Lebanese Saints

 The US has the most ultra high net worth individuals. Credit Suisse by Rachael Levy North America can expect to mint a new billionaire every six days for the next five years. That’s according to Credit Suisse’s 2016 global wealth report, which charts the number of millionaires and billionaires around the world, and forecasts trends in […]

By Bryan Logan

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has died, his brother, Cuban
President Raul Castro, announced on state-run media. President Castro announced Fidel’s death in a
televised address. “At 10:29 in the night, the chief commander of the Cuban
revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died,” he said. “Ever onward, to victory.”

Castro had been in failing health for years, and was the subject
of death rumors for nearly as long. His cause of death was immediately unclear.

The Cuban revolutionary was born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on
August 13, 1926, in the small eastern village of Biran. His
father was a wealthy sugarcane farmer; his mother worked as a
maid to his father’s first wife. Castro received a Roman Catholic education through high school.
He later excelled as an athlete and went on to law school at the
University of Havana, where he would find an interest in
politics.

A more radical bent soon emerged, as Castro plotted and executed
several attempts at overthrowing Cuban leaders and making an
attempt at a bid for Cuba’s House of Representatives. Following a
series of offensives, he seized power in 1959 from Cuban dictator
Fulgencio Batista. He did not look back.

Fidel
Castro.

JFK Library

Though he was admired by leftists worldwide, Castro was demonized
by the US and many of its allies. Castro moved quickly to nationalize businesses across the island,
moving away from the US and toward the Soviet Union. The US
officially cut all diplomatic ties with Cuba in January 1961.

To exiles who awaited Castro’s death, the Associated Press
reported, he embodied a heavy-handed regime that jailed political
opponents, suppressed civil liberties, and wrecked the island’s
economy. After decades of political and military tumult, the tide began to
shift in Cuba’s ruling class. Cuba’s insular policies began to thaw a bit in 1998, when Pope
John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the nation. Pope
Benedict would follow more than a decade later. In 2003, Castro was confirmed as president for another five-year
term. Then in the waning years of his rule, Castro oversaw
several initiatives that led to a major crackdown on independent
journalists, dissidents and activists, and a strengthening of
ties with Venezuela. The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas was birthed from
that, in which Cuba sent health professionals to Venezuela in
return for discounted oil.

Cuban
leader Fidel Castro looks out over a 3,000 stong crowd that
screaming “Fidel, Fidel,” in a concert hall were left-wing groups
were holding a rally against the UN summit for Social Development
in Copenhagen.

Reuters/FOR
P-BASE- FILE PH0TO

By 2006, Castro handed provisional control of Cuba to his
brother, Raul, while Fidel reportedly recovered from a major
intestinal surgery. That was the first time he surrendered
control of his power in 47 years.

By Vishakha Sonawane Eleven members of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, have been arrested near Lebanon’s border with Syria, the Lebanese army said Friday. The terrorist group has claimed several blasts in the country in the past two years, killing several people. The ISIS fighters were arrested following an operation by the […]

BEIRUT –  The last public beach on
Beirut’s heavily developed seaside could soon be squeezed out by yet
another luxury resort, raising fears that residents could find
themselves living in a coastal city without much of a coast.

The fight for Ramlet al-Baida beach has emerged as a
new flashpoint between civil society activists and the entrenched
political establishment over land management and public services in
Lebanon’s capital. It follows last year’s trash crisis, in which
mountains of garbage piled up for months, and a conflict over a local
park that until recently was only open one day a week.

Activists say the Eden Rock Resort development,
greenlighted by the city’s governor in September, is the first step to
transforming the city’s last public beach into yet another exclusive
resort.

“If this is how Beirut is going to be, then tomorrow,
we’re going to be sitting in a cage,” said Nazih al-Raess, the
custodian of the beach’s public swimming zone. “The people who have
money will be able to go out to smell the breeze and the people who
don’t … will be buried at home.”

The project has rekindled debate in this intensely
stratified city over who has the right to its shrinking green spaces and
shores. Many of Beirut’s well-to-do have turned up their noses at
Ramlet al-Baida — or pinched them, as the case may be — as municipal
authorities have allowed sewage to pollute its once azure waters and
white sands.

Sharkass cuts and fastens a piece of wire to a nail, which will be fastened to the wooden cutting board to slice the soap into small bars. Almost everything in the factory is done by hand. [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera] Using this system, each piece of soap comes out in one standard size. [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera] […]

By Gulfnews

Beirut: Authorities in the Lebanese capital renamed the stretch of
the airport road that was known as Hafez Al Assad Avenue after 1991 as
President Camille Chamoun Boulevard.

A brief ceremony was held
earlier this week in the presence of Dory Chamoun, the son of the
country’s second president, along with representatives from the National
Liberal Party and the Camille Chamoun Association.

The
celebration of the reversion to the old name occurred in front of the
Monroe Hotel in Beirut where the Minister of Education, Elias Bou Saab,
delivered a short speech saying: “President Camille Chamoun inspires us
through his political work to be open to all citizens of the nation.

“The
lesson here today on the eve of Lebanon’s Independence Day is that
Lebanon is only strong through the solidarity of its people and their
rallying around their institutions, Constitution and president.”

What
was left out in the brief talk, delivered in the presence of deputy
Bahia Hariri and Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib, was the pain that many
felt when traditions were upset during the three decades-long Syrian
occupation of the country.

By Reuters

Nov 24 Lebanon’s economy is expected to
grow 1.5 to 2 percent in 2016, Central Bank Governor Riad
Salameh said in a televised speech in Beirut on Thursday, in
line with ratings agency forecasts.

Inflation in 2016 was expected to be close to zero percent,
he said, in a speech to a banking conference.

Salameh added that central bank reserves in September were
at historically high levels and that bank deposits had risen at
an annualised rate approaching five percent.

Ratings agency Fitch said in July it expected real growth in
Lebanon’s gross domestic product to remain lower than 2 percent
in 2016. Moody’s said in the same month that it expected the
economy to grow at a rate of 1.7 percent this year.

Lebanon’s economy has for years been hindered by regional
unrest, including the war in neighbouring Syria, and by its own
political crisis.

But the election of President Michel Aoun this month after a
two-and-a-half-year period without a president, and the expected
formation of a new Lebanese government with Saad al-Hariri as
prime minister, may help alleviate Lebanon’s political deadlock.