Overnight clashes in Lebanon injure dozens as tensions rise

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by courant.com -- By BY BASSEM MROUE -- Overnight confrontations between supporters and opponents of Lebanon's president — mostly fistfights and stone throwing — erupted in cities and towns across the country, injuring dozens of people, and 16 people were detained for their involvement, the Lebanese Red Cross and the army said Wednesday. The nationwide uprising against the country's ruling elite has remained overwhelmingly peaceful since it began Oct. 17, but as the political deadlock for forming a new government drags on, tempers have risen. President Michel Aoun has yet to hold consultations with parliamentary blocs on choosing a new prime minister after the government resigned a month ago. Outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri , who was Aoun's and the militant Hezbollah's favorite to lead a new Cabinet, withdrew his candidacy for the premiership, saying he hoped to clear the way for a solution to the political impasse after over 40 days of protests. Protesters have resorted to road closures and other tactics to pressure politicians into responding to their demands for a new government.

The prolonged deadlock is awakening sectarian and political rivalries, with scuffles breaking out in areas that were deadly front lines during the country's 1975-90 civil war. The most recent violence first began Sunday night after supporters of the two main Shiite groups, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, attacked protesters on Beirut's Ring Road. That thoroughfare had in the past connected predominantly Muslim neighborhoods in the city's west with Christian areas in the east. Intense clashes took place Tuesday night between people in the Shiite suburb of Chiyah and the adjacent Christian area of Ein Rummaneh, where stones were hurled between supporters of Hezbollah and rival groups supporting the right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces. A shooting in Ein Rummaneh in April 1975 triggered the 15-year civil war that killed nearly 150,000 people. Also on Tuesday night, supporters and opponents of Aoun engaged in fistfights and stone throwing in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest, injuring 24 people; seven were hospitalized.

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Man sentenced to death over British woman’s death in Beirut

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by dailystockdish.com -- A man has been sentenced to death in the case of a British woman who was raped and killed in Beirut nearly two years ago, Lebanon’s national news agency said. Tarek Houshi, a local Uber driver, was sentenced over the death of Rebecca Dykes, the National News Agency said. It was not immediately clear what crime Houshi was convicted of. The sentence can be challenged. Colleagues at the British Embassy Amman observed a two minute silence for Rebecca this morning, at the same time as the service in London Ms Dykes worked at the UK Embassy with the Department for International Development. She had been strangled with a rope and was suspected of having been sexually assaulted in December 2017. Ms Dykes was last seen leaving a bar in the Gemayzeh district of Beirut. The driver, who authorities said at the time had a criminal record, was arrested two days later.

Lebanese gov’t pays 1.5 bln USD to Eurobond buyers

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by famagusta-gazette.com --Lebanon’s central bank has paid the buyers of its Eurobond 1.5 billion U.S. dollars that were due on Thursday. The eight-year Eurobond has a yield rate of 5.45 percent, reported Elnashra, an online independent newspaper. Lebanese experts previously voiced their fears about Lebanon’s possible default on the Eurobond due to the financial crisis prevailing in the country. Lebanon has to pay for three Eurobonds in 2020, including 1.2 billion dollars in March, 700 million dollars in April and 600 million dollars in June. Lebanon is the third most indebted country in the world with a debt of 86 billion dollars by the end of July.

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.

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

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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."

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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.

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