Lebanon

BEIRUT, Apr 25 (NNN-NNA) – Lebanese Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, accused the central bank’s governor of adopting a “mysterious” approach in dealing with the U.S. dollar crisis in the country.

“The behaviour of the central bank’s governor is very mysterious and it is causing further deterioration in the country, by exacerbating the social disaster,” Diab said, in a televised speech, following a cabinet meeting.

24 April 2020; MEMO: Dozens of demonstrators broke coronavirus lockdown orders last night to protest in front of the Lebanese Central Bank in Beirut, after the country’s currency, the Lira, went into freefall.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Ziad Abdallah has watched with growing alarm as Lebanon’s financial meltdown has threatened the savings he spent 25 years building up in his dollar account.

First his Lebanese bank reduced dollar withdrawals, then it stopped them entirely. Now the central bank has issued rules saying any withdrawals must be in the collapsing Lebanese pound at a rate likely to mean he will face a loss.

BEIRUT, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese protesters resumed on Wednesday their demonstrations all over the country against the cabinet's policies amid a meeting for the parliament to approve draft laws, the National News Agency reported.

Protesters drove their cars while holding Lebanese flags and vowing to resume their nationwide protests given the dire economic circumstances and the inability of the government to adopt policies that would reduce poverty in the country.

BEIRUT (AP) — A Palestinian woman from Syria has become the first refugee living in a camp in Lebanon to test positive for the coronavirus, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday. It triggered a spate of testing to determine whether other residents have been infected.

The agency, UNRWA, said the woman resided in the only Palestinian camp in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa region. It said all necessary measures had been taken and the patient was transferred to the government-run Rafik Hariri Hospital in Beirut.

15 April 2020; MEMO: Lebanese Army soldiers faced off with Israeli troops yesterday, after reports the latter had crossed the Blue Line – the UN demarcated border between the two countries.

Local media reported that Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon while carrying out work on the concrete wall on their side of the border, near the southern Lebanese village of Marjayoun.

BEIRUT, Apr 12 (NNN-NNA) – A Middle East Airlines flight, coming from the State of Kuwait, with 123 Lebanese citizens on board, accompanied by a medical team, affiliated to the Ministry of Public Health, and members of the Lebanese Public Security, landed at Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, close to 4:00 p.m. yesterday.

BEIRUT, Apr 9 (NNN-NNA) – Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, said that, Lebanon will not accept that the United Nations remains silent, on repeated Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

“The United Nations should expose this behaviour publicly by all means,” Diab said, during his meeting with Stefano Del Col, head of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), at the Grand Serail.

Diab insisted that the exchange of messages about these violations was not sufficient to put an end to Israel’s violations.

05 April 2020; MEMO: A prominent Hezbollah commander, Muhammad Ali Yunis, was killed by unknown gunmen on Sunday morning in southern Lebanon, Iranian and Lebanese media reported.

The Iranian semi-official Fars news agency reported that the slain commander was “responsible for tracking spies and collaborators”.

It also said that so far there is “no additional information on how he was killed”.

BEIRUT, Apr 5 (NNN-NNA) – The United Nations Press Office in Beirut, distributed an article by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, the English version of which was published in “The Guardian” newspaper, as follows: