By Aya Iskandarani -- thenationalnews.com -- Lebanese authorities released two western journalists on Monday, six hours after Hezbollah detained them and handed them over to the security forces. British reporter Matt Kynaston was detained and his phone confiscated after he went to the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut to cover the country’s ongoing fuel crisis, his editor-in-chief at NOW Lebanon said on Twitter. “Journalist Matt Kynaston has been detained on the Airport Road by men who introduced as Hezbollah agents,” Ana Maria Luca said on Twitter. “Before his phone was probably taken away he sent a voice note with a recording of a man saying, 'I have the right to take his phone. I have the right to take his phone without his consent.'"

Kynaston is employed at NOW Lebanon and has previously worked for The National as a freelancer. He was detained with German reporter Stella Manner, Luca said. The two journalists were handed over to Lebanese authorities and held at the General Security building in Beirut before being released in the evening. Lebanon has long been considered a haven for freedom of speech in the Middle East. But Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal have repeatedly cracked down on journalists, activists and demonstrators in Beirut and southern Lebanon after the mass anti-government protest movement of October 2019. Areas under Hezbollah control are out of reach for the Lebanese state. Journalists and media workers are required to ask for permission from Hezbollah before they can report from these areas. “The individual had not asked permission before filming in Dahiye,” a Hezbollah representative told The National. “That may be why he was questioned."

من مقال يحيى احمد الكعكي اليوم في الشرق:‎ ولكن مع استمرار رفض “البعض” في لبنان لـ”الميثاق الوطني 1943″، و”القانون الدستوري 1990/9/21″، و”إعلان …

منيت أحزاب السلطة في لبنان بالهزيمة في انتخابات نقابة المهندسين في بيروت التي نظمت الأحد، أمام مرشحين محسوبين على ما يسمى "قوى 17 تشرين"، التي تقود التظاهرات الاحتجاجية منذ عام 2019.

ويعد هذا مؤشرا يدق ناقوس الخطر بالنسبة إلى الأحزاب التقليدية المهيمنة، قبل عام من فتح صناديق الاقتراع للانتخابات البرلمانية.

وأعلنت لائحة "النقابة تنتفض" التي تمثل مرشحي المعارضة، فوزها في انتخابات الأحد، التي تعتبر المرحلة الأولى من انتخابات نقابة المهندسين، على أن تجرى "المعركة الأكبر" في انتخابات النقيب والأعضاء العشرة لمجلس النقابة في 18 يوليو المقبل.

وأعلنت اللائحة على موقعها على "تويتر" أن "النقابة انتفضت... فانتصرت"

By Nadim Shehadi -- arabnews.com -- In the Latin American city of Bogota, a prosperous-looking lady goes to an ATM to withdraw cash and her card is rejected. This is how, in the fall of 2019, the widow of a Lebanese immigrant in Colombia first learned of Lebanon’s financial collapse and the bankruptcy of both its banking and public sectors. Financial collapse strikes like a thunderbolt. Those affected emerge confused and disoriented, hardly realizing what hit them. Economic problems can also have financial repercussions. Unsurprisingly, there is a chicken and egg debate about this among economists: Do real economic factors affect financial phenomena, or is it monetary and financial considerations that affect the real economy? Whatever the answer is, the fact remains that, behind financial phenomena, there exists real economic factors. For example, the 2008 collapse in the US was caused by a “real” economic factor: Bad loans, known as “subprime.” Bankers created complex instruments to reduce their risk and spread these globally. When the crisis hit, it dragged everyone down with it and people are still figuring out what struck them.

In Lebanon, the banking sector gave loans to the Banque du Liban (BDL) central bank that, in turn, lent the money to the government, which kept increasing its debt to pay the interest. Bankers are easy to blame, and probably deserve it; the other side of the story is what happens in the economy and drives the crisis. This is in a country that historically operated a budget surplus and had a sound monetary policy, with risk-averse bankers. What the BDL did is no different from what the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are now doing in the US, with the trillions of dollars being printed and buying their own bonds. In any other economy, what would follow would be a race between economic recovery and debt servicing to make the latter sustainable. But in the US the government can print dollars as it pleases and feed its own Ponzi scheme indefinitely, as long as the US dollar is the global reserve currency. There is no banking system that can survive a run and, once it happens, it is unstoppable. A run on a bank is when depositors rush to withdraw their money at the same time. It is caused by a sudden loss of confidence. This is what happened in Lebanon after November 2017.