LEBANON, ECUADOR

 When you first see the title of this post, you might ask what do these two countries have in common?  That is the right question to ask, and the answer (as far as I know) is nothing. However, since my last post these countries are at the center of some very interesting news, so to start the week this post will give an overview of why these countries (Lebanon, and Ecuador) are the topics in this first post of the week.

First, I will discuss Lebanon. On Friday (three days ago) reports started to come out, saying that Israel was preparing to invade Lebanon to the Ltanii River (which is roughly 18 miles from the border with Israel) with the stated goal of pushing Hezbollah away from the border. Hundreds of thousands of reservists were called up over the weekend in preparation for the invasion. Early this morning, it was reported that "targeted, and limited" ground operations had begun.  It is currently unknown if the ground operations are to set the ground for the invasion, or the beginning of the invasion itself.

Yesterday in Ecuador, 70,000 troops were mobilized to fight drug cartels in four of the country's provinces with the President saying the country is at war. Curfews are in place across the affected provinces. Ecuador is located between Columbia, and Peru, who are the two largest cocaine producers in the world. This location makes Ecuador very strategic to disrupt global drug trafficking.