By Michael Karam - The National

Someone, I forget who, once told me "everything before the ‘but’ is meaningless". Here’s the "before" bit: In the same week that Lebanon ended its two year political impasse by nominating Michel Aoun, an 81-year-old former army commander, as president and appointing Saad Hariri, the Saudi-born billionaire businessman, as the next prime minister, it welcomed two Apple legends – Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of the US$250 billion tech company, and Tony Fadel, an American-Lebanese whizz-kid who essentially invented the iPod.

Mr Wozniak and Mr Fadel headlined the Lebanese Central Bank’s "Accelerate" conference, billed rather optimistically as the biggest tech gathering in the Mediterranean and themed under the strapline "Innovation: Intrapreneurship v Entrepreneurship". (If, like me, if you are wondering what "intrapreneurship" is, Wikipedia defines it as "the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organisation", which sounds like every Lebanese public sector worker.)

So the conference was held in a mood of optimism not felt in the country since the ill-fated Bashir Gemayel was elected president in 1982. Which was probably just as well. "Accelerate" would have been planned at least a year ago if the conference organisers had to book such stellar names, and it would have taken some of the shine off the three days had the event tried to sell the dynamism of a country that after two years, still couldn’t nominate a president.

Statistician Nate Silver warned on Sunday that Hillary Clinton's path to capturing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House now appears narrower than President Barack Obama's path at this point in 2012. In an appearance on ABC's "This Week," the FiveThirtyEight chief claimed Clinton is a "2-to-1 favorite," but noted that recent polls show Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with a slight edge in electoral college-heavy states like Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina.

"The electoral college math is actually less solid for Clinton than it was for Obama four years ago, where four years ago we had Obama ahead 320-some electoral votes. Clinton has about 270," Silver said. "So she's one state away from potentially losing the electoral college. You'd rather be in her shoes than Donald Trump's, but it's not a terribly safe position." While other polling aggregators like the New York Times' Upshot and HuffPost Pollster have put Clinton's chances of winning around 84% and 98% respectively, Silver's model gives Trump a greater chance of winning.

Saint Charbel #PrayForLebanon