RIYADH By Reuters - Stephen Kalin - Saudi Arabia is allowing foreign men and women to rent hotel rooms together without proving they are related, after the conservative Muslim kingdom launched a new tourist visa regime to attract holidaymakers. Women, including Saudis, are also permitted to rent hotel rooms by themselves, in a break with previous regulations. The moves appear to pave the way for unaccompanied women to travel more easily and for unmarried foreign visitors to stay together in the Gulf state, where sex outside of marriage is banned. The Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage confirmed a report on Friday by Arabic-language newspaper Okaz, adding: “All Saudi nationals are asked to show family ID or proof of relationship on checking into hotels. This is not required of foreign tourists. All women, including Saudis, can book and stay in hotels alone, providing ID on check-in.”

Saudi Arabia threw open its doors last week to foreign tourists from 49 countries as it tries to grow that sector and diversify its economy away from oil exports. As part of the move, it decreed that visitors need not wear all-covering black robes but should dress modestly. Alcohol remains banned. Saudi Arabia has been relatively closed off for decades and until recently unrelated men and women, including foreigners, could be severely punished for mixing in public. Strict social codes have been relaxed in recent years and previously banned entertainment has flourished. But an influx of tourists — the authorities are aiming for 100 million annual visits by 2030 — could push boundaries further and risks conservative backlash. The kingdom ended a heavily criticized ban on women driving last year and in August granted women new rights to travel abroad, chipping away at a guardianship system that assigns each woman a male relative to approve important decisions throughout their lives.

by aawsat.com -Yousef Diab- While three decades have passed since the end of the civil war in Lebanon, the country still suffers major crises resulting from the lack of proper infrastructure for electricity, communications, water, waste, and transport. But the current severe financial and economic deterioration has put Lebanon on the edge of an abyss. As usual, the state resorts to temporary and “patchwork” solutions, which anesthetize the situation for a few months, before a new problem emerges elsewhere. Today, three major crises are menacing the Lebanese people’s living conditions. The fuel, with calls for an open-ended strike by owners of fuel stations as of next week; the possible halt of operation at bakeries, and a very dangerous problem threatening the import of medicine. The crises are all linked to the rise in the value of the US dollar against the national currency, because traders buy the goods in USD and sell them to the consumers in Lebanese pounds, amid the Central Bank’s inability to control the game. The union for fuel distributors and gas stations in Lebanon decided to hold an open-ended strike as of next Monday unless the ongoing communications result in solutions that satisfy the sector.

The Union members met on Friday in Beirut and decided to give the government a deadline of 48 hours, ahead of a warning strike on Monday. In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Sami Brax, the head of the Syndicates of Gas Station Owners, said: “Companies will stop Monday distributing fuel to gas stations, which will deprive them of a single drop of gasoline.” “The union exerted mighty efforts with Prime Minister Saad Hariri to reach a solution, and to convince the distributing companies to pay the price of fuel in Lebanese pounds,” he noted. “We will not accept to continue to buy fuel in dollars and sell it to consumers in Lebanese pounds at the fixed price determined by the Ministry of Energy.”

by Dana Halawi BEIRUT (Xinhua) -- Winemakers in Lebanon have become aware about the importance of sending their products to the Chinese market because of its high demand for wine. Around 9 million bottles of wine are produced yearly in Lebanon with 45 percent exported to foreign markets. The annual production of the Lebanese wine industry is equal to the wine sales in one week in China, according to Eliana Ibrahim, president of the China Arab Association for Promoting Cultural and Commercial Exchange.

Although Lebanon's export of wine to China has not been high so far, Lebanese winemakers have started looking for ways to enter the Chinese market. "Around 3 to 4 percent of our production goes to China every year while we have been working on this market for around 12 years," Gaston Hochar, co-owner of Lebanese winery Chateau Musar, told Xinhua. Hochar said that the winery's exports to China have increased since he has started dealing with a new distributor in China. "Ever since then, our exports have started increasing," he said. Hochar added that exporting to China is not free from challenges. The country requests a lot of information about the company's products and requires bottles' labels to be translated into Chinese, he explained. "We are coping with these so far and we travel twice a year to China to promote our products," he said.

This is an opinion article and does not represent necessarily khazen.org view

by cnbc.com --Jake Novak -- No matter where you turn, the news is filled with embarrassing stuff about President Trump. The CIA whistleblower complaint about his conduct on a call with Ukraine’s president has turned into a full-court impeachment scandal. But through all of this, Trump’s approval rating is at its highest level of the year according to the Hill-HarrisX survey, and the other major polls taken since this Ukraine phone call whistleblower story emerged show few changes from the last surveys taken before the news broke.

How is this possible? Anyone still asking that question simply hasn’t come to terms with why Donald Trump won the 2016 election in the first place. In short, Trump was elected to be the ultimate disruptor and to play that disruptive role as much as possible. “Drain the swamp” wasn’t just a campaign slogan, but a visceral feeling against establishment Washington in every way. Millions of Americans who voted for Trump and still support him chose him precisely because he is nasty, breaks the rules, and shows little respect for the political establishment at every level.

To really be mad at Trump for asking foreign leaders to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton, the voters need to believe that Clinton and the Bidens aren’t inherently corrupt. They must also believe that just about all the rules and established groups within American government, especially the intelligence community, deserve unquestioned respect. Here’s a newsflash: a very large number of Americans don’t have that trust and respect, and they’re generally OK with Trump being the junkyard dog who digs it all out.