Elissa, Lebanese pop star, retires from 'mafia-like' music industry

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by bbc.com --Elissa, one of the biggest pop stars in the Arab world, has announced her retirement, blaming what she called the "mafia-like" music industry. The Lebanese singer surprised fans on Monday by saying that her next album would be her last. She did not explain her mafia comparison, but complained last year about her music being blocked because of a deal by her record label, Rotana. During her career, Elissa's songs have challenged social taboos and politics. In a tweet, she said she had decided to make the announcement "with a heavy heart but with a lot of conviction".

Elissa, whose real name is Elissar Khoury, is one of the highest-selling female Arabic artists in the Middle East, with millions of records sold worldwide. She began her musical career after studying politics at Lebanese University, and first gained attention after winning a silver medal at a Lebanese music competition, Studio El Fan. Since then, the 46-year-old has released 11 studio albums and has won multiple awards for her work. Outside of music, she has also launched her own line of perfume, worked as a judge on television talent shows, and appeared in adverts for brands including Pepsi.

Her music has touched on several taboos, including abuse against women. Elissa herself has also taken controversial political stances, including aligning herself with a former Christian militia in Lebanon. She won new respect when she revealed she was being treated for breast cancer last year and produced a video featuring her sessions of radiotherapy. The video has been watched more than 22 million times on YouTube. Last year, Elissa also hinted at problems with her record label Rotana after it signed a deal with music streaming service Deezer. The deal saw her songs removed from a key Arab music streaming platform on which she had received hundreds of millions of plays.

Lebanese President: I Will Tend to Economic, Financial Reforms

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by aawsat.com --The Lebanese government is expected to begin implementing in October a set of economic and financial measures agreed by its top leadership that will boost economic growth, President Michel Aoun said on Sunday, vowing that he would tend to this himself. He was referring to decisions taken at a top-level meeting earlier this month with the aim of reviving an economy that has been growing slowly for years and is struggling with one of the world's heaviest public debt burdens.

After the Aug. 9 meeting, Prime Minister Saad Hariri said agreed steps included finishing the 2020 budget on time, drawing up a plan to start $3.3 billion of projects approved by parliament, full implementation of a power sector reform plan, and laws to fight tax evasion and regulate public tenders. "I will personally tend to the implementation path of the decisions of the financial and economic meeting" in cooperation with Hariri, Speaker Nabih Berri and other parties in government, Aoun said. In written comments to Reuters, Aoun said this aimed "to guarantee political stability in cabinet and outside it and to secure the greatest amount of productivity", including in the implementation of the 2019 budget and its reforms.

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A food critic feeds his love for Lebanese cuisine at the source

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By BILL ADDISON - RESTAURANT CRITIC -latimes.com --- I’ve been thinking lately about the ways that cuisines are transformed and reinterpreted when they’re translated from home cooking to a professional kitchen. It was the subject of my newsletter last week, in conversations with food writers Andy Baraghani and Naz Deravian on the subject of Persian restaurant menus. And it was, in essence, the impetus for a recent nine-day trip I took to Lebanon. I’d known Lebanese cuisine only from restaurants I’d reviewed over the years, mostly in Atlanta: mezze of hummus, tabbouleh, labneh (yogurt drained to the thickness of fresh cheese) and fatayer (small savory pies often filled with spiced spinach and pine nuts); falafel and kebabs and shawarma.

About seven years ago I had dinner at the home of a Lebanese American friend, Caline Jarudi, whose parents, Mona and Subhi, were visiting from overseas. Mona prepared a beautiful Lebanese dish of lamb shanks braised in plenty of pomegranate molasses, which matched the meat’s gaminess with its rich, overtly sour-sweet tautness. Caline’s sister, Natalie, made exquisite hindbe — dandelion greens sautéed in olive oil and covered in caramelized onions. Their airy hummus dialed back the garlic and tahini and pushed forward the lemon. This was not how I had experienced Lebanese cooking in American restaurants. It spurred my curiosity and ardor for the cuisine in new ways. At one point Caline suggested I follow the Lebanese Syrian cookbook author Anissa Helou on Instagram. Anissa and I met in London in 2015 and became occasional traveling buddies. We immersed ourselves in the Lebanese restaurants of Dearborn, Mich., the following year; we recently ate through Iranian restaurants together in Los Angeles. As Caline and I have become closer over the years, and I grew to love her family, a trip to Beirut became inevitable. We finally planned the trip this summer as a preamble to her brother Nadim’s wedding, which took place in Estonia. (Tallinn, Estonia, is a story for another time, but: bread.)

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PM Hariri: Saudi, UAE want to invest in Lebanon

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Reuters -- BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are looking to invest in infrastructure projects in Lebanon after ties have recovered, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said in comments from his office on Friday. Hariri, on a visit to Washington, also said there were negotiations "over financial and economic aid" with the United States, the Lebanese military's biggest foreign backer. Launching long-stalled reforms would help Lebanon unlock more than $11 billion pledged at the "Cedre" donor conference in Paris last year - the centrepiece of the Hariri government's plans to revive the sluggish economy.

"We will present to (Saudi and the UAE) the projects we have in Cedre because they want to contribute and invest. The relationship between us has returned to what it was before and may be better," Hariri told reporters during a visit in Washington, his office said in a statement on Friday. He added that talks were under way with Riyadh on some 23 economic deals, it said. Hariri's government, which has one of the world's highest levels of public debt worth around 150% of GDP, is seeking to bring down its fiscal deficit. Parliament passed the 2019 state budget in July. After years of low economic growth, Lebanon wants the funds promised by foreign donors in Paris for a capital investment programme to overhaul its infrastructure, with projects tackling transport, water and power sectors. Reuters

Lebanon's Hariri hopes for decision in September on sea border talks

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Thursday after talks in Washington that he hoped for a final decision, possibly in September, on a proposal for resolving a maritime border dispute with Israel on a gas pipeline. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed Lebanon’s commitment to the talks and reiterated Washington’s willingness to facilitate discussions.

“We consider the process to be viable and will continue to support constitutional next steps leading up to a final decision in the coming months, hopefully September,” Hariri said in a statement to the press after meetings with Pompeo. Beirut has an unresolved maritime border dispute with Israel – which it regards as an enemy country – over a sea area of about 860 square km (330 square miles) extending along the edge of three of Lebanon’s southern energy blocks. Senior U.S. official David Satterfield has been shuttling between Lebanon and Israel trying to launch the talks between the countries, which have remained formally in a state of war since Israel was founded in 1948. In his statement, Pompeo said a resolution to the dispute would “be greatly beneficial” to Lebanon and the region. “We are prepared to participate as a mediator and a facilitator in the maritime discussions, and we do hope that we will soon see substantive discussions on these important issues,” he said. “The right solution…will be greatly beneficial to Lebanon and the greater region.”

Lebanon last year licensed a consortium of Italy’s Eni, France’s Total and Russia’s Novatek to carry out the country’s first offshore energy exploration in two blocks. One of the blocks, Block 9, contains waters disputed with Israel. Lebanese leaders have repeatedly warned Israel not to encroach on its offshore oil and gas reserves. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Lebanese gravitate toward Beirut in rural-to-urban shift

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by dailystar.com.lb -- BEIRUT: When Hamza Shamas first moved to Beirut, he was overwhelmed. The constant bustle of the city’s busy Downtown was a far cry from the quiet village of Boudai, where he grew up. In his village, Shamas’ identity revolved around his tribe, but in Beirut he felt adrift.He settled in Hay al-Sellom, a low-income neighborhood in the southern suburbs made up almost entirely of residents from rural Lebanon, and soon discovered that despite the noise and crowding, his community in Beirut was really a microcosm of village life. More and more people originally from Lebanon’s rural population are finding themselves in cities. The United Nations Human Settlements Program (U.N.-Habitat) estimates that by 2020, 88.6 percent of Lebanon’s population will live in urban areas, the fourth-highest in the Arab world after Gulf states Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

The vast majority of this urban shift is focused on Beirut. A 1996 survey by the Social Affairs Ministry and the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, found that 20 percent of Lebanese living in the Beirut governorate were born elsewhere, along with 31 percent in the Mount Lebanon governorate, which encompasses Beirut’s dense suburbs. This greatly exceeds the proportion in other governorates, at 8 percent in the north and 2 percent in the south. In the intervening two decades, the proportion of Lebanese migrants to the Beirut area has only increased, said Suzanne Menhem, a sociology professor at the Lebanese University. She is in the midst of a yearlong study of Lebanon’s internal migration, a woefully understudied phenomenon, she told The Daily Star. “We have no statistics,” she said. “We base it on the study and by estimation.” Lebanon’s last official census was in 1932. Since then there have only been scattered studies of the country’s demography. Menhem is still in the initial stages of her project, but she already knows that the trend of rural-to-urban migration is a strong one. “I’m sure that this phenomenon is increasing with time,” she said.

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