BEIRUT: The US has launched a $20 million fund to help Lebanese businesses install solar energy systems as owners struggle to stay afloat amid the collapse of the country’s electricity sector.

US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea launched the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund on Friday, saying it will help local businesses reduce operating costs, sustain their operations and maintain employment levels.

“This fund will support the purchase and installation of solar power generation systems for at least 25 businesses,” she said.

RAMALLAH: Two teenagers from Tel Aviv have been arrested for firebombing the Sayedna Ali Mosque in Herzliya in January.
Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet said on Friday that Liad Ohana, 19, and a 16-year-old boy, who was not named, had been indicted on multiple charges, including committing terrorist acts, arson and the use of weapons for terrorist purposes.
It said the pair had also initially planned to lynch an Arab citizen, “but they abandoned the idea and decided to attack a mosque.”

WASHINGTON: From an empowered Iran and eroded US influence to the cost of keeping US troops in Iraq and Syria to combat Islamic State fighters, the United States still contends with the consequences of invading Iraq 20 years ago, current and former officials say.
Then-US President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to oust Saddam Hussein by force, the way limited US troop numbers enabled ethnic strife and the eventual 2011 US pullout have all greatly complicated US policy in the Middle East, they said.

WASHINGTON: The Senate took a first step Thursday toward repealing two measures that give open-ended approval for military action in Iraq, pushing to end that authority as the United States marks the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War.
Senators voted 68-27 to move forward on legislation that would repeal the 2002 measure that greenlighted that March 2003 invasion of Iraq and a 1991 measure that sanctioned the US-led Gulf War to expel Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. Nineteen Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the measure.

DUBAI: The UAE was on a collision course with Israel on Thursday over a Palestinian town torched during a rampage by radical Jewish settlers.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the UAE president, pledged $3 million for the reconstruction of Huwara in the occupied West Bank, days after a minister in Israel’s new far-right extremist government said the town should be destroyed.