Author: Zayala

Lebanon’s next presidential voting session will be held on June 14, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said. It will be the twelfth in a series of attempts by Lebanese lawmakers to elect a new president since the end of Michel Aoun’s tenure last October. Many hope that it also be the last of the 12 sessions, now that two strong candidates have emerged for the country’s top job: Jihad Azour and Sulaiman Frangieh. The first is backed by the two Christian parties — the Lebanese Forces (LF) and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) — while Frangieh is supported by the…

The Greek Foreign Ministry reacted after the court in Vlora today ordered the detention of the candidate for mayor of the local elections in Albania Fredi Belleri , who is of Greek origin, the Greek and Albanian media reported. Belleri, who is the candidate of the Albanian opposition coalition We Win Together for the southern Albanian town of Himara, was arrested yesterday on charges of “complicity in active corrupt activities” during the election campaign. He was released, then detained again before the measure of remand was set for him, notes ANA-MPA. “Today’s decision of the court in Vlora, if the evidence is not…

Lebanon’s central bank governor Riad Salameh has failed to respond to a summons sent by the Lebanese judiciary for a hearing in France on Tuesday, a senior judicial source told The National. Beirut First Investigative Judge Charbel Abou Samra has attempted to notify Mr Salameh of his hearing on three separate occasions, but the governor — or a representative who could sign for him — could not be located. All the notification letters were returned to the Lebanese judiciary. The source said that Mr Abou Samra had informed Aude Buresi, the French judge leading the case, on Monday that the governor could not…

A diversion or a real goal? At the moment it is difficult to express certainties, but surely the Ukrainian counter-offensive that is expected for this well-developed spring has a central element in the Crimea. There are signs. The most recent statements by Volodymyr Zelensky ‘s government show how the Black Sea peninsula, annexed by the Russian Federation after its occupation in 2014, is still fully part of Kiev’s political plans, to the point that in the most maximalist segments there has been talk of a sort of de-Russification to be implemented as soon as the reconquest of the territory is completed. Signals in the Crimea…

In Lebanon’s impoverished Palestinian refugee camps, young people say they dream of leaving a struggling country where their families took refuge generations ago and where their futures remain bleak. Nirmeen Hazineh is a descendant of survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba — the “catastrophe” — when more than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. She proudly considers herself from Jaffa — now south of Tel Aviv — and talks as if she has lived there all her life, instead of in the ramshackle Shatila refugee camp south of Beirut.…

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is carrying out searches today, 31 March 2023, in Sofia (Bulgaria), in a probe into possible corruption and misuse of EU funds to restore the city’s historic centre, including its iconic yellow paved streets.    The allegations under this investigation, code-named ‘Yellow Brick Road’, concern mismanagement of the funding allocated to Sofia’s city municipality to renovate the town’s old centre, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), as well as possible corruption, with estimated damages of at least €3 million. The EPPO started this investigation ‘ex officio’ in the autumn of 2022, based on…

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Lebanese say they want real action from their government to solve the country’s crises, but don’t expect it. Lebanon has shifted to daylight savings time a few days later than initially planned after a backlash to a controversial government decision left the country split between two different time zones. Lebanon had been scheduled to make the shift last weekend, but a last-minute government decision extended winter time by approximately a month to avoid making the fasting day an hour longer for Muslims in Ramadan. But the decision was rejected by other institutions, including the Maronite Church,…

Jordan’s King Abdullah II met Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib at Al-Husseiniya Palace on Wednesday. The king assured his guest of his country’s continuing support for Lebanon and its people, as they discussed the deep-rooted bilateral ties between their nations and ways in which cooperation might be expanded across all fields, the Jordan News Agency reported. In addition, they talked about the plight of Syrian refugees and the burdens shouldered the countries that host large numbers of them, as well as the need for the international community to step up its support for this. According to UN estimates, more…

In eight years, BellTroX InfoTech Services has hacked over 10,000 email accounts. An obscure little Indian IT company provides hacking services and has hacked over 10,000 email accounts in eight years. Delhi-registered BellTroX InfoTech Services attacked European government officials, Bahamas casino moguls and high-profile US investors, including companies such as KKR and Muddy Waters. This was reported to Reuters news agency by three former employees of the company and third-party researchers. BellTroX attacks on US targets are currently under investigation, but the Justice Department has not commented on the situation. In a telephone conversation with Reuters reporters, BellTroX owner Sumit…

Beirut, 20 January 2023–Over the past two decades, the Lebanese trade deficit exceeded $250 billion. In the same context, the country showed a subpar performance in the two free trade agreements signed by Lebanon with the European Union and other Arab countries. These are some of the findings of a new policy brief prepared by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) entitled “Trade Policy of Lebanon in a New Development Era“, in support of the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade. To discuss the findings of this policy brief, ESCWA organized a high-level panel discussion…