BEIRUT: Escalating political confusion sent the Lebanese pound plummeting to a new low on the black market, trading at 90,000 pounds to the dollar on Wednesday.
The latest plunge in the local currency means the exchange rate is more than 60 times lower than the base rate of 1,500 LBP/USD that has been in place for the past three years.
Amid warnings of looming economic chaos, the Finance Ministry set the price of the customs dollar at 45,000 Lebanese pounds so the state treasury could pay public sector salaries.

IDLIB: Damage from last month’s Turkiye-Syria earthquake is exerting new pressure on northwestern Syria’s already strained education sector.
Harem, a city in Idlib, an opposition-held territory, was hit particularly badly by the quake.
Mohamed Al-Khatib is a quake survivor and local headteacher at Harem Rural School.
The three-building school he runs is one of the many educational facilities that the quake damaged and rendered unusable.

BAGHDAD: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Iraq for his first visit in six years Tuesday in a show of “solidarity” after a drawn-out political crisis in the country.
Guterres said he wanted to demonstrate “solidarity with the people and the democratic institutions of Iraq and a solidarity that means that the United Nations is totally committed to support the consolidation of the institutions in this country.”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s controversial far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Tuesday police had arrested a Palestinian who planned to assassinate him.
A statement from his office said the man, who was not identified, was arrested several weeks ago.
“The Arab suspect, a Jerusalem resident, who was planning to assassinate National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was arrested a few weeks ago by police in cooperation with Shin Bet, the internal security service,” the statement said.

SAN JUAN: Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on Trinidad & Tobago to repatriate more than 90 of its citizens who have been detained as Daesh suspects and family members in war-torn Syria, noting that at least 56 of them are children.

Some of them were whisked to Syria as children by relatives, while others said they erroneously thought they were going to visit a Muslim utopia.

“These children never chose to live under Daesh, yet they are suffering because of their parents’ decisions,” said Jo Becker, the Human Rights Watch child advocacy director.