BEIRUT: Amos Hochstein, the US State Department’s senior advisor for energy security, will visit Lebanon June 13-14 to discuss the country’s energy crisis and underscore Washington’s hope that Lebanon and Israel can reach a decision delimiting their maritime boundary.

The State Department said in a statement that it “welcomes the consultative and open spirit of the parties to reach a final decision, which has the potential to yield greater stability, security, and prosperity for both Lebanon and Israel, as well as for the region.”

ANKARA: Following Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ address to the US Congress last month, long-running tensions between Turkey and Greece are flaring up again.

As both countries simultaneously face an economic downturn with severe inflation, and as they near their election terms in 2023, experts say that tension between them is being increasingly used for domestic purposes.

TUNIS: A coalition of 10 rights groups Friday condemned a decree by Tunisian President Kais Saied firing scores of judges, describing it as a “deep blow to judicial independence.”
The June 1 presidential decree saw Saied award himself the power to fire judges, and he duly sacked 57 of them, further cementing a power grab that began in July last year when he dismissed the government and suspended an elected parliament.

BEIRUT: There have been 22,111 Israeli violations of Lebanon’s airspace since 2007, according to a database that wants to show the effects of “systematic and prolonged exposure to the roar of these military planes in the airspace, and their impact on the physical and psychological life of those who have had to withstand constant air pressure” from above.

Airpressure.info compiled the database to make all Israeli air violations visible.

BEIRUT: One of Lebanon’s most notorious drug barons used his wife as a “human shield” to evade capture by Lebanese troops during a series of military raids in Baalbeck, northeast of Beirut.

Troops targeting Ali Munther Zeaiter, known in the drug world as Abu Salleh, destroyed drug-manufacturing labs and seized military-grade weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, during a week-long military operation centered on the Al-Sharawneh neighborhood at the northern entrance to the city.