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Entrepreneurs come together to restore faith in local products

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by dailystar.com.lb -Emily Lewis - BEIRUT: Lebanese residents are taking matters into their own hands to encourage investment in local products as the country plunges deeper into a financial crisis and the Lebanese pound depreciates. “Our country is like a badly managed company. It’s time for the people to help in whatever way we can to save Lebanon,” Imad Jomaa, the president of media enterprise JGroup told The Daily Star Friday. Since early November, Jomaa’s company has offered free advertising for any business offering Lebanese-made products at a discount of 50 percent. Adverts for Lebanese merchandise have appeared on billboards, online platforms and local TV channels, accompanied by the hashtag which translates into #BuyLebanese. Jomaa said that 200 companies have reached out to JGroup to benefit from the offer - 95 percent of which did not have funds to advertise, so the company helped them “showcase their products to the Lebanese audience,” Jomaa said.

JGroup’s initiative is one of many launched by Lebanese entrepreneurs, activists and NGOs to encourage people to choose Lebanese-made products in increasingly tough economic times. Last April, Sylva Abi Hanna started a Facebook page called “Buy Lebanese [products] from Lebanese [people] in Lebanese [pounds]” to encourage people to buy products made in Lebanon using the national currency. In recent weeks a lack of dollar liquidity has pushed unofficial U.S. dollar-Lebanese pound exchange rates way above the official peg of 1,507.5 that was put in place in 1997. On Thursday, the black market rate reached more than LL2,300 to the dollar at some exchange shops. The frequency of Abi Hanna’s posts increased with the start of the nationwide protests that erupted on Oct. 17, calling for end to a corrupt political class, economic mismanagement and looting of public funds. “I neglected my page for a while, but I believe now more than ever that it’s important to encourage Lebanese products from Lebanese owners. This is my way to do my part as much as I can,” Abi Hanna explained to The Daily Star.

Lebanon's young protesters say a better life waits for them overseas, but they're choosing to stay and fight

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A Lebanese woman smiles while holding a Lebanese flag

By Middle East correspondent Adam Harvey, Tom Hancock and Cherine Yazbek in Beirut -- abc.net.au --They are articulate and optimistic and extremely patriotic. They do not want to move away. They want to transform Lebanon into a place where you do not have to leave to find a job. They blame their nation's dire economy on a political system that is still dominated by the civil war that ended 30 years ago, before they were born. Wartime militias turned into political parties and the protesters on the streets of Lebanon say they looked after their own interests, and not that of the nation. The ABC went to the heart of the protests to speak to the twentysomethings who want something better for Lebanon.

Olivia Yacoub is a 22-year-old Lebanese Australian who came home after completing her master's degree in Melbourne. She has been here for 18 months but will probably have to leave again to find work in her field of expertise, food science. "It is such a beautiful, chaotic country. There is something so special about this country," she said. "That's what driven me to leave Australia where I could have easily found work, and come back to Lebanon and hope that I can work here and live with my family." Ms Yacoub said she would like to build a career in Lebanon without having to depend on family funds or political connections to find a job. "I've lost a lot of friends and family members who've had to leave to find work overseas. It's really sad," she said. Ms Yacoub would also like the Government to change a law that prevents Lebanese women from passing their nationality to their children. Currently, citizenship is only a right for the children of Lebanese men. "I'm protesting for very simple things. I want to be able to give my future children Lebanese nationality. I want to be able to live in a Lebanon that has 24/7 electricity, and has clean water and clean air," she said.

This year anti-Government demonstrations have swept more than a dozen countries, including Hong Kong, Chile, Bolivia and Spain. "People overseas are really fighting for this, so we're not on our own," Ms Yacoub said. "I'm very hopeful that we will be able to live in a better Lebanon, the Lebanon that we deserve."

Microsoft FarmBeats: Improving Farm Productivity Using Data-Driven Agriculture

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By Zerina Kapetanovic, Ranveer Chandra, Tusher Chakraborty, and Andrew Nelson -sinews.siam.org ---

The global demand for food is expected to increase by 70% by the year 2050 compared to 2010 levels. Achieving this increase in food production has become even more challenging as the resources we rely on are starting to diminish. For instance, water levels are receding, the amount of arable land is decreasing, and climate change has become more imminent. Data driven agriculture techniques can help alleviate the world’s food problem by reducing waste in resources, increasing yield, and ensuring sustainable farming practices. In particular, studies have shown that precision irrigation techniques can increase yield by 45% all the while reducing water intake by 37% [1]. Such results extend to other precision agriculture techniques as well. While the efficacy of data driven agriculture has been demonstrated, these techniques are sparsely adopted in today’s farming practices. This is primarily due to the expensive cost of data collection and the challenging environment of typical farming locations.

To enable data driven agriculture, a seamless data collection system is needed. In other words, this would be an end-to-end IoT system where sensors collect data, such as soil moisture or temperature, and stream to the cloud to perform data analytics. In turn, providing insights for farmers to enable precision agriculture techniques. For example, soil moisture data can be used to determine where water should be applied and where it is not needed. However, enabling an IoT system for agriculture faces several significant challenges, those being power, connectivity, and overall system cost.

Decision time: Lebanon faces significant debt crunch

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Millions of Lebanese have been affected by unofficial capital controls imposed on their withdrawals from banks, as the government fears capital flight [File: Jamal Saidi/Reuters]

by aljazeera.com -- Leila Molana-Allen -- Lebanon has close to $1.5bn in public debt that it may decide to repay on Thursday. The country's escalating financial crisis and weeks-long anti-government protests are adding more pressure to an already difficult situation. At $86bn, Lebanon's sovereign debt is the world's third-highest relative to gross domestic product (GDP). The country's beleaguered economy is expected to contract by 0.2 percent this year. In an effort to calm protesters and to reduce the deficit from the current 11 percent to 0.6 percent by 2020, the government recently proposed a reform package. However, because talk of a tax on the internet partly fuelled the initial protests, ministers avoided tax increases on individuals and instead proposed using a bank contribution of $3.4bn to alleviate the deficit, alongside other proposals. For protesters however, many of whom want the wholesale removal of the prevailing political class, the move was too little, too late.

While anti-government protests have lowered confidence in the economy still further, the crisis was in motion well before the demonstrations began. The situation was compounded after Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned on October 29, leaving in place a caretaker government without the bureaucratic powers to introduce the necessary economic reforms. On Tuesday protesters gathered around the central bank, wearing masks of Central Bank governor Riad Salameh's face and chanting "Thief, thief, Salameh is a thief!" The following day they were back, this time with a Beirut hairdresser offering free haircuts in front of the building "to show them how to give a haircut", according to a poster advertising the event. The scene references proposals by some economists that the central bank should confiscate a certain percentage from the highest depositors' accounts, a financial haircut on those who benefitted the most from high interest rates, in order to relieve the debt burden. "We have to find a solution, and the solution must not be [borne by] the poor people,' said protester Enas Sherry. "They benefitted from the interest, which was very high over the years, so they have to pay what they took from us."

'A regulated Ponzi scheme'

Lebanese Bitcoiners Show How to Talk About Crypto At Thanksgiving

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by coindesk.com -- Leigh Cuen -- News of Lebanese banks shuttering to prevent a bank run was met with predictable enthusiasm from the global bitcoin commentariat. People in Lebanon can no longer send foreign currencies, mainly dollars and euros, abroad. Further, due to heavily restricted banking access and limited liquidity provided by established grassroots networks, most Lebanese civilians also struggle to acquire bitcoin. Long-time bitcoiner Ali Askar, currently on the ground in Lebanon, told CoinDesk a few Telegram and WhatsApp groups for local traders have nearly doubled in size over the past year, with one such private group reaching roughly 300 members this past weekend. Following news of the banking limitations, the Beirut-based car dealership Rkein Motors promptly started accepting bitcoin payments this week. Clearly, awareness is spreading.

However, a stark disconnect between daily bitcoin users and the rest of the populace continues in a region plagued by economic and political conflict. “Bitcoin will not help the people. It will help the politicians because they are the filthy rich ones who have access to money,” one anonymous bitcoin trader with family in Lebanon told CoinDesk. He uses a European bank account to buy bitcoin, then sends it to people on the ground in Lebanon. “It [bitcoin] could help them, perhaps, if they were sitting at home with 24 hours worth of electricity and internet, and they could work online to get paid for their online work. That’s a utopian scenario,” he added. “In Lebanon, the internet is very expensive. Electricity doesn’t come often. We sometimes have electricity for just six hours a day.”

Untouchable No More: Hezbollah’s Fading Reputation

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Image result for lebanese protests

By Rebecca Collard --- foreignpolicy.com -- BEIRUT—It was the sort of chant that, only a month or so ago, would have been all but unthinkable in Lebanon. “Terrorists, terrorists, Hezbollah are terrorists,” yelled some of the hundreds of anti-government protesters who stood on a main road in Beirut early Monday morning, in a tense standoff with supporters of Hezbollah and another Shiite party, the Amal Movement. Other protesters told the chanters to stop, but as widespread economic discontent and anger engulf Lebanon—and with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah defending the government—the sanctity around Hezbollah’s reputation is clearly broken.

“Hezbollah is being seen as part and parcel [of] the main hurdle to change in Lebanon,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center. The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful and unilaterally against the whole ruling class—all sects, all political parties. And until recently Nasrallah, who doesn’t have an official government position, was seen as above the endemic corruption that has helped push the country toward a collapse, particularly among Hezbollah’s Shiite support base. Hezbollah’s expulsion of Israeli troops from Lebanese territory in 2000 earned the group the moniker “the resistance” among Lebanese of all sects and political affiliations. Even after the 2006 war, which left swaths of Lebanon in ruins, the group enjoyed popular support for what many here saw as a victory against Israeli aggression by defenders of the country. In May 2008, Hezbollah fighters took over central Beirut after the government threatened to shut down the group’s telecommunications network and remove an ally in charge of airport security, pointing their weapons inside rather than toward the border for the first time.

And as Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters across the border to fight in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad in 2013, more people questioned exactly whom Hezbollah was defending. The group’s reputation has been fading further since the first days of protests in mid-October, which saw large crowds take to the streets in primarily Shiite areas such as Tyre and Nabatieh. Suddenly, with demonstrators there shouting similar anti-government slogans as protesters in Beirut—who want all the current sectarian political leaders gone and new elections under a new system— Hezbollah found itself part of the targeted establishment. The protests are seen as a direct challenge to the gains made by Hezbollah in the 2018 elections and a threat to the organization’s foreign-policy agenda, said Hage Ali.

Samir Khatib favorite for PM as Hariri bows out

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by dailystar.com.lb -- BEIRUT: Prominent contractor Samir Khatib has emerged as the favorite candidate to be named prime minister this week, hours after caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri withdrew his candidacy, Future Movement officials said Tuesday. “The Future Movement’s [parliamentary] bloc is set to meet Wednesday to outline its position on naming its candidate for the premiership after Hariri announced he was withdrawing his candidacy,” Mustafa Alloush, a member of the Future Movement’s politburo, told The Daily Star. “The tendency within the Future bloc is to support Samir Khatib for the premiership. Being a neutral and nonpolitical figure and a successful businessman whose name was not linked to allegations of corruption, Khatib meets all the qualifications demanded by the protest movement,” Alloush, a former Future MP, said.

He was referring to thousands of Lebanese who have taken to the streets since Oct. 17 in an unprecedented popular uprising, demanding an overhaul of the country’s decades-old sectarian ruling system, early parliamentary elections, the formation of a technocratic government to carry out economic reforms and fight corruption, and the return of “looted public funds.” Alloush said Hariri’s decision to bow out of the premiership was final. “If Khatib is chosen by the Future bloc as its candidate for the premiership, this means that Prime Minister Hariri and the bloc will nominate him during the binding parliamentary consultations to be held by President Michel Aoun,” Alloush added. “Contacts among the country’s main political parties, and also with Hariri, are focused on the nomination of Khatib for prime minister.” Earlier Tuesday, Khatib said he was ready to form a new government if there was consensus among the political parties on his nomination. “I was approached by different sides since I am close to everyone,” Khatib was quoted as saying by local broadcaster MTV. “I am ready to form a government and take over the premiership in order to serve the country during these exceptional times.” Khatib is an executive vice president of engineering company Khatib & Alami, according to its website. But shortly after, Hariri’s office released a statement saying he distanced himself from any names being circulated for the position and that his choice for premier would be announced during parliamentary consultations at Baabda Palace in a statement to be issued by him.