In a final interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Donald Trump‘s camapign Kellyanne Conway lamented the lack of support from the “republican infrastructure” throughout the campaign. “We didn’t have the full support of the republican infrastructure,” Conway said. She added, “It would really be too bad if we win narrowly and it’s not because of the […]

By Business insider Melia Robinson Election Day, voters across America will wait in lines outside polling places that will make them want to tear their hair out. The good news: a grassroots initiative called Pizza to the Polls aims to make voting less miserable with pizza. The nonpartisan site has been taking in reports of long lines […]

Khazen.org strongly recommends visiting bars/restaurants/venues manged by Sky Management. To name few: O1ne  and La Creperie  O1NE BEIRUT Les Caves de La Creperie Hamish Smith speaks to Jad Ballout, bar manager at Central Station Boutique Bar- Tell us a little about Beirut’s alcohol tradition. The most famous alcoholic beverage from Lebanon is arak, a grape […]

#LebaneseArchitecture #LebaneseLandofSaints Kadisha Valley

Minister of Presidential Affairs of Syria, Mansour Azzam visiting President Aoun Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif With President Aoun by AP Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday became the first foreign minister to visit newly appointed Lebanese President Michel Aoun, underscoring the ties between Iran and Aoun’s Hezbollah-backed presidency. The Shiite militant […]

By Michael Karam – The National

Someone, I forget who, once told me “everything before the
‘but’ is meaningless”. Here’s the “before” bit: In the same week that
Lebanon ended its two year political impasse by nominating Michel Aoun,
an 81-year-old former army commander, as president and appointing Saad
Hariri, the Saudi-born billionaire businessman, as the next prime
minister, it welcomed two Apple legends – Steve Wozniak, the co-founder
of the US$250 billion tech company, and Tony Fadel, an American-Lebanese
whizz-kid who essentially invented the iPod.

Mr
Wozniak and Mr Fadel headlined the Lebanese Central Bank’s “Accelerate”
conference, billed rather optimistically as the biggest tech gathering
in the Mediterranean and themed under the strapline “Innovation:
Intrapreneurship v Entrepreneurship”. (If, like me, if you are wondering
what “intrapreneurship” is, Wikipedia defines it as “the act of
behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large
organisation”, which sounds like every Lebanese public sector worker.)

So
the conference was held in a mood of optimism not felt in the country
since the ill-fated Bashir Gemayel was elected president in 1982. Which
was probably just as well. “Accelerate” would have been planned at least
a year ago if the conference organisers had to book such stellar names,
and it would have taken some of the shine off the three days had the
event tried to sell the dynamism of a country that after two years,
still couldn’t nominate a president.

Statistician Nate Silver warned on Sunday that Hillary Clinton’s
path to capturing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White
House now appears narrower than President Barack Obama’s path at
this point in 2012. In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” the FiveThirtyEight chief
claimed Clinton is a “2-to-1 favorite,” but noted that
recent polls show Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
with a slight edge in electoral college-heavy states like
Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina.

“The electoral college math is actually less solid for
Clinton than it was for Obama four years ago, where four years
ago we had Obama ahead 320-some electoral votes. Clinton has
about 270,” Silver said. “So she’s one state away from potentially losing the electoral
college. You’d rather be in her shoes than Donald Trump’s, but
it’s not a terribly safe position.” While other polling aggregators like the New York Times’ Upshot
and HuffPost Pollster have put Clinton’s chances
of winning around 84% and 98% respectively,
Silver’s model gives Trump a greater chance of winning.

Saint Charbel #PrayForLebanon

By Paul Astih

Beirut- The workshop launched by the nominated Prime Minister Saad
al-Hariri to compose his upcoming cabinet has resembled many other
workshops launched by other nominated Prime Ministers who worked on
distributing quotas and ministerial portfolios based on sects, and
political and partisan belonging. However, Hariri’s mission may be the
hardest from years, because Lebanese political parties have raced to
partake in the rule, months before the next parliamentary elections,
aiming at taking advantage of their ministerial portfolios to draw
voters in May.

Hariri’s mission was more complicated with the coming apart of 8 and
14 March blocks and the failure of alliances composed in 2005 after the
assassination of the Former Prime Minister Rafic Al-Hariri. Meanwhile, the young Hariri cannot distribute ministries based on
political blocks anymore, but he is obliged to deal with each party as
an independent political team.

The upcoming Hariri cabinet, which is expected to see the light soon,
is the 74th cabinet in Lebanon since the independence on 1948, and the
seventh since 2015. Probably, it will be a “national unity” cabinet,
which means it will comprise all the political forces just like his
previous 30-minister government in 2009.