BEIRUT: The news of a Lebanese dance group winning the TV competition show “America’s Got Talent” sparked joy on Thursday across the country.

Mayyas, an all-female dance troupe, dazzled the show’s judges and audience on the competition’s 17th season before winning $1 million and a headlining show in Las Vegas. 

Lebanese President Michel Aoun called the crew’s choreographer, Nadim Cherfan, who is still in the US with his group, and congratulated him on the achievement.

He informed him of his decision to award the team the Lebanese Order of Merit.

BEIRUT: A Lebanese activist group on Thursday vowed to organize more bank heists to help people retrieve their locked savings as the country’s years-long economic crisis continues to worsen.
Activists from Depositors’ Outcry group accompanied Sali Hafez into a Beirut bank branch on Wednesday, and she was able to retrieve some $13,000 in her savings to fund her sister’s cancer treatment.

WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that a staff mission will visit Lebanon next week to discuss ways to “speed up” implementation of agreed reforms required for an IMF loan program amid deteriorating living conditions in the country.
“We are looking to support Lebanon as strongly as we can. It’s a difficult situation,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told a regular news briefing. “There’s been slow progress in implementing some of the critical actions that we think are required to move forward with a program.”

AL-MUKALLA: Yemeni forces say they have driven Al-Qaeda militants from a key mountain stronghold in the province of Abyan, in the latest victory against the terrorist group.

Military units commanded by the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council on Thursday pushed deep into Omaran valley to strike a blow against the group’s decade-long occupation, Mohammed Al-Naqeeb, the STC’s spokesman, told Arab News.

STRASBOURG, France: Negotiations to bring Iran and the US back into the nuclear deal curbing Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions are in “stalemate,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday.

“I am afraid that with the political situation in the US, and so many directions without being conclusive, now we are going to stay in a kind of stalemate,” Borrell said.