Lebanon's English-language Daily Star newspaper published an edition on Thursday without any news. It printed largely blank, white pages. The front page simply said "Lebanon". The inside pages contained headlines highlighting the country's current ills, and the back page had a photo of a cedar tree (Lebanon's national symbol) with a caption reading: "Wake up before it's too late." The newspaper said it had, "refrained from publishing news articles in its print edition" to protest against the country's worsening economy and political situation.
The editor-in-chief spoke to CNN reporters about the rationale for the protest. She said: "The aim is to ring the alarm bells about all the challenges that our country is facing and to urge everyone in Lebanon to work towards resolving these crises." She called on "politicians and everyone to pull together". Some of the headlines inside the paper highlighted a government deadlock, "alarming" levels of pollution, public debt, unemployment and illegal weapons flooding the country. The editor-in-chief said: "It's enough that people take notice of these problems and think."