Coca-Cola fizzles out in Lebanon with economic downturn

Coca-Cola fans could opt to shift their loyalty to PepsiCo with the impending cessation of its rival’s operations in Lebanon. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 01 May 2020
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Coca-Cola fizzles out in Lebanon with economic downturn

  • NBC, the beverage maker’s distributor in Lebanon, said the critical economic situation has forced it to make the difficult decision
  • All of Coca-Cola’s products, including Sprite, Fanta and Diet Coke would also be affected

DUBAI: Coca-Cola spirit has fizzled out in Lebanon and would be shuttering its operation on May 31 as prospects from the country’s continuous economic decline remained gloomy.
“You have all become certain that the company has been experiencing critical challenges and difficulties, yet was able to overcome some of them although it recorded an accumulated set of losses,” National Beverage Company (NBC), Aujan said in a statement.

NBC, the beverage maker’s distributor in Lebanon, said the critical economic situation has forced it to make the difficult decision. With the closure of operations, all of Coca-Cola’s products, including Sprite, Fanta and Diet Coke would also be affected.

“Due to the current deteriorating economic conditions in the country, which paralyzed the economic activity, especially the process of importing raw materials for industrialization and making bank transfers abroad,” the company said in statement.

The Lebanese government on Thursday agreed on an economic reform roadmap, paving the way for negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and other international partners and possibly free up pledges that have been pending since 2018.

Coca-Cola fans could however opt to shift their loyalty to rival PepsiCo who is keeping its operations in the country and could benefit its products such as 7-Up and Miranda with the impending cessation of Coca-Cola operations in Lebanon.


Erdogan says UNRWA to open office in Turkiye, calls for more support for agency

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Erdogan says UNRWA to open office in Turkiye, calls for more support for agency

Turkiye has called Israel’s assault on Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law
“We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said

ANKARA: The United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will open an office in Ankara, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, urging Muslim countries to give the agency more support after Israel banned it.

Israel last year banned UNRWA, saying it had employed members of Palestinian militant group Hamas who took part in the October 2023 attacks on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

Turkiye has called Israel’s assault on Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law, particularly amid worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which has been reduced to rubble with millions displaced.

Addressing foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan said opening an Ankara UNRWA office would deepen Turkiye’s support for the agency.

“We must not allow UNRWA, which plays an irreplaceable role in terms of taking care of Palestinian refugees, to be paralyzed by Israel. We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said.

A Turkish diplomatic source said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini were expected to sign an accord on the sidelines of the OIC meeting in Istanbul on establishing the office.

Turkiye has given UNRWA $10 million a year between 2023 and 2025. In 2024, it also transferred $2 million and sent another $3 million from its AFAD disaster management authority.

Israel has handed responsibility for distributing much of the aid it lets into Gaza to a new US-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates three sites in areas guarded by Israeli troops. The UN has rejected the GHF operation saying its distribution work is inadequate, dangerous and violates humanitarian impartiality principles.

Previously, aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents had been distributed mainly by UN agencies such as UNRWA with thousands of staff at hundreds of sites across the enclave.

Israel says killed three Iranian commanders in fresh wave of strikes

Updated 7 min 22 sec ago
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Israel says killed three Iranian commanders in fresh wave of strikes

  • Israel’s military said its fighter jets successfully targeted top Iranian official Saeed Izadi
  • It also announced the deaths of two other commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

JERUSALEM: Israel said Saturday it had killed three Iranian commanders in its unprecedented bombing campaign across the Islamic republic, which Foreign Minister Gideon Saar claimed had already delayed Tehran’s presumed nuclear plans by two years.

Israel’s military said its fighter jets successfully targeted top Iranian official Saeed Izadi, in charge of coordination with Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Qom south of Tehran and announced the deaths of two other commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

As Israel continued to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and military targets, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in an interview that by the country’s own assessment, it had “already delayed for at least two or three years the possibility for them to have a nuclear bomb.”

“We will do everything that we can do there in order to remove this threat,” Saar told German newspaper Bild, asserting Israel’s onslaught would continue.

Israel and Iran have traded wave after wave of devastating strikes, after Israel launched its aerial campaign on June 13, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Iran has denied.

Israel said it had attacked Iran’s Isfahan nuclear site for a second time after its air force said it had also launched salvos against missile storage and launch sites in central Iran.

The military later said it struck military infrastructure in southwest Iran.

US President Donald Trump warned on Friday that Tehran has a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible American air strikes, as Washington weighs whether to join Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss the conflict.

Top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany met Araghchi in Geneva on Friday, and urged him to resume talks with the United States that had been derailed by Israel’s attacks.

But Araghchi told NBC News after the meeting that “we’re not prepared to negotiate with them (the United States) anymore, as long as the aggression continues.”

Trump was dismissive of European diplomatic efforts, telling reporters, “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Trump also said he is unlikely to ask Israel to stop its attacks to get Iran back to the table.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do,” he said.

Any US involvement would likely feature powerful bunker-busting bombs that no other country possesses to destroy an underground uranium enrichment facility in Fordo.

A US-based NGO, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, said on Friday that based on its sources and media reports at least 657 people have been killed in Iran, including 263 civilians.

Iran’s health ministry said on Saturday at least 350 people had been killed in the Israeli strikes including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians.

Nasrin, 39, who gave only her first name, explained she had been thrown across a room in her Tehran home by an Israeli strike.

“I just hit the wall. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I woke up, I was covered in blood from head to toe,” she said as she received treatment at Hazrat Rasool hospital in the Iranian capital.

Traffic police and Fars news agency reported congestion on roads into Tehran on Saturday, indicating some inhabitants were returning to the capital.

Internet access remained highly unstable and limited in Tehran on Saturday, with slow connections and many sites still inaccessible, according to AFP journalists.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 25 people, in Israel, according to official figures.

Overnight, Iran said it targeted central Israel with drones and missiles.

Israeli rescuers said there were no casualties after an Iranian missile struck a residential building in Beit She’an.

At the site of the strike in the north of Israel, mounds of soil had been gouged from the ground and the wall of a ground-floor room destroyed.

Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate said more than 450 missiles have been fired at the country so far, along with about 400 drones.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted military sites and air force bases.

Western powers have repeatedly expressed concerns about the rapid expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, questioning in particular the country’s accelerated uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief Rafael Grossi has said that Iran is the only country without nuclear weapons to enrich uranium to 60 percent.

However, it added that there was no evidence Tehran had all the components to make a functioning nuclear warhead.

Grossi told CNN it was “pure speculation” to say how long it would take Iran to develop weapons.


GCC ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict

Updated 58 min 8 sec ago
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GCC ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict

  • The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities
  • The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point that it had struck Iran's Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake

CAIRO: Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors have expressed concerns to UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi about the safety of nuclear facilities close to their countries amid the Israeli-Iranian crisis, Qatar state news agency reported on Saturday.
The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities.
The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point on Thursday that it had struck the Russian-built Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
The potential consequences of an attack on the plant — contaminating the air and water — have long been a concern in the Gulf states.


Exiled former Tunisia leader sentenced to 22 years: reports

Updated 21 June 2025
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Exiled former Tunisia leader sentenced to 22 years: reports

TUNIS: A Tunis court has sentenced exiled former president Moncef Marzouki in absentia to 22 years in prison for offenses related to “terrorism,” Tunisian media reported on Saturday.
Four other defendants, including his former adviser Imed Daimi and former head of the national bar association Abderrazak Kilani, were also handed the same sentence late Friday.
A staunch critic of President Kais Saied who has been living in France, Marzouki had already been sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison in two separate cases, one involving “provoking disorder.”
The latest ruling came after a press conference held in Paris, during which he, along with Daimi and Kilani, sharply criticized state institutions and members of the Tunisian judiciary, reports said.
Marzouki, who served as Tunisia’s third president from 2011 to 2014, said in a statement the ruling was “surreal.”
He said it came as part of a “series of verdicts that have targeted some of Tunisia’s finest men and continue to provoke the world’s mockery.”
Tunisia emerged as the Arab world’s only democracy following the ousting of longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, after it kicked off the Arab Spring uprisings.
But since a sweeping power grab by Saied in July 2021 when he dissolved parliament and began ruling by decree, rights groups have warned of a sharp decline in Tunisian civil liberties.
In April, a mass trial saw around 40 public figures, mainly critics of the authorities, sentenced to long terms on charges including plotting against the state.
Other media figures and lawyers also critical of Saied have been prosecuted and detained under a law he enacted in 2022 to prohibit “spreading false news.”


Syrian security forces detain cousin of toppled leader Assad

Updated 21 June 2025
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Syrian security forces detain cousin of toppled leader Assad

Syria’s security forces have detained Wassim Assad, a cousin of toppled leader Bashar Assad, state news agency SANA said on Saturday.
Wassim Assad was sanctioned by the United States in 2023 for leading a paramilitary force backing Assad’s army and for trafficking drugs including the amphetamine-like drug captagon.
Bashar Assad was toppled by an Islamist-led rebel insurgency in December and fled to Moscow. Most of his family members and inner circle either fled Syria or went underground.
Syria’s new security forces have been pursuing members of the former administration — mainly those involved in the feared security branches accused of rights abuses.
Rights groups have called for a fully-fledged transitional justice process to hold them to account.