Reuters – DUBAI: A United Arab Emirates court sentenced two Lebanese
nationals and a Lebanese-Canadian citizen to six months in jail
followed by expulsion for setting up a group affiliated to the Lebanese
Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, local media said on Monday.

• Pamela Engel
  

As a US-led coalition hammers ISIS’s oil infrastructure and other
financial institutions in the Middle East, the terrorist group has cut
salaries and infighting has broken out within the rank and file and
senior leadership.

Reports of infighting within ISIS — aka the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh — aren’t new, but increased financial and territorial losses might be worsening the stress fractures that are splintering the group. The Washington Post reported on Monday
that ISIS is now facing an “unprecedented cash crunch” as the coalition
ramps up strikes on its sources of wealth. Strikes have been hitting
oil refineries and tankers as well as banks and buildings that hold hard
cash.

by Elizabeth Dias
@elizabethjdias

Sept. 11, 2014

While the nation watched President Obama primetime address the threat
of ISIS Wednesday night, something else was happening in Washington:
Senator Ted Cruz was getting booed off the stage of a Christian event.

Cruz is often considered a rising darling of the American Christian
right. He speaks at evangelical gatherings in the country, talks to
groups of conservative pastors and headlines events with the Family
Research Council. But Wednesday night, his Christian audience was
largely Eastern and Arab. The brand of conservative, American
evangelicalism that Cruz often champions—one that often aligns itself
with the state of Israel’s interests—did not sit well with everyone in
attendance.

Cruz was keynoting a gala for In Defense of Christians (IDC), an
advocacy and awareness group that aims to bring the U.S.’s attention to
the plight of ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, and to
protect the rights of other religious minority groups in the region.
This week, IDC is hosting a three-day Summit, a conference bringing
together a range of Middle Eastern Christians—Orthodox, Catholic,
Coptic, Syriac, Lebanese, Assyrian, to name a few—to foster a new sense
of unity in the midst of a politically fraught season. Most of the
panels at the summit are of a religious nature, but a handful of
political leaders are slated gave remarks as well, including Senator Rob
Portman (R-OH). Former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was
Wednesday’s gala’s master of ceremonies, but Cruz was tapped to give a
keynote.

hoteliermiddleeast.com

Hotel owners in Lebanon are seeking to attract new guests
from Jordan as a slow tourism season impacts the country’s hospitality
sector. The Lebanese Syndicate of Hotel Owners secretary-general Wadih Kanaan
said that a delegation from Lebanese hotels will head to Jordan in a
bid to encourage Jordanians to visit the country, the Central News
Agency reports.

He said that the delegation would try to persuade Jordanian officials
to reduce the airport tax claiming that it is too high and is
discouraging visitors from travelling to Lebanon.

An employee walks on newspapers after protesters attacked the office of
Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al Awsat in Beirut, Lebanon, April 1, 2016.

Gulfnews Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer Following tensions that arose after a trained group of
rioters stormed Al Sharq Al Awsat’s Beirut offices — to protest a
cartoon deemed insulting to Lebanon — fresh threats against the Saudi
ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri, prompted the chancellery to adopt
new security measures.

According to the generally well-informed
Al Nahar daily, extra measures were adopted to what are strictly
enforced access limitations on Bliss Street, near the American
University of Beirut. Imposing stone barriers that are manned by the
Internal Security Forces prevent any vehicle from approaching the
embassy building, and visitors are screened via airport-style scanners,
before they can gain access to inner grounds. A large vacant lot next to
the embassy, a former parking lot, is permanently closed to prevent
potential car bombings.

BEIRUT (AP) — Beirut-based employees of the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya
channel said the station has decided to shut down its Lebanon operation
amid tensions between Riyadh and Beirut.

The channels’ Beirut correspondent Adnan Ghamloush said the decision
to shut down “for security reasons” was communicated to the staff on
Friday through a lawyer, and effectively puts 27 employees out of work. He declined to give other details and the nature of the security threat remained unclear.

Al Arabiya, which is affiliated with the MBC group, provoked protests
by supporters of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in February
after the channel broadcast a comedy skit mocking the Hezbollah leader.

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO — Brazilian prosecutors on Thursday charged Joseph Safra,
the world’s richest banker, in connection with an alleged scheme to pay
bribes to government officials in return for waiving tax debts.In a statement, prosecutors said Safra had knowledge of a 2014 plan by executives at his Banco Safra SA
to pay 15.3 million reais ($4.2 million) in bribes to federal tax
auditors. The accusation is based on tapped phone calls between Banco Safra executive João Inácio Puga and tax officials, the statement added.

Safra, who alongside his family owns Banco Safra SA and a number of private-banking institutions including Switzerland’s J Safra Sarasin,
was not directly involved in the negotiations on the bribery plan, the
statement noted. Still, the conversations showed that Puga reported to Safra on the bribery talks, prosecutors said.