The Daily Star BEIRUT: The Lebanese pound fell against the dollar Thursday, trading at around LL7,150 on the black market as government formation efforts took a back seat to the outcome of the hotly contested US presidential election. Black market exchangers were selling the dollar for LL7,200 and buying it for LL7,100. The pound had […]

by nypost.com — They blew it again. After muffing it spectacularly in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was supposed to cruise to easy victory over Donald Trump, pollsters and the media should be ashamed by how wrong they got this year’s election. Even after their cross-their-hearts-hope-to-die promises to fix flaws in their methodology — which always errs in their preferred, liberal direction. Like Clinton, Joe Biden was supposed to be a sure winner — possibly in a landslide victory over President Trump. Polling “guru” Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a whopping 89 percent chance of winning. RealClearPolitics’ compilation of polls showed Biden with an average 7.2 percentage-point national lead; some polls had the spread in the double digits at various times. In the top battleground states, Biden averaged a 2.3-point lead, according to RCP. Analysts talked of a “blue wave” — with Democrats winning the Senate as well as the White House, and gaining dozens of seats for their House majority. The message, amplified by a feverishly anti-Trump, left-leaning media, was clear: Donald Trump was toast, a one-term president who’d drag the whole party down. Count on it. And it sure is about time. Ha! It’ll be days, maybe weeks, before the vote counts are finalized, and Biden may win — but it’s clear the pollsters couldn’t have been more off. Again.

Their predictions weren’t just wrong — but often wildly so. As of Wednesday morning, Biden had a mere 1.9-percentage point lead over Trump; the prez had a good chance of prevailing overall in electoral votes. Before Election Day, the ABC-Washington Post poll gave Biden a whopping 17-point lead in Wisconsin; on Wednesday, his lead was 0.6 percent. “That’s not a mistake. That’s not an error,” noted pollster Frank Luntz. “That’s polling malpractice, and you have to go to tremendous lengths to be able to get something that wrong so close to the election.” Similarly, Quinnipiac had Biden with a five-point margin in Florida and four points in Ohio; Trump wound up ahead in both states — by three and eight points, respectively. So much for a Biden blowout. Republicans also seem likely to retain control of the Senate, with Democrats having picked up just one net seat by Wednesday morning, and several “endangered” GOP seats proving safe. And Dems lost House seats in New Mexico, Florida and Oklahoma that they picked up in 2018. What went wrong with the polling? Some possible explanations stand out. One of the biggest may be that Trump voters have given up on mainstream media and polling. Yes, it may be “shy voters” in some places it’s considered uncouth to like him, but many others are actively hostile to the institutions that have ignored and insulted them. They show up in droves at Trump rallies and “Donvoys,” but they don’t answer the phone to answer questions. Will these mistakes make pollsters change their ways? Will the media show any humility in the face of again misjudging Trump and his voters? The answer, alas, is probably no. But they aren’t the only ones with egg on their faces:

by newsmax — Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova on Wednesday called it a “miracle” the Republicans appeared to have retained their control of the U.S. Senate, saying it would be the “bulwark against crazy government” if Joe Biden ultimately claims the presidency. Speaking to Newsmax TV, diGenova referred to the […]

by AFP — BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prosecutor general decided Tuesday not to charge fugitive ex-auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn for visiting Israel in 2008 because the statute of limitations has expired, a judicial source said. Three lawyers filed a motion in January calling for the 66-year-old businessman to be prosecuted over his trip to the Jewish state as Renault-Nissan chairman. Lebanon is technically still at war with Israel and forbids its citizens from traveling there. “Prosecutor general Ghassan Oueidat decided … not to prosecute Ghosn for the crimes attributed to him of entering the enemy country and dealing with it economically,” the source told AFP. “A statute of limitations of ten years had passed since the alleged crime,” the source added.

Ghosn on Jan. 8 apologized to the Lebanese people for having visited Israel to sign a deal to produce electric vehicles, saying he traveled on business for Renault on a French passport. He also holds Lebanese and Brazilian nationalities. The ex-Nissan chief was arrested in Japan in November 2018 on financial misconduct charges and spent 130 days in detention, before he jumped bail and smuggled himself out of the country late last year. Ghosn appeared at a press conference in Lebanon on Jan. 8, denying all charges and claiming he was a victim of a plot by Nissan and Japanese officials.

by arabnews.com — NAJIA HOUSSARI — BEIRUT: Frustration mounted in Lebanon on Sunday amid continuing paralysis in the formation of a new government, with fingers pointed at the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil as the source of the blockage. Eleven days after former prime minister Saad Hariri was asked to resume office and assemble an administration of non-party technocrats, no date has even been set for a meeting with President Michel Aoun. “We do not know if the obstructing parties actually want to form a government. It is about party quotas again, regarding the number of ministers and the rotation of portfolios,” senior Hariri adviser Hussein Al-Wajh told Arab News. Dr. Mustafa Alloush, a leading figure in Hariri’s Future Movement, told Arab News: “The main obstacle to forming a government is Gebran Bassil, who has returned to his old demands.”

Hariri resigned as prime minister in October 2019 amid a wave of public protests over financial corruption, government ineptitude and a collapsing economy. Neither of his successors, Hassan Diab and Mustapha Adib, was able to restore stability, and Lebanon has been without a government since September. At the prompting of French President Emmanuel Macron, Hariri offered to lead a technocratic Cabinet in an initiative seen as opening the door to desperately needed international aid and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Former minister Ahmed Fatfat told Arab News: “Hariri’s project is a mini-government of specialists, which would not be against anyone or against the country, but Hezbollah stands behind the play of Gebran Bassil.”

“The political authority has killed its people economically, financially and in terms of living and development, and has thrown them into a state of loss and anger, despair and revolution, emigration and survival,” Rai said in his sermon. “The political community must acknowledge its failure to represent the citizens and gain their trust … then […]

by dailystar.com.lb — BEIRUT: Israeli jets and a warship crossed into Lebanese territory in the country’s south Sunday, days after the conclusion of a large scale Israeli military drill that was supposed to simulate war with Hezbollah. The Lebanese Army said in a statement Sunday that an Israeli warship had crossed into Lebanon’s territorial waters […]

by newsmax — Iranian hackers accessed voter registration data in one state and attempted to access more in a series of targeted attacks dating back to September, according to a U.S. government cybersecurity advisory. The FBI and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency — a unit of the Department of Homeland Security — revealed Friday that […]

by ncregister.com — Doreen Abi Raad — BEIRUT — ’The horrific double explosion on Aug. 4 in Beirut, Lebanon, destroyed half of the Middle Eastern country’s capital, especially regions inhabited by Christians. The disaster — considered one of the world’s most powerful non-nuclear explosions — is the result of the detonation of 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate stored for years in a port warehouse. It killed 200 people, injured more than 6,500 and left 300,000 people homeless. The tragedy comes as Lebanon’s economy is collapsing, pushing the population further into poverty. Maronite Catholic Archbishop Paul Abdel Sater of Beirut spoke to the Register at the chancery, where destruction from the explosion, like so much of Beirut, is obvious. Breezes blow from blasted-out windows of the chancery’s lobby. Makeshift glass sheets cover the damaged windows in the archbishop’s office, his desk chipped and splintered from the impact of glass shards. Archbishop Abdel Sater spoke of his anguish in seeing the Lebanese people suffer, the absence of the government in assuming its role in reconstruction, the expression of solidarity and care on the part of Pope Francis through the visit of the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the rise in emigration of Lebanon’s Christians. He urged the international community to support Lebanon so that it may continue — as Pope St. John Paul II had proclaimed of Lebanon — as a “message.”

What was the greatest pain for you as a shepherd, related to the blast?

The greatest pain was a few minutes following the explosion when an employee and a priest were injured here at the chancery. We took them to the hospital. Seeing all these people — fathers, mothers, husbands, wives — who were all bleeding, walking aimlessly in their house clothes looking for a hospital to receive them. It was sad to see how much the Lebanese people have been robbed of their dignity. And the only thing I was thinking about was that this person I see now, bleeding, is a father who is important in the life of his family. Or a mother who sacrificed so much for her family. And they have been treated this way by an unknown evil person or persons (who perpetuated the explosion). For what?’ What makes me sad is that Lebanon is a country where the human person is losing his and her dignity and it’s a country that has sacrificed many of its children.

by Catholic Herald — Christopher Altieri — — Pope Francis has sent a telegram expressing his condolences to families of victims and reiterating his spiritual closeness to the Catholic community and the entire French people, in the wake of a brutal knife attack in Nice’s Notre Dame church that left three people dead on Thursday […]