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US helps power-starved Lebanese businesses switch to solar

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By Najia Houssari - arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: The US has launched a $20 million fund to help Lebanese businesses install solar energy systems as owners struggle to stay afloat amid the collapse of the country’s electricity sector. US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea launched the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund on Friday, saying it will help local businesses reduce operating costs, sustain their operations and maintain employment levels. “This fund will support the purchase and installation of solar power generation systems for at least 25 businesses,” she said. Lebanon’s crumbling power sector has forced businesses and households to rely largely on private diesel generators.

Power now is available for only four hours a day, thanks to a $60 million advance approved by the Cabinet in favor of the Electricite du Liban to supply fuel to operate the Deir Ammar and Zahrani plants. However, few trust the state’s sudden generosity. Jamal, a lawyer, said: “Increasing feeding hours to four hours may be a temporary trap to impose the new price on taxpayers, after which we will fall back into darkness.” Shea said: “Lebanese businesses are struggling in this current economic crisis. They have limited access to financing and their capital accounts, like those of all depositors, are trapped in Lebanese banks. For years, Lebanese enterprises relied on unsustainable and costly energy sources harmful to the environment. “The US Agency for International Development contributed $4 million in seed capital to the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund, and we are working to secure an additional $16 million from private investors and other donors.” She added: “The fund will lend capital to enterprises at commercial rates, anticipating that the loans will be repaid within two to three years. This will come from savings on reduced reliance on diesel generators. “We expect that these businesses will cut their operating costs by at least 20 percent, reducing their expenditures on electricity, and thereby boosting productivity and protecting Lebanese jobs.”

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot—A whole new way to work

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by microsoft.com -- Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager -- Today, we announced Microsoft 365 Copilot—your copilot for work. Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more—and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. And it does so within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise. Right now, we spend too much time on the drudgery of work and too little time and energy on the work that ignites our creativity and sparks joy.

Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more—to unleash creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel skills. Today, we’re also announcing an entirely new experience: Business Chat. Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts—to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like “tell my team how we updated the product strategy” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads. Recent GitHub data shows that among developers who have used GitHub Copilot, 88 percent say they are more productive, 77 percent say the tool helps them spend less time searching for information, and 74 percent say they can focus their efforts on more satisfying work.1

Reinventing productivity for everyone

Salameh testifies before European judicial delegation in Lebanon

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by Najia houssari - arabnews.com -- Bank du Liban governor attends meeting in Beirut at the Palace of Justice Pope Francis meets caretaker PM Mikati as tensions rise amid currency crisis, political deadlock BEIRUT: The governor of the banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, testified on Thursday before a European judicial delegation at the Palace of Justice in Beirut, as part of investigations into Salameh’s involvement in financial irregularities.

Strict security measures were taken in and around the palace. The army was deployed in the vicinity of the headquarters of the Military Court and the headquarters of the army intelligence near the National Museum, all the way to the Adliya Bridge. Salameh entered and exited through a gate far from the press, via an elevator that leads directly to the floor where the session took place. The European delegation, led by French judge Aude Buresi, who represented France and Luxembourg, did not question Salameh directly, with local judge Charbel Bou Samra questioning the governor as interpreters translated the answers. No Lebanese or foreign lawyer accompanied Salameh to the hearing. According to leaked information, Salameh answered all the questions and appeared comfortable while providing the delegation with explanations. The European delegation is investigating the laundering of some $330 million.

OpenAI releases GPT-4

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By Jake Perez, Editor at LinkedIn News -- OpenAI's long-awaited GPT-4 was released on Tuesday. The new iteration of ChatGPT is multimodal — able to respond to images and text — and it's more accurate, more knowledgable and is able to "see" images and "reason," per OpenAI, further intensifying the artificial intelligence race. In fact, GPT-4's release happened hours after Google announced generative AI features were coming to its suite of Workplace apps. GPT-4 isn't perfect and occasionally still "hallucinates," according to The New York Times. It's also unable to form new ideas or hypothesize about the future.

Amid ongoing Lebanese stalemate, France renews sanctions threat

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PARIS, (Reuters) - France's foreign ministry on Tuesday said it was exploring with allies whether the time had come for those spoiling efforts to break the constitutional deadlock in Lebanon to face consequences. Lebanon has had no head of state since former President Michel Aoun's term ended at the end of October, deepening institutional paralysis in a country where one of the world's worst economic crises has been festering for years.

Foreign states have historically played a part in determining the presidency's fate in a country that has been a theatre for international rivalries. Last month, representatives from France, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar met in Paris to discuss how to end the political stalemate in Lebanon, though the meeting did not result in the clear backing of any one presidential candidate, according to people briefed on the meeting. "We call on the Lebanese authorities, Lebanese leaders, all the political leaders to get out of this constitutional impasse," foreign ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre told reporters in a daily briefing. "We have underlined that those who block ... could be exposed to consequences."

Monaco money laundering probe of Najib Mikati goes on after Lebanon probe dropped

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by Nada Maucourant Atallah - thenationalnews -- Monaco is continuing its investigation into Lebanon's billionaire caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati over allegations of money laundering, the principality's general prosecutor has confirmed exclusively to The National. This will proceed despite the Lebanese judiciary dropping its own separate probe into allegations of fraud connected with a subsidised housing loans scheme that was alleged to involve members of the Mikati family. “An investigation is currently ongoing in the Principality of Monaco and it has been entrusted to the judicial police division of the Public Security,” the Monaco General Prosecutor’s Office said. Officials could not provide further information “at this stage”, the office said.

Monaco requested mutual legal assistance in January last year from Lebanese authorities in its investigation into Mr Mikati and his relatives over allegations of money laundering in relation to the subsidised loans. Mr Mikati is connected to three companies in Monaco, including SAM M1 management, and had, according to the request, several bank accounts in the principality — which have been closed. Lebanon opened its own investigation into the housing loans case in 2019, after allegations that politicians and affluent individuals benefited from fraudulent central bank-subsidised loans. According to the allegations, these included members of the Mikati family. The file stayed for two years with Beirut's First Investigative Judge Charbel Abou Samra. But Lebanon's top prosecutor Ghassan Oueidate informed Monaco in March last year that the local investigation had been dropped the previous month. He said the case “ended with the submission of the documents to Beirut investigative judge, who issued a motion to dismiss and that this decision is definitive”, in the letter seen by the National.

China-brokered talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran a ‘troubling' development, former DNI warns

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Story by Madeline Coggins foxnews.com -- After Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to end years of hostilities Friday, one former Director of National Intelligence is sounding the alarm on the "troubling" development in the Middle East. "The end result is China is stronger, Iran is stronger. The United States and Israel are weaker and the Middle East is more vulnerable. This is a terrible development," former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said on "Cavuto Live" Saturday. Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to end years of hostility and re-engage in diplomatic relations following previously undisclosed talks in Beijing between top security officials from the rival powers. The two nations announced the deal following four days of meetings, saying they would "resume diplomatic relations between them and re-open their embassies and missions within a period not exceeding two months."

Saudi Arabia and Iran also agreed to activate a security cooperation agreement signed in 2001 in addition to earlier agreements on trade, economy and investment. The talks in Beijing concluded an ongoing series of discussions that took place in Iraq and Oman in 2021 and 2022. Ratcliffe highlighted how under the Biden administration relations with China and the Middle East have changed. "Think about where we were two years ago, the Abraham Accords, peace in the Middle East, and an Iran that was poorer, weaker and less influential than they'd ever been. And the Saudis were likely to be the next participant in the Abraham Accords to improve relations with Israel," he said. "Two short years later, think about it, because Joe Biden pushed the Saudis away, called them a pariah state, they have now normalized relations with Iran, a country they hate, a country they've been fighting for centuries in a deal that was brokered by our number one adversary that everyone admits is our number one adversary, China." The reports concerning relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran came on the same day Chinese President Xi Jinping won an official third five-year term as president.