by Stephanie T. Williams — Nonresident Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy –– Lebanon is sliding into “failed state” status. The country has been limping along with a weak interim executive while the presidency has been vacant for over six months. A full restoration of the country’s leading governance institutions is […]

by Arab news – Najia Houssari — Thousands of women in Lebanon are turning to motorcycles for transport as a means to cut costs, with many saying that social stigmas are disappearing amid the country’s worsening economic crisis. Many Lebanese people no longer have the financial means to drive a car, instead opting for motorcycles to withstand the economic crisis. Motorcycle sales make up about 50 percent of the consumer vehicle market, according to car dealerships in Lebanon. Buying and driving motorcycles is no longer limited to young men, delivery workers, university students and professionals who need to move quickly on the roads to reach their workplace at the lowest possible cost. Now, Lebanese women — in their 20s, 30s and 40s — are skillfully driving motorcycles around the country, with some even converting their bikes into taxis.

The economic crisis has placed a great burden on Lebanese women. Some have turned to traditionally male professions to find an income, including selling vegetables in pickup trucks, working in butcher shops, at gas stations, in car repairs and as taxi drivers. Lebanon’s civil war previously revolutionized women’s role in the workplace, with many entering professions for the first time, such as journalism, search and rescue, civil engineering and even frontline military positions. Before the economic crisis, some Lebanese women joined Harley-Davidson luxury motorcycle clubs, took part in car races and competed in mountain climbing competitions. They became a source of inspiration for others.

by Ghinwa Obeid, Al Arabiya English –– A young Lebanese man was stabbed to death in California’s college town of Davis days after a similar attack took place, triggering a police manhunt for the suspect. The victim, 20-year-old Karim Abou Najm, was killed Saturday evening at Sycamore Park as he was on his way home coming from an awards ceremony at the University of California, Davis, where he was finishing his undergraduate degree. For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app. “The day he left us, he won one of the UC Davis awards, and he was on his way back home,” Abou Najm’s father, Majdi, told local KCRA-TV channel. “He was literally 5 minutes away.”

The death of the computer science student came after another man, 50-year-old David Breaux, was stabbed to death at another park in the same town. The two incidents were followed by the stabbing of a 64-year-old woman at a homeless encampment on May 1, instigating fear that a serial killer might be on the loose in the area. “We moved from Lebanon in 2018 when the situation in Lebanon was…starting to go [in the wrong] direction and we came here hoping for safety,” the father said. The Associated Press reported that following the woman’s stabbing, a shelter-in-place was put into effect but was later lifted while calling on the residents to remain vigilant. The Associated Press also reported that the suspect was “described as a male with long curly hair, a thin build and carrying a brown backpack.”

Idlib – by Firas Karam — aawsat.com — — Opposition civilian and political groups in Syria’s northwest announced their complete readiness to receive Syrian refugees from Lebanon in liberated Syrian regions in wake of the violations and forced deportation they are facing in the neighboring country. The “Political Affairs Administration” in the opposition-held Idlib region and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group said on Friday that they were prepared to welcome over two million refugees in Lebanon who are threatened with forced deportation to regime-held regions where their lives could be at risk. In a statement, they urged Lebanese authorities to return to reason and their humanitarian and moral duties towards civilian refugees in line with international laws and norms that ensure their protection. They added that the Syrians were initially forced to leave their country given the violence of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime against them. Nearly two million Syrians have sought refuge in Lebanon to escape imprisonment or death.

The groups said they are “fully prepared” to receive the refugees in liberated Syrian regions in the north. The practices of the Lebanese authorities prompted popular protests and rallies in the cities of Azaz, al-Bab and Afrin in the Idlib countryside and in Idlib city. Seif Hammoud, who was displaced from the Homs countryside to Azaz, said he fears for the life of his parents and siblings, who are living in a refugee camp in Lebanon’s Baalbek region, should they be deported to regime-controlled regions. 

Story by Jamal Osborne • © Provided by Hollywood Unlocked — A12-year-old middle school student is speaking out after he said he was sent home from school for refusing to remove a T-shirt that read: “There are only two genders.”

The 7th grader, Liam Morrison attends John T. Nichols Jr. middle school and during a board meeting on April 13 he revealed to Middleborough Public Schools that he was in gym class on day and someone on the school’s staff told him that he had to take his shirt off because people were complaining that it was making them feel unsafe. “Yes, words on a shirt made people feel unsafe. They told me that I wasn’t in trouble, but it sure felt like I was,” Morrison told the MPS board. “I was told that I would need to remove my shirt before I could return to class. When I nicely told them that I didn’t want to do that, they called my father.”

by arstechnica.com — BENJ EDWARDS — According to The New York Times, AI pioneer Dr. Geoffrey Hinton has resigned from Google so he can “speak freely” about potential risks posed by AI. Hinton, who helped create some of the fundamental technology behind today’s generative AI systems, fears that the tech industry’s drive to develop AI products could result in dangerous consequences—from misinformation to job loss or even a threat to humanity. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” the Times quoted Hinton as saying. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”

The generative AI revolution has begun—how did we get here?

Hinton’s résumé in artificial intelligence extends back to 1972, and his accomplishments have influenced current practices in generative AI. In 1987, Hinton, David Rumelhart, and Ronald J. Williams popularized backpropagation, a key technique for training neural networks that is used in today’s generative AI models. In 2012, Hinton, Alex Krizhevsky, and Ilya Sutskever created AlexNet, which is commonly hailed as a breakthrough in machine vision and deep learning, and it arguably kickstarted our current era of generative AI. In 2018, Hinton won the Turing Award, which some call the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” along with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun.

By AFP – Agence France Presse — The United States on Monday called on Lebanon’s parliament to elect a new president, as the country marks six months without a leader at the helm amid grinding political and economic turmoil. “The United States calls on Lebanon’s political leadership to move expeditiously to elect a president to […]

By Najia Houssari — arabnews.com — BEIRUT: Former Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Sunday that the continued presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon was “a conspiracy against Lebanon.” He described them as “security refugees and not political refugees,” at an event held by the Free Patriotic Movement in the southern town of Jezzine. He […]

 By Jamie Prentis / The National —  Some villages and towns are turning to solar panels to power water pumps but these are just local solutions to a nationwide problem. Adham Al Danaf, the mayor of Baalchmay, says the town’s water woes are the result of Lebanon’s electricity crisis. Jamie Prentis / The National Adham Al Danaf, the mayor of Baalchmay, says the town’s water woes are the result of Lebanon’s electricity crisis The Middle East and North Africa is one of the most water-scarce regions of the world. Already plagued with a lack of freshwater resources, climate change, population growth and poor management has exacerbated the issue and threatens to affect the lives of millions.

The National’s correspondents across the region spoke to the people most affected to understand the extent of the issue and where hope for change may lie. The thick maple tree in Baalchmay, a town carved into the hills of the Mount Lebanon region, almost acts as a dividing line on the road in the lower parts of the area. Perhaps about 200 years old, the tree is so broad that it is nearly as wide as the small cars passing by. Only metres away is a spring. It is said the proximity of the water nearby allowed the maple tree and its thick branches to grow to such an extent, and survive previous conflicts that hit the area. “In the past, the story goes that if you got a shovel and were just digging a little bit, water would come from the ground. That’s how rich the area was with water,” said Adham Al Danaf, the mayor of Baalchmay, a town of about 4,500 Lebanese residents and up to 3,000 refugees. “What we always say about the village is that it’s like the human body,” added Jamil Al Danaf, a water specialist at the municipality. “No matter where you take a small pin and poke it, blood comes out — that’s what water is in Baalchmay. Where ever you dig, you’re going to find water.”

By Cate Chapman, Editor at LinkedIn News – The U.S. is investigating whether “several dozen small technology” firms have colluded to game the H-1B visa lottery for skilled foreign workers, The Wall Street Journal reports. Those companies entered the same individual candidates multiple times into the lottery, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said, in […]