Bassam Za’za’, Legal and Court Correspondent

Dubai: Football player Lionel Messi is Argentinian, and Cristiano
Ronaldo is Portuguese, but despite these facts a Lebanese voter decided
otherwise as he cast his ballot for the Barcelona superstar to represent
him in Lebanon’s municipal election.

As results of polling
stations in Lebanese capital, Beirut, started rolling out around 9pm, an
image of an anonymous voter’s ballot favouring Messi over Ronaldo
started going viral on social media networks.

Mockingly expressing
disgust and desperation and distrust of the credibility of the
municipal election, the voter crossed off Ronaldo’s name and ticked yes
on Messi’s.

The image contained the footballers’ names inked on a
white piece of paper on its top half, while the bottom half was partly
slid into a brown beige envelope that had the 2016 municipal election’s
logo and the name of Lebanon’s Ministry of Interior and Municipalities.

Lianna Brinded

Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to diversify its economy away from oil, and the person pulling the strings is 30-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

King Salman is technically the ruler, but Prince Mohammed is the
favoured son, and he is increasingly calling the shots on some pretty
important events.And his power over one of the world’s most important economies was made abundantly clear on Saturday when he replaced 20-year veteran oil minister Ali al-Naimi with someone who he directly controls the actions of — Khalid al-Falih, chairman of the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco.

It probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise to people watching Saudi
Arabia closely. After all, he is driving forward Vision 2030 — Saudi
Arabia’s plan to curtail the kingdom’s “addiction” to oil.

Kuwait: A Lebanese man made headlines after he drew a heart using petals to welcome his bride on her arrival at the Kuwait International Airport.A video recording showing the married couple standing inside the artificial heart and hugging before kissing each other went viral. The incident angered conservatives who described the incident against local traditions […]

Daily Star.com.lb

The Bekaa Valley and Baalbek-Hermel districts witnessed heated battles between rival parties running for local
elections, with three people being treated at hospitals after scuffles
broke out in Zahle.

TV footage showed a scuffle at a polling
station in Zahle between supporters of the Lebanese Forces, people who
back the Fattoush list, and the supporters of the Skaff family’s Popular
Bloc over the vote-buying allegations.A similar incident occurred at an office of the Popular Bloc, after LF supporters reportedly stormed into it.

“I’m still waiting for the Lebanese Forces to explain what happened. I call on people to try to protect the democratic way we should all follow,” Popular Bloc head Myriam Skaff told reporters.

BEIRUT (Sputnik) — The first round of municipal elections kicked off on Sunday in Lebanon, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

Residents are choosing lawmakers to be represented in local governments
of the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek-Hermel provinces in eastern Lebanon
as well as in Beirut. Supporters of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad
Hariri and independent civil society activists are struggling for the
victory. The elections will last until May 29 in five other provinces
of Lebanon.

“Municipal elections are a privilege of the
people, this is the essence of our democracy. We hope that this will
also affect the rest; first and foremost, the presidential election,”
Prime Minister Tammam Salam said, after casting his vote in Beirut.

Myles Udland

Back in 1998, the world of finance learned a very painful lesson: Models break and markets aren’t efficient. And with the rise of Donald Trump from sideshow to presumptive Republican nominee, politics has learned the same lesson. Long-Term Capital Management was a hedge fund staffed by several
Nobel Prize winners that possessed a supposedly unmatched grasp on how
markets work. The firm had the most sophisticated methods for exploiting
any and all inefficiencies, millions and millions of times over. And it
blew up.Spectacularly.

Chronicled at length in Roger Lowenstein’s brilliant book “When Genius Failed,” the short version of LTCM’s blowup is that a series of misplaced bets that certain interest rates would converge over time — because they always had in the past — went against the firm until they were out billions of dollars.

LTCM’s core conceit was that it believed markets were efficient and any inefficiencies would be corrected in due course. They were wrong.

Gulfnews by Joseph A. Kechichian – Beirut: After it was widely criticised in 2013, the Lebanese joint
parliamentary committees convened on Tuesday to study various electoral
drafts and settled on the so-called “Orthodox Gathering Electoral Law”
for serious consideration.

Under the controversial proposal, an
expansion of parliamentary seats would be recorded — from 128 to 134 —
along with a complex pattern that would allow each of Lebanon’s 18
officially recognised religious communities to elect their own deputies.

The
proportional representation system will consider the country as a
single district. Consequently, the draft stipulates that each sect will
vote for its own representatives, with registered Shiite voters only be
able to vote for Shiite candidates, Sunnis for Sunnis, Maronites for
Maronites, and so on.