by english.aawsat.com — Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi stressed Sunday that the Lebanese Constitution was written to be respected by officials and not to become a source of tension. “The Constitution has been created to be implemented and not to be a cause of dispute,” he said during Sunday’s mass service in Bkirki. It was also written “to be a source of agreement and not a source of disagreement.” His statement came in light of a recent political dispute between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri on the President’s role in forming the new government.

Aoun says the President has a constitutional right to approve the names of the proposed ministers before signing its decree, while Hariri accuses the President of rejecting, without any explanation, the lineups he has been presenting him. Rahi reminded politicians of “Article D” of the Constitution, saying the people are the source of authority and sovereignty and therefore, shall exercise these powers through the constitutional institutions. “Don’t you fear God, the people and the court of conscience and history? How can unyielding political positions – that are destructive for the state as an entity and constitutional institutions – persist and under what national conscience and under what justification?”

By NAJIA HOUSSARI — arabnews.com — BEIRUT: Lebanon’s foreign minister, Charbel Wehbe, demanded the absolute secrecy of the investigation into “suspicions of money laundering and embezzlement by the Banque du Liban,” following a Swiss request for assistance from the Lebanese judiciary. Wehbe met with the Swiss ambassador to Beirut, Monika Schmutz Kirgoz, on Monday, who refused to comment on the matter, saying that the probe was a matter that the Swiss minister of justice and the attorney general were dealing with, adding that the Swiss attorney general was the one who requested judicial assistance. Wehbe said: “Despite the importance of this matter to the Lebanese public, absolute secrecy is required in response to what is being circulated through Lebanese media regarding this case.”

Wehbe called on the media to “report the news as it is, without interpretations, additions, or switching words around.” He also said: “I hope that the Lebanese judiciary will have absolute freedom to make a statement and take the appropriate decision in this regard.” The Lebanese judiciary informed the governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, last week that he is expected to present his testimony either before the attorney general in Switzerland or before a Swiss judicial delegation at the country’s embassy in Lebanon. Salameh denied he had made any transfers from the accounts of the Banque du Liban or from its budgets, and expressed his readiness to go to Switzerland to present his testimony. He said in a statement on Monday: “All reports about large transfers reported by some media outlets are very exaggerated and have nothing to do with reality. They aim to systematically tarnish the image of the central bank and its governor.”

by albawaba.com & arabnews.com — On Saturday, MP Anwar Al-Khalil said that Aoun’s media office’s statement on Friday “undermines the Lebanese people’s minds and destroys the hope of forming an important government. It is also a digression from obstinacy and stubbornness.” Friday’s statement said Aoun was a “partner in choosing ministers and distributing ministerial portfolios.” Al-Khalil reminded Aoun that “the constitution named you as president, a symbol of national unity and a protector of the constitution.” “Your advisers are making you one team. Enough bickering! Support the whole country and save it from collapse,” Al-Khalil said.

Aoun defended himself and the head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), MP Gebran Bassil, against the accusation of obstructing the formation of a government, which raised tension between him and Prime Minister-designate, Saad Hariri. MP Hadi Abu Al-Hassan said: “Hariri is faced with a crippling process in order to force him to resign.” He added that the president and the FPM “do not want the return of Hariri as prime minister without Bassil in the government.” He criticized Aoun, saying: “The covenant is unconscious. It lives somewhere else, as attested to by all, and through his practices, he wants to monopolize everything.” “The problem in the country is the non-presence of a conscious central authority that is aware of what is happening. It is absent and today, we are reaping what was sown,” he said.

By FRANK KANE — arabnews.com — DUBAI: Bahaa Hariri, the eldest son of slain Lebanese statesman Rafik Hariri, is calling for a broad alliance — a “supermajority” — to coalesce around a plan to agree on the way forward for Lebanon as it faces multiple crises. Such an alliance is needed to implement the unfinished business of the Taif Agreement, the peace deal brokered by Saudi Arabia 30 years ago, Bahaa said as he gave a candid assessment of Lebanon’s situation on Frankly Speaking, the televised interview in which senior Middle East policymakers are questioned on their views about the most important issues of the day. “We have to make sure that across the sectarian divide, the forces of moderation go hand in hand to put (together) a complete comprehensive plan — whether it’s an economic plan, a COVID-19 plan, a constitutional plan, a judiciary plan, or a security plan,” he said, noting that Lebanese was “at the precipice.”

Bahaa, a billionaire Lebanese businessman, added: “We seek the full support of Saudi Arabia to make sure of the full implementation of the Taif Accord. It is key for us that Saudi Arabia helps us out and supports us in this. That’s the key.” The Taif Agreement, signed in 1989 under Saudi auspices at the end of the bitter civil war, had never been fully implemented, Bahaa said, but remained as a blueprint for achieving progress in the country. “If we are going to come to the Arab world and the international community, they’ll tell us you have an accord, but three-quarters of it hasn’t been executed,” he said. “If we want a new accord, it may take us another 10 years and maybe half a million dead.” Referring to the Taif Agreement, Bahaa said: “We need to make sure that this accord is executed to the letter: The separation of religion from the executive and the legislative branches; the establishment of a senate that protects minorities; the establishment of an independent judiciary; and an electoral law that meets the aspirations of all Lebanese. And that we have a new election.”

By Washington University School of Medicine — One of the most vexing aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is doctors’ inability to predict which newly hospitalized patients will go on to develop severe disease, including complications that require the insertion of a breathing tube, kidney dialysis or other intensive care. Knowledge of a patient’s age and underlying medical conditions can help predict such outcomes, but there are still surprises when younger, seemingly healthier patients suffer severe complications that can lead to death. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that a relatively simple and rapid blood test can predict — within a day of a hospital admission — which patients with COVID-19 are at highest risk of severe complications or death. The study, published Jan. 14 in JCI Insight, involved nearly 100 patients newly admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. The blood test measures levels of mitochondrial DNA, a unique type of DNA molecule that normally resides inside the energy factories of cells. Mitochondrial DNA spilling out of cells and into the bloodstream is a sign that a particular type of violent cell death is taking place in the body.

“Doctors need better tools to evaluate the status of COVID-19 patients as early as possible because many of the treatments — such as monoclonal antibodies — are in short supply, and we know that some patients will get better without intensive treatments,” said co-senior author Andrew E. Gelman, PhD, the Jacqueline G. and William E. Maritz Endowed Chair in Immunology and Oncology in the Department of Surgery. “There’s so much we still don’t understand about this disease,” he added. “In particular, we need to understand why some patients, irrespective of their ages or underlying health in some cases, go into this hyperinflammatory death spiral. Our study suggests that tissue damage may be one cause of this spiral, since the mitochondrial DNA that is released is itself an inflammatory molecule.”

by AP — BEIRUT: Authorities in Lebanon on Thursday extended a nationwide lockdown by a week, to Feb. 8, amid a steep rise in coronavirus deaths and infections that has overwhelmed the health care system. Despite increasing the number of hospital beds in the country of nearly 6 million, doctors and nurses have struggled to keep pace with patients flooding their facilities. Intensive care unit bed occupancy has been rising, hitting 91% late Wednesday, according to the World Health Organization. Registered daily infections have hovered around 5,000 since the holiday season, up from nearly 1,000 in November. The overall death toll has surpassed 2,000, with new fatalities numbering between 40 and 60 deaths a day in the past week.

Doctors say with increased testing, the number of confirmed infections has also increased, recording a positivity rate of over 20% for every 100 tests. Nurses and doctors are overwhelmed, and more than 2,300 health care workers have been infected since February. Lebanon has yet to carry out any vaccinations. The government finalized a deal with Pfizer last week for vaccines that will arrive in early February. The World Bank said Thursday it approved $34 million to help pay for vaccines for Lebanon that will inoculate over 2 million people. The steep rise in infections and deaths comes despite the strict lockdown in place since Jan. 14. On Thursday, the government decided to extend that lockdown, which was due to expire Feb. 1, by a week.

By Najia Houssari – Arabnews.com –– The rift between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri over the formation of Lebanon’s new government widened on Friday. Hariri was instructed to form a new government on Oct. 22, but no progress has yet been made, leaving the country in a political deadlock to add to its economic woes and the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Video footage was broadcast on Jan. 11 of a meeting between Aoun and the caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, in which Aoun accused Hariri of lying when he claimed that his proposed government lineup had been approved. Commentators have claimed that, in doing so, Aoun insulted the office of prime minister and head of government, thus widening the gulf between the president and the prime minister-designate. Over the past 10 days, several attempts to bridge that gap have failed.

On Friday, Aoun’s media office issued a statement in response to what it described as “analyses and articles suggesting that the president is the one who is putting obstacles in the face of the PM-designate to obstruct the government formation process.” “The president did not ask for the obstructing third in the government,” the statement said, adding that “the head of the Strong Lebanon bloc, MP Gebran Bassil, did not obstruct the formation of the government, nor was he involved in this process at all.” Bassil is the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and Aoun’s son-in-law. The media office also denied that Hezbollah is “putting pressure on the president in the government formation matter.” The statement said that “naming, nominating, and distributing the ministers to ministerial portfolios is not an exclusive right for the prime minister-designate, based on two articles in the Constitution,” adding that the president “has a constitutional right to approve the entire government before signing.” “The president does not have to repeat his call on the prime minister-designate to go to the Baabda Palace, which is waiting for his arrival with a government lineup that takes into account the standards of fair representation in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, especially in light of the extremely pressing circumstances — on more than one level — to form the government,” the statement continued.

by arabnews.com — DUBAI: Former presidential Tiffany Trump’s fiancée proposed to her with a 13-carat emerald-cut diamond by Lebanese designer Samer Halimeh. Donald Trump’s youngest daughter on Tuesday announced her engagement to Lebanese partner Michael Boulos, whom she has been dating since 2018, with the engagement pictures taken at the White House, a few hours […]

By JOSHUA SHUMAN — themedialine.org — The World Bank approved $34 million in emergency financing to Lebanon to allow the country to purchase vaccines against the coronavirus. Under a reallocation of funds from the Lebanon Health Resilience Project, which was launched in June 2017 to shore up the Eastern Mediterranean country’s struggling health care sector, the funds will provide the country with the ability to obtain enough vaccine doses for over two million people. This the first time the World Bank has financed a program to fund the purchase of vaccines for a sovereign state. World Bank Group President David Malpass said in a statement that the bank will continue to offer “our support to many more countries in their vaccination efforts. Our goal remains to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in order to save lives and improve livelihoods.”

Coronavirus infections are at record levels in Lebanon. Since the beginning of 2021, the country’s active cases have more than doubled from 52,000 to over 105,000, while total deaths have increased by 40% from 1,479 to 2,084. One nursing student at the American University in Beirut, who is aware of the depth of the crisis aid that she and her fellow students are having a tough time but “this pandemic is also one of the challenges nurses must face in their career, so we must get accustomed to it.” Lamenting the ongoing crisis, nursing student Carine Dichjknian told The Media Line that “having more than 5,000 positive cases per day for a small country like Lebanon, that lacks the needed medical supplies and hospital beds, is terrible. Almost everyone I know has had the virus or has had contact with a COVID-19 positive person.”

By reuters — BEIRUT — Beirut university student Mohammad El Sahily was close to graduating in computer science, but uncertainty now clouds his future following a plunge in the Lebanese pound that has left him and thousands like him unable to pay their tuition fees. With Lebanon facing its worst economic crisis ever, two private universities, the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese American University (LAU) have raised the exchange rate their fees are based on to 3,900 Lebanese pounds per dollar – at a stroke making teaching almost three times more expensive for students paying in the local currency. AUB student Sahily was studying for his final exams in December when he received an email announcing the hike. “(There was) fear, stress, desperation. I don’t know what I will do, I can’t afford paying for the spring (semester) if I want to take a full load (of courses), so I will have to either take two courses only or nothing at all,” he told Reuters. “This is the case of around 80% of people I know.”

Sahily was one of many undergraduates who took to the streets in December to protest the universities’ move. Leen Elharake, a LAU engineering student and vice president of the student council, called it “catastrophic,” and some students are now calling for a tuition strike. Lebanon has traditionally prided itself on its education system, set up in the 19th century by American and French missionaries and producing a steady stream of graduates who land top jobs in the Middle East region and beyond. But the pressure the system now faces – both from the economic crisis and a strict coronavirus lockdown that has banned face-to-face teaching since Jan. 7 – is weighing as heavily on the institutions as on the students. The economic crisis has left the official peg of 1,500 pounds to the dollar that the universities used to use well out of step with the rate on the street, which has topped 8,500 in recent weeks.