Years of adversities in Lebanon have only taught us that our governments are never capable of providing help to the unfortunate people. They never have a nation-wide plan to rescue the needy families, some remote areas always end up being disregarded, and whenever they actually start taking action it always comes too late for the people. On the other hand, we are blessed to have a number of really good NGOs who consistently A very good example is the current crisis we are currently going through in Lebanon due to the bad economic situation and coronavirus pandemic. People are losing their pur ..read more

Back in July when the parliament was discussing the budget for the year 2019, not a lot of people probably focused much on the lawmakers’ speeches since most of them actually criticized it, but we were all amused by what MP Salim Saade had to say about falsifying our deficit in order to get the CEDRE funds “They [CEDRE donors] know that we are lying to them, and we know that they know that we are lying to them!”. However, his joke was in fact a very small part of a thorough explanation for everything that has led to the economic and financial crisis that we are currently going through. Back i ..read more

Beirut’s Court of First Instance, headed by Judge Zulfa Al-Hassan, issued a temporary decision today obliging Alfa and Touch to issue their bills and price all their services (including recharge cards) for the next three months in Lebanese Lira according to the official dollar exchange rate. This should basically make subscribers’ lives easier until February 2020, and regulate the price of recharge cards since some dealers were overcharging people by selling the cards at higher exchange rates (1,600 and 1700 instead of 1500). It is a good step indeed, but the best solution in my opinion is to ..read more

As we go through turbulent times in Lebanon, Al Ahed Football Club became the first Lebanese club to claim the AFC cup after winning 1-0 over DPR Korea’s 4.25 (April 25) club in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. I personally didn’t watch the game and was following the updates online, but I found the highlights on the AFC website here. Al Ahed missed several chances before Issa Yakobo scored the winner in the 74th minute. The fact that Korea’s April 25 club is backed by the North Korean army while Al Ahed is linked to Hezbollah, of course made it interesting enough for some international websites/newspa ..read more

For over a month now we have witnessing a dollar shortage in Lebanon which caused two parallel markets to be established for the currency. The first market is the one regulated by the central bank where financial institutions are supposed to deal by the ~1,500L.L rate, while the other is controlled by money changers where the rate changes from day to day and follows the supply and demand principle. And as banks decrease their supply of dollars to the market, their clients feel obliged to turn to money changers who have been imposing a rate as high as 1,750 or 1,800L.L sometimes (20% differenc ..read more

I admit I have never participated in a demonstration prior to the October 17th uprising. I didn’t think any of the political movements represent me in 2005, and I didn’t believe the civil society was capable of bringing real change with the 2015-16 protests. This however all changed two weeks ago when I decided to join the masses in Riad El Solh and The Martyrs’ Square to protest against the whole ruling class in Lebanon after watching people from all social levels and religions united against the politicians. For once, it felt like people were liberated from their politicians especially in s ..read more

Minister of Telecommunication Mohamed Choucair announced today that he is considering cancelling the 60 free minutes of local talk-time that postpaid subscriber get every month as part of setting the government budget for 2019. Minister Choucair made that suggestion based on his own assumption that postpaid subscriber are wealthy people who can afford to pay additional fees on their bills. I’m not making that up as he really explained it to LBCI’s reporter..! Noting that the additional money generated from that move should make up for the decrease in revenue that Touch and Alfa have reported ..read more

Several news websites reported last week that a new decision (number 1/247) was issued by the Minister of Transport that aims to organize the operation of Taxi cabs at the airport, an urged taxi drivers to abide with it as of the first of April. No details were provided about that decision and the ministry website didn’t have any information, so it all sounded vague. A few days later I started hearing about people arriving to Beirut Airport not being able to meet their designated drivers at the exit and I just made sure yesterday it was because of that decision. A friend of mine arrived last ..read more

The Ministry of Culture is organizing the 6th edition of La Nuit des Musées this Saturday April 6th. And this year, 14 museums around Lebanon will be open for free to the public starting 5:00PM until late at night. Free shuttles will be available at LibanPark parking in the Mathaf area in Beirut for people wish to visit the museums in the north and south, but reservations are mandatory through Virgin Ticketing box office to secure your place. I highly recommend you use public transportation to visit the participating museums in Beirut by the way because it tends to get very crowded aroun ..read more

Business News announced today that Cascada Mall in Bekaa will soon transform into a Chinese trading hub called “Chinatown” that will serve the markets in Lebanon and the neighboring countries. The hub will be similar to Dubai’s Dragon Mart which is massive mall full of low cost Chinese products and good bargains (think of it like the offline version of Ali Express). I once went to it there and it is so big that you can literally waste a whole day moving from one shop to another in it. Chinatown will not be that big though as the premises stretch over 60,000m2 but the area should double in the ..read more