by aawsat.com — The anti-Iran Lebanese Saydet el-Jabal gathering announced on Friday that it was again barred from holding its annual conference. Two weeks ago, it accused the Hezbollah party of preventing it from meeting at Beirut’s Bristol hotel. It attempted to hold its meeting at the Gefinor Rotana hotel, but the hotel management refused […]

BEIRUT (AP) — One of Lebanon’s leading newspapers  An-nahar printed a blank issue Thursday to protest the country’s long-running political gridlock and the failure to form a government five months after elections. “We are ringing the alarm bells,” Nayla Tueni, editor-in-chief of An-Nahar daily, told a press conference at the newspaper’s headquarters in Beirut. The […]

by mprnews.org –– Riham Feshir — One day, photographer Fadi BouKaram was Googling the word “Lebanon,” hoping to browse the web for information about the country he grew up in. Instead, he found Lebanon, Ore. It was one of 47 towns named Lebanon in the United States. It occurred to him to visit them all, taking photographs […]

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, appeared in court on Sunday for the first hearing in the fraud trial against her, in which she is alleged to have misused state funds in ordering catered meals. According to the indictment, Sara Netanyahu, along with a government employee, fraudulently obtained from the state […]

This article does not necessarily represent opinion of khazen.org – There was a strong denial from the Saudi-Arabia officals about these accusations. By Kareem Fahim – Washington post ISTANBUL — Turkey has concluded that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist from Saudi Arabia, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last week by a Saudi team […]

by middle-east-online.com –Khadija Hamouchi– The Nobel science prizes are done for another year and in 2018, just as in most of the past 117 years, there were few surprises for the Arab world. No Arab scientist was among this year’s laureates. The Arab world has produced precious few Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine, including Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail in 1999, the first Arab to win a Nobel in the science category. The most recent winner from the region was Turkish-American chemist Aziz Sancar in 2015, who stressed he wasn’t Arab but “a Turk.” There were two members of the Lebanese diaspora in the West — the half-Lebanese, Brazil-born, Britain-based Peter Medawar in 1960 and Lebanese-American Elias James Corey in 1990. That makes four, all of whom have deep and abiding educational connections to the West and three who don’t count as Arab.

In fact, there seems more chance of an Arab from the region and based in it to win the Nobel Peace Prize than for science. Why? “In the Arab world, we have not given great minds a great environment,” said Osama AbdelKarim who runs MaterialSolved, a start-up that helps researchers transform data into a visual story. “Behind one [Nobel]-winning scientist, there are teams of hundreds of researchers working on a project.” The Arab world, however, doesn’t give its scientists such resources and “in Egypt, many researchers cannot even work full time on research but have to tutor to financially sustain themselves,” AbdelKarim said. The point is underlined by the Arab Thought Foundation, an NGO advancing economic, social and cultural development. In its annual report on scientific research, the foundation said scientific research in the Arab world is heavily underfunded with investment in university infrastructure, research centres, human resources and the protection of intellectual property lagging far behind other regions.

In 2012, Saudi Arabia spent 0.25% of its GDP, Tunisia 0.68% and Qatar 0.47% on research and development. Even the private sector in Arab countries is said to be hesitant about investing in scientific research because it has little faith in it. Research by Sana Almansour, an associate professor at Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University in Riyadh, said the region is beset by the poor application of information technology, a lack of strategic planning and an overdependence on foreign expertise. AbdelKarim said the poor regional environment for science means it cannot “attract foreign researchers from, say, South Korea.” He has a point. In 2005, Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries put together. UNESCO’s 2009 Science Report stated that Egypt produces 0.3% of all scientific articles in the world; Lebanon generates 0.04%; and Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia each 0.03%. Those numbers have likely not changed significantly in recent years. Unsurprisingly then, Arab scientists are fairly limited in their ability to make groundbreaking medical discoveries, consider the laws of physics or develop transformational methods in chemistry.

Asharq Al-Awsat— Lebanese parliament Speaker Nabih Berri expressed on Saturday his pessimism over the prospects that a new government will be formed soon amid the ongoing disputes between the rival Christian parties of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Lebanese Forces (LF) over the distribution of portfolios. Five months after parliamentary elections were held, Berri […]

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s leading Christian parties clashed on Friday over how power should be divided in a new unity government, casting doubt over Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri’s prediction that one will be agreed soon. Five months since a parliamentary election, there is no sign yet of the concessions sought by Hariri to allow the […]

BEIRUT, (Xinhua) — Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said Thursday that the new government will be formed within 10 days. “My dialogue with President (Michel) Aoun was very positive yesterday… I believe that we have reached a consensus for the government formation,” Hariri said in an interview on MTV, a local TV Channel. “I am […]

by recode.net — Half of U.S. Uber drivers make less than $10 an hour after vehicle expenses, according to a new study. Uber lures drivers with the idea of being your own boss and “making great money with your car.” The “great money” part is up for debate. The median hourly pay with tip for Uber drivers in the U.S. is $14.73, according to a new study conducted by Ridester, a publication that focuses on the ride-hail industry. That figure includes tips but doesn’t account for expenses like insurance, gas and car depreciation incurred while working. Using Ridester’s low-end estimate of $5 per hour in vehicle costs, drivers would bring in $9.73 per hour and potentially much less. That implies a driver working 40 hours per week would make an annual salary of almost $31,000 before vehicle expenses, and about $20,000 after expenses (but still before taxes). That’s below the poverty threshold for a family of three. It’s also a far cry from the $70,000 to $90,000 Uber once claimed its drivers made in major markets. This is important because online “gig economy” jobs, including driving for Uber, are a growing part of the U.S. workforce: About 5 percent of the working population has worked in the gig economy in the past year, up from 2 percent in 2013. So their labor is increasingly tied to overall prosperity. Additionally, these workers are still typically considered contractors, meaning that they aren’t required to receive employer healthcare or other employee benefits. Tech companies are also receiving increased scrutiny for how they pay their workers. Today, Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 following criticism from politicians including Sen. Bernie Sanders.