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

4 years 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

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.