by cnbc.com — BEIRUT — Lebanon’s prime minister pledged to stabilize the country’s economic problems and aim for a budget deficit of around 7% next year. Speaking to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble in Beirut, Saad Hariri said: “I understand that we have a problem but I am extremely confident that we can get out of this problem if we follow through all the steps we put in front of us.” “What we are doing is, fixing our debt to GDP (gross domestic product), our deficit and the budget to 7.6% this year, we want to go down to 7% next year, or maybe a little bit less. And then, you know, continue on stabilizing this deficit,” he added in the interview aired Wednesday. Hariri also said he was committed to keeping the Lebanese pound’s currency peg to the U.S. dollar. “We believe in the government and in the Ministry of Finance (and) also the central bank, we believe that keeping the Lebanese pound at 1,500 is the only way, only stable way to move forward with these reforms.” On Monday, Lebanon was on the brink of declaring a state of economic emergency, initiating plans to accelerate reforms in an effort to save the country’s ailing economy. Hariri reiterated the importance of reducing the country’s deficit to reporters the same day, following a meeting between his cabinet and other political leaders.

by ahvalnews.com — Turkey has criticised Lebanese President Michel Aoun after he made a speech lamenting what he called state terror practiced by the Ottoman Empire during its four-century rule of the region. Turkey’s Islamist government often harks back to what it sees as the glory days of the Ottoman Empire that ruled much of […]

by aawsat.com — Lebanon’s political leaders met Monday with the aim of finding a solution to the country’s economic crisis, raising concerns that more taxes will be imposed. Lebanon has one of the world’s highest public debts in the world, standing at 150% of GDP. Growth has plummeted and budget deficit reached 11% of GDP […]

by dailystar.com.lb — BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah Saturday denied Israeli claims about his party having factories to produce precision-guided missiles in Lebanon, saying such “lies” were an attempt to justify Israeli attacks against the country. In a televised speech Nasrallah said Hezbollah possessed precision-guided missiles but not the factories to produce them. “We […]

BEIRUT,  (Xinhua) — Lebanese central bank’s foreign exchange reserves increased by 1.4 billion U.S. dollars during the second half of August to reach 38.66 billion dollars at the end of the month. “This increase is due to the influx of deposits from the non-resident private sector directly to the central bank,” a statement by the […]

 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Lebanese bank for connections to Hezbollah on Thursday. The agency announced the sanctions against Jammal Trust Bank and its subsidiaries for “brazenly enabling” the financial activities of Hezbollah, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization. “Corrupt financial institutions like Jammal Trust are a direct […]

by esquireme.com –Chris Cotonou– It might be nothing, or it might just be the perfect metaphor. On a usually busy corner of Armenia Street in Beirut, a mural depicting the iconic Lebanese singer Fairuz is now semi-hidden, obscured by plant pots, chairs and scribbled graffiti. I point it out from a busy bar across the street and Salma, a 22-year-old Beirut student, half-smiles and muses “I hadn’t noticed it before, but I’m not surprised.” The short pause in our conversation is replaced with a pulsating American club track bluring out of the bar’s speakers. “Not a lot of people my age would admit they listen to Fairuz these days. She is our parent’s generation,” says Salma. The street art is the work of Yazan Halwani who—along with other artists such as Sabah and Khalil Gibran—sought to fill Beirut with murals of Lebanese cultural icons they believed would inspire and unite the next generation. As the Arab-world’s best-selling singers Fairuz is undoubtedly one of those icons. In Lebanon and abroad she remains a representative of the country’s identity. As Halwani once put it “she’s a symbol of Lebanese identity not soured by sectarianism”. “Not a lot of people my age would admit they listen to Fairuz these days. She is our parent’s generation”

As a transcendent star stitched into the tapestry of Arabic pop-culture, her popularity has spawned a rather unique tradition where many Lebanese families, taxi drivers, and workers start their days with her music. On Spotify and YouTube you can find popular playlists titled ‘Fairuz Morning Songs’ created specifically for this ritual. Although, today with the maturing of a new generation, people like Salma believe that perhaps it has now had its time. “That is something our parents do,” she says, “but that won’t be happening in 10 years, at least not in Beirut.” While a shift in tastes is not particularly dramatic—new generations have always sought music styles that will define and differentiate them from their elders—it is Fairuz’s longevity that is impressive. “These days people have no respect for the classics. Kids today would rather listen to trash! They forget what we fought for to get here.” With a career spanning 50 years, and more than 150 million records sold, Fairuz has been three types of icon to three generations: the first during the glamour and optimism of the Golden Age; then to that generation’s children, who either heard her from abroad, or amidst the sounds of sobbing and ammunition; and finally following the war when her image became a de facto matriarch of a new Lebanon looking for reinvention. For three generations, she has remained relevant.

by naharnet.com —Lebanon’s Higher Defense Council on Tuesday stressed “the right of the Lebanese to defend themselves with all means against any aggression,” in the wake of Israel’s latest drone attacks in the country. “This is a right that is enshrined in the U.N. Charter,” the Council added in a statement, emphasizing that “national unity […]

by en.annahar.com —BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has described the crash of two Israeli reconnaissance drones over Beirut as a violation and “aggression” against Lebanese sovereignty. He said Sunday that the developments overnight constitute a threat to regional stability and an attempt to push the situation toward more escalation. Hariri’s comments were the first […]

by finance.yahoo.com —Rex Moore, The Motley Fool  — Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) founder Bill Gates was speaking to a group of college students in 2004. According to The New York Times, Gates was a bit concerned about the decline in the number of computer science majors, as well as the notion that the field had matured and there weren’t many breakthroughs left to achieve in the area. One student expressed doubt that there would ever be another tech company as successful as Microsoft. Gates’ reply is eye-opening: ”If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts.” He wasn’t kidding…

Fast-forward to today, and of course someone has figured it out. This special kind of artificial intelligence is called machine learning. If anything, Gates was too conservative in his estimates. Experts say the market opportunity is now far, far greater than 10 Microsofts. And Gates isn’t alone in his optimism. Other top business leaders are on board as well. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), said he thinks this new technology is the key to Amazon’s future. Sun CEO Greg Papadopoulos is calling it “a real revolution.” Even super investor Warren Buffett says that it will have a “hugely beneficial social effect.”

When machines go to college We’ve referred to machine learning before as the beginning of today’s AI explosion. It’s “simply” software that ingests data, learns from it, and can then form a conclusion about something in the world. Thus, the key to understanding machine learning is that it’s software that writes itself. Instead of explicitly programming software what to do, you instead provide it with large amounts of data and let it learn on its own. This allows machine learning to solve problems that earlier software with even billions of lines of code couldn’t have solved. A more powerful subset of machine learning is deep learning, which essentially simulates how neurons in the human brain strengthen connections between one another to learn. If you’re wondering how companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have grown to be among the largest in the world, part of the answer is how well they’ve integrated machine learning and deep learning into all aspects of their businesses.