Source: Al Arabiya
Security & Justice
Southern Lebanon Endures Massive Damage: 40,000 Homes Leveled Across 37 Towns
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Lebanon’s army chief, General Joseph Aoun, detailed to Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati how Israeli forces likely exploited gaps in the country's coastal radar system during the recent raid carried out in Batroun. The briefing comes as Lebanese officials seek answers on how Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 unit carried out the landing undetected.
Monday, November 4, 2024
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The Emptying of Baalbek Is a Moment to Take Stock
“Large numbers of people continue to flee their homes every day, as Israel’s military operations in Lebanon have been going on unabated.” These disturbing words could be from almost any news report about Israel’s invasion of its northern neighbour over the past month. However, they can be found in a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre issued on July 27, 2006.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
A Future Without Hezbollah
At the end of September, when Israel’s campaign to destroy Hezbollah was reaching its height, I met one of the group’s supporters in a seaside café in western Beirut. He was a middle-aged man with a thin white beard and the spent look of someone who had not slept for days. He was an academic of sorts, not a fighter, but his ties to Hezbollah were deep and long-standing.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Sports
Tottenham Forward Son Heung-min Crowned Asia’s International Player of the Year
Tottenham forward Son Heung-min was crowned as Asia’s International Player of the Year for the fourth time by the Asian Football Confederation at its annual awards ceremony Tuesday.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Real Madrid Launch Investigation into Racist Insults After El Clasico Defeat
Real Madrid has launched an investigation into racist insults directed at players during Saturday’s 4-0 home loss to Barcelona in LaLiga, it said on Sunday.
Monday, October 28, 2024
Wednesday 18 September 2024 15:21:56
How Did Hezbollah Exploding Pagers Lead to a Budapest-Based Company?
When a simultaneous explosion of pagers targeting Hezbollah members took off across Lebanon on Tuesday little was it clear that the incident would lead to an investigative path from Taiwan to Hungary.
The incident, which took Lebanon off guard, marked one of the serious breaches faced by the Iran-backed party that has been engaged in border attacks against Israel amid the ongoing Gaza war.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for detonating the pagers with media reports suggesting that Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside the thousands of pagers that Hezbollah imported.
What does Taiwan have to do with the incident?
After the explosions took place, killing 12 people and wounding between 2,750 and 2,800 others, the pagers were linked to Taiwanese company Gold Apollo.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by the company.
In response to the news, Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-kuang, said on Wednesday that the product wasn’t theirs and “only that it had our brand on it.”
The Taiwanese economy ministry said that it has no record of any Taiwanese companies exporting pagers directly to Lebanon between 2022 and 2024, according to NPR.
From Lebanon to Taiwan to Hungary: How did this happen?
Hsu explained that a Budapest-based company called BAC Consulting has manufactured the devices. Gold Apollo also noted that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.
“There was nothing in those devices that we had manufactured or exported to them [BAC],” Hsu was quoted by NPR as saying. He noted that the pagers “were entirely different” from his designs and contained a chip that Gold Apollo does not use in its pagers, according to NPR.
The outlet added that Hsu said that the last time Gold Apollo shipped components to BAC was earlier this year.
What is BAC Consulting?
The stated address for BAC Consulting in Budapest was a peach building in a mostly residential street in an outer suburb. Footage released by The Associated Press showed the company’s name posted on the glass door on a sheet in what appeared to look more like a residential building.
The company’s website has appeared to be inaccessible since the morning, but the company’s CEO has been revealed to be Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono.
Her LinkedIn profile says that among the posts that she has occupied was working as a strategic advisor for various organizations including UNESCO and Venture Capitals.
BAC didn’t respond to Al Arabiya English’s calls for comment, but Barsony-Arcidiacono was quoted by Sky News as saying that she doesn’t “make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong.”
Middle East payments
According to both Reuters and NPR, Hsu said on Wednesday that he did find the payment transfers made to his company to be “strange.”
Although based in Budapest, Hsu, according to NPR, said the company paid Gold Apollo from a Middle Eastern bank account that was blocked at least once by the company’s bank in Taiwan.
