Timour Azhari

Lebanon’s demise has turned food blog­ger An­tho­ny Ra­hayel into an un­like­ly pro­tag­o­nist in the fight for its fu­ture.

More than 220 peo­ple also wound­ed, sev­er­al of those when se­cu­ri­ty forces opened fire at a group in Al Nour Square.

Salameh said he would face ques­tion­ing in Switzer­land as part of a mon­ey-laun­der­ing probe, a source tells Al Jazeera.

Mean­while, a top health of­fi­cial has an­nounced plans for a roll-out of vac­ci­na­tions in the cri­sis-hit coun­try.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is the lat­est blow of con­fi­dence to Lebanon’s crip­pled fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

One of the busi­ness­men had pre­vi­ous­ly been ac­cused of try­ing to pro­cure am­mo­ni­um ni­trate for the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment.

In­ter­na­tion­al want­ed no­tices is­sued for men con­nect­ed to 2,750 tonnes of ex­plo­sive ma­te­r­i­al brought into Beirut’s port.

Front-line doc­tors say emer­gency de­part­ments are over­whelmed as cas­es spike fol­low­ing hol­i­day eas­ing of re­stric­tions.

Eco­nom­ic col­lapse, COVID and a port ex­plo­sion test­ed Sty­ro 3D, but its path out of crises could sig­nal a broad­er trend.

New law to send per­pe­tra­tors to up to four years in jail, with par­lia­men­tar­i­ans also amend­ing a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence law.