by Najib A. Mozahem — sciencetrends.com – It is no secret that the printed newspaper industry is facing a crisis. This is due to the fact that people can now get news updates almost instantaneously, thanks to smartphones. As the users migrate online, so do the advertisers. Why advertise in newspapers when specific market segments can be targeted […]

by naharnet-– “Official turnout statistics have shown 59% of people registered have cast their votes,” he said. He said the elections cost held around 40 Arab and foreign countries, “reached around $1.5 million.” Voter turnout in Australia reached 58%, in Europe 59.5%, in Africa 68%, in Latin America 45%, in Americas around 55%, in Arab […]

The Daily Star — BEIRUT: Polls opened for Lebanese citizens living abroad in the United States, Canada and Latin America as voting closed in Australia Sunday afternoon, in the second phase of a historic first expat vote. Polling began around midnight Saturday night in Australia, the country with the most Lebanese expats registered in the current election. The ballot boxes in Australia closed at around 3 p.m. Beirut time, or 10 p.m. in Australia. Some 11,826 Lebanese citizens in Australia registered to vote in this year’s parliamentary elections. Canada and the U.S. are home to the second and third highest number of registered Lebanese voters, respectively. Polls also opened Sunday morning in Europe and countries across Africa with significant Lebanese populations, including the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Senegal. The race is the first in which Lebanese expatriates have the right participate from overseas.

As of 5:15 p.m. Beirut time, numbers circulating in local media said that polls closed in Australia with 6,602 voters, with 239 votes counted so far in Canada, 205 in the United States, 102 in Armenia, 775 in the Ivory Coast, 489 in Nigeria, 60 voters in Senegal, no voters in Guinea, 81 in Ghana, 118 in Congo, 72 in South Africa, 50 in Sierra Leone, 81 in Gabon, 84 in Liberia and no votes in Benin. Earlier in the day, expat elections supervisor Bilal Qablan said polling stations were “under a lot of pressure” due to high voter turnout. In Europe, local media reported 1,809 voters cast ballots so far in France, 2,114 in Germany, 628 in Sweden, 371 in the United Kingdom, 322 in Belgium, 203 in Switzerland, 135 in Italy, 74 in Spain, 135 in Romania, 123 in Greece, 76 in Denmark and 72 in the Netherlands. In Latin America, local media reported that in Brazil the number of voters reached 96, none in Venezuela, 19 in Paraguay, 8 in Argentina, none in Mexico and none in Columbia. Local TV channel LBCI reported that voters in Germany encountered several difficulties. One of the most significant issues that voters faced, particularly in Berlin, was not having their names registered to vote at polling stations there. Some citizens reportedly arrived to polling stations in the German capital only to find that their names were registered to vote in another city such as Dusseldorf, which is around a five-hour drive away. Some voters hadn’t been recorded on voting lists at all. Many registered voters in Germany originate from Hezbollah and Amal Movement strongholds in southern Lebanon, with some supporters of the Shiite parties telling local media they suspected the technical difficulties had been orchestrated to lower turnout in these districts. “There are fatal errors in voters’ lists,” Amal Movement MP Ali Bazzi said in a statement carried by the state-run National News Agency. “We received hundreds of complaints from citizens who took the burden [of going to the polling stations] and were surprised that either their names weren’t on the voting lists or that [they were recorded to vote] in different polling stations in different cities,” he said. “It is our right to ask if what happened was a technical error that can be corrected or if it was done on purpose – and this is our fear,” Bazzi was quoted as saying.

 by middleeastmonitor.com —Lebanon’s army said late on Saturday that an Israel border patrol had seized a Lebanese woman in the Shebaa area and taken her across the frontier. “On April 28 at 8.30pm an Israeli enemy patrol carried out the abduction of Nohad Dali from the town of Shebaa and took her into occupied Palestinian […]

by lebaneseexaminer.com — As Lebanon gears up for its first parliamentary elections in 9 years, candidates are spending big money on their last-minute push to garner recognition and get people out to vote. According to the AFP news agency, advertising on a single Lebanese talk show episode can cost up to $240,000. This includes a […]

by thehindubusinessline.com –DEEPA BHASTHI-The Lebanese capital isn’t a place that one ‘gets’ in a few days. The only way to live the city is by taking home its abundant stories Bey — Beyrouth — Beirut. A city with three familiar names and a hundred uncomfortable identities, demarcations and allegiances. Which side do I begin with then? Some places, even people, are like this: words about them tumble one over the other, like in a congeries, and you operate in angst when you have to even think about them. Thus, in angst, I think of Beirut. I left a piece of my soul there. Perhaps it is because it is not Europe, or the Americas, or any other place that you know endless people that have left, lived and come back from. It still feels like the present tense, the city and the overly elusiveness of it all. Being in Beirut is to be abundant in stories. In one of the oldest regions in the world to be continuously inhabited — the Levant — it is one of the oldest cities in the world, founded, they say, in 3000 BCE. It ought hardly be a surprise then, this abundance. There is a measure of overwhelm that sets in even before the plane fully lands. My first sight are of its edges. It is awash with orange-yellow lights from tall buildings — brighter at first, near the coast, then tapering away as the land stretches into the surrounding hills, whereupon the number and the brightness reduce. There it is, the first note on how demarcations work, just like elsewhere, in this oldest of cities where the wealthier breathe the sea in more than those that make do with the mountain air and the militia. Beirut overwhelms because you realise the moment you step outside the airport into the balmy late-evening air that this city will have so many things that you will want to write home about. At its heels comes an understanding that you are inadequate, too, to do so in the space you are allowed on the postcard, that the language you have borrowed does not have all the words. I do not go to too many places or do many things. I am trying to cram in as much as possible instead, in the few days there, enough to construct a surficial larger picture. Something that would mean that I went there, that I saw the city and that I got back.

‘Paris of the Middle East’ is what it was apparently called. Progressive, modern and cosmopolitan. It is an age that the ones who lived then speak and write of with indulgent yearning; those too young to remember see it predictably to have been a version of utopia. The Lebanese Civil War changed everything. Fought between 1975 and 1990, it is still a speck in the rear-view mirror, too recent to be distant enough to try and move on from. The war is everywhere. I don’t get out of the city to sightsee — time is too short, and it doesn’t seem wholly safe yet to be a non-local and be sauntering about. I am repeatedly told that Lebanon is so very beautiful outside of the city, that the mountain air is purity itself and that I must come back when things are quieter at the various fronts. I promise to. The war defines everything. It is still in the souls of people. I read that children are not taught about the Civil War because it was so recent. The relative peace that holds is still fragile and complicated to be included safely in textbooks. The Downtown is sharp and shiny, the result of a post-war frenzy of building. But the by-lanes and older parts of town still flaunt the sniper marks on the walls. As do the old cars operating as taxis — called ‘service’ — and the dents on men who drive them. It was only a year ago that Beit Beirut, the first publicly funded museum and memorial for the war, was opened. The building, still sporting the scars, was called Yellow House or Barakat Building. It sits bang on the Green Line that separated the Muslim sections on the west and the Christian sections of the city during the war. Owing to this strategic location, it was used as a forward control post and sniper base. The opening of this museum and research centre is a much-required step forward in acknowledging the amnesia around the war, of beginning to think of ways to heal. The not-healing parts of people masquerade as road rage and wild partying, someone tells me. The former, I see among taxi drivers, their driving veering too suddenly from a crawl into recklessness. It doesn’t help that most speak only Arabic, so communication is at best through single words, wild gestures and guesswork. The wild partying is what a lot of people from Europe and neighbouring countries come for. Typically, a party would start after midnight and spill into the morning. Signs of obvious denial in the all-out joie de vivre is both laudable, and a bit sad. ****

 The Daily Star BEIRUT: Prime Minister Saad Hariri will issue a statement before May 6 condemning Iran for “kidnapping” Lebanese Citizen Nizar Zakka, Zakka’s brother said in a statement Saturday. The statement said Hariri had told thousands of supporters of his intent to do so at an election rally during a visit to northern Lebanon […]

Lebanese communication manager Charbel Matta talks to reporters next to a giant screen that shows voting by Lebanese expatriates in six Arab countries, ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled to be held in Lebanon on… (AP Photo/Hussein Malla by middleeastmonitor.com Lebanese expatriates in six Arab countries today began casting ballots for parliamentary elections, according to the […]

by devdiscourse.com — Lebanon launched the Beirut Historical Museum project on Thursday, which will include archaeological artifacts unearthed during excavations conducted between 1993 and 1997 under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The museum will also feature a host of civilizations that have passed through Beirut since the Bronze Age, […]