The month of November is now annually designated “Lebanese Heritage Month” in Canada, under legislation passed unanimously by the House of Commons on June 14 and receiving royal assent on June 20, the final step for the legislation make must go through before they come into effect.

The project was presented by Senator Jane Cordy last April and supported in the House of Commons by Lebanese-Canadian MP Léna Metlege Diab. It aims to “recognize and particularly celebrate the invaluable contribution made by Canadians of Lebanese origin at social, economic, cultural, religious, military, philanthropic and even political levels to the construction of Canadian society of yesterday and today”.

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The celebration of “Lebanese Cultural Heritage Month” will therefore encourage Canadians of Lebanese origin to “promote their culture and traditions and make them known to other Canadians,” the law states. Lebanon’s Independence Day is celebrated on November 22 every year.

historical figures
During the second reading of the law, Ms Diab, whose parents were first-generation immigrants who came to Canada from the village of Dimane in northern Lebanon, spoke and paid tribute to several Lebanese-Canadian historical figures such as William Haddad: “a merchant’s son who was one of the first Arab Judge of Canada”, or Lieutenant Edward Francis Arab, who “gave his life for Canada” and died at the Battle of the Scheldt in 1944 during World War II.

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She also cited Lebanese-Canadian athletes, artists and diplomats, noting that many Canadian “academics and lawyers” are of Lebanese descent, as are “leaders at all levels of government and political parties, including former senators and former MPs.”

Ms Diab stated that “Canadians of Lebanese origin have been in our country since the late 19 and 400,000 people and that between 40,000 and 75,000 Canadians live in Lebanon”.

According to the Canadian government’s website on the heritage of the country’s resident Asian communities, in 2001, people of Lebanese origin in Canada were “the sixth largest non-European ethnic group in the country, residing primarily in Ontario and Quebec”. The site also mentions significant Lebanese communities based in “Atlantic Canada, particularly Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.”

Forgetting or loss of inheritance
“Unfortunately, in my experience, there are many who have forgotten or lost their Lebanese heritage, or sometimes even suppressed it. It moves me because I saw it. I’ve had conversations with these people. It’s one of the reasons why this designation is so important to so many people,” Ms. Diab added.

The government’s official website notes that Canada has welcomed immigrants of Lebanese origin since the 1880s. “It is generally believed that the first immigrant of Arab origin in Canada was a Lebanese named Ibrahim Abou Nader, who was then from the town of Zahlé.” Located in the Moutassarifat of Mount Lebanon, an autonomous region of the Ottoman Empire, located in Montreal had settled. The migratory flow then intensified during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) before morphing into movements of economic migrants and academics after the conflict.

The national recognition of November as “Lebanese Heritage Month” in Canada, introduced in June 2023, has been effective since 2018 at a more regional level, particularly in the provinces of Nova Scotia or even Ontario.

The month of November is now annually designated “Lebanese Heritage Month” in Canada, under legislation passed unanimously by the House of Commons on June 14 and receiving royal assent on June 20, the final step for the legislation make must go through before they come into effect. The project was presented last April…

Argentina is a country where no universal rules apply and where the law of gravity can be reversed at any time. This is the only way to explain why, in a country grappling with a systemic crisis of monumental proportions, polls show that the ruling party and major opposition leaders can win, lose or even be banned from the vote.

We Argentines are used to moving in the anomaly, to the annoyance of the Anglo-Saxons, although we also displace many Latin Americans. Example? The ruling party has just nominated its economy minister as presidential candidate, who promised to bring down inflation when he took office almost 11 months ago, but the opposite has happened. Today we’re looking at an increase of 114% per year, which experts say will be close to 150% by the end of the year.

The election scenario today is so closed and uncertain that this candidate, the Peronist Sergio Massa, can win, just as he could even come third in the October elections, which would be an unprecedented slap in the face for Peronism. Libertarian Javier Milei could sideline him, although his candidacy also involves a giant unknown. Because all their candidates have lost in every provincial election so far – by defeats. Example? Yesterday, his “chicken” finished fourth in the election of the next governor of Cordoba, Argentina’s second most populous province, with just 2.49% of the vote.

Javier Miley. LUIS ROBAYO (AFP)

Milei isn’t shy, however, and she’s right when she says she can win, recalling the tortuous path that led Mauricio Macri to Casa Rosada eight years ago. “In 2015, Macri lost 11 previous provincial elections and was president.” That’s true, but it could also happen that he finished third in October and thus be eliminated in the second round.

And what about Together for Change, the alliance founded by Mauricio Macri? For a long year he has been looking forward to regaining the power he lost in 2019. He has candidates, he has structure, he has money, and he intends to vote. But he is bleeding to death in internal struggles, most notably – though not exclusively – between Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich, who will decide who will win the candidacy in August’s primary.

Together for Change thus became the only one of the three spaces with real ambitions to reach the Casa Rosada, which will use the primaries for what they were created for: to settle the internal power struggles. This can strengthen the one who wins… or destroy their dreams. And it could happen that whoever wins the primaries goes from champion-to-be to “little onion,” as we say in Argentina, and is disqualified from voting.

But Argentina’s anomalies don’t end there. Firstly, because all polls reveal citizens’ weariness towards the current situation and towards politicians, which is reflected in a record number of abstentions and empty votes since the return of democracy in 1983. But the provincial elections gave way again and again The victory of the governing parties. Even in Córdoba, where former President Mauricio Macri has his stronghold, the prevailing Peronism triumphed.

In this context, the only apparent consensus is that the candidate who is not a Kirchnerist will win. However, this data ignores one final paradox: current Vice President and powerhouse Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is not in this competition and has not anointed a dolphin, but she may emerge victorious.

How is it possible? Should Massa and the Peronists promoting her candidacy lose, she will retain leadership within Peronism while focusing her energies on retaining her crucial enclave: the province of Buenos Aires. Whether you resist or dream of returning to Casa Rosada in 2027. As Andrés Malamud, one of the clearest political analysts, summarized: “Cristina wins, there is no other interpretation.”

Argentina is indeed a peculiar country where even the law of gravity can be reversed at any time.

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A thief in Indianapolis, dazzled by the beauty of a woman he had just stolen from $100 while threatening her with a gun, would not have fled with his loot but decided to add his victim to Facebook and ask her to go out with him.

“Look, you know I’ll get back at you. It’s a damn way of getting to know someone, but […] “You were too pretty to steal,” burglar Damien Boyce reportedly wrote to the woman he just robbed at close range in Indianapolis, The Mirror reported Monday.

Apparently, the thief had no idea that he was making police work easier by adding his victim, Amber Beraun, to Facebook to invite her out after he stole $100 from outside her home.

On May 8, the man approached her with a gun as she was going to her mailbox and told her to let him into her home, which she refused.

When she refused, he eventually accepted the $100 that was in the victim’s vehicle and then asked her if she had a boyfriend. He still threatened her with a gun and then asked her to add him on Facebook.

“I thought maybe if I put him on Facebook he would leave and he did,” the woman said in an interview with WRTV, relayed by The Mirror. […] It made me feel less secure in my own home.”

Despite this, he then texted her promising to refund her before inviting her to “come and relax.”

The suspect was arrested and charged with armed robbery and a range of other charges in another robbery in which he reportedly shot two people dead and hit a third with a brick after an altercation, according to British media.