Solidere — the company that received public land, tax breaks, and subsidized loans worth an estimated $3 billion to rebuild Beirut's downtown after the civil war — asked the government for a fresh 25-year extension of its mandate. The government's response: not so fast.

• The Council of Ministers replied with a detailed letter setting out non-negotiable preconditions: a full independent audit of Solidere's assets, a tax clearance certificate, and a formal General Assembly vote requesting the extension — before any talks can begin.
• Rather than the 25 years Solidere requested, the government is proposing an initial 8-year extension, renewable for another 6 years only if the company meets binding performance targets — with financial penalties for delays.
• Solidere still holds roughly 1.35 million square meters of undeveloped land in central Beirut, and has left long-promised public projects — Martyrs' Square, Rafic Hariri Park, the Grand Theatre (built in 1929), and the Beirut History Museum — unfinished for decades.
• The government also wants future Solidere income — land sales, leases, new construction — taxed like any other real estate company, ending decades of special fiscal treatment.

Why it matters: After more than 30 years of stalled promises and land hoarding, the government is attempting to use the threat of non-renewal to finally extract the public-benefit projects that justified Solidere's extraordinary privileges in the first place.

Since a Jun⁠e 26 deal linked Israel's gradual troop withdrawal from Lebanon to verified Hezbollah disarmament, the thorniest question has been: who does the verifying? After meetings at the U.S. embassy in Rome this⁠ week, Beirut and Jerusalem finally have a common shortlist of candidates.

• A Lebanese official confirmed the two sides agreed on a shortlist of countries that could send troops as third-party verifiers, with Washington now set to make the final selection — possibly choosing more than one country.
• Lebanon rejected an earlier U.S. proposal to use private security companies, insisting all verifiers be sovereign states.
• In what the Lebanese official called a breakthrough, the U.S. and Israel signaled they are now willing to consider a new UN Security Council resolution — potentially housing the verification forces under UNIFIL, whose mandate expires at year's end.
• No agreement was reached on the next area from which Israeli troops would withdraw; Lebanon had proposed Bint Jbeil and Khiam. The next round of talks is set for early Sep⁠tember.

Zooming out: The U.S.-Israel willingness to work within a UN framework marks a meaningful shift from earlier positions, but Hezbollah has refused to join the agreement or give up its arsenal — meaning the hardest part of implementation hasn't started.

Two U.S. senators — one Democrat, one Republican — introduced a bipartisan bill this⁠ week that would combine fresh sanctions on Hezbollah's financial network with direct security assistance to Lebanon's armed forces, framing it as Washington's chance to lock in gains from the ongoing disarmament talks.

• The Lebanon Sanctions, Stabilization and Support Act was introduced by Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Senator James Lankford (R-OK), tying sanctions on Hezbollah enablers to security and recovery assistance conditioned on congressional oversight.
• The bill cites an estimated 1.2 million Lebanese displaced from the south, describing the situation as risking a fresh regional crisis if left unaddressed.
• It is framed around the trilateral U.S.-Israel-Lebanon framework and what sponsors called "the first direct talks in 30 years".

What to watch: A bill introduced in the Senate is a long way from becoming law, but bipartisan sponsorship signals that U.S. policy toward Lebanon's disarmament process has enough cross-aisle support to shape how Washington conditions any future aid packages.

Three of the Muslim world's most powerful states — one with NATO's second-largest military, one the world's top oil exporter, and one its only nuclear-armed Muslim nation — signed a binding collective defence agreement in Mecca on Fri⁠day, declaring that an attack on any one of them is an attack on all three.

• The Mecca Joint Deterrence Agreement was signed by Turkish President Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistani P⁠M Shehbaz Sharif, building on an existing bilateral pact between Ankara and Islamabad.
• Negotiations began after Oct⁠ober 7, 2023 and accelerated as US and Israeli military operations against Iran intensified, with Saudi Arabia coming under Houthi and Iranian attack.
• Analysts describe the deal as a framework for strategic coordination rather than a NATO-equivalent mutual defence treaty — combining Turkey's defence industry, Saudi financial muscle, and Pakistan's nuclear deterrent.
• A Turkish official told Reuters the pact is defensive in nature and open to other regional countries.

The bigger picture: The deal signals a push by three major Muslim states to build an independent regional security architecture at a moment when confidence in the existing US-led order has visibly eroded.

In a move with significant geopolitical undertones, judges at the International Criminal Court have ordered prosecutors to open a standalone investigation into the Taliban's systematic persecution of women — effectively separating it from the court's broader Afghanistan inquiry, which also covers alleged war crimes by US military and CIA personnel.

• A three-judge panel in pre-trial chamber II issued the request to the Office of the Prosecutor in mid-Jul⁠y, finding that the Taliban's post-2021 conduct is "materially different" from the armed conflict that defined the original investigation authorised in 2020.
• The ICC already issued arrest warrants for Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for gender persecution a year ago.
• The decision came days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened to "dismantle the ICC, brick by brick" — the US has imposed financial and visa sanctions on court officials over the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations since Feb⁠ruary 2025.
• The original Afghanistan investigation, which nominally covers all parties including US forces, has sat dormant for years; judges flagged a new procedure allowing prosecutors to formally close it.

What to watch: Whether prosecutors open the new standalone Taliban investigation — and whether the original probe covering US forces is quietly closed — will reveal how far the court adjusts its posture under sustained American pressure.

A painting that spent decades misattributed and then buried in storage at Norway's National Museum has been officially reattributed to Clara Peeters, a pioneering 17th-century Flemish still-life artist whose work hangs in the Prado and the Met — a discovery that researchers say is a preview of many more recoveries to come.

• American researcher Cynthia Osiecki identified the work, Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza (c. 1620), after noticing the panel was from a supplier Peeters commonly used and that a distinctive tazza appeared in other confirmed Peeters paintings.
• The painting had been attributed to Ambrosius Brueghel, then reclassified as "anonymous" in the early 20th century.
• Peeters's signature was likely lost to woodworm damage at the panel's bottom edge, the precise spot where she typically signed her works.
• The reattributed piece will be a centrepiece of Woman Painter, opening at the National Museum of Norway on Oct⁠ober 8, featuring 19 female artists from 1550 to 1650.

Zooming out: The find is part of a broader, accelerating effort by European museums to recover and reattribute works by women artists long filed away under "anonymous" — and curators say the archival research has only just begun.