The Arab American News
Author's Posts
Angry relatives of Beirut blast victims protest probe delays
September 29th, 20210 BEIRUT — Hundreds of relatives of victims of last year's Beirut port explosion, some chanting and some silent, took to the streets on Wednesday, angry that an investigation into the disaster had been delayed for the second time this year. Some carried miniature figures of people on death row with signs below reading "the end for...
Biden to get COVID-19 booster on Monday as additional doses roll out
September 27th, 20210 WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Biden will receive a COVID-19 booster shot on Monday, the White House said days after his administration green-lighted a third shot of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine in certain populations. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week backed an additional dose of the Pfizer...
Lebanon at risk of complete blackout by end of the month
September 23rd, 20210 BEIRUT — Lebanon's state electricity company said on Thursday it risked a total blackout across the country by the end of September as its fuel oil reserves dwindle. Lebanon, in the throes of one of the worst economic meltdowns of modern history, has been plagued by worsening fuel shortages for the past few months with most...
Netanyahu suggests on Facebook that Biden fell asleep meeting new Israeli PM
September 20th, 20210 ISRAEL — Israel's former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in a Facebook video posted on Sunday that President Biden had fallen asleep when meeting the new Israeli leader, Naftali Bennett, last month. A Reuters fact check previously debunked the idea that Biden dozed off, after social media users shared a video clip of...
Hezbollah brings Iranian fuel into Lebanon, checks U.S. sanctions with cheers from locals
September 16th, 20210 Hezbollah began bringing Iranian fuel into Lebanon via Syria on Thursday, a move the group says should ease a crippling energy crisis but which opponents say risks provoking U.S. sanctions. Dozens of trucks carrying Iranian fuel oil entered northeastern Lebanon near the village of al-Ain, where Hezbollah's yellow flag fluttered from...
Yemeni woman gives her time and wages to treat children malnourished by war
September 15th, 20210 HAJJAH — In the poor village of Jarb in northern Yemen, Ashwaq Mahmoud gives her time and spare cash to provide basic health services that people there could not otherwise reach or afford. The 23-year-old Mahmoud was trained by the U.N.'s children's agency UNICEF as a community health worker after a village elder noticed her...
Israeli prime minister visits Egypt in first official trip in a decade
September 13th, 20210 CAIRO — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday for talks on Israeli-Palestinian relations and bilateral issues, Egypt's presidency said, in the first official trip by an Israeli head of government to Egypt in a decade. Bennett, the head of a far-right party who took office...
Lebanon agrees new government to tackle economic collapse
September 10th, 20210 BEIRUT - Lebanese leaders agreed a new government led by Sunni Muslim tycoon Najib Mikati on Friday after a year of feuding over cabinet seats that has exacerbated a devastating economic collapse, opening the way to a resumption of talks with the IMF. The breakthrough followed a flurry of contacts with France, which has led efforts to...
Muslim Americans 20 years later
September 10th, 20210 — This article by Abdul El-Sayed originally appeared in the newsletter The Incision. It has been edited for style. Subscribe to The Incision here: incision.substack.com Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives on that fateful day. We...
Inflationary pressures force Lebanese to make tough choices
September 9th, 20210 BEIRUT — Ibrahim Jaber was laid off when the fast food restaurant where he worked as a chef in Beirut shut down. Unable to find another job, he had to take his daughter out of school to put food on the table at home. He is one of many Lebanese who have found themselves facing staggering inflation just as their employers, also hit...
Lebanese state’s permission not sought for Iranian fuel, minister says
September 1st, 20210 BEIRUT — The Lebanese government has received no request for fuel to be imported from Iran, the caretaker energy minister said on Wednesday, appearing to confirm that the Shi'a group Hezbollah has bypassed the state with a move to import Iranian fuel. Hezbollah, a heavily armed group founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982,...
Yemen gets first batch of J&J COVID-19 vaccines
August 30th, 20210 ADEN — Yemen received its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) on Sunday, roughly 151,000 doses, the health ministry said. The desperately poor country, where the health infrastructure has been devastated by six years of war, received 360,000 doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine in March through...
War-hawking talking heads: Why do we keep hearing from the bums who got us into this mess in the first place?
August 27th, 20210 — This article by Abdul El-Sayed originally appeared in the newsletter The Incision. It has been edited for style. Subscribe to The Incision here: incision.substack.com Back in June, well before any of us knew the sordid 20-year American adventure in Afghanistan would come to a crashing end just a few months later, I was asked to...
Israel’s new leader to present Iran plan in delayed White House visit
August 25th, 20210 WASHINGTON, D.C. — Overshadowed by events in Afghanistan, the first White House meeting between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was postponed until Friday. The Israeli leader is expected to push Biden to harden his approach to Iran, with few prospects their talks will lead to renewed movement on peace talks...
HPS superintendent: Prepare your child for back-to-school success
August 24th, 20210 Waving summer goodbye is bittersweet, but the new school year is right around the corner and your schools are eager to welcome students back. You may find your family is already in back-to-school-mode, or maybe your children are trying to make summer last as long as possible. Either way, preparing for the school year can be simple. As......
U.S. FDA grants full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
August 23rd, 20210 On Monday, the U.S. drug regulator granted full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech SE COVID-19 vaccine that had earned emergency-use authorization in December, making it the first to secure such U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) validation as health authorities struggle to win over vaccine skeptics. The FDA approved the two-dose...
Taliban urges Afghan unity as protests spread to Kabul
August 20th, 20210 The Taliban called on Afghanistan's imams to urge unity when they hold their first Friday prayers since the Islamist group seized control of the country, as protests against the takeover spread to more cities on Thursday, including the capital Kabul. Several people were killed when Taliban militants fired on a crowd in the eastern......
Afghanistan: Contours of a catastrophe
August 17th, 20210 — This article by Abdul El-Sayed originally appeared in the newsletter The Incision. It has been edited for style. Subscribe to The Incision here: incision.substack.com On Sunday, our wayward 20-year war effort in Afghanistan suffered its final death blow. The Taliban rode the U.S.-manufactured Humvees captured from Afghan...
Rush on Kabul airport as Afghans flee Taliban takeover
August 16th, 20210 KABUL — Afghans rushed onto the tarmac of the capital’s airport on Monday as thousands tried to flee the country after the Taliban seized power with stunning speed. Some clung to the side of a U.S. military transport plane before takeoff, in a widely shared video that captured the sense of desperation as America’s 20-year war...
CIA director Burns holds talks in Israel, with focus on Iran
August 12th, 20210 JERUSALEM — U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns held talks in Israel on Wednesday with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, with Iran high on their agenda, an Israeli statement said. Regional tensions have risen over an attack on July 29 on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman that Israel, the U.S. and...
Lebanon’s Aoun shields patriarch after he urged halt to rockets
August 10th, 20210 BEIRUT — On Tuesday, President Michel Aoun condemned criticism of Lebanon's Christian Maronite patriarch after he expressed opposition to the Iran-backed Shi'a group Hezbollah, warning that insults must be avoided to safeguard national unity. Following a cross-border salvo between Israel and Hezbollah, Patriarch Bechara Boutros......
Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel trade cross-border fire amid Iran tensions
August 6th, 20210 The Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah fired barrages of rockets towards Israeli forces on Friday, drawing fire from Israel into south Lebanon, in a third day of cross-border salvoes amid wider regional tensions with Iran. Suggesting its attack was calibrated to avoid further escalation, Hezbollah said it had targeted open ground...
Israeli defense minister threatens Iran with military action, airstrikes launched into Lebanon
August 5th, 20210 Israel’s defense minister warned Thursday that his country is prepared to strike Iran, issuing the threat against the Islamic Republic after a fatal drone strike on a oil tanker at sea that his nation blamed on Tehran. The comments by Benny Gantz come as Israel lobbies countries for action at the U.N. over last week’s attack on......
HRW report: Some officials saw risk of Beirut blast, did not act
August 3rd, 20210 BEIRUT — A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday concluded there was strong evidence to suggest some Lebanese officials knew about and tacitly accepted the lethal risks posed by ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut port before the fatal blast there on Aug. 4 last year. HRW called for a U.N. investigation into the...
FBI probe shows amount of chemicals in Beirut blast was a fraction of original shipment
August 1st, 20210 BEIRUT — The amount of ammonium nitrate that blew up at Beirut port last year was one fifth of the shipment unloaded there in 2013, the FBI concluded after the blast, adding to suspicions that much of the cargo had gone missing. As the first anniversary approaches on Aug. 4, major questions remain unanswered, including how a huge......
