by dailystar.com.lb — The financial results of the Lebanese banking sector saw growth in customer deposits and assets in the first six months of 2018 compared to the same period of last year, according to Bank Audi’s Lebanon Weekly Monitor. “Lebanon’s banking sector witnessed healthy activity and earnings growth in this year’s first half amid […]

by Vivian Yee is a New York Times writer — ARSAL, Lebanon — The mayor was tired. Asleep-at-3, awake-at-6 tired. Tired the way you cannot help but be after years of the Islamic State group squatting in your town, killing your citizens and forcing the army to quarantine you from the rest of the country. Tired of Syrian refugees from just across the border growing so numerous that they eclipse your actual constituents — and of your constituents growing so sick of the refugees that they mutter about taking the town back by force. All this fell to the mayor of Arsal, Lebanon: checkpoints to negotiate, refugees to manage, townspeople to appease. And now even his wife complained that he was neglecting her. “At night, I go back home and I listen to people’s problems again,” said Mayor Bassil Hujeiri. “It’s not like my shift ends and I get to close the door.”

And yet the mayor has recently had cause to believe that the arc of his town’s ordeal was at last bending toward a little less misery — if only for the Arsalis. The refugees, for their part, were still living a nightmare. Seven years of war in Syria has displaced more than half the country’s population, leaving millions of refugees shipwrecked between the wasteland of home and the void of exile. Among the many Lebanese and Jordanian towns that received them was Arsal, where rented rooms and tent cities overflowed at one point with 120,000 Syrians — quadruple its Lebanese population. But with the Syrian government closing in on victory, President Bashar Assad declaring the country safe for Syrians again and their reluctant Lebanese hosts pressing them to leave, the Syrian refugees are now beginning to set out on the fraught road home.

Over the past month, convoys carrying nearly 2,000 Syrians have crossed the border, returning families to the homes they had abandoned years ago — though few knew whether those homes had survived the bombs and shells. But many may be stuck in Lebanon. Thousands of Syrians in Arsal have applied to return, only to be rejected by Assad’s government. Many more say they believe that if Assad remains in power, the outcome tacitly accepted by the global powers haggling over Syria’s future, they have only arrest, torture, death or forced conscription to return to. “Here, I’m a refugee,” said a former Syrian soldier who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Fares. “In Syria, I’m a traitor.”

by Charlie Darwich-Houssami, Samir Sleem and Laya  — executive-magazine.com — When it comes to health, Lebanon is one of the leading countries in the Arab world in terms of the quality of healthcare provided and in testing new medical technologies. The country now has the opportunity to lead the way in entrepreneurship via healthcare startups. Executive spoke with entrepreneurs in this field to see what challenges they faced and what obstacles still need to be overcome to find success as a healthcare startup. According to a 2016 Wamda Capital’s report on health startups, MENA is growing its first generation of health entrepreneurs, which means that the region is witnessing the first business and economic wave of an industry that is likely to expand and unveil a vast range of entrepreneurial opportunities. Meanwhile, worldwide information technology solutions for healthcare are entering their third wave. As consulting firm McKinsey & Company pointed out in a 2014 paper on the digital future of healthcare, the first two waves of IT brought computation of data and statistics to healthcare institutions in the 1950s and helped with integrating processes among healthcare organizations in the 1970s. Compared with these advancements, the third wave of digitization is seen as having incomparably greater implications, from robotic surgery and remote diagnosis to mobile healthcare via digital apps.

Given the huge social and economic implications of the full digitization of healthcare and wellness, any entrepreneurial ecosystem should be priming itself to nurture startups related to healthcare. This applies in Lebanon as much as anywhere, but local healthcare startups who spoke to Executive report experiencing the same frustrations felt by other startups in the Lebanese ecosystem, such as the difficulty of attracting funding and the lack of local talent. Among local startups, diabetes digital monitor Weglo is still in its first development stage. Spike, a software application that helps and guides diabetes patients with their everyday treatments, and TrakMd, an online platform that helps patients find, book, and review doctors around Lebanon, have already progressed beyond the launch phase and are currently operating in a full commercial form. While the entrepreneurs that spoke to Executive cite similar difficulties to those encountered by emerging healthcare startups worldwide, they also raised issues unique to the Lebanese market, and opined that the economic situation in Lebanon negatively affects startups due to the dearth of appropriate resources and professionals within the field.

by gulfnews.com — Lebanese singer Elissa announces she has fought breast cancer through new video The video clip showed Elissa’s journey fighting cancer Dubai: Fans around the Arab world were shocked today, as they were waiting for their favourite singer to release a video clip from her summer Album – instead she revealed she was fighting breast cancer. Elissa revealed her video clip in a tweet. “You are the reason I am strong and healthy… you are my strength. And this story is a thank you “For all those who love me”” and along came her video clip. “A reality music video beyond reality,” Tareck Karam, a famous Lebanese producer, tweeted after watching it.

The video clip begins with a women inside an MRI machine with the date December 26, 2017 and a subtitle ‘you have cancer.’ You would think this is a normal video clip of a cancer patient, but you’re shocked after hearing Elissa, talking in what seemed like a real phone call. Describing her pain, her shock, her black thoughts, hiding her weakness, and her treatments. “You know that moment when you wonder… Will I ever see the people I love again? Those who love me back…… Is that moment, when it’s all over here? You won’t exist tomorrow?” You can hear her sobs, feel her fear and agony. “I go to radiotherapy, then I enter the studio. I finish another session, rest for two hours and to the studio again. Once a week also I was shooting a live show. It’s not me who I felt sorry for. Angy, I felt sorry for the people I loved and this song is for the people we really love and don’t want to leave behind.”

Angy is a famous film producer and a friend of Ellisa, who produced the video clip and confirmed that these were real voice notes sent to her by Elissa. “She calls me one day and said: I want to tell my story… she sent me all these voice notes that you heard in the clip… not knowing that I will find in them the best way to reflect her state of mind… her unbelievable story of illness, pain, and survival! “ Nidlal Alahmadieh, a Lebanese journalist, tweeted to Ellissa instantly: “The smartest Arab music video, the most moral and the most courageous.. This is the message of a respectable artist.”

by Jon Gambrell   Associated Press — Saudi Arabia expelled the Canadian ambassador on Monday and froze “all new business” with Ottawa over its criticism of the ultraconservative kingdom’s arrest of women’s rights activists — yet another warning to the West reflecting Riyadh’s newly assertive foreign policy. The sudden and unexpected dispute bore the hallmarks of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old future leader, whose recent foreign policy exploits include the war in Yemen, the boycott of Qatar and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s surprise resignation broadcast during a visit to the kingdom. Hariri later rescinded the resignation, widely believed to be orchestrated by Riyadh, and returned to Beirut. Analysts say the dispute between Riyadh and Ottawa shows Saudi Arabia won’t accept any outside criticism and will continue flexing its muscles abroad, especially as the kingdom enjoys a closer relationship with President Donald Trump. “This message is obviously not just being sent to Ottawa,” said Giorgio Cafiero, the CEO of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based risk consultancy. “It’s a message to countries across Europe and across the rest of the world that criticism of Saudi Arabia . has consequences.”

The Saudi Foreign Ministry made the announcement early Monday, giving Ambassador Dennis Horak 24 hours to leave the kingdom. It wasn’t immediately clear if he was in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia said it would recall its ambassador to Canada as well. “Any further step from the Canadian side in that direction will be considered as acknowledgment of our right to interfere in Canadian domestic affairs,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Canada and all other nations need to know that they can’t claim to be more concerned than the kingdom over its own citizens.” Saudi state television later reported that the Education Ministry was coming up with an “urgent plan” to move thousands of Saudi scholarship students out of Canadian schools to take classes in other countries. Meanwhile, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates publicly backed Saudi Arabia in the dispute. Marie-Pier Baril, a spokeswoman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, said Canada was “seriously concerned” by Saudi Arabia’s actions. “Canada will always stand up for the protection of human rights, very much including women’s rights, and freedom of expression around the world,” she said in a statement. “Our government will never hesitate to promote these values and believes that this dialogue is critical to international diplomacy.”

by dailystar.com.lb — Speaker Nabih Berri said in remarks published Monday that he had “no answer” as to why Cabinet formation was still being delayed. “When we ask, they tell us that there is a positive [atmosphere], but we don’t see a translation of this on the ground,” Berri was quoted as saying by Al […]

by Reuters — Lebanon’s pound is stable and the central bank has the means to defend its stability, central bank governor Riad Salameh said on Monday, urging fiscal reforms to reinforce monetary stability. Salameh, in an interview with Reuters, said the central bank was not concerned about the pound – pegged at its current level since 1997 […]

by theguardian.com — Richard Hall and Oliver Holmes In most places around the world, a shepherd’s work is a quiet and solitary business. But in the rolling borderlands of southern Lebanon, a wandering sheep can lead to a diplomatic incident or worse. In the years since Israel’s withdrawal from most of Lebanon in 2000, a […]

by AFP – Her trainers beating down on the pavement along Beirut’s seafront, Nour Safieddine, 24, cuts past strollers ambling in the evening sun. In her bright pink T-shirt, she is running to survive. “I run to carry on, so life can smile at me even if it made me cry – or in fact, […]

by arabnews.com — JEDDAH: Twenty-one-year old Lebanese-Canadian beauty Rita Houkayem, who speaks three languages and runs her own driveway business, is up against 47 contestants at this year’s Miss Universe Canada. The event will take place on Aug. 18, the winner of which will represent Canada in the Miss Universe 2018 finals in Bangkok at […]