by reuters- Lebanon's banks will not go bankrupt and deposits are secure, central bank Governor Riad Salameh said on Thursday in remarks aimed at reassuring depositors amid a deep financial crisis that has shaken confidence in the country's banking system. Speaking to broadcaster MTV in his first extended remarks in nearly two months, Salameh said that foreign support was needed to pull the country from crisis and that Qatar appeared open to offering help. "I believe the Qataris want to support Lebanon," he said, referencing a recent visit he made to Doha, before adding: "Contact between the two states is not the responsibility of the central bank." Salameh said that contact with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had so far been limited to talks with the prime minister over technical support. "There has been no negotiation with the IMF by the Lebanese state to really know what conditions they would put," he said. Foreign donors pledged $11 billion in project finance to Lebanon in 2018 but made it contingent on Beirut carrying out long-delayed economic reforms - something it has failed to do. Salameh said the central bank remains convinced of its fixed exchange rate, which has kept the Lebanese pound pegged to the U.S. dollar at the same rate since 1997.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Carlos Ghosn’s daring escape from Japan to Lebanon may have cast light on his wealth and influence, but in Beirut the ex-Nissan boss can only get a few hundred dollars a week from the bank because of the country’s deep financial crisis. Lebanon, Ghosn’s childhood home, is in the throes of the worst financial and economic emergency in decades, with a shortage of dollars leading the Lebanese pound to slump and banks to tightly restrict savers’ access to their deposits. Asked in an interview with a Lebanese broadcaster on Thursday if he would be willing to transfer his money to Lebanese banks, Ghosn said: “What is this question?” “You know that if we move money to Lebanon we can no longer use it. I have investment in Lebanon and I have money in the Lebanese banks and - like all the Lebanese citizens - I can only withdraw $250 or $300 a week,” he told al-Jadeed TV. “My situation is like the situation of all Lebanese.”

by foxbusiness.com -- For the first time since being reunited, former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn and his wife Carole spoke out together on Thursday about the injustices they say they’ve faced since the ex-auto boss was arrested in Japan last year. “Anything is better than Carlos being in Japan,” Carole Ghosn said in an interview on FOX Business’ "Mornings with Maria." While being held in Japan, Carlos Ghosn said he was interrogated day and night and lied to by Japanese authorities. “What they were looking for was not the truth,” he said. “What they were looking for was just confession. They didn’t care about the truth.”

by reuters -- A Ukrainian airliner that crashed in Iran, killing all 176 people aboard, was likely brought down by an Iranian missile, Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Thursday, citing intelligence from Canadian and other sources and reaffirming what U.S. officials were saying earlier in the day. The destruction of the airliner, which carried 63 Canadians, "may well have been unintentional," Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa. "We have intelligence from multiple sources, including our allies and our own intelligence. The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile," he said. The Ukraine International Airlines flight to Kiev from Tehran crashed on Wednesday hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. military bases in Iraq, and Iranians were on high alert for a U.S. military response. Trudeau said his government would not rest until it had obtained closure, transparency, accountability and justice. Earlier on Thursday, a U.S. official, citing an extensive review of satellite data, said Washington had concluded with a high degree of certainty that anti-aircraft missiles brought down the plane. The official said the Boeing 737-800 had been tracked by Iranian radar.

The U.S. government believes Iran shot down the plane by mistake, three U.S. officials told Reuters. The data showed the plane was airborne for two minutes after departing Tehran when the heat signatures of two surface-to-air missiles were detected, one of the officials said. That was quickly followed by an explosion in the vicinity of the plane, this official said. Heat signature data then showed it on fire as it went down. Heat signatures are infrared emissions detected by U.S. military satellites. Iran denied that the airliner had been hit by a missile, government spokesman Ali Rabiei said in a statement. "All these reports are a psychological warfare against Iran ... all those countries whose citizens were aboard the plane can send representatives and we urge Boeing to send its representative to join the process of investigating the black box," he said.

by catholicherald.co.uk -- Matt Hadro/CNA --  A new US government report says that human rights abuse in China has worsened in the last year, and specifically highlighted the escalating persecution of Chinese Catholics in the wake of the Vatican-China agreement of 2018. “During its 2019 reporting year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that the human rights situation has worsened and the rule of law continued to deteriorate, as the Chinese government and Party increasingly used regulations and laws to assert social and political control,” stated the commission’s annual report, released on Wednesday. The report said that “After the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed an agreement with the Holy See in September 2018 paving the way for unifying the state-sanctioned and underground Catholic communities, local Chinese authorities subjected Catholic believers in China to increasing persecution by demolishing churches, removing crosses, and continuing to detain underground clergy.”