The Daily Star BEIRUT: The Lebanese pound fell against the dollar Thursday, trading at around LL7,150 on the black market as government …

by nypost.com -- They blew it again. After muffing it spectacularly in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was supposed to cruise to easy victory over Donald Trump, pollsters and the media should be ashamed by how wrong they got this year’s election. Even after their cross-their-hearts-hope-to-die promises to fix flaws in their methodology — which always errs in their preferred, liberal direction. Like Clinton, Joe Biden was supposed to be a sure winner — possibly in a landslide victory over President Trump. Polling “guru” Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a whopping 89 percent chance of winning. RealClearPolitics’ compilation of polls showed Biden with an average 7.2 percentage-point national lead; some polls had the spread in the double digits at various times. In the top battleground states, Biden averaged a 2.3-point lead, according to RCP. Analysts talked of a “blue wave” — with Democrats winning the Senate as well as the White House, and gaining dozens of seats for their House majority. The message, amplified by a feverishly anti-Trump, left-leaning media, was clear: Donald Trump was toast, a one-term president who’d drag the whole party down. Count on it. And it sure is about time. Ha! It’ll be days, maybe weeks, before the vote counts are finalized, and Biden may win — but it’s clear the pollsters couldn’t have been more off. Again.

Their predictions weren’t just wrong — but often wildly so. As of Wednesday morning, Biden had a mere 1.9-percentage point lead over Trump; the prez had a good chance of prevailing overall in electoral votes. Before Election Day, the ABC-Washington Post poll gave Biden a whopping 17-point lead in Wisconsin; on Wednesday, his lead was 0.6 percent. “That’s not a mistake. That’s not an error,” noted pollster Frank Luntz. “That’s polling malpractice, and you have to go to tremendous lengths to be able to get something that wrong so close to the election.” Similarly, Quinnipiac had Biden with a five-point margin in Florida and four points in Ohio; Trump wound up ahead in both states — by three and eight points, respectively. So much for a Biden blowout. Republicans also seem likely to retain control of the Senate, with Democrats having picked up just one net seat by Wednesday morning, and several “endangered” GOP seats proving safe. And Dems lost House seats in New Mexico, Florida and Oklahoma that they picked up in 2018. What went wrong with the polling? Some possible explanations stand out. One of the biggest may be that Trump voters have given up on mainstream media and polling. Yes, it may be “shy voters” in some places it’s considered uncouth to like him, but many others are actively hostile to the institutions that have ignored and insulted them. They show up in droves at Trump rallies and “Donvoys,” but they don’t answer the phone to answer questions. Will these mistakes make pollsters change their ways? Will the media show any humility in the face of again misjudging Trump and his voters? The answer, alas, is probably no. But they aren’t the only ones with egg on their faces:

by newsmax — Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova on Wednesday called it a “miracle” the Republicans appeared …

by AFP -- BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prosecutor general decided Tuesday not to charge fugitive ex-auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn for visiting Israel in 2008 because the statute of limitations has expired, a judicial source said. Three lawyers filed a motion in January calling for the 66-year-old businessman to be prosecuted over his trip to the Jewish state as Renault-Nissan chairman. Lebanon is technically still at war with Israel and forbids its citizens from traveling there. “Prosecutor general Ghassan Oueidat decided ... not to prosecute Ghosn for the crimes attributed to him of entering the enemy country and dealing with it economically,” the source told AFP. “A statute of limitations of ten years had passed since the alleged crime,” the source added.

Ghosn on Jan. 8 apologized to the Lebanese people for having visited Israel to sign a deal to produce electric vehicles, saying he traveled on business for Renault on a French passport. He also holds Lebanese and Brazilian nationalities. The ex-Nissan chief was arrested in Japan in November 2018 on financial misconduct charges and spent 130 days in detention, before he jumped bail and smuggled himself out of the country late last year. Ghosn appeared at a press conference in Lebanon on Jan. 8, denying all charges and claiming he was a victim of a plot by Nissan and Japanese officials.