By Abby Jackson

Gaining acceptance into selective colleges seems harder today than ever before. Acceptance rates at top schools decline almost every year, and former admissions officers at Ivy League schools say the competition is at an all-time high. Anthony-James Green, a New York City-based SAT and ACT tutor, agrees. "It's become a little bit of an arms race," Green told Business Insider. Green experiences firsthand the lengths to which families will go to improve their students' scores. His $1,500-an-hour price tag may seem hefty, but to the families who want to see significant improvement in test scores, it's worth the cost.

"My average ACT students usually goes up by around 7 points, and on the old SAT they were going up around 420, 430 points," he said. On the new SAT, Green said, his students average 310- to 320-point increases. The Columbia University grad works exclusively over Skype, and he attracts families from all over the US. Students on average spend about 20 to 30 hours with him. He acknowledged that the inching up of test scores related to test prep may have a potentially damaging impact on students who don't pay for additional SAT support.

by Paul Szoldra - Business Insider - China's military is fast approaching "near parity" with western nations, according to a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In its 2017 Military Balance report, which focuses on global military capabilities and defense spending, IISS experts say that China has made significant progress in research and development and improved its military capabilities, putting it close to on par with the US and other allies.

"Western military technological superiority, once taken for granted, is increasingly challenged," Dr. John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive of IISS, said in a statement. "We now judge that in some capability areas, particularly in the air domain, China appears to be reaching near-parity with the West." Instead of its usual practice of working on systems that imitate Soviet and Russian technology, China has shifted its efforts (and budget) to domestic research and development. Its Navy is currently working on three new advanced cruisers, 13 destroyers, and outfitting other ships with better radar.

Compiled news by Ya Libnan, the tower.org and middle-east monitor

Speeches by Hezbollah’s leader this week were aimed at making clear to the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that the Lebanese group could strike U.S. interests by hitting Israel, a source familiar with its thinking said on Friday. Trump and administration officials have used strong rhetoric against Hezbollah’s political patron Iran and to support its main enemy Israel, including putting Tehran “on notice” over charges it violated a nuclear deal by test-firing a ballistic missile.

Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun, an ally of Hezbollah, defended the group this week, saying: “As long as the Lebanese army lacks sufficient power to face Israel, we feel the need for (Hezbollah’s) arsenal because it complements the army’s role”. In his speech on Sunday, Nasrallah said: “We are not worried (about Trump), but rather we are very optimistic because when there is an idiot living in the White House, who boasts of his idiocy, it is the beginning of relief for the weak of the world”. On Thursday he said that his group, which played a major role in ending Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, could strike its nuclear reactor at Dimona. The harsh words for Israel and Trump were aimed at drawing “red lines” for the new U.S. administration, the source familiar with the thinking of the Lebanese Shi’ite group said. “Until now, Hezbollah is not worried about the arrival of Trump into the U.S. administration, but rather, it called him an idiot this week and drew red lines in front of any action that threatens Lebanon or Hezbollah’s presence in Syria,” the source said. Israel and the United States both regard Hezbollah, which dominates Lebanese politics and maintains an armed militia that has had a significant part in fighting for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as a terrorist organisation. “We can turn the threat (of their nuclear capability) into an opportunity,” he said, signalling that Hezbollah could strike the Dimona reactor and other Israeli atomic sites according to the source familiar with Hezbollah thinking.

Lebanon’s Change Movement leader Elie Mahfoud warned against Hezbollah becoming like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or like the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) paramilitary organisation. Mahfoud said that “the issue of Hezbollah’s armament has always been a contentious issue amongst the Lebanese people,” in comments that reflect statements made by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri earlier this week, who declared that the Shia jihadist movement possessed weapons “illegally”. Mahfoud and Al-Hariri’s comments were in response to Hezbollah ally and Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s remarks supporting the Iranian proxy’s possession of arms.

Ibrahim al-Amin, chairman of the pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar, wrote in an editorial on January 24 that “a vast supply of advanced, state-of-the art weapons of various kinds, including weapons provided by Iran” have flown into Hezbollah’s depots since the beginning of the Syrian civil war. He also asserted that while Israel targeted convoys transporting sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah, “dozens if not hundreds of convoys managed to [get through and] bring the necessary [weapons] to the resistance bases in Lebanon.” “Israel reads the map and realizes that Hizbullah’s weapons arsenal has steadily grown, and is now several times larger than it was in 2006, and that the kind of weapons that the enemy tried and is still trying to prevent the resistance from acquiring – namely, what Israel calls ‘game-changing’ weapons – is available to it in great amounts,” al-Amin claimed.

BEIRUT (AFP): A Lebanese parliamentary committee has forced a vote on scrapping a controversial law that allows rapists to escape punishment by marrying their victims, an NGO said Thursday. Parliament would need to ratify the decision to change the law, but NGO Abaad said the committee’s decision on Wednesday was a key first step. “We hope that Parliament will move quickly to cancel this article and make the other amendments” proposed by the committee, said Alia Awada, advocacy manager for Abaad’s campaign to drop Article 522 of the penal code. The controversial article deals with rape — including against minors — assault, kidnapping and forced marriage. “If a valid marriage contract exists between the perpetrator of one of these crimes... and the abused, the prosecution is suspended,” the article reads. “If a verdict has been issued, the implementation is suspended.” A proposal to scrap the article was introduced last year but the committee only approved it Wednesday, along with changes to other sections of the penal code. The panel proposed raising the penalty for assaults against girls aged under 15 to a maximum of seven years.