by naharnet – President Michel Aoun on Monday appointed former education minister Elias Bou Saab as international cooperation adviser, the Presidency said in a statement. Bou Saab, who represented Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement in Tammam Salam’s government and has good ties with Gulf officials, will be tasked with “communicating with countries and international bodies, organizations […]

by Michael Karam – National AE 

Leaving Lebanon at the best of times can make you feel like
you’ve been on an assault course. For some reason – maybe a burst of
zeal in the wake of the appointment of a new president – the unsmiling
security at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport has become more
rigorous and less efficient. Passengers already endure five
passport checks and two luggage scans, and now those travelling to the
United Kingdom out of the Lebanese capital must put all electronic
devices bigger than a mobile phone, such as laptops and tablets, in
checked luggage. I don’t know how much time this will add to the general
airport nightmare and I’m not even sure what difference it makes to
passenger security; for surely a bomb in the hold will do as much damage
as a bomb in the cabin.

My
first reaction was that Lebanon only has itself to blame. Overall
security measures at the relatively new terminal building have been
criticised in recent years, especially as it is widely known that
Hizbollah, the uncompromising Shia pol­itical party, wields huge
influence at the airport. Then again, other countries with less shady
reputations, the UAE being the most striking example, are affected by a
similar US ruling on carry-on devices, so who knows? But
is it really such a big deal? There has always been a hard and fast
rule – often from swivel-eyed friends – that you never check in your
laptop. I’ve done it twice. The first time nothing happened and the
other time British Airways lost, but eventually found, my bag.
Admittedly it was a bore to be without my computer, but I still reasoned
that I was supremely unlucky and still work on the theory that the risk
of damage, loss or theft is greatest only when taking a connecting
flight when there is more opportunity for something to go wrong.

In any case, now that it is a requirement, airlines are going to bend over backwards to see that nothing goes wrong. Emirates is already taking steps to ensure passengers flying to the US can use their devices right up to the departure gate. But
this didn’t stop Facebookers and the Twitterati from exploding with
outrage and indignation at the new rulings. “What are we meant to do on a
14-hour flight without an iPad?” “How are we meant to work without our
laptops?” and “How would the kids sit still without their devices?” Now I
can rant and rage with the best of them, but on the issue of device
addiction, I throb with the Luddites – even through, if I am being
honest, I also spend too much time staring at my own phone. And it is
probably because of this that I can’t help but feel that, while this
enforced down time makes no sense, it is, if you think about it, really
quite harmless. I almost welcome it.

by Áine Cain We measure temperature using Farenheit. We’re not about the metric system. We tip. We tend to do things a bit differently in the States. So, what sets US apart from the rest of the world when i Americans are always on their phones, but rarely make calls “In Europe, people prefer to […]

In private, Mark Cuban has started discussing his role in
national politics with his family. He told Business Insider, for instance, that he spoke with loved
ones about his decision to campaign on the trail for Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “We discussed how much of a threat I believe Trump to be,” Cuban
said in an email. “We discussed why it was important to me to get
involved — that if I could have an impact and didn’t try, it
would have left me guessing forever.” And, as Cuban said, his family feels “like we started on the
right path” to “have a platform and voice for the future.” Cuban, 58, is a self-made billionaire businessman and the owner
of the Dallas Mavericks. And he seems more serious than ever
about running for president. Cuban refrained from engaging much in politics before the 2016
campaign cycle. But in the past two years he has openly flirted
with a White House bid,
teasing journalists with
tantalizing words about his aspirations.

It wasn’t long ago that Cuban was shutting down questions about
whether he’d seek the presidency one day, flatly rejecting the
notion, as he did at the September presidential debate. But something changed. It was, as Cuban put it, “obvious”: the
election — unpredictability — of Trump. “What I do depends on how things play out for the country,” Cuban
said referring to a 2020 attempt at unseating Trump. Like Trump, Cuban introduced himself to American households first
as a prominent businessman and later through a reality-TV show.
He had no formal history in politics, only suddenly emerging on
the national political stage last year. His strategy for gaining
political prominence was oddly similar to Trump’s — deliver hot,
unadulterated takes on cable TV, outlets like CNBC, Fox News, and
CNN, and on Twitter.

Yet Cuban does not embrace the comparison. “He talked about running for office for 30 years,” Cuban said. “I
started talking about politics this year, after avoiding them the
last almost 20 years, because I thought it was important to do
so.” In conversations with Business Insider, Cuban’s longtime friends
said they were initially surprised to see Cuban get involved
politically, but they added that they could certainly now
envision him entering the fray in 2020. And while it would be a
climb to the White House for the tech titan, campaign experts
have laid out a path Cuban could take to find himself in the
Oval Office.

By Joseph A. Kechichian – yalibnan – Beirut: Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has submitted a letter to the United Nations to protest a pending bill in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) that calls for the annexation of a disputed maritime border area with Lebanon. According to a detailed report in the daily Al Jumhuriyyah, the Israeli […]

by Naharnet – Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday noted that “all politicians in Lebanon will not be able to make any initiative unless they rise above their private interests that are being fulfilled at the expense of public welfare and the state’s treasury.” “We urge the officials of the Lebanese state — in parliament, […]

by Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: All eyes will be on Lebanon’s during the Arab League summit
in Aqaba Jordan this week. Its positions will be closely observed by
member states, particularly Saudi Arabia which has been displeased with
several statements made by pro-Iranian Lebanese politicians, including
the president, Michel Aoun, as of late. At an emergency foreign
ministers meeting last year, Lebanese Foreign Minister Jibran Bassil,
refused to condemn attacks on Saudi missions in Iran in early 2016,
which sparked a massive diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and
Lebanon. In response, Saudi Arabia stopped critical military aid
to the Lebanese army and banned its citizens from travelling to Lebanon,
in a severe blow to Lebanon’s tourism industry. Aoun, who became
president in late 2016, travelled to Riyadh on his first official trip,
hoping to patch things up with Lebanon’s traditional ally. However,
a planned follow-up visit by Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz to
Lebanon was cancelled after Aoun praised Hezbollah and backed the
militia’s right to bear arms alongside the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)
during an interview with Egyptian TV.

On
Wednesday, Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, met Egyptian President
Abdul Fattah Al Sissi in Cairo to close ranks with the most populous
Sunni power in the Arab world, ahead of the summit. Hariri will accompany Aoun during the summit, in an unprecedented move interpreted as trying to cushion any potential fallout. Hariri,
whose father Rafik Hariri was assassinated allegedly in a
Syrian-Hezbollah coordinated plot in 2005, wanted to coordinate
Lebanon’s positions with Egypt to avoid any potential embarrassing
incidents.

by Al Monitor – Florence Massena

Ski and Swim the Same Day, an event held March 19 co-sponsored by the Laqlouq ski resort and MARCH, a nongovernmental organization, invited the adventurous for some skiing in the morning and then a trip to the beach at Batroun, in northern Lebanon. It is only one of the many types of activities offered by ski resorts as well as the Lebanese Ski Federation
(FLS) to attract locals and tourists to Lebanon’s slopes. Lebanon’s ski
season is expected to close at the end of this month, but other
activities continue year-round at ski resorts. “All the ski resorts had to develop extra activities to attract
people during the rest of the year, because when spring comes, people
only think about going to the beach,”
Freddy Kairouz, FLS general secretary told Al-Monitor. “At FLS, we
focus on bringing athletes from all over the world to participate in
international competition for skiing, snowboarding and cross-country,
but also to enjoy the nightlife, visit Lebanon and of course taste the
food.”

Kairouz has developed activities to attract people who are not particularly into skiing, such as Alaska Night,
a party in the snow last held March 18 in the Bsharri ski resort that
included igloos for the children. Kairouz is also the mayor of Bsharri, a
northern village where Lebanon’s first school for skiing
was established in the 1930s by the French army at the Cedars, which
today, along with the resort there, is managed by the municipality. Skiing in Lebanon rose in popularity in the 1950s, when the first ski lift was installed at the Cedars, and in the 1960s, with the opening of the Mzaar ski resort.
Snow-related recreation came to a halt during the civil war (1975-1990)
because the resorts closed, but the facilities have since developed and
upgraded their equipment to offer optimal service to skiers.

“We now have 15 chairlifts and five ski lifts on around 100 square
kilometers [39 square miles] of groomed and marked trails and slopes,
and all our equipment is from Europe,” Christian Rizk, the director of
the Mzaar ski resort, told Al-Monitor. “We follow French security norms
and have an expert from the research firm ERIC [involved in cable transportation engineering] coming from France every year to give us an operating certificate.”