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Lebanon’s buried treasure

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by Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati & Ugo Panizza -- FT.com (Financial times) Daily Digest -- Stephen Choi and Mitu Gulati are on the law faculties at New York University and the University of Virginia, respectively. Ugo Panizza is a professor of economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Lebanon’s debt crisis is a slow moving train wreck. For three years it has been unable to implement reforms necessary for an IMF program — including a requirement to make progress in debt negotiations with private creditors. And when it does move ahead with creditor talks, it faces a heightened risk of holdouts.

Lebanon’s holdout risk derives from its confusing choice to not use Aggregated Collective Action Clauses, or CACs. These clauses, created to ameliorate the problem of holdout creditors, were widely adopted by sovereign debtors starting roughly a decade ago. The innovation allows a debtor to conduct a single aggregated vote across all of its bonds that will be binding, even for dissenters. Holdouts would be deterred, it was thought, because the size of the position needed to hold out would be large. But rather than adopting Aggregated CACs, Lebanon stuck with its old non-aggregated clauses. The end result: Lebanon’s international bonds require the approval of 75 per cent of the holders, in principal amount, for each bond series before key terms can be modified. Those single-series CACs, combined with the fact that Lebanon’s foreign currency bonds are trading at less than ten cents on the dollar, are blood in the water for specialist distressed-debt sharks (see here, here, here and here). But maybe not. Buried in the typical sovereign bond contract is a “manifest error” clause. This section doesn’t get much attention because it covers technical corrections; matters so minor that the debtor and the agents can fix them without approval from the creditors.

To protect against its misuse, the manifest error clause normally comes with two conditions:

1) The changes may not adversely affect the interests of any creditor.

2) The fiscal agent/trustee has to approve the change. Having a trustee who is agent for the bondholders, as opposed to a fiscal agent, is better for the creditors, but that’s not relevant here as we will see.

The brain drain at tech companies is already bad and as Elon Musk's poaching of AI experts shows, it's only going to get worse

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by Story by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Hasan Chowdhury) -- Tech firms are pretty obsessed with AI right now. But if their leaders aren't obsessed enough, they could see invaluable workers walk right out the door to work for those who are. In other words, AI is posing a bit of a brain-drain problem – and tech CEOs will need to act fast or risk losing their very best talent. Here's the latest example: Elon Musk, who announced his new company xAI on Wednesday – part of his mission to take on OpenAI, DeepMind and Google – managed to poach a bunch of workers from his AI arch-rivals to establish his founding team. Among the 12 men making up the new company are some of the most sought-after AI talent from rival firms: Igor Babuschkin, Manuel Kroiss and Guodong Zhang of Google-owned DeepMind, Yuhuai Wu, Zihang Dai and Christian Szegedy of Google, Kyle Kosic of OpenAI.

What's notable is just how many of those workers come from Google and DeepMind, which made a drastic move in April to create a combined entity willing to put aside internal schisms in the face of the common threat that is ChatGPT. The search giant has been in a bit of panic since the launch of ChatGPT in November, rushing to release rival chatbot Bard just two months afterwards amid fears OpenAI's chatbot could pose an existential threat to its core business. But there has been a sense that Google is lagging well behind OpenAI, which has had a boost to its generative AI capabilities thanks to the backing (and billions of dollars) of Microsoft. First impressions count, after all, and the first impressions haven't been in Google's favor. It's part of the reason why several talented workers got up and left the search giant and headed towards Silicon Valley's land of milk and honey, OpenAI. Even before ChatGPT's launch, Google workers seemed fed up and decided to jump ship to OpenAI to help launch ChatGPT.

Beirut judge sentences journalist Dima Sadek to year behind bars following Free Patriotic Movement lawsuit

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By arabnews.com -- LONDON: Judge Rosine Hujaili, counselor at the Court of Appeal in Beirut, issued on Tuesday a ruling sentencing journalist Dima Sadek to one year of imprisonment in a lawsuit filed against her by the Free Patriotic Movement accusing her of libel, inciting sectarian strife and slander. The verdict also requires the Lebanese journalist to pay a fine of 110 million Lebanese pounds ($7,316) to the claimants, Sadek said in a video she shared on Twitter. The FPM, led by Gebran Bassil, sued Sadek in 2020 over tweets in which she accused the party of Nazism after a young man, Zakariya Al-Masri, was attacked by the party’s supporters under Fouad Chehab Bridge in Jounieh, north of Beirut. Sadiq said in the tweet she would file an appeal against the ruling.

“In an unprecedented move, Gebran Bassil extracted a ruling from the Criminal Court through Judge Rosine Hujaili to imprison me for a year without a stay of execution,” she wrote, captioning a video. “Yes, in Lebanon, journalists now can be imprisoned on charges of libel and defamation. Of course, I will appeal and persevere.” Bassil’s lawyer Majed Boueiz said in a tweet: “What you speak is not the truth, but we have kept our promise. You slandered the movement’s youth, so we promised to prosecute you. “The judiciary today is doing us justice and convicting you of the crimes of defamation and provoking sectarian strife, imprisoning you for a year, stripping you of some of your civil rights, and fining you 110 million Lebanese pounds for the damages cause to the Free Patriotic Movement.”

On Feb. 6 and 7, 2020, FPM supporters assaulted in Jounieh two young men hailing from Tripoli, Al-Masri and Walid Raad, for demonstrating outside the Fouad Chehab Stadium. In video footage capturing the assault, the FPM supporters told the young men they had had no business being in Keserwan given that they are from Tripoli. The Publications Court in Lebanon prohibits the imprisonment of members of the press, but the FPM filed their lawsuit against Sadek with the Criminal Court, claiming her content was not published in a printed medium but rather on social media, which was not part of her work as a journalist.

Lebanese angered by video of daycare worker violently hitting children

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Al Arabiya -- A video showing a worker at a daycare center in Lebanon hitting a toddler and an infant drew anger from Lebanese citizens calling on the state to take action against both the worker and the center. The disturbing video, which was widely circulated on social media platforms on Monday, showed the worker at the center in Metn’s Jdeideh area feeding a child who then spit the food before she violently hit him on the head and forced him back into his seat. The other part of the video showed the worker forcibly feeding and hitting an infant as the baby was laying down. In one segment, the worker was also seen terrorizing a child who appeared to be scared of the women.

The video drew much anger from Lebanese social media users who requested a severe punishment against those involved in the abuse of the children with some calling for individual action to be taken. “God be with the parents seeing this,” one user said. “How could someone be that much cruel and inhumane. This daycare and the staff deserve a punishment that will remain an example for anyone who dares to do such thing to children or elderly people. It’s heartbreaking,” another user said on Instagram. According to local media reports, parents of the children who were subjected to the abuse traveled to the worker’s house and assaulted her in retaliation.

Local media reported that the judiciary took a decision to shut down the daycare center while Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) issued a statement after the video went viral saying that “an investigation into the matter was opened.”

New search engines fueled by Generative AI will compete with Google, says SEMrush

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Story by Desire Athow techradar -- Pixabay SEMRush, together with Ahrefs and Moz, is one of the most recognized names in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) with its eponymous SEO tool. I interviewed its president, Eugene Levine, to find out what his thoughts are about the impact of AI on the world of search, how disruptive generative artificial intelligence (GAI) could be for an industry faced with its biggest challenge since Google launched almost 25 years ago. He talks about how he thinks Search will evolve into a multi-dimensional experience and why GAI-based search engines may be the next big thing.

1. Let's start with an easy one. What is your personal view about Generative AI as a concept?

I think this is a new technology that many people have been waiting for. For me, in terms of long term impact, this is going to be on par with personal computers, internet and smartphones. I see a lot of similarities between Generative AI and great disruptive technologies of the past. It enables people to do things they couldn’t do before. Personal computers have democratized many areas of the economy. For example, more people could pursue software engineering that previously was an option only for those who had access to very expensive mainframes. Generative AI enables people to do creative tasks even if they lack certain technical skills. You don’t have to be a professional painter to create great concept art using Midjourney, and you don’t need to be a professional copywriter to write great blog posts using our tools. It boosts productivity. Smartphones enabled people to be connected and improved efficiency of business communication. Generative AI can act as a co-pilot to deal with mundane tasks. For human resources professionals, it can write job descriptions and interview questions. For software developers, it can write unit tests and comments. That will free up a lot of time that can be used on more productive tasks. It can disrupt some industries. Computers and the internet eventually displaced bank tellers. But while doing that, those technologies created more jobs. With Generative AI I can see a lot of disruption across the customer support sector. But there will be a lot of new jobs for people to train and fine tune AI.

2. What will SEMrush (and its competitors) do to track what's going on in an environment where traditional SERP will disappear?

We're going to write history': The surfers putting Lebanon on the world surfing map

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by Reem Abulleil author thenationalnews.com -- Chris Dirany is part of the Lebanon team at the Asian Surfing Championships. Lebanese

A graffiti artist, a financial analyst, an investment banker, and a surfing/skateboarding/snowboarding instructor and business owner are currently in the Maldives getting ready to represent Lebanon in the Asian Surfing Championships between July 8 and 17. Together, Alfred Badr, Lena Abdelnour, Lena Allam, and Chris Dirany have formed Lebanon’s first-ever homegrown surfing team and have flown to the Maldives with the clear mission of putting their country on the world surf map. They each got introduced to the sport in their own unique way, and never knew there were surfable waves in Lebanon before they actually hopped on a board and tried for themselves. Lena Allam, a 29-year-old investment banker who has been living in Dubai for the past two years, grew up in Deir El Qamar, south-east of Beirut, and fell in love with surfing when she was a child, watching a Disney movie. “It was thanks to Lilo & Stitch, the Disney cartoon. In Lebanon we don’t have surfers, so I never saw a surfer on the beaches in Lebanon. So I think the idea came to me when I was watching Lilo & Stitch and I was always replaying the same part of the movie where they surf this big wave and I used to get like super excited,” Allam told The National.

Allam’s fascination with surfing grew from there. She would write school projects on Hawaii because of its vibrant surf culture and it was always a dream to get on a surfboard and catch a wave. That dream finally came true when she was 18 years old. An interview with Lena Allam from Lebanon's surfing teamAn interview with Lena Allam from Lebanon's surfing team She initially tried windsurfing but didn’t enjoy it before she eventually got in touch with a surfboard shaper and began taking lessons in Batroun in Lebanon. The first surfboard Allam bought was a decorative one hung up in a Quiksilver store that wasn’t intended for sale.

Deputy Lebanon central bank governors' threat to collectively resign 'dangerous', deputy premier says

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by Maya Gebeily; editing by Tom Perry and Mark Heinrich (Reuters) - Deputy premier Saade Chami said on Friday deputy governors of Lebanon's central bank should run it if no governor is appointed by the end of the month, calling their threat to collectively resign "dangerous". Longtime governor Riad Salameh's term expires at the end of July and one of the deputy governors told Reuters on Thursday they were considering quitting together if no successor is named, raising the possibility of the central bank being left leaderless amid a deep financial crisis. Lebanon's breakdown in governance and political tensions have hamstrung efforts to find a successor to Salameh, whose 30-year tenure has been stained by charges at home and abroad of embezzlement of public funds in Lebanon. He denies the charges.

In a statement to Reuters, Chami said the deputy governors should "assume their responsibility in case this appointment is not possible...The threat of resignation implied by the statement is quite dangerous at this critical juncture." Chami said Lebanon’s code of money and credit “very clearly” instructs the first deputy governor to assume the responsibility of the governor in case this position becomes vacant. “One cannot pick and choose from the code of money and credit,” he told Reuters. The central bank leadership is appointed according to the sectarian power-sharing system that governs other top posts. The governor must be a Maronite Catholic, while the four deputies - a Shi'ite Muslim, a Sunni Muslim, a Druze and an Armenian Catholic - must have the approval of the political chiefs representing their respective sects. "The most likely scenario prompting such a statement is a push to extend Salameh's term," said Nabil Boumonsef, deputy editor-in-chief of Lebanon's leading Annahar newspaper. "Otherwise, a full vacuum in the central bank leadership would bring the worst period of Lebanon's financial crisis yet. The deputy governors are playing Russian roulette," Boumounsef told Reuters.