by thearabweekly.com — By Samar Kadi– Recent studies indicated that most shisha smokers in Lebanon are women and young Lebanese are among the heaviest shisha smokers in the world. – “It is a nice pastime, especially when we sit with friends in cafes, chatting while having a smoke,” said Nada Cherif. Cherif said she was never enticed to smoke cigarettes but she is a regular user of nargile — also known as shisha, hookah or water pipe — which has become an epidemical trend in Lebanon. Cherif insisted that she is not a tobacco addict. “I have friends who smoke the nargile more than once a day and alternate with cigarettes,” she said.

Lebanon has been ranked among the world’s highest tobacco-consuming countries in recent years. In 2015, a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) put Lebanon third for the highest cigarette consumption per capita. “It is no surprise that we have the highest cancer rate in the region,” said Nadine Chatila, director of communications at the American University of Beirut Medical Centre (AUBMC). “The problem is that indoor smoking is allowed in many public places. Shisha is easily accessible and you can even have it delivered to your home at a very cheap price.” AUBMC’s cancer department estimates that 8,000 cases of cancer are reported in Lebanon annually. Dr Nagi Saghir, professor of haematology-oncology and director of the breast cancer centre at AUBMC, has stated that cases are divided equally between the sexes and that, among the 4,000 cases of cancer in women, 1,700 are breast cancer. Oncologist Dr Joseph Makdessi noted that cancer prevalence has risen globally, not only in Lebanon, with lung cancer being the most common type of the disease. “Almost 90% of lung cancer cases are related directly to smoking,” Makdessi said. “Among females, cases of breast cancer are the highest, whereas prostate cancer is the most common among men.” While smoking could be one of the main causes for lung cancer, other factors are relevant for the increase in cancer cases, Makdessi said.

by arabnews.com —BEIRUT: A Lebanese citizen imprisoned in Iran, Nizar Zakka, announced in a message he sent from Tehran’s Evin prison that he will run for the by-election to fill the vacant Sunni seat in the district of Tripoli in northern Lebanon. Zakka, an information technology expert, was kidnapped in September 2015 on his way […]

By Eric Levenson, CNN, 

The college admissions scheme revealed Tuesday is the largest of its kind ever prosecuted, federal prosecutors said, and features 50 defendants across six states, millions of dollars in illegally funneled funds and a handful of the country’s most selective universities. But at its core, the alleged scheme is remarkably simple — and brazen. Cheat on standardized tests. Bribe the people who decide which students get admitted. All the while pretending that money was for charity. “I’ll speak more broadly, there were essentially two kinds of fraud that Singer was selling,” US Attorney Andrew Lelling said, referring to William Rick Singer, the figure at the center of the scheme. “One was to cheat on the SAT or ACT, and the other was to use his connections with Division I coaches and use bribes to get these parents’ kids into school with fake athletic credentials,” Lelling said at a press conference in Boston. A total of 50 people were charged in the case. Those arrested include two SAT/ACT administrators, one exam proctor, nine coaches at elite schools, one college administrator and 33 parents, according to Lelling. Here’s how the plan worked, according to prosecutors.

Cheating on the ACTs and SATs

Of course, students who score higher on standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT are more likely to get into selective colleges. Given that, Singer facilitated cheating on those exams for students whose wealthy parents paid for his services. Singer pleaded guilty in court on Tuesday to four federal charges and admitted that the case against him was accurate. According to the indictment, he arranged for a third-party — generally Mark Riddell, who is charged with two conspiracy counts — to secretly take the test in the students’ place or replace their responses with his own. How did Riddell allegedly take the tests without being noticed by the test administrators? Well, prosecutors said, Singer bribed them. Igor Dvorskiy, who administered SAT and ACT tests in Los Angeles, and Lisa “Niki” Williams, who administered the tests at a public high school in Houston, are both accused of accepting bribes to allow Riddell to take the tests. Both are charged with conspiracy to commit racketeering, according to the indictment. Parents who hired Singer as part of the scheme allegedly paid between $15,000 and $75,000 per test, the indictment states. CNN has reached out to Riddell, Williams and Dvorskiy.

by hrw.org —Aya Majzoub — The sentencing of Lebanese TV correspondent Adam Chamseddine to three months in jail for “insulting” a security agency in a Facebook post is the latest escalation in the crackdown on speech criticizing public officials and state institutions. The prison sentence, the second issued to a journalist in absentia by a military […]

by cnbc.com — Making good on a pledge to sever ties with Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Endeavor talent agency on Friday returned a $400 million investment from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. The news, first reported by The New York Times, comes six months after Khashoggi’s death. Endeavor, helmed by […]

by dw.com — Germany will not declare Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement a terrorist organization, a top official said Friday. Minister of State Niels Annen told news magazine Der Spiegel that the Iran-backed Shiite Islamist movement is a relevant factor in Lebanese society and part of the complex political landscape in the country. Read more: Iran’s military power: What you need to know The comments come after Britain last month banned Hezbollah’s political wing, accusing the movement of destabilizing the Middle East. “The British move is a national decision that has no direct impact on the position of the German government or the EU,” said Annen, a top Foreign Ministry official.

The European Union had already added Hezbollah’s military wing to a list of banned terrorists groups in 2013. Hezbollah is represented in the Lebanese parliament and holds three of 30 ministries in the government led by Western-backed Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. The movement’s armed wing has expanded its influence in recent years in Lebanon and Syria, where alongside Iran and Russia it backs the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In Lebanon, it is considered to be more powerful than the Lebanese army. Hezbollah, or Party of God, was conceived by Muslim clerics in the 1980s in response to the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon in 1982. The Shiite group has a political and military wing.

As the once-powerful Islamic State (ISIS) crumbles, and its desperate fighters make a last stand in its final enclave surrounded by U.S.-backed coalition forces, its ideological leader is nowhere to be found. ISIS militants who have surrendered to coalition forces believe that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has abandoned the struggle when his leadership is needed most. His absence is causing deep fissures within the crumbling terrorist organization, which, though eroded, still boasts between 28,000 and 32,000 soldiers. “He’s hiding somewhere, people were angry,” Mohammed Ali, an ISIS fighter from Canada who was captured by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, told The Sunday Times. The ideological appeal of ISIS and Islamic extremism remains, but Baghdadi’s leadership vacuum and the receding territorial losses of what’s left of ISIS holdings in Syria diminish the influence of the once-powerful organization.

“Iraqi intelligence is following Baghdadi and we believe he never stays in one place for more than one day,” Abu Ali al-Basri, director general of Iraq’s intelligence office at the Ministry of Interior, told Fox News. “We have information he still moved from towns in Syria and entered the Iraq border through Anbar (province) with movement to bordering Salahuddin (province). Although Baghdadi remains far from the battlefield, he has continued to urge his loyal and ardent followers to carry on the fight. His most recent call to arms was in a series of audio clips released in August 2018.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon on Thursday warned its Mediterranean neighbors that a planned EastMed gas pipeline from Israel to the European Union must not be allowed to violate its maritime borders. Beirut has an unresolved maritime border dispute with Israel – which it regards as an enemy country – over a sea area of about 860 sq km (330 square miles) extending along the edge of three of Lebanon’s southern energy blocks. Israel is hoping to enlist several European countries in the construction of a 2,000 km (1,243 mile) pipeline linking vast eastern Mediterranean gas resources to Europe through Cyprus, Greece and Italy at a cost of $7 billion.

by arabnews.com — DUBAI: The family of a Lebanese student, who was killed in the UK’s northern city of Manchester, said they were expecting him home for tea when they got the knock at the door from police to tell them their son had been stabbed to death. Youssef Makki, 17, who was a student […]

by reuters.com —The White House hosted CEOs of major corporations who joined a Trump administration advisory board on workforce issues, including from Apple Inc, IBM Corp, Lockheed Martin Corp, Siemens USA and Home Depot Inc, who are part of a 25-member board co-chaired by President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary […]