Lebanon

03 Apr 2021; MEMO: Antoine Constantine, advisor to Michel Aoun, has announced that the president is preparing for a new initiative that will present great opportunities to the Lebanese people.

Constantine confirmed in a tweet that President Aoun is set to establish a joint economic market.

02 Apr 2021; MEMO: Lebanon witnesses a suicide case every 60 hours, a new study revealed, Anadolu reports.

Based on suicide statistics from the Lebanese Internal Security Forces between January 2008 and December 2018, the study prepared by seven therapists in Lebanon was published late last month in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry.

The statistics showed that security forces reported 1,366 cases, an average of 2.4 cases per 100,000 people over 11 years.

01 Apr 2021; MEMO: Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has asked why the UN-sponsored talks between Lebanon and Israel on maritime border demarcation around potentially oil- and gas-rich areas have stopped.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, yesterday warned that the country will sink like the Titanic if a government is not formed soon.

"The whole country is in danger, the whole country is the Titanic," Berri said during a parliament session held to approve an emergency fund for electricity.

"It's time we all woke up because in the end, if the ship sinks, there'll be no one left," he added.

Last Monday, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun announced that they had failed to reach an agreement on the formation of a cabinet.

30 Mar 2021; MEMO: Lebanese President Michel Aoun has blamed Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri for the latter's failure to form a new government, Rai Al Youm online newspaper reported yesterday.

"[Hariri] was asleep and then woke up with new rules that ignore all previous rules we used to follow when we form governments," Aoun said in a press conference.

29 Mar 2021; MEMO: Lebanese group Hezbollah has provided military training to 220 pro-Assad regime Shabiha militants in Qamishli, northeastern Syria, according to local sources, Anadolu Agency reports.

A three-week training camp was organised by two Hezbollah commanders codenamed al-Hajj Mahdi and al-Hajj Salih, said the sources on the ground.

29 Mar 2021; MEMO: Four Syrian refugees have apparently frozen to death in a mountainous area in eastern Lebanon while trying to cross the border illegally to go back to Syria. While the two women and two children died, eight others were rescued by Lebanese civil defence officers.

BEIRUT (AP) — At age 19, Fatima al-Omar is at her wits’ end. In the last year alone, she lost her home to fighting in Syria’s last rebel-held enclave and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She became the sole breadwinner for her mother, three siblings and grandmother as they moved around between shelters.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s largest Christian bloc, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), warned prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri on Saturday against sidelining President Michel Aoun and other parliamentary blocs in talks over cabinet formation.

Hariri and Aoun have been at loggerheads over the formation of a cabinet for months, dashing hopes of a reversal of Lebanon’s deepening financial meltdown.

26 Mar 2021; MEMO: Lebanon's outgoing Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, said today that experts had found "dangerous chemicals" at a warehouse at the Zahrani oil installations in the south, Reuters reported.