanon: Lebanon’s households are facing another squeeze on their purchasing power as rising fuel, electricity and essential goods costs add to an economic crisis that has already pushed millions into poverty. The World Bank said Lebanon had entered 2026 on firmer…
NOW Lebanon: Prime Minister Nawaf Salam visited Nabatieh on Friday, October 2, in a high-profile trip aimed at reaffirming the Lebanese state’s presence in a region devastated by successive rounds of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Salam acknowledged that the scale…
NOW Lebanon: On Sunday, thousands of Hezbollah supporters gathered in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh to mark the second anniversary of Hassan Nasrallah’s death. The commemoration came at a difficult moment for the group. Weakened by successive confrontations with…
NOW Lebanon: The latest developments have reignited debate over whether one of Lebanon’s most consequential financial corruption cases will finally move towards a verdict or face yet another delay. The Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Cassation announced that…
NOW Lebanon: The Israeli and Lebanese delegations finished the seventh round of the U.S.-brokered negotiations in Rome on Thursday, with reportedly no progress towards expanding the pilot zones. The talks took place during a tense time — with the Israeli military bombing…
NOW Lebanon: Beirut, 24 July 2026 – A new study proposes a simple tool that could warn a country about an economic downturn before it happens: a regular survey of young people. The study titled A Youth Sentiment Index as a Leading Economic Indicator appears in the Journal…
NOW Lebanon: The Sanctions Message: Hezbollah’s Power Runs Through Lebanon’s Own Institutions The U.S. Treasury’s decision to sanction Ahmad Asaad Baalbaki, Amal’s security director, is not merely another strike against Hezbollah’s political ecosystem. It is a warning…
NOW Lebanon: When Mojtaba “ Baby” Khamenei—Iran’s supreme leadership—declared that “Hezbollah, the sacrificial party, came to support the Islamic Republic despite all obstacles,” he may have unintentionally exposed something important about Hezbollah’s latest narrative.…
NOW Lebanon: With a track record that is chock-full of achievements and an ambitious political agenda, expatriate Brigitte Khair, endeavors to win a seat in the parliament and turn things around. Mastering diplomacy, development and government advisory, as well as having…
NOW Lebanon: This podcast came to life because we wanted to put our voices behind our articles and bring you an inside view of our job. This podcast is not just about us, the reporters at NOW. It is to give a glimpse into what it means to be a journalist during these…
NOW Lebanon: More than a year and a half after the Beirut blast that was triggered by thousands of tonnes of improperly stored chemical explosives in the city’s cargo port, situated only a few meters away from dense residential areas, many businesses continue to…
NOW Lebanon: If he wasn’t making good money smuggling irregular migrants to the European Union by sea, Ibrahim himself might have joined the growing exodus from crisis-hit Lebanon. “If I didn’t work in this profession, I would have left, just like so many other people,”…
NOW Lebanon: While everything seemed to be going wrong for Lebanon in 2021, from the declining local currency that hit its lowest rate to the dollar at 28,000 pounds to $1 last week, people found some relief in the individuals and initiatives that worked to alleviate the…
NOW Lebanon: Wajdi Tabet is set to run for a Parliament seat for his native regions of Keserwan-Byblos, on the Lebanese National Bloc list. The 41-year-old civil engineer was born in Ajaltoun, but grew up in Marseille, after his family left Lebanon during the civil war.…
