by Nathalie Bertrand — A hacking group linked by cybersecurity experts to Russia’s
military intelligence apparatus has begun taking aim at France’s
centrist presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron, the
cybersecurity firm Trend Micro said in a report published on
Tuesday. On March 15, the group — known as Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sednit,
APT28, Sofacy, or STRONTIUM — began registering domain names
like “onedrive-en-marche.fr” and “mail-en-marche.fr” in an
attempt to trick members of Macron’s campaign team into clicking
on links that looked affiliated with his political party, En
Marche.

“A huge revelation in this Trend Micro report is
that Fancy Bear has significantly upped the
sophistication of its cyber attacks,” said Greg Martin, the
CEO of cybersecurity firm JASK. “They’re taking advantage of
vulnerabilities in cloud-based email services like Gmail to trick
people into downloading fake applications, and compromising
their inboxes without even having to steal
a password.”  Martin said that when targeted by this kind of attack,
known as “OAuth phishing,” the victim can’t just
change their password to regain access to their account. “It’s a new style of attack is very deadly and
unprecedented,” he said. “It’s the first time we have seen
this in the wild.”

A more primitive version of that phishing
technique was on full display during the US presidential
election. Emails stolen by Fancy Bear from the Democratic
National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John
Podesta, were fed to WikiLeaks and the website DCLeaks,
which is run by self-described hacker Guccifer 2.0, who
researchers believe was a persona created by Russian military
intelligence. “The cat got out of the bag in terms of the tools used in the DNC
cyberattacks, so Fancy Bear upped the ante this time around,”
Martin said. 

by Vahakn Kabakian – Executive — Lebanon’s energy sector is characterized by a significant supply-demand imbalance, continuing growth in demand
(5 percent per year), high generation costs (partly due to aging
infrastructure), and a lack of financial sustainability. Electricité du
Liban (EDL) cannot recover its operating costs and depends on the
Lebanese government to subsidize operations. In 2013, EDL received
transfers amounting to around $2 billion, corresponding to 4.5 percent
of the GDP – creating a significant strain on the country’s budget and
economy. Lebanon’s baseline energy mix is dominated by oil,
accounting for over 95 percent of generation. Renewable energy currently
accounts for 4 percent of the electricity produced in Lebanon,
predominantly hydropower, with less than 0.2 percent from solar
photovoltaic (PV).

For the most part when we consider the Lebanese diet, traditional
cuisine and eating habits we notice that firstly and most importantly it
revolves around the season which means you’re eating food that is
fresh, and in its nutritional prime,” Kehdy, author of The Jewelled
Kitchen cookbook, tells The New Arab.

For Kehdy, nutritional variety is key to Lebanon’s healthy lifestyle.

“The [Lebanese] diet also revolves around vegetables with sprinklings
of meat with weekends dedicated to letting loose and enjoying a lavish
meat-laden grills. Fruits are also still celebrated and often as a form
of dessert,” she adds. Meals are mostly balanced and include copious amounts of garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. “A typical lunch is very balanced with a salad, stew, not overdosed
on meat and a good serving of grains. The diet also involves lots of
fermented foods – pickles and yoghurt always grace the table – so lots
of probiotics and natural digestive aids,” Kehdy says. She also adds that cultural habits, and especially light dinners, are key. “If we go back and really consider the traditional eating culture we
notice that dinners were often simply yoghurt and cheese which much
lighter and easily digestible in comparison to the balanced lunch of
stew, grain and salad. The old saying says: have lunch and nap, eat
dinner and walk.” As testified by hordes of customers filling Lebanese restaurants from
Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, Lebanon’s cuisine had long ago found
world-wide fame.

by  Florence Massena

Samir Rebeiz, a conservator who was born in the house and lived there
for 65 years, was expelled from it by members of his family who were
given the property by their elderly uncle. “After months of discussions,
I received a court order at the end of January 2016 telling me to
evacuate, so I did,” Rebeiz told Al-Monitor. “I don’t mind moving, but
the house was in perfect shape and condition. I was maintaining
everything — it’s my job after all — living in basic conditions and not
having done anything to modernize the house in order to keep it intact.” When the owners asked for a demolition permit
in January 2016, the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA) — a
technical unit of the Ministry of Culture in charge of the promotion,
protection and excavation of all heritage sites of Lebanon — started an
investigation. In March 2016, it established that the Red House is a
part of the city’s cultural heritage and that it should not be demolished. The owners appealed this decision.

Rebeiz talked about acts of vandalism, saying, “I saw people who were
starting to dismantle the house from the inside, so I called the DGA,”
who sent the police. For a month, all was quiet. “But the windows and
tiles were gone as well as most of the decorations that made the house
valuable,” such as tiles, windows and arcades. In July 2016, the
minister of culture signed decree No. 95, but it did not stop the
vandalism.

PARIS (Reuters) – Centrist Emmanuel Macron, running on the “En
Marche!” platform, and far-right National Front leader Marine Le
Pen are set to face each other in a May 7 runoff for the French
presidency after coming first and second in Sunday’s first round
of voting, according to multiple projections. The result makes Macron most likely to become the next
president of France.  Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has
never held elected office, opinion polls in the run-up to the
ballot have consistently seen him easily winning the final clash
against the 48-year-old Le Pen. Sunday’s outcome spells disaster for the two mainstream groupings
that have dominated French politics for 60 years, and also
reduces the prospect of an anti-establishment shock on the scale
of Britain’s vote last June to quit the EU and the election of
Donald Trump as U.S. president. The euro currency was quoted higher immediately after the first
projections were issued, with banks quoting the US dollar at
around $1.092 versus $1.072 on Friday evening, according to
Reuters data. In a race that was too close to call up to the last minute,
Macron, a pro-European Union ex-banker and economy minister who
founded his own party only a year ago, was projected to get 24
percent of the first-round vote by the pollster Harris, and 23.7
percent by Elabe.

Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-EU National
Front, was given 22 percent by both institutes. At least three
further pollsters all projected broadly similar results. Macron’s supporters, gathered at a Paris conference center burst
into singing the national anthem, the Marseillaise, a few seconds
after results came through. Many were under 25, reflecting some
of the appeal of a man aiming to become France’s youngest head of
state since Napoleon. Le Pen, who is herself bidding to make history as France’s first
female president, follows in the footsteps of her father, who
founded the National Front and reached the second round of the
presidential election in 2002. Jean-Marie Le Pen was ultimately crushed when voters from right
and left rallied around the conservative Jacques Chirac in order
to keep out a party whose far-right, anti-immigrant views they
considered unpalatably xenophobic. His daughter has done much to soften her party’s image, and found
widespread support among young voters by pitching herself as an
anti-establishment defender of French workers and French
interests.

Beirut, Lebanon. Forty-two years after the civil war began in Lebanon, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls on the Lebanese authorities to pass a law that will help clarify the fate of those who have gone missing during armed conflicts in the country since 1975. The ICRC also urges the authorities to […]

by english.aawsat.com, The Lebanese army intelligence on Saturday killed an ISIS leader and arrested ten terrorists after they came over the northeastern border from Syria, the military and the state-run National News Agency said. “An army unit carried out a swift raid at dawn today in Arsal, resulting in the arrest of 10 dangerous terrorists […]

by BBC – Activists campaigning to change Lebanon’s law on rape have staged a macabre protest on Beirut’s famous sea front. What appeared to be more than 30 white wedding dresses were hung from nooses, strung up between the palm trees. Lebanese law currently allows a rapist to be exonerated if he marries his victim. The activists are pressing to have the legislation abolished at an upcoming session of parliament. Minister for Women’s Affairs Jean Oghassabian described the article as being “from the stone age”. “There
are 31 days in a month and every single day, a woman may be raped and
forced to marry her rapist,” said Alia Awada from the non-governmental
organisation Abaad. A proposal to scrap Article 522 of the penal
code, which deals with rape, assault, kidnapping and forced marriage,
was introduced last year and approved by a parliamentary committee in
February.

By Jordan Grantham, Catholic Outlook

The Ijdabra Cross rises as a powerful witness of faith in the war
torn Middle East. When the cross is complete, the Church of St Saba,
Ijdabra, in Northern Lebanon will have the largest inhabitable cross in
the Middle East. The 60 metre high cross will contain a small church and a gallery to
view the sea and mountains. The cross will be the focus point of a place
of pilgrimage, camps, prayer and recreation. The project also provides
employment opportunities to the inhabitants of the Batroun region. The cross symbolises Christ’s victory over death and the project
takes inspiration from the scripture verse: “And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all things to myself.” (John 12:32)

The Ijdabra cross is nearing completion. Watch this video of its progress.

The cross also aims to inspire peace in the conflicted region and will promote dialogue between conflicting groups. “The cross in its horizontal and vertical dimensions is in its
essence a symbol of connection between God and men on the one hand and
between men among each other on the other, no matter their race,
religious beliefs or social status. The cross is an invitation for love,
reconciliation and coexistence,” the Ijdabra Project website states. The Maronite Patriarch Moran Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi has
encouraged the project, as seen in this photograph of His
Beatitude cutting a colourful cake displaying the cross.