News

Lebanon Preparing To Build New $70 Million Airport Terminal

The construction of the second terminal is hoped to increase the capacity of the airport from 8 million passengers a year today to 20 million by 2030.

Published

12 months ago

June 16, 2022

David Morelo

lebanon preparing to build new $70 million airport terminal

Directorate General Of Civil Aviation

Lebanon’s only international airport in Beirut is moving one step closer to the construction of its second terminal. According to Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamie, the crisis-stricken country will soon launch an international tender for the $70 million project.

Once constructed, the state-of-the-art terminal will be used for chartered and low-cost flights, as well those carrying Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The construction of the new terminal, together with other expansions and technological improvements, is hoped to increase the capacity of the airport from 8 million passengers a year today to 20 million by 2030, as stated on the website of national carrier Middle East Airlines.

beirut international airport terminal 2

In the coming months, large numbers of travelers are expected to visit Lebanon and generate substantial revenue for the country, whose tourism sector alone corresponds to 7.5 percent of its gross domestic product.

“Occupancy rates are full at airlines and hotels,” Minister of Tourism Walid Nassar said in reference to the summer season. “Lebanese expatriates and foreigners who love Lebanon will come to Lebanon and it will be a promising summer.”

Also Read: Google Contributed Billions To The Middle East Economy In 2021

The capacity to comfortably welcome more travelers to the country would provide a nice economic boost for Lebanon, which is experiencing the first financial crisis in its modern history. What’s more, the terminal construction project, which will be carried out by the private sector, should create hundreds of new jobs.

The last time when the Beirut Airport underwent a modernization was in 1990, after the Lebanese Civil War, which left it in shambles and in need for major improvements. For the last several years, the airport has been operating at peak capacity, and the two large explosions at the Beirut port in 2020 only made the situation worse.

News

Adobe Firefly AI Image Generator Comes To Photoshop

The Generative Fill tool will arrive in the app’s tool palette sometime in the second half of this year.

Published

5 days ago

May 25, 2023

Nour Nasir

Adobe

Adobe Photoshop is the latest app to benefit from the explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, gaining a new tool called Generative Fill. The company’s AI image generator Firefly benefitted from the new feature in a web-only update back in March, and today, the Generative Fill tool launches in beta for the popular photo editing program.

Generative Fill is a little like a smarter version of Adobe’s existing Content-Aware Fill feature and works within individual Photoshop image layers. The tool can be used to expand the borders of an image (a feature known as outpainting) or to generate entirely new objects, and contains a text prompt to add direction to the AI technology.

Adobe claims its AI is only trained to work on Adobe Stock images, licensed content, and images without copyright restrictions. Generative Fill also supports a system called Content Credentials, which attaches metadata-style attributes to images before they are shared online, informing viewers that content was created or edited with the help of AI.

“By integrating Firefly directly into workflows as a creative co-pilot, Adobe is accelerating ideation, exploration and production for all of our customers,” announced Ashley Still, the senior vice president of Digital Media at Adobe. “Generative Fill combines the speed and ease of generative AI with the power and precision of Photoshop, empowering customers to bring their visions to life at the speed of their imaginations,” she added.

Also Read: PicSo Review: A Popular AI-Based Text-To-Image App

Generative Fill isn’t yet available in the latest version of Photoshop, but if you’re curious about how the tool works, you can download the desktop beta app or try it out within a module of the Firefly beta. Adobe is still tight-lipped about the exact release date of Generative Fill, but says we can expect the new feature to drop sometime in the second half of 2023.