News

Lebanon Postpones Daylight Saving Time Shift By 1 Month

The decision has left Lebanon waking up in two different time zones this morning.

Published

2 years ago

March 26, 2023

Nour Nasir

lebanon postpones daylight saving time shift by 1 month

AFP

In a last-minute decision, Lebanon’s government announced that the shift away from daylight saving time would be postponed by a month, extending DST until the end of Ramadan. As a result, while most Northern Hemisphere countries automatically advanced their times by an hour yesterday, the people of Lebanon were left confused about the exact time they should set their alarms on Sunday morning.

In an alleged video leak shown by news outlet Megaphone, Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, and parliament speaker Nabih Berri discussed the postponement, with Berri insisting on delaying the switch away from DST.

Most digital devices with network access, such as smartphones and computers, switch in and out of daylight saving time automatically, so Lebanese citizens were asked to adjust their clocks back an hour manually.

Also Read: A Line-Up Of Over 100 Shows Comes To Snapchat This Ramadan

Although public institutions are forced to abide by the government’s decision, many private businesses ignored the request and continued to follow the existing schedule. The confusion has left Lebanon — a small country that can be transversed east to west in less than two hours — with two separate time zones.

The chaos has resulted in missed appointments, TV channels displaying different times, and even Google searches with the wrong timestamps.

News

Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users

The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

Nour Nasir

Google

Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.

Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.

Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.

Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.

Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide

To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.

While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.

Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.