By Calvert W. Jones – washingtonpost.com  – Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, isn’t just consolidating power before his probable ascent to the throne. He’s also trying to remake Saudi society. He bluntly told reporters that his country is “not normal.” And so, like Ataturk in post-World War I Turkey, the shah in pre-revolutionary Iran and other […]

By Calvert W. Jones – washingtonpost.com  – Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, isn’t just consolidating power before his probable ascent to the throne. He’s also trying to remake Saudi society. He bluntly told reporters that his country is “not normal.” And so, like Ataturk in post-World War I Turkey, the shah in pre-revolutionary Iran and other […]

by alaraby.co.uk – Lebanon has denied Saudi allegations that its prestigious banking system is being used to smuggle and launder funds for powerful political and militant group Hizballah. “The Lebanese banking system enjoys international legitimacy in relation to its financial and monetary transactions,” Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon’s central bank Banque Du Liban (BDL), told […]

by npr.org — Secretive real estate deals in the Holy Land are putting one of Jerusalem’s most powerful and ancient churches in the spotlight. The Greek Orthodox Church calls itself the second-largest landowner in Israel, after the Israeli government. It says it owns some 30 percent of Jerusalem’s walled Old City, the city’s historic core, and […]

by Florence Massena – Al Monitor – With long-awaited parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2018, the Lebanese government provided an online platform Nov. 3-20 so non-resident Lebanese could register to vote. More than 90,000 eligible voters took advantage of the opportunity, the first time such an option had been offered. Elections Law no. 25, adopted in 2008, stipulated that out-of-country voting begin with the 2013 parliamentary elections — previously, […]

by voanews.com BEIRUT — Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in remarks published Thursday that he fears Hezbollah’s military role in regional conflicts will end up costing his country dearly. But Hariri also stressed he was optimistic that a way to end the political paralysis gripping Lebanon following his Nov. 4 resignation is being worked out. […]

BY TOM O’CONNOR  – NEWSWEEK – The U.S. had planned to resettle Palestinians from war-torn Lebanon into Egypt in the 1980s, but the North African state’s former leader demanded the West first find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to secret British documents seen by BBC News. The documents were reportedly obtained via the U.K.’s Freedom […]

by Tom DiChristopher | @tdichristopher – by cnbc.com – The bold anti-corruption campaign by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and his aggressive foreign policy threaten to undermine his effort to promote a more moderate form of Islam, warns Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman. The New York Times columnist, who began his career covering the Middle East and Israel, recently […]

BEIRUT, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) — The Lebanese-Chinese cultural relations are developing “from the Silk Road into the Silk Highway,” said Lebanon’s Minister of Education Marwan Hamadeh Tuesday. Hamadeh hailed the rapid expansion of cultural ties between the two countries, mentioning 30 scholarships for Lebanese and Arab students to continue studies in the Chinese city of […]

by By MARK PERRY theamericanconservative.com – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has accomplished the impossible: he’s actually united Lebanon, though perhaps only briefly.   The tale of how the 32-year-old bin Salman (or MbS, as he’s called), accomplished this is a tad complex, but it’s worth the telling. Earlier this month, on November 2, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, […]