By NAJIA HOUSSARI

BEIRUT: Saudi tourism to Lebanon is tipped to increase after a boost in
diplomatic ties between the two nations. In a visit to Lebanon last
month by Thamer Al-Sabhan, Saudi minister for Arabian Gulf Affairs, the
diplomat told President Michel Aoun that Saudi Arabian Airlines would
increase its flights to Beirut. Lebanese-Saudi relations have been
troubled in recent years as a result of the Syrian crisis. The
Gulf countries earlier barred their citizens from traveling to Lebanon,
while Saudi Arabia last year suspended $3 billion in military aid
involving French arms to Lebanon. But President Aoun’s visit
to Riyadh at the beginning of the year paved the way for restoring warm
ties between the two nations, and Al-Sabhan’s visit to Beirut was
perceived as “a complementary effort comfortably received by the
Lebanese,” said Future Bloc MP Ammar Houri. “The Kingdom has always been keen to offer Lebanon help and support in all fields and arenas,” Houri said. “The
Lebanese state’s proven ability to control security and fight terrorism
combined with a warm welcome to our Saudi brothers constitutes
favorable conditions for the Saudi comeback to Lebanon,” he said.

By Scott Belinksi

While the Eastern Mediterranean is well known for its major (and underexploited) gas reserves, Lebanon is the latest country in the region to join the oil rush, after Egypt’s fitful entry into the market and Israel’s more straightforward path to exporter status. Seismic surveys
in 2013 estimated Lebanon’s offshore fields to hold 96 trillion cubic
feet of gas and 850 million barrels of oil. On January 27th, the
government finally opened the bidding for five offshore blocks in a
first licensing round, after a three-year delay brought upon by
political instability.

The fractious Lebanese government hopes
that these energy reserves and the wealth that should come with them
will alleviate the country’s notorious power shortages and budget
deficits. But, history is littered with examples of fragile countries
going completely off the rails because of the warping effects oil has on
their economies – will Lebanon follow suit or can Beirut dodge the
resource curse? Michel Aoun, who was elected President at the end of October, after a grueling 29-month standoff, vowed
to use the fund for the good of the Lebanese people, financing
development projects and revamping ailing infrastructure. In this, his
government wants to follow the example of developed economies that have
the advantage of better governance and economic planning, greater
regional security, and long-established transparency practices. However,
even if Lebanon’s estimated reserves turn out to be as substantial and
as profitable as its leaders predict, replicating that success won’t be
an easy feat.

For the time
being, the government is off to a good start. To send a message that it
will handle the future proceeds from exploiting its reserves
responsibly, Beirut is pushing a plan that would require all
oil-generated proceeds be deposited into a national sovereign wealth
fund (SWF), which emulates the path followed by Norway and more recently
by Saudi Arabia. Norway, the country that manages the world’s
largest wealth fund, sets the gold standard when it comes to
transparency. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG)
publishes online details of every investment it makes to uphold its
culture of political trust. As former fund supervisor Martin Skancke put
it, the trust the fund enjoys comes down
to “relatively high levels of equality and cultural homogeneity.” Even
with unexpected bumper profits, Nordic frugality and trust in government
meant the public has thus far been content to put hundreds of billions
into the fund and let the money stay there.

(CNN)Syria’s leader has praised
Donald Trump’s rhetoric on terror, saying the new US President’s pledge
to prioritize the fight against terrorism, including ISIS, was
“promising.” “Trump during the campaign and after the
campaign is promising regarding the priority of fighting terrorists,
and mainly ISIS, that’s what we’ve been asking for during the last six
years,” Assad said. “It’s
still early to expect anything practical. It could be about the
cooperation between the US and Russia, that we think is going to be
positive for the rest of the world, including Syria.” It’s
not the first time the Syrian leader has praised Trump. In an interview
with state media agency, SANA, last December, Assad said the then
President-elect would be a “natural ally” if he held fast to his hard line on terrorists.

tradearabia A bike-sharing station seen in downtown Beirut, Lebanon on February 7. According to the media office of Beirut Municipality which installed the first bike-sharing station in the capital Beirut in January, the project dubbed ‘Lebanon Bike Sharing System, Bike 4 All,’ is privately funded by Bike 4 All, launched in collaboration with the Governor […]

Source:The961 blog

A Daesh-linked Lebanese has been arrested yesterday. He is suspected
of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack in downtown Beirut.The Solidere employee was recruited by Daesh to monitor surveillance
cameras in downtown. A judicial source told The Daily Star Tuesday the
suspect, identified by authorities as 26-year-old Sidon native Mustapha
Safadi A judicial source, as well as authorities, identified the suspect as 26-year-old Sidon native Mustapha Safadi.

The Solidere employee monitored the construction firm’s security
cameras that watch almost the entirety of Downtown Beirut. Many public
institutions, major businesses, tourist attractions and homes of
influential figures including Prime Minister Saad Hariri are based in
the district. The Solidere employee was chosen due to his access to “sensitive information” because of his job. The family is known as a conservative working-class household. One of
Safadi’s brothers works for an Islamic social institution while his
sister works for an Islamic teaching organization.

Although the family has a reputation for being conservative, there is
no indication that family members hold extremists views, except for one
of Safadi’s brothers. Mustapha’s brother is reportedly in Syria fighting alongside Daesh.
When Safadi’s brother in Syria found out he had married a Shiite woman,
he branded him an apostate and refused to speak to him.

By Daily Mail – They’ve been enjoying a relaxing couple of days in Barcelona. And amid rumours she’s pregnant,
Amal Clooney certainly looked excited to enjoy some time with her loved
ones as she arrived in the city on Wednesday with husband George, 55,  and the actor’s parents Nick and Nina. The
human rights lawyer – who turned 39 on Friday – kept warm in a cosy
loose fitting sweater dress as the group arrived at the airport, and
appeared to be sporting a fuller figure in the casual outfit.

Amal had a big smile on her face as she led the way out of the airport, wrapped up warm for the chilly weather. She
layered a loose cream jumper dress under a casual black coat and added
black opaque tights and a chic pair of knee-high boots. A knitted cap and Altuzarra Bullrope Hobo
bag completed the look, while the beauty added a touch of makeup and
left her hair loose around her shoulders.

A dressed down George was seen chatting to airport staff before taking charge of the luggage. The next night the foursome were seen grabbing dinner at Barcelona’s swanky Rooftop Smokehouse Restaurant. Amal
looked amazing with her jet black mane down and a black skirt, holding
hands with her 55-year-old spouse as she walked in black heels.

A
source told InTouch last month that the dark-haired fashionista, who is
of Lebanese-British descent, ‘is pregnant with twins: a boy and a
girl.’  The couple, who got engaged in
April 2014 before tying the knot in Venice, Italy on September 27 of
that year, ‘feel like they’ve hit the family jackpot’ in light of the
big news, the source told the magazine.

Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Sahar Nasr

By Sayed Badr 

Egypt and Lebanon are set to sign soon
around 15 official documents, including agreements and memoranda of
understanding, aimed to enhance means of bilateral cooperation in all
economic fields. Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Sahar Nasr met Friday with Fath Allah Fawzi,
Chairman of the Egyptian-Lebanese Businessmen Friendship Association
(ELBA). The two officials discussed current preparations for the
convention of the 8th session of the Egyptian-Lebanese Joint Higher
Committee (ELJHC) to be chaired by the prime ministers of both
countries.

Nasr, who chairs the ministerial preparatory committee, indicated
that both countries gave due regard to the convention of the ELJHC,
given that it has been 7 years since the committee was last held in
2010. The role of ELJHC is to eliminate obstacles hindering the
increase of bilateral trade and to identify causes which stand as
obstacles to the flow of trade, the Egyptian minister said, stressing
the necessity of the activation of the joint business council.

By Matthew DeBord

Ghosn — born in Lebanon, raised in Lebanon and Brazil, educated in France —
became CEO of Renault-Nissan in 2001 and for a decade and a half
has been responsible for this French-Japanese hybrid, which not
incidentally sells a lot of cars and trucks in the US. At the Detroit auto show last month, Ghosn held a roundtable
discussion with the media and spent a fair amount of time, in the
days before Trump’s inauguration, visibly grappling with the
“America First” idea. 

 It isn’t complicated.
“If there is free trade, it should be good for me,” Ghosn said when asked to describe what American First means — with the “me” being the Trump’s USA. He added that part two of his understanding of American First is that it prioritizes “American jobs.”

Simple.  For the most part, Ghosn took a cautiously flexible attitude
toward what Renault-Nissan might be up against if Trump’s
policies favor domestic US manufacturing.

For starters, Nissan builds cars in both Tennessee and
Mississippi, but jobs in those reliable GOP states won’t help
Trump.  That’s because Trump needs the hiring to happen in
Michigan and Ohio, which are the states he sought out during the
2016 election and will need again to get re-elected in
2020.  So some new jobs might be better than others, and Ghosn might not
gain much by pointing out that there were exactly zero car
factories in Tennessee before Nissan landed in Smyrna back in
1983 (GM followed in the 1990s with its Spring Hill factory).

Published in NYT – Beirut: There was once a nice sea view at the Al Jazira beach club,
and umbrellas of palm fronds sticking from the sand are reminders of
nicer days. Nowadays, the place is surrounded by an ever-growing garbage
dump. “It used to be a beach,” said Hassan, a Syrian man who
works as a caretaker at the club and insisted on being identified only
by his first name because of a lawsuit concerning the city. “There was
sea. There were rocks. I used to fish.”

Just up the shoreline,
Mohammad Jradi, who has been fishing the waters of the Mediterranean off
Beirut for 20 years, said the trash had driven even the fish away. “All over the world, they have solutions for this, but not here,” he said. There
is no end, it seems, to Lebanon’s trash crisis, a potent symbol of the
dysfunctional, sect-based politics that define this tiny country. When
trash piles built up across this city two years ago, enveloping Beirut
in a nasty stench, they spawned a protest movement, called ‘You Stink,’
against the political class. Now, the latest episode of the crisis has become a uniquely Lebanese
story, entwining bird migration, civil aviation, mysterious gunmen and
the long story of Lebanon’s struggle to become a functioning state that
can at least take care of its trash, more than 25 years after emerging
from a long civil war.

Last year, as a Band-Aid solution to the
garbage crisis, the municipality opened the Costa Brava landfill on the
shoreline, not far from Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. And
so for many visitors to Beirut, a city whose shabby-chic architecture,
great cuisine and French colonial influences are otherwise enchanting,
the first thing to greet them was a strong whiff of garbage.

BEIRUT
(Reuters) – Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Friday world powers
must work with Damascus to create safe zones in Syria so refugees can
return to their country. It
was the first time the Beirut government had lent its support to such a
plan. At least a million people have fled the Syrian civil war since
2011 into Lebanon, which has an estimated total population of less than
six million. Lebanon
would not force unsafe return on any refugees, but the international
community must make their return possible, Aoun’s office quoted him as
saying in a meeting on Friday with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
Filippo Grandi.

He
said it was “important to achieve a political solution” to the
conflict. Aoun is an ally of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group which is fighting
in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. U.S.
President Trump said last week he would “absolutely do safe zones in
Syria” for refugees fleeing violence and that Europe had made a mistake
by admitting millions of refugees.. According
to a document seen by Reuters, Trump is expected to order the Pentagon
and the State Department to craft such a plan, a move that could ratchet
up U.S. military involvement in Syria.

The
Syrian government said on Monday that any attempt to create so-called
safe zones for refugees without coordinating with Damascus would be
“unsafe” and violate Syria’s sovereignty.

Rebel
backers including Qatar have welcomed Trump’s support for safe zones,
and Turkey says it is waiting to see the outcome of the U.S. president’s
pledge.