BEIRUT: When Nadine Abi Nasr and her Italian fiance Marco decided to have a civil marriage, they turned to a travel agency for help to escape Lebanon’s tangled bureaucracy and strict religious rules. Nadia Travel provided them with a tailor-made package and return tickets for the 30-minute flight to the nearby east Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where the couple tied the knot.

Despite a long-running campaign by civic groups, civil weddings still have no legal basis in Lebanon, a tiny country of around four million people who belong to 18 different religious communities, mainly Christian and Muslim.

The Lebanese authorities recognize civil weddings only if they have been registered abroad, but such ceremonies are banned from taking place inside the country because of strong opposition from religious leaders.

Religious faiths have their own regulations governing marriage, divorce and inheritance, and mixed Christian-Muslim weddings in Lebanon are frowned upon and downright discouraged unless one of the potential spouses converts.

Here’s the full list of countries polled, accompanied by opinion results on whether Obama “will do the right thing in world affairs”: U.S. (74), Canada (88), Britain (86), France (91), Germany (93), Spain (72), Poland (62), Russia (37), Turkey (33), Egypt (42), Jordan (31), Lebanon (46), Palestinian territories (56), China (62), India (77), Indonesia (71), Japan (85), Pakistan (13), South Korea (81), Argentina (61), Brazil (76), Mexico (55), Kenya (94), Nigeria (88).

The Survey did not cover Syria, but in Lebanon there are some interesting trends. For one thing, the Favorability rating  here (now at 55%) for the United States has been steadily climbing, although not by much, which seems to support the notion that Lebanon has long been an outlying proponent of George W. Bush in the region. (In 2005, Bush helped encourage Lebanon’s effort to oust Syrian troops from the country.) Lebanon emerges as the only polled country which gave Bush a higher confidence rating than Bin Laden among its Muslim citizens in recent years, although this surely relates as much to Bush’s support for the anti-Syrian movement as it does to so much of the Muslim population’s support here for Nasrallah. No room for Bin Laden’s shenanigans here.

Other points:

-The Obama support is highly polarized: “Only 2% of Lebanese Shia express a positive attitude toward the U.S., barely an improvement from last year’s 0%. But a remarkably high 90% of Lebanese Sunni hold a positive view of the U.S., up from 62% in 2008. Sunnis now have more favorable views of the U.S. than the country’s Christian population – 66% of Lebanese Christians express a positive opinion of the U.S., down from 75% in 2008.”

-Lebanon shows some of the most dramatic change in its Muslim citizens’ response to a question about whether suicide bombing is ever justified. In 2002, 72% of the country’s Muslims answered yes; today that figure is 38%.

Written by Don Duncan, Beirut] – The firecracker smoke has cleared from Beirut’s streets and the purple electoral ink has faded from the thumbs of Lebanese voters. It’s been over a month since Lebanon went to the polls and regardless of political affiliation, it is clear that there was one big loser across the board – the women of Lebanon. The number of women elected as MPs has fallen from six to just four out of 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament.

“It was a major, major setback for women, at least in terms of representation,” says Lina Abou-Habib, director of the Center for Research and Training on Development Action, a social justice NGO. “It is also a setback in the sense that the way that the women who enter parliament do so through patriarchal channels and yet again this has been reproduced, reiterated, reinforced, exacerbated in the latest parliamentary elections.” Lebanon was at the forefront of women’s empowerment in the Middle East when it extended suffrage to women in 1952, the third country in the region to do so after Israel in 1948 and Syria in 1949. Since then, Lebanon has been sliding down the scale. With only 3 percent of its parliamentary seats currently occupied by women, Lebanon now languishes at the bottom of the table of parliamentary representation of women in the Middle East – side by side with conservative Gulf states like Oman (0%), Bahrain (2.7%) and Yemen (0.3%). At the top of the scale is Iraq whose parliament has a 25% quota for women MPs, Tunisia with 22.8% and Lebanon’s neighbor Syria with 12.4%.

Many people point to Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and numerous other periods of domestic tumult for putting the brakes on advancement for women and subjecting women’s rights to the volatilities of the country’s infamous sectarian political culture. “The issue then was how to help Lebanon and how to save Lebanon from those difficult times and it was all-consuming,” says Strida Geagea, one of Lebanon’s current women MPs. “Women’s rights were a secondary issue and weren’t raised enough.”

 ‘Some 30,000 tourists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates arrived via Syria on Sunday,’ an official at the Masnaa border checkpoint told the German Press Agency, dpa. The Ministry of Tourism  expects 2 million Arabs and other nationalities to come by the end of 2009. ‘This will be a record,’ said tourism ministry director Nada Sardouk. About 1.3 million tourists visited Lebanon in 2008, up 30 per cent from the previous year, the ministry’s records show. An official at Beirut International Airport  told dpa that planes are arriving packed with tourists from Gulf states. ‘I can say people are flocking into the country to spend their summer vacations, and our airport staff are working around the clock to speed up their entry,’ he said. The tourism boom is visible in the capital’s hotels, beach resorts  and restaurants.

Pierre Achkar, head of Lebanon’s Hotel Association, said occupancy in most hotels  in Beirut reached to 90 per cent in mid-July. Car rental owners are also delighted with business. ‘This is a season the likes of which we have never witnessed before,’ said Ali Chabani, owner of a taxi and car rental firm. I can say Beirut is reclaiming its position as the Jewel of the Middle East for tourists from he Arab world and Europe,’ Sardouk said. This year’s summer festivals, which include famous names like rock group Deep Purple, have also added to the attractions for visitors. Nada Attayeh, a Jordanian national, said she came to Lebanon to see her favourite group perform in the ancient city of Baalbeck.

‘I bought my tickets two months ago to watch Deep Purple play on July 25. At the same time I came to enjoy the nightlife in Beirut,’ she said. Famous bars and restaurants are crowded with visitors who usually stay well into the night, dancing and enjoying the music. ‘We are fully booked every day until the end of September,’ a waiter at the famous open-air dance club Sky Bar told dpa. La Creperie restaurant located at the sea front of Kaslik overlooking the bay of Jounieh  is also receving many tourists daily from European countries, Arab, Americas and Australia has informed us their manager: "It is just different from any other previous year where tourists are not only the Lebanese from aborad but it is Arabs, Europeans Americans from all over"

(AFP) – 47 minutes ago

BEIRUT — The United States has pledged another 30 million dollars to the rebuilding of a Palestinian refugee camp destroyed in a battle between Islamists and the Lebanese army, a UN refugee agency said on Monday.

"The amount of 25 million dollars (18 million euros) will be allocated towards the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared camp and five million dollars (four million euros) towards the Relief and Early Recovery Appeal," said the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The grant raises to 71.8 million dollars (51 million euros) the amount donated by the United States to the reconstruction of the camp in north Lebanon that was almost completely destroyed in a 15-week battle between the army and an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group in 2007.

The UN refugee agency has collected over 92 million dollars (65 million euros) of the estimated 450 million dollars (290 million euros) needed to rebuild the camp and 15 nearby villages.

More than 400 people, including 168 soldiers, were killed in the Nahr al-Bared battles and the camp’s 31,000 residents were transferred to nearby camps, some of whom have since returned.

BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) — Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said Monday that his ministry is cooperating with the army and the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to investigate Saturday’s clashes in south Lebanon, local LBC TV reported.

    "The Lebanese Foreign Ministry is carrying out necessary contacts with army officers, while the investigation is still going on" about the incident between UNIFIL and the residents of Khirbet Selm village Saturday, Salloukh said.

    About 14 UNIFIL soldiers were wounded on Saturday when Lebanese Shiite protesters prevented them from searching a location suspected of containing arms.

    Salloukh said the "UNIFIL did not coordinate with the Lebanese army when it entered the village for search, thinking that the army was already deployed there," adding "but today coordination is present between them."

    Ammunition depot in an abandoned house in the village of Khirbet Selm, 20 kilometers from the Israeli border, exploded on Tuesday in an area widely seen under control of Shiite Lebanese group of Hezbollah.

    The UNIFIL patrols were attacked by around 100 protesters from Khirbet Selm village. They hurled stones to the windows of UNIFIL vehicles and the two sides were engaged in fistfights.

    However, military sources told As-Safier daily Monday that "UNIFIL had no right, under UN resolution 1701, to raid houses or set up checkpoints without prior coordination with the Lebanese army."