Lebanese man finds hand of Providence in mystical experience

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By Hannah Brockhaus Beirut, Lebanon (CNA).- Raymond Nader had spent years searching for the meaning of life, when during a moment of prayer in an old Lebanese hermitage, he says a mystical experience of light left his arm miraculously marked with a burn in the shape of the hand of St. Charbel. Since that moment, on Nov. 10, 1994, the handprint on his upper left arm has faded and reappeared multiple times, Nader told CNA. Dr. Nabil Hokayem, a Beirut plastic surgeon, examined the mark on Nader’s arm three times: first in 1994, soon after its appearance, and subsequently in the spring of 1995 and the summer of 1996. He told CNA that in his professional opinion, the mark is a third-degree burn, in the shape of what appeared “like five fingers, as if someone is holding [Nader] from behind.”

A third-degree burn is severe, and destroys both the upper and lower layers of skin, possibly also affecting underlying tissues. But Hokayem said the burn on Nader’s upper left arm did not go through the stages of healing typical of a severe burn. “I have seen and treated hundreds of burned people; I tell you, I have never seen such a thing,” he said. “I was really astonished.” The doctor said the first time he saw the burn, he wanted to treat and bandage it as usual, but Nader declined, saying it did not bother him. Besides the lack of pain, the doctor explained it was unusual that the burn did not leave a scar, but instead would just slowly fade until it had “healed totally.” Nader said he has continued to have supernatural visions since that first experience in the hermitage nearly 25 years ago, sometimes also seeing a vision of the Lebanese monk and hermit, St. Charbel, “in a halo of light.” He says that each of those times, the fading handprint has turned the dark red of a burn, and again oozed blood and water, as it did when it first appeared. After years of trying to find his purpose through science, this experience “deeply changed everything in my life,” the engineer told CNA, noting that he thinks St. Charbel, who lived as a hermit in the hills of Lebanon for 26 years, “has only one message. He’s pointing to Jesus Christ, pointing to God.”

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Lebanese Central Bank to Reinstate Subsidized Housing Loans

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By Dana Khraiche - bloomberg.com -- Lebanon’s Central Bank will reinstate subsidized housing loans, ending an almost year-long freeze of the program, the state-run National News Agency reported late Friday. The new housing package will be $200 million for housing loans of as much as $300 million, the agency said, citing a circular from the Association of Banks in Lebanon after its meeting with the central bank. The central bank also will offer a stimulus package for the production sector valued at $500 million for loans of up to $400 million. The central bank froze subsidized housing loans at the beginning of last year, eroding a real estate market that was already reeling from slow demand caused by regional tensions and local political stalemate.

Lebanon’s economy has slowed since the crisis in neighboring Syria began in 2011, leading to a shut down of vital trade routes and an influx of some 1.5 million refugees. The country is also coming to a reckoning with years of fiscal overreach with public debt, estimated at over 160 percent of gross domestic product this year, is projected to rise to near 180 percent by 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund. The central bank has for years carried the burden of stimulating the economy by offering stimulus packages for various sectors given the lack of functioning governments.

Facebook to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger together

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Facebook is planning to merge WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, bringing together more than 2.6 billion users so that they can communicate over the three platforms, the New York Times reports. The effort will require the social media giant to rewrite the basic software of the three apps so that they are interoperable. The plan, which is in its early stages, would take thousands of Facebook employees about a year to complete. Messages would incorporate end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only the users participating in such conversations would see them.

Cross-platform messaging may also lead the way for businesses on one platform to message potential customers on another. And it might make it easier for Facebook to share data across the three platforms, to help its targeted advertising efforts. But bigger still: it makes Facebook's suite of apps a much tighter, interwoven collection of services. That could make the key parts of Facebook's empire more difficult to break up and spin off, if governments and regulators decide that is necessary.

Shared data: Mr Zuckerberg is reportedly pushing the integration plan to make its trinity of services more useful and increase the amount of time people spend on them. By effectively joining all its users into one massive group Facebook could compete more effectively with Google's messaging services and Apple's iMessage, suggested Makena Kelly on tech news site The Verge. "We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private," said Facebook in a statement. "We're working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks," it added.

GOOGLE GIVES WIKIMEDIA MILLIONS—PLUS MACHINE LEARNING TOOLS

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GOOGLE IS POURING an additional $3.1 million into Wikipedia, bringing its total contribution to the free encyclopedia over the past decade to more than $7.5 million, the company announced at the World Economic Forum Tuesday. A little over a third of those funds will go toward sustaining current efforts at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, and the remaining $2 million will focus on long-term viability through the organization’s endowment. Google will also begin allowing Wikipedia editors to use several of its machine learning tools for free, the tech giant said. What's more, Wikimedia and Google will soon broaden Project Tiger, a joint initiative they launched in 2017 to increase the number of Wikipedia articles written in underrepresented languages in India, and to include 10 new languages in a handful of countries and regions. It will now be called GLOW, Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia. It’s certainly positive that Google is investing more in Wikipedia, one of the most popular and generally trustworthy online resources in the world. But the decision isn’t altruistic: Supporting Wikipedia is also a shrewd business decision that will likely benefit Google for years to come. Like other tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, Google already uses Wikipedia content in a number of its own products. When you search Google for “Paris,” a “knowledge panel” of information about the city will appear, some of which is sourced from Wikipedia. The company also has used Wikipedia articles to train machine learning algorithms, as well as fight misinformation on YouTube.

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Super wealthy are getting younger

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The average age of U.S. investors with $25 million or more has fallen by 11 years since 2014, to 47. Their numbers have more than doubled since the financial crisis, to about 172,000, aided by the boom in new technologies and venture-capital funding. Meanwhile, the share of wealth belonging to Americans over the age of 65 hasn’t kept pace with the growth in their numbers, suggesting “a vast generational transfer of wealth," according to Bloomberg. The wealth of “typical” Americans aged 35 to 54 has dropped by 41% since the Great Recession.

Lebanese Default Risk Prompts Moody's Downgrade Deeper Into Junk

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by bloomberg.com --Lebanon wasn’t spared a debt rating downgrade that pushed it deeper into junk, hours after Qatar unveiled a plan to plow $500 million into its government bonds. Moody’s Investors Service lowered the country’s credit score one step to Caa1, seven levels below investment grade and on par with countries including Gabon, Zambia and Iraq. It changed the outlook to stable from negative. Even though Lebanon’s caretaker government has disavowed any debt restructuring, recent official comments suggest “a growing urgency” that coping with one of the world’s biggest debt burdens might prompt measures resulting “in a default event under Moody’s definition,” according to a statement on Tuesday.

Eight months on from an election, Lebanon remains without a government and with billions of dollars in aid untapped as sectarian tensions simmer. The central bank has maintained stability through stimulus measures and financial engineering, made possible by the billions of dollars deposited into Lebanese banks by the nation’s diaspora. While Moody’s report highlights the need to form the government more quickly and embark on reforms, Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil said that “the financial and monetary situation remains stable, the needs of the Treasury are secure, and it’s able to meet all commitments, especially on debt.” Lebanon is hopeful Qatar’s decision is a “prelude” to a show of support by other countries and institutions, he said on Twitter.

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