By GEORGI AZAR -- arabnews.com -- DUBAI: Two public hospitals in Lebanon have threatened to shut their doors from Thursday, July 15, if officials fail to disburse urgently needed supplies, funds and materials as the healthcare sector inches closer toward a collapse. Lebanon has been hit with an unprecedented financial, economic, and monetary crisis that has wiped out life savings coupled with a crippling liquidity crunch. Shahar Gharbi Governmental Hospital, located in the heart of Aley district, announced Tuesday that it would stop receiving patients as of Thursday. “We’re facing crisis after crisis. Fuel shortages, medicine shortages and unsustainable wages,” Nawal Al Hasaniya, a member of the hospital’s secretary administration, told Arab News.

The health sector, as with virtually all other sectors across the country, has been reeling under the burden of the country’s severe financial crisis, prompting medical practitioners to repeatedly sound the alarm. The national currency has lost more than 91 percent of its value since October 2019, causing the value of the minimum wage to plummet to around $35 per month. At Sibline Government Hospital on the southern outskirts of Beirut, managing doctor Ali Al Barraj echoed Hasaniya’s concerns. “It’s an extremely tough situation. Starting tomorrow we’re going to shut down,” he said. Just like Shahar Hospital, his facility will limit its activities to only treating life-threatening conditions such as dialysis and heart conditions. Employees, they explained, now earn as little as $40 per month, with Barraj calling on the Health Ministry to disperse LL3 billion while raising their wages. A similar plea was made by Sibline Hospital, yet both have fallen on deaf ears. “Until now, we haven’t heard anything, and we are headed toward an escalation,” Hasaniya said.

by bbc.com -- Dearbail Jordan & Simon Jack -- At 10.30pm on a cold December night in 2019, a former titan of the global car industry lay bundled inside a box on board a plane, waiting to flee Japan. "The plane was scheduled to take off at 11pm," recalls Carlos Ghosn. "The 30 minutes waiting in the box on the plane, waiting for it to take off, was probably the longest wait I've ever experienced in my life." Now, for the first time, the man who was once the boss of both Nissan and Renault has detailed his daring escape. In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Mr Ghosn tells how he disguised himself to slip unnoticed through the streets of Tokyo, why a large music equipment box was chosen to smuggle him out of Japan and the elation he felt when he finally landed in his native Lebanon. "The thrill was that finally, I'm going to be able to tell the story," he said.

Mr Ghosn was arrested in November 2018 over allegations by Nissan that he had understated his annual salary and misused company funds, which he denies. At the time, Mr Ghosn was the chairman of the Japanese carmaker. He was also chairman of France's Renault and the boss of a three-way alliance between both carmakers and Mitsubishi. His cost-cutting at Nissan - initially controversial - was ultimately seen to have saved the carmaker and he became a highly respected and recognisable figure. But he insists he was "collateral damage" in a fight back from Nissan against the increasing influence of Renault which still owns 43% of the Japanese company. Documentary series Storyville details his extraordinary rise and sudden fall in Carlos Ghosn: The Last Flight which will be shown on BBC 4 on Wednesday 14 July.

by middleeastmonitor.com — Lebanese President Michel Aoun confirmed Tuesday that the country’s parliamentary elections will be held as scheduled in 2022, Anadolu …

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