أرشيف الأخبار

BEIRUT: The United States has pledged $30 million to the rebuilding of a Palestinian refugee camp destroyed in a battle between Islamists and the Lebanese army, a UN refugee agency said this week. “The amount of $25 million (18 million euros) will be allocated toward the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared camp and $5 million toward the Relief and Early Recovery Appeal,” said the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The grant raises to $71.8 million the amount donated by the US to the north Lebanon camp, which was almost completely destroyed in a 15-week battle between the army and an Al-Qaeda inspired militant group in 2007.

CARACAS: Venezuela rejected on Tuesday a US government report that said it was not cooperating fully in the war on drug trafficking, saying such accusations had to stop if bilateral relations were to improve. The country’s Foreign Ministry also rejected allegations made by a senior Israeli diplomat that Venezuela harbored cells of Hizbullah.

Dorit Shavit, the head of Latin America and Caribbean affairs at the Israeli foreign ministry, told Colombian newspaper El Tiempo that the presence of Hizbullah had in­creased in recent years in Ve­nezuela’s northwestern Guajira region and on the Caribbean island of Margarita.

Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry called the statement absurd.

SYRIA: Civil rights groups in Syria have backed an amendment to the law on so-called “honor crimes,” but said the punishment for such murders of women by their male relatives was still not severe enough. A new presidential decree earlier this month imposed a minimum sentence of two years in prison for men who kill their female relatives for engaging in extra-marital sex.

The law previously exempted honor crimes from prosecution because the man was “saving the family’s honor.”

The amendment abolished that legal justification for murder, said Amal Younes, a lawyer and a member of the Syrian Women’s Union, a leading non-governmental organization for the defense of women rights.

The new legislation also abolishes “suspicion” as a justification for killing, she said.

BEIRUT: Rights activists gathered on Wednesday to remind the incoming Lebanese government of its obligation to formulate a nationality law that does not discriminate against women. At a conference called by The National Committee to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination against Women, activists launched what they said would be the third and most sustained campaign to demand an amendment to the inequitable law.

Under the current legislation, written in 1925, only Lebanese men married to non-Lebanese are entitled to pass on their nationality to their wives and children. Viewed as foreigners by the authorities, the families of Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese must pay regular residency permit fees and often face difficulties finding work, affordable education and health care.

CAIRO: Karim borrowed money to expand his bakery. When the money ran out, and facing the prospect of imprisonment if unable to repay his debts, the 36-year-old Egyptian baker sold his kidney. His case, which is among hundreds documented by the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions (COFS), a Washington-based NGO working to end organ trafficking, reveals an alarming trend: poverty is driving Egyptians to sell their organs.

Experts say the absence of legislation regulating human organ transplants has made Egypt an international “hotspot” for kidney trafficking. Up to 95 percent of the 3,000 legal kidney transplants per year, and hundreds of illegal ones, involve a commercial transaction.

BEIRUT: Arab countries are in dire need of creating four million job opportunities every five years to keep up with the fast pace of population growth in the Middle East and North Africa, Ayman Haddad, managing partner of Heidrick and Struggles, said Tuesday, citing a study done by the World Bank.

“The global financial crisis had negative repercussions on the Lebanese emigrant youths and many of them have lost their jobs in the United States and Europe,” said Haddad.

He added that most of the Lebanese usually pursue their careers in professions that are subject to high demand in the Arab world such as architecture, medicine, information technology, media, money and banking and many others.

BEIRUT: The Arab world must tackle the global financial crisis, make provisions against climate change and seek to end regional occupation before the area can enjoy lasting stability, according to a new landmark security report. “The Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries” was unveiled in Beirut on Tuesday, entreating Arab leaders to confront the economic and social crises which risk overrunning the region.

Speaking at report’s launch, in Beirut’s Grand Serail, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora focused on the issue of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, calling for “an end to occupation” and “[preparations] for the appropriate conditions for a fair and comprehensive solution to the sufferings of the Palestinian people.”

BYBLOS: “Finally Jethro Tull in Lebanon,” read one flapping banner, “… We’ve been waiting 35 years.” For the legendary band’s first performance in the Middle East, the waterfront venue of the Byblos International Festival was literally swarming with legions of fans. Hippies, burly motorcyclists, the young and the prim – those who turned up for Sunday’s concert were as colorfully varied as the music they came to enjoy. As the assembled reluctantly took their seats – incongruous at a rock concert – the air was heavy with impatient excitement. Steadily, the sound of thumping feet grew to a maddening roar. The pied pipers of Byblos had arrived.

What international association brings together 18 countries straddling three continents thousands of miles apart, united solely by their sharing of a common body of water?

That is a quiz question likely to stump the most devoted aficionado of global politics. It’s the Indian Ocean Rim Countries’ Association for Regional Cooperation, blessed with the unwieldy acronym IOR-ARC, perhaps the most extraordinary international grouping you’ve never heard of.

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, which marked its fifth anniversary in office on July 14, has revitalized Egypt’s sluggish economic reform process, exchanged external finance for internal revenue, and eased restrictions on trade. Yet Nazif’s policies have exacerbated social inequalities and tied some reform progress to United States economic aid, which now faces steep cuts. The global economic crisis has further increased resistance to reform and encouraged the government to engage in palliative spending at the expense of development. Under these conditions, the sustainability of Egypt’s reform process is in doubt.