Lebanese economists dismiss Moody's warning of rescheduling debt

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by Dana Halawi BEIRUT, (Xinhua) -- Lebanese economists dismissed on Monday a recent warning from the Global credit rating agency Moody's that Lebanon may risk rescheduling its debt because of slow capital inflows and weaker deposits growth. "Lebanon is solvent and it does not need to reschedule its debt. The country is paying its debt servicing obligations on time," Nassib Ghobril, head of the economic research department at Byblos Bank, told Xinhua. Lebanon "has also paid maturing Eurobonds of 500 U.S. million dollars in April and other bonds of 650 U.S. million dollars in May," Ghobril added. Moody's said on June 27 that Lebanon may have to reschedule its debt despite the measures taken to reduce its deficit in the 2019 state budget. "Lebanon may have to reschedule its debt because of the slowdown of capital flows to the country and the decline in deposits growth," it noted. Moody's report prompted Lebanese Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil to announce that the financial situation in Lebanon is under control. Ghobril agreed that Lebanon is far from reaching this conclusion, as "this is not the first time our deposits growth slow down." But the country should work on improving its public finance, he said. "We need to do our work seriously by reducing our fiscal deficit and borrowing needs but we will not reach such an alarming point," the Lebanese economist explained.

Ghazi Wazne, also an economist, said Lebanon has the capacity to pay its dues in 2019 and 2020. "Moody's report is just a warning to Lebanese authorities that they should implement more serious reform measures to reduce public debt and budget deficit which would attract investors and depositors again," he told Xinhua. According to the two economists, Moody's warning was perhaps triggered by what Khalil said at the beginning of this year that the finance ministry was planning to restructure Lebanon's public debt, causing confusion and concerns among the public. "We gave Moody's the opportunity to declare this after the vacuum created in Lebanon because of the absence in government for over seven months, in addition to announcements by our finance minister about the possibility of a debt restructuring," Ghobril noted. Wazne also said Moody's did not forget about the finance minister's announcements at the beginning of this year.

However, Qatar's investment worth 500 million dollars has sent a message of confidence to foreign investors and depositors, he added. A Qatari official said on June 30 that the Gulf state had bought some of the Lebanon's bonds which, according to Refinitiv data, led to the rise on Monday of dollar-denominated bonds issued by Lebanon's government. Lebanon is currently the third most indebted country in the world after Japan and Greece with a public debt equivalent to 138.8 percent of GDP in 2018. The government has been calling for more support from banks by subscribing to Treasury Bills at a non-market rate of 1 percent in a bid to reduce the cost of debt servicing which could reach 58.6 percent of the government revenues by 2021 if the fiscal deficit maintained the same momentum, according to Moody's Investors Service. Lebanon's parliament is currently discussing the 2019 state budget with promises to reduce budget deficit to 7.6 percent of GDP. The 2019 state budget is also seen as Lebanon's lifeline to secure 11 billion dollars in loans and donations approved last year by the CEDRE Conference organized by France last year on condition that the country implements key reforms to curb its public debt.

MEA flight en route to return Lebanese expats in Kazakhstan

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The Daily Star BEIRUT: A number of Lebanese expatriates working in Kazakhstan are set to arrive in Beirut Tuesday afternoon after they were involved in a brawl at their workplace last week, a source from the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said. “The plane is supposed to leave around 5 or 6 [a.m. Tuesday],” the source told The Daily Star. As of Monday night, the list of Lebanese expats returning from Kazakhstan was being finalized. At least 10 Lebanese nationals had been injured in the bloody altercation, which took place Saturday. A Middle East Airlines plane would depart to charter the expats. With no direct flights between Nur-Sultan and Beirut, the flight time is estimated at around four and half hours. Lebanese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Giscard El Khoury was unable to be reached for comment prior to print.

Khoury Sunday met with a number of the employees, who worked at Consolidated Contractors, a construction company in western Kazakhstan, the state-run National News Agency reported. He said all were in good health and “high spirits,” according to the NNA. The ambassador’s message was relayed to the head of the Higher Relief Committee, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Kheir. The fight reportedly broke out after a Lebanese employee shared a photo of himself and a female Kazakh employee that local staff deemed offensive. However, Nurlan Nogayev, the governor of the Atyrau region, said that disparities between local staff and foreign workers had sparked the incident. Videos posted to social media showed Kazakh workers violently beating others, who were expats. Jordanian nationals and Palestinians were also among the attacked.

Two aides to Lebanese minister killed as convoy hit by gunfire

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two aides to a Lebanese Druze minister were killed on Sunday when his convoy came under fire in an area of support for a rival Druze faction, in what the minister called an assassination attempt. Saleh al-Gharib, Lebanon’s minister of state for refugee affairs, is close to pro-Syrian Druze leader Talal Arslan. The Mount Lebanon town near Aley where the incident took place is an area of support for Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a fierce opponent of the Syrian government and rival to Arslan. His Popular Progressive Party (PSP) denied any involvement.

In an interview with Lebanon’s al-Jadeed TV, Gharib said the incident had been “an armed ambush and a clear assassination attempt”. “There appears to be a decision to blow up the situation on the mountain,” he said. The National News Agency reported that a PSP member was wounded in the incident. Jumblatt, Lebanon’s main Druze leader, and Arslan are historic rivals whose parties vied for posts in the national unity government formed earlier this year.

The tensions on Sunday grew out of a plan by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, a Maronite Christian who is a political ally of Arslan, to visit the area, which led protesters to block roads. Bassil canceled the visit, described as provocative by the PSP, because of the protests. Akram Chehayeb, a senior PSP official and minister of education, also urged calm, saying: “What happened is the result of poor judgment by some officials and is a recipe for strife on the Mountain.” Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, made contacts with the Druze parties, security chiefs and Bassil “focused on the need to ease tension in Aley and to exert all efforts to calm the situation”, his office said in a statement.

Defence Minister Elias Bou Saab told the broadcaster LBC the army had deployed heavily in the area and called for calm. President Michel Aoun has called a meeting of Lebanese security chiefs on Monday, his office said. Arslan supporters blocked a main highway south with burning tires in protest over the incident, choking traffic for several hours. Writing by Tom Perry/Laila Bassam; Editing by Kevin Liffey and David Evans Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

No one cares about 99% of the photos you take. Not even you.

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BY CHRIS TAYLOR mashable.com -- -- For our summer vacation, my wife drove us hell-for-leather between National Parks, driven by the urge to collect every stamp in her Parks Passport. We eagerly snapped up the new National Parks Geek merch. Our dog was sworn in as a #BarkRanger. And I was deputized photographer, urged to get shots of thousand-year-old petroglyphs and cave dwellings, not to mention the 200 million-year-old tree trunks. We came home. My wife pored over her passport and stamps. The magnets and decals went on fridges and cars. The dog wore his Bark Ranger badge around the neighborhood with beaming pride. And my photos? We haven’t looked through them yet. I doubt we ever will. If we really need to see that petroglyph or that tree again, it would be faster to Google them — where we'd find a more pleasingly professional shot. If you’re anything like me, here’s the exact number of times in any given year that you pore over your Apple Photos, Google Photos or similar library: approximately never. Who has the time? Despite the encouragement those companies give us to store all our images with them, it sits there as ones and zeros — billions of merely theoretical photos expending massive amounts of energy on cloud servers, costing each of us a few bucks every month. Or worse, the photos are consigned to death row on a single vulnerable hard drive, awaiting its inevitable failure. Sure, you might dip into the archive for a minute or two every now and then. Wearing your Instagram or Facebook hats, you pluck an image from obscurity, elevating them to the relative stardom of a few Likes. In the social archives, at least, you might look back at them more often. But you're lucky if this elevation happens to more than one in a hundred snaps.

The average picture you take will fade into forever, and it’s high time we got real about this. We live in an age of digital abundance, one that has devalued photos more than anything. The Snapchat-and-Stories generation treats them as expendable and ephemeral, but Gen Xers are no better — we just fool ourselves into thinking we're preserving history in these dusty, pricy digital archives. But what exactly are we preserving, and for whom? Will our descendants, beset on all sides by ever more media, even bother to look? If we don't, why would they?

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Apple design boss Jony Ive quits

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The Apple design boss instrumental in creating the iPhone is exiting the company after an almost three-decade run. Jony Ive is starting his own design firm, LoveFrom, and will count his soon-to-be-former employer as a key client. Ive led design on several Macs, the iPod, iPad and Apple Watch, as well as the “spaceship” Apple Park campus. Ive's team, long an elite landing place for design talent, had endured some issues with talent retention in recent years.

Lebanon to ask for extending mandate of UN peacekeeping force

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BEIRUT, (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Friday that his country will ask the United Nations to extend the mandate of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) for one year, the Presidency's website said. The cooperation between the Lebanese army and the UNIFIL has achieved stability and security on the southern borders, Aoun said. "It is in the interest of everybody to keep this stability," he noted. Meanwhile, Stefano Del Col, UNIFIL chief, has discussed with Aoun the ongoing preparations for extending the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, according to the Presidency. UNIFIL has been operating in southern Lebanon since 2006 by supporting land and maritime Lebanese forces in improving their capabilities and preserving peace in the area.