The US and Europol have assessed that Lebanon’s Hezbollah remains intent on preserving its overseas operations, the State Department said in a media note on Thursday.
The State Department, Justice Department and Europol convened the 14th meeting of the Law Enforcement Co-ordination Group on “countering Hezbollah’s terrorist and illicit activities” on July 9 and 10. Law enforcement, prosecutors and financial practitioners from approximately 30 governments from across the Middle East, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America also participated in the session.
Despite suffering setbacks over the past year in its war with Israel, the LECG assessed that the Iran-backed armed group “remains a dangerous organisation, determined to maintain its overseas footprint, with the ability to strike with little to no warning against targets around the world”.
Once regarded as Iran’s most formidable proxy, Hezbollah was dealt heavy blows in its year-long war with Israel. The Israeli military campaign eliminated the group's longtime leader and top commanders, destroyed large parts of its arsenal and infrastructure and penetrated its internal security networks.
The organisation, however, is still believed to possess medium and long-range missiles, and it continues to command a broad Shiite support base.
LECG members discussed Hezbollah’s “shaky financial state and agreed that it may seek to increase its fund-raising and procurement activities in the Western Hemisphere, Africa and other locales”, the media note read.
It added that participants highlighted recent actions that governments have taken to counter Hezbollah’s “financial mechanisms and criminal schemes”.
The Lebanese government is under pressure to disarm Hezbollah across all Lebanese territory and reassert state sovereignty. US envoy Thomas Barrack was in Beirut this week to seek the government’s response to a US proposal on removing weapons from the Iran-backed group.
The US plan ties reconstruction aid and a halt to Israeli army operations to Hezbollah’s full disarmament around the country. Since the US-brokered ceasefire took hold, the armed group has pulled back almost all of its fighters from the Israeli border, though Israel insists it must be disarmed nationwide.
Despite the truce, the Israeli army continues to bomb southern Lebanon almost daily and maintains control over five military posts along the border. It has also occasionally targeted Beirut's southern suburbs and the Beqaa Valley since the ceasefire.
A man was killed in an Israeli drone strike on southern Lebanon on Thursday, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, after Israel announced it was carrying out “special, targeted operations” against Hezbollah.
“One man was killed and two others wounded in an Israeli enemy drone strike that targeted a motorcycle in the village of Mansouri” near the coastal city of Tyre, the ministry said.
Israel claimed the man killed was a Hezbollah artillery commander in the coastal sector.
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Director: Christopher McQuarrie
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Favourite book: The Power of Habit
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Other ways to buy used products in the UAE
UAE insurance firm Al Wathba National Insurance Company (AWNIC) last year launched an e-commerce website with a facility enabling users to buy car wrecks.
Bidders and potential buyers register on the online salvage car auction portal to view vehicles, review condition reports, or arrange physical surveys, and then start bidding for motors they plan to restore or harvest for parts.
Physical salvage car auctions are a common method for insurers around the world to move on heavily damaged vehicles, but AWNIC is one of the few UAE insurers to offer such services online.
For cars and less sizeable items such as bicycles and furniture, Dubizzle is arguably the best-known marketplace for pre-loved.
Founded in 2005, in recent years it has been joined by a plethora of Facebook community pages for shifting used goods, including Abu Dhabi Marketplace, Flea Market UAE and Arabian Ranches Souq Market while sites such as The Luxury Closet and Riot deal largely in second-hand fashion.
At the high-end of the pre-used spectrum, resellers such as Timepiece360.ae, WatchBox Middle East and Watches Market Dubai deal in authenticated second-hand luxury timepieces from brands such as Rolex, Hublot and Tag Heuer, with a warranty.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Zayed Sustainability Prize
