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Lebanon Besieged By Bread, Medicine, Fuel Crises

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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.”

Lebanese winemakers keen to enter Chinese market

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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.

Here’s why Trump’s poll numbers are defying the impeachment mess

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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.

Facebook targets Snapchat (again)

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by linked-in -- Facebook took another aim at Snapchat by announcing a new messaging app for Instagram users. Threads, the name of the new app, allows users to send photos or videos to lists of their close friends — much like Snapchat. Facebook tried to take on Snapchat in 2012 with an app called Poke and again in 2014 with an app called Slingshot, but neither effort took off.

Exclusive: In Saudi Arabia, criticism of Crown Prince grows after attack

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(Reuters) - Some members of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and business elite have expressed frustration with the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the largest-ever attack on the kingdom’s oil infrastructure last month. It has sparked concern among several prominent branches of the ruling Al Saud family, which numbers around 10,000 members, about the crown prince’s ability to defend and lead the world’s largest oil exporter, according to a senior foreign diplomat and five sources with ties to the royals and business elite. All spoke on condition of anonymity. The attack has also fanned discontent among some in elite circles who believe the crown prince, known in the West by the initials MbS, has sought too tight a grip on power, the sources said. Some of these people said the event has also fueled criticism among those who believe he has pursued an overly aggressive stance towards Iran. “There is a lot of resentment” about the crown prince’s leadership, said one of the sources, a member of the Saudi elite with royal connections. “How were they not able to detect the attack?”

This person added that some people in elite circles are saying they have “no confidence” in the crown prince, an assertion echoed by the four other sources and the senior diplomat. The crown prince nonetheless has staunch supporters. A Saudi source within circles loyal to the crown prince said: “The latest events won’t affect him personally as a potential ruler because he is trying to stop the Iranian expansion in the region. This is a patriotic issue, and so he won’t be in danger, at least as long as the father lives.” A second senior foreign diplomat said ordinary Saudis still want to unite behind MbS as a strong, decisive, dynamic leader.

The Saudi government media office did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters for this article. The crown prince, during a television interview aired Sunday by U.S. broadcaster CBS, said that defending Saudi Arabia was difficult because of the kingdom’s large size and the scale of threats it faces. “It’s challenging to cover all of this fully,” he said. He also called for “strong and firm” global action to deter Iran but said he preferred a “peaceful solution” to a military one.

Lebanese Peg That’s Held Up for Over Two Decades Is Under Siege

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(Bloomberg) -Dana Khraiche- Lebanon’s slow-churning currency crunch is fast engulfing Bashar Boubess’s business. The miller pays for wheat imports in dollars but bakeries buy his flour in Lebanese pounds. For weeks now, the bank has refused to exchange those pound earnings back into the hard currency he needs to replenish supplies. His wheat stocks have dropped 30%. Boubess has turned to money changers to keep his business alive, but it’s expensive: they demand more pounds for every dollar than the increasingly unrealistic official rate. “If I sell to the bakeries in dollars, I’d just be transferring the problem to them,” said Boubess, owner of Modern Mills of Lebanon. “I don’t know if we can last the week. What am I supposed do?” More than two decades after Lebanon pegged its pound to the dollar, providing an anchor of stability as the economy emerged from civil war, the moment of reckoning may finally be arriving.

The central bank on Tuesday announced that it will guarantee a supply of dollars at the official rate of 1,507.5 pounds to cover imports of wheat, gasoline and pharmaceuticals, which retail at government-regulated prices. The measure could go some way to averting social upheaval, after weeks of strikes and protests, but it also amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that everyone else is working to a parallel rate. The divergence is small -- Boubess, for instance, said he last paid 1,595 per dollar to buy $50,000 at an exchange bureau -- and top officials including Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri have said the peg is a red line. But the widening imbalance has raised fears among Lebanese that a steeper slide is now only a matter of time.

The central bank’s reserves have fallen some $4 billion in the last two years to reach about $37 billion in July. As confidence has plummeted, even ordinary people have begun to transfer their dollar savings abroad or hide notes under their mattresses. “You can’t help but be affected by what people are are saying and I’ve thought of transferring my money abroad,” said Rose, a widow who’s living on her late husband’s retirement savings and declined to give her name for privacy. “But if everyone withdraws their money, what will happen? There’ll be a crisis?”

Zuckerberg says if Warren becomes president, Facebook would sue U.S. gov't: 'You go to the mat and fight'

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Zuckerberg walks to meetings for technology regulations and social media issues on Sept. 19, 2019, in Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

by foxnews.com -- Chris Ciaccia - Leaked audio comments from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg include him saying that the tech company would likely have no choice but to sue the U.S. government to stave off being broken up if Elizabeth Warren becomes president. The comments, obtained by The Verge, span a wide range of topics and deep insight into Zuckerberg's thinking, going much further than the usually stoic CEO appears in public. "You have someone like Elizabeth Warren thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies … I mean, if she gets elected president then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge," Zuckerberg is quoted as saying in two Q&A sessions with Facebook employees during July. "And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … It’s like, we care about our country, and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and fight."

Zuckerberg, who met with President Trump and several D.C. lawmakers last month, also said that the company's size has helped it fight election interference while noting that its rival, Twitter, has been inadequate at fighting interference because of fewer resources. “It’s why Twitter can’t do as good of a job as we can,” Zuckerberg said. “I mean, they face, qualitatively, the same types of issues. But they can’t put in the investment. Our investment on safety is bigger than the whole revenue of their company.”

The 35-year-old tech titan publicly acknowledged on Tuesday that the comments were indeed his, saying that he often shares "openly what I'm thinking on all kinds of projects and issues." "The transcript from one of my Q&As a few months ago just got published online -- and even though it was meant to be internal rather than public, now that it's out there, you can check it out if you're interested in seeing an unfiltered version of what I'm thinking and telling employees on a bunch of topics like social responsibility, breaking up tech companies, Libra, neural computing interfaces, and doing the right thing over the long term," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.