By Najia Houssari — arabnews.com — BEIRUT: The decision of Taraya municipality, Bekaa, to move a memorial for Lebanese armed forces personnel from the town’s entrance to the side of the road has come under criticism. It was claimed that the memorial was moved to not disturb a photo associated with a political party. The monument — a military armored vehicle — was given as a token of loyalty to the townspeople who had died while defending the country. The Al-Islah’ Al-Baladi (Municipal Reform) organization in Taraya said the decision to put the monument on the side of the road was inappropriate. It said that opinions were divided during the municipal council’s meeting, with some supporting the decision and others rejecting it.

Taraya is 75 km from Beirut and is a stronghold for Hezbollah and its ally the Amal Movement, similar to most villages and towns in Central and North Bekaa that are home to a majority of Shiites. Al-Islah’ Al-Baladi condemned the behavior of the town’s mayor, Rifaat Hamiya, who is a retired army brigadier general with more than 25 years of service. “We hoped that he would use national principles, enforce laws, hold corrupt people accountable, and apply and commit to the national army’s regulations, instead of committing to parties’ orders and exploiting the municipal council and its members for personal gain.” While the organization stressed its support for diverse political affiliations, it said it opposed militias and parties’ decisions which proliferated hostility toward the Lebanese army. Taraya currently suffers socially and economically like other towns in Bekaa while waiting for the enforcement of a development policy. Parties have taken over these towns’ municipalities, notably Hezbollah, which has infiltrated social lives, imposed traditions, and even controlled decisions in these places.

By  Mohammed Abdelbary, CNN — Abu Dhabi, UAE (CNN)London got so warm this summer that newspapers splashed with headlines saying temperatures in the city had exceeded those of scorching hot Dubai. One after another, European countries such as Spain and Portugal registered record highs this year. The northern hemisphere did indeed witness record temperatures, with wildfires engulfing parts of Europe and drought threatening food supplies. And, often, European cities witnessed hotter conditions than those in the Persian Gulf. But experts say that temperature alone isn’t an adequate measure of the livability of a city — a combination of heat and humidity is. And that’s why the Middle East is far less livable than Europe even at the same temperatures.

The Middle East is still quite hot. The Iranian city of Abadan set the record for the hottest dry heat temperature this year when it hit 53 degrees Celsius (127 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 5. But combine that with the high levels of humidity in the region and it becomes an even more inhospitable place for human beings. It’s harder to cool down when the weather is humid, as our bodies struggle to transfer their heat to “wet” air rather than dry air, making it harder to sweat it out and lower our body temperatures. The measure of heat combined with humidity is called the wet bulb temperature. The name stems from the way this condition is measured, literally by wrapping a wet cloth around a thermometer and measuring the temperature as the water evaporates.

by globeecho.com — He lived 4 years in Beirut before Baghdad requested his arrest The Lebanese security services arrested a relative of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the young Abdullah Yasser Sabawi al-Hassan, who is the grandson of Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother by his mother, based on a memorandum issued by “Interpol” […]

سجعان قزي

@AzziSejean

يُخطِئُ الأعيانُ الّذين يَطرَحون اسمَ الرئيس الياس سركيس نَموذجًا لمرشَّحٍ رئاسيٍّ تِقنيٍّ ومحايدٍ وتَسوويٍّ ومِطواع. مواصفاتُ الرئيسِ سركيس بعيدةٌ من النَموذجِ قيدَ التحرّي عنه. هؤلاءِ الأعيانُ لا يَعرِفون ربّما مسيرةَ هذا الرجل ومواقِفَه وميزاتِه، ولا ظروفَ انتخابِه رئيسًا، ولا العواصفَ التي ضَربت عهدَه (1976 ـــ 1982)، ونالَت من صِحّتِه وخلَّدَت اسمَه. يوم توفِّـيَ الرئيس سركيس في 27 حزيران 1985، كتبتُ تعليقي السياسيَّ في إذاعةِ “لبنان الحر” بعنوان: “مات مغفورًا له، بل غافرًا لنا”.

1 ـــــ كان الياس سركيس مرشَّحًا سياسيًّا بامتيازٍ لا مرشَّحًا تقنيًّا، إذ عاش الحياةَ الوطنيّةَ بكلِّ أبعادِها اللبنانيّةِ والعربيّةِ والدُوليّة، وشارك في صناعةِ القراراتِ السياسيّةِ والاقتصاديّةِ والعسكريّةِ مع الرئيسَين فؤاد شهاب وشارل حلو وضبّاطِ المكتبِ الثاني في الجيشِ اللبناني. فاوض جميعَ قادةِ الطوائف والأحزابِ والكُتلِ النيابيّةِ في البلاد، وإليه كان بعضُهم يعود قبلَ اتّخاذِ القراراتِ السياسيّة. ولـمّـا خاض انتخاباتِ الرئاسةِ أوّلَ مرّةٍ سنةَ 1970 كان مرشّحَ “الشهابيّةِ” ضِدَّ سليمان فرنجيه مرشّحِ “الحلفِ الثلاثيِّ” و”الوسَطِ”، وخَسِر على صوتٍ واحد. وجميعُ المناصبِ القضائيّةِ والقانونيّةِ والإداريّةِ والماليّةِ التي شَغلَها سركيس: قاضيًا في ديوانِ المحاسبةِ ثم مديرًا للشؤونِ القانونيّةِ في القصرِ الجُمهوري فمديرًا عامًّا للرئاسةِ فحاكمًا مَصرَفَ لبنان مدّةَ تسعِ سنوات (1967 ـــ 1976)، أعطَته المعرفةَ والخِبرةَ وقوّةَ الدفعِ الإضافيّةَ في مسيرتِه السياسيّةِ والرئاسيّة.

2 ـــــ كان الياس سركيس مرشَّحَ فريقٍ لا مرشَّحًا محايدًا حين فاز بالرئاسةِ سنةَ 1976. دَعمَته، آنذاك، “الجَبهةُ اللبنانيّةُ” وسوريا، وعارضَه تحالفُ “الحركةِ الوطنيّة” بزعامةِ كمال جنبلاط ومُنظمةِ “فتح” بقيادةِ ياسر عرفات الذي ــــ أي التحالف ــــ أيّدَ ريمون إدّه. وفي محاولةٍ لإلغاءِ جلسةِ الانتخابِ المقرَّرةِ في 08 أيّار 1976، فَجّر التحالفُ الوضعَ العسكريَّ في الأوّلِ والثاني من أيّار فسَقط 96 قتيلًا و116 جريحًا. ويومَ الانتخابِ، أعلَنت “الحركةُ الوطنيّةُ” الإضرابَ العامَّ وقاطَع الجلسةَ النوّابُ مؤيِّدو ريمون إده، ولم يَتورَّع تحالفُ فتح/الحركةِ الوطنيّة عن قصفِ مَقرِّ مجلسِ النوّاب الموَقَّت في “قصرِ منصور” بين مِنطقتَي الـمَتحف والبربير، وكادت قذيفةٌ تُصيبُ الرئيسَ كميل شمعون والشيخ بيار الجميّل. وبعد انتخابِ سركيس ظلّ الوضعُ العسكريُّ مضطَربًا حتى تشرين الثاني 1976.

3 ــــــ كان الياس سركيس مرشَّحَ معادلةٍ سياسيّةٍ

by arabnews.com — Najia Houssari — BEIRUT: Lebanon’s public sector and legal system are under growing strain amid widening strike action over the plunging value of salaries in the crisis-hit country. Hundreds of judges continued their strike on Thursday in protest at having their salaries based on exchange rate of 1,507 Lebanese pounds to the dollar. Civil servants have also decided to go on strike again for the same reason, despite being granted monthly aid. Meanwhile, Lebanese university professors are continuing their open-ended strike, while students wait for work to resume so they can take last year’s final exams. Lebanon took preliminary steps to raise the customs dollar rate from 1,507 Lebanese pounds — the rate adopted before the economic crisis hit three years ago — to 20,000 pounds. The move created confusion in markets, adding to the chaos they were already facing.

The customs dollar is the price for calculating the customs value of imports, and is paid in Lebanese pounds. On Thursday, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati sent a letter to Finance Minister Youssef Khalil demanding the customs dollar rate of 20,000 pounds be adopted. Khalil told an expanded ministerial consultative meeting about the move. The ministerial committee enjoys exceptional powers that allow it to adjust the customs dollar rate without the need for Cabinet approval. Amin Salam, the caretaker economy minister, told a press conference on Thursday that the preliminary decision will be the subject of discussions between the finance minister and the central bank governor. Salam said that the impact of the new customs dollar rate on prices of goods would be “insignificant,” adding that the current rate was no longer fair. “We want to adjust the wages and salaries of civil servants,” he said. Salam also voiced fears that traders might store goods to be sold later under the new rate. “We are waiting for traders to provide us with the lists of goods they purchased previously,” the minister said.

by english.alaraby.co.uk — Lebanese officials have confirmed plans to demolish the northern section of the grain silos at Beirut port, just weeks after the country marked the second anniversary of the deadly blast, local media reported. A meeting between caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and caretaker Environment Minister Nasser Yassin concluded with a decision to […]

YAROUN, Lebanon, (Reuters) by Timour Azhari; – Street-side signs in the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun, the ancestral home of the suspect in the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, bear posters of Iran’s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who in 1989 issued a fatwa calling for the author’s death. The logo of Lebanon’s powerful, Iran-armed Hezbollah group adorns small monuments to its fighters killed during decades of wars with Israel, which borders Yaroun to the east and south. The mood in the small Lebanese village is apprehensive. Few want to speak about Friday’s attack on Rushdie or about Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old Shi’ite Muslim American suspect whose family originally hails from Yaroun, where Hezbollah has strong support.

Locals say the attack on the novelist at a public appearance in New York state has little to do with them. “There is no information… He was born abroad in America and remains there,” local official Riad al-Ridha told Reuters. “No one wants to talk about it because no one knows anything.” Matar, from New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault. An initial law enforcement review of his social media account showed he was sympathetic to Shi’ite extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to NBC New York. The IRGC is a powerful faction that Washington accuses of carrying out a global extremist campaign. U.S. authorities have not offered any additional details on the investigation, including a possible motive.

by venturebeat.com — Louis Rosenberg, Ph.D — Many “futurists” insist that technological advances will enable humans to “upload our minds” into computer systems, thereby allowing us to “live forever,” defying our biological limitations. This concept is deeply flawed but has gained popular attention in recent years. So much so, Amazon has a TV series based on the premise called Upload, not to mention countless other pop-culture references. As background, the concept of “mind uploading” is rooted in the very reasonable premise that the human brain, like any system that obeys the laws of physics, can be modeled in software if sufficient computing power is devoted to the problem. To be clear, mind-uploading is not about modeling human brains in the abstract, but modeling specific people, their unique minds represented in such detail that every neuron is accurately simulated, including the massive tangle of connections among them.

Is it even possible?

Of course, this is an extremely challenging task. There are more than 85 billion neurons in your brain, each with thousands of links to other neurons. That’s around 100 trillion connections – a thousand times more than the number of stars in the Milky Way. It’s those trillions of connections that make you who you are – your personality and memories, your fears and skills and ambitions. To reproduce your mind in software (sometimes called an infomorph), a computer system would need to precisely simulate the vast majority of those connections down to their most subtle interactions. That level of modeling will not be done by hand. Futurists who believe in “mind uploading” often envision an automated process using some kind of super-charged MRI machine, that captures the biology down to the molecular level. They further envision the use of artificial intelligence (AI) software to turn that detailed scan into a simulation of each unique neuron and its thousands of connections to other neurons.

NNA – Caretaker Minister of the Displaced, Issam Sharafeddine, visited today the Syrian state, accompanied by a Lebanese Democratic Party delegation, where they met with the Minister of Local Administration and Environment, Hussein Makhlouf, in charge of the displaced Syrians’ dossier, and Interior Minister, Major General Mohammad al-Rahmoun. Talks centered on the plan set by Minister Sharafeddine to ensure a safe, dignified and voluntary return of the displaced Syrians to their homes, and the measures taken by the Syrian side to provide a safe and quick return for them according to specific timetables agreed upon by both sides.

Makhlouf confirmed in a statement after the meeting, that “there is a consensus in the vision between the Syrian and Lebanese sides regarding the return of all refugees, not just 15,000 displaced persons per month, as stated in the plan presented by the Lebanese side,” noting that “the amnesty decrees that were issued included all Syrians, in addition to facilitating and simplifying procedures in the border areas and providing services for returnees, including transportation, relief, humanitarian aid, medical care, education and others, to provide them with a safe and comfortable stay.” “One of the priorities of the Syrian state is to create conditions for the return of all Syrians to their homes and to rehabilitate the infrastructure in the areas liberated by the Syrian Arab Army,” Makhlouf asserted. He added: “What the state has done in this context allowed the return of five million displaced Syrians, including one million displaced from abroad and four million from the inside…They have become stable in their areas with full services being provided.” “Syrians in Lebanon and in any other country are invited to return,” Makhlouf reiterated. He called on the United Nations organizations to be “an active partner in the return of the displaced, especially that the Syrian side is open to cooperation with the Lebanese side and others to facilitate the return of all the displaced and to have an active role in the reconstruction.”

by english.sawtbeirut.com — In his Sunday sermon from Diman, Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi said that Lebanon cannot live in accordance with his message if it does not maintain active neutrality or refrain from being involved in other people’s conflicts. Being neutral is not a presumptive stance, but rather a way to have a […]