World
Is Hezbollah weakened as Lebanon shifts towards new governance?
Beirut, Lebanon – A new president. A new prime minister. And the sense that Hezbollah, arguably the most powerful group in the country, has been weakened.
It has been a potentially transformative few weeks in Lebanon, particularly when taken in the context of a political system that often appears frozen.
The developments have been a cause for celebration among many Lebanese, but they also could lead to questions for the entire political class, including Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, a Shia political group and militia, has dominated Lebanon for the better part of the past two decades. But in the past few months, it has suffered numerous setbacks, including the loss of most of its senior members, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah, in its war with Israel and subsequently the fall of its staunch ally, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
“Hezbollah still has legitimacy,” Ziad Majed, a Lebanese political researcher, told Al Jazeera. “It will have to accept to be a strong – and it will be strong – Lebanese party like all the others but without the ownership of the decision of war and peace.”
Hezbollah’s ‘hand cut off’
Hezbollah helped Joseph Aoun get the required number of votes to become president by backing him in the second round of voting on January 9. But the group, which had planned to support incumbent Najib Mikati in the vote for prime minister on January 13, abstained after it became clear Nawaf Salam, the former president of the International Court of Justice, would win.
Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad said the group had extended a hand to the nation by voting for Aoun but Salam’s nomination saw that “hand cut off”.
The Iranian-backed group feels that many of its opponents in government are taking advantage of the losses it suffered in Israel’s war on Lebanon.
In his first speech as prime minister-designate, however, Salam promised to unite the Lebanese people and spoke to issues that impact the Shia community deeply after Israel’s war on the country. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon focused predominantly on areas with high Shia populations, even in areas where many locals said Hezbollah military infrastructure or fighters were not present, including southern Lebanon, much of the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s suburbs widely referred to as Dahiyeh.
Much like Aoun’s speech a few days earlier, Salam said he would work to make sure Israel’s military withdraws “from the last occupied inch of [Lebanese] land” and the areas impacted by Israel’s devastating attacks would be rebuilt.
“Reconstruction is not just a promise but a commitment,” he said.
“He is smart enough to find the appropriate ways to try to be inclusive,” Karim Emile Bitar, an international relations professor at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera. “I do not think he will try to exclude the Shia constituency from participating in government and state building, but this is a decision the Shia parties have to make.”
Hezbollah is, however, in a precarious position. For years, Hezbollah and its allies were politically and militarily influential enough to block decisions they opposed, such as government formations that didn’t satisfy their needs. In one of the most well-known examples of the group’s power, Hezbollah deployed fighters to the streets of Beirut in May 2008 after the Lebanese government ordered the dismantling of the group’s private telecommunications network, forcing the state authorities to backtrack.
But the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria has made receiving weapons more difficult and removed a key regional ally for the group.
Monopoly on weapons
Under the terms of the ceasefire with Israel, Hezbollah is supposed to move north of the Litani River, which runs across southern Lebanon from north of Tyre in the west to just south of Marjayoun in the east, and the Lebanese army is to deploy in southern Lebanon after the Israelis withdraw from the territory.
Hezbollah has said its military infrastructure must only be removed from the south, but Israel has recently attacked targets north of the Litani that it said are associated with Hezbollah. However, some officials in Israel and the United States – and even Lebanon – have said Hezbollah’s military infrastructure should be targeted anywhere in Lebanon. This leaves questions over whether all parties have the same understanding of the ceasefire.
Aoun and Salam have both spoken about the state having a monopoly on weapons and deploying to southern Lebanon, a clear message to Hezbollah that its military supremacy may be over.
Whether Hezbollah will accept that is a different matter. On Saturday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem warned that Hezbollah must be included in any incoming government.
“[No one can] exclude us from effective and influential political participation in Lebanon as we are a fundamental component of the country’s makeup and its renaissance,” Qassem said before adding that no force was able to “take domestic advantage of the results of the [Israeli] aggression, for the political path is separate from the situation of the resistance [Hezbollah]”.
Lebanon’s new leaders have promised to ensure Israel withdraws from every centimetre of southern Lebanon and to rebuild its destroyed homes and villages in what analysts believe is an effort at extending a hand to the Shia community.
Hezbollah is under pressure from its constituencies in the south, the Bekaa Valley and Dahiyeh to rebuild their homes and lives. For that, analysts said, Lebanon will need international aid. This could lead Hezbollah to accept the new political direction for Lebanon for the time being.
“Either [Hezbollah] allows the rebuilding to happen in a way that is state-led and has sufficient legitimacy from [Arab] Gulf donors who are willing to put their money in, or it’s not going to happen,” Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, said.
And there are indications that, despite the rhetoric from some, Hezbollah may be open to a more conciliatory path, at least in the short term.
“The important thing is to rebuild state institutions, achieve political, financial and economic reform, implement the ceasefire agreement and follow up on the implementation of the Taif Agreement,” Qassem Kassir, a political analyst close to Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera, referring to the 1989 pact designed to end the 15-year Lebanese Civil War. “The issue of confronting the Israeli enemy is one of the priorities.”
New hope in Salam
The partnership of Aoun and Salam signals a shift away from the traditional blocs of political power in Lebanon as well as the billionaire prime minister profile of some of Salam’s predecessors, including Saad Hariri and current caretaker Premier Mikati.
Many Lebanese said Salam’s designation as prime minister in particular is a boon for the country and its hopes at reforms.
“I am very hopeful,” said Dalal Mawad, a Lebanese journalist and author who counts Salam as a mentor. “He embodies the justice and accountability and the rule of law that we want to see in Lebanon.”
“What we can say is that Nawaf Salam’s nomination definitely augurs well for the future of Lebanon,” Bitar said. “Most Lebanese are optimistic for the first time in a couple of decades or at least for the first time since 2019.”
Salam’s name first began to be circulated for the premiership shortly after the mass protests that broke out on October 17, 2019. He is widely seen as someone who, despite being from a prominent political family – his relatives include former Prime Ministers Saeb Salam and Tammam Salam – is outside the traditional political oligarchy.
In his first speech as prime minister-designate, Salam spoke about building “a modern, civil and just state”.
He also spoke about achieving “justice, security, progress and opportunities”.
He spoke specifically of justice for the victims of the August 4, 2020, Beirut port blast and the 2019 bank crisis when depositors were suddenly stripped of access to their money and no officials or banks were held accountable.
Lebanese media reported on Tuesday that the investigation into the blast, which had been derailed by Lebanese political groups including Hezbollah, would resume shortly.
Struggles ahead
Despite the focus of many on Hezbollah, all of Lebanon’s most powerful parties have taken advantage of the system to avoid accountability or block political agendas they oppose.
The next challenge for Aoun and Salam will be to deliver on their statements as they confront a political system built on sectarianism.
Lebanon’s sectarian system “necessitates new approaches”, Majed said, adding that Lebanon was in need of a monopoly on violence by state institutions and weapons and “a strategy to defend Lebanon from real Israeli hostilities”.
Under the current sectarian system, Lebanon is managed by a handful of political parties and leaders with deeply rooted support and control over the state’s institutions. These leaders, who span Lebanon’s religious sects, are accused of using these resources and their political power to build their patronage networks, holding people accountable to them rather than the state.
These powers have become entrenched in their positions and resistant to change.
“We need to make fundamental, structural reforms in Lebanon to the political system, and I do not know if that is doable,” Hilal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut and former colleague of Salam’s, told Al Jazeera.
Appointing strong or new leaders in positions of power is not all that is needed to root out the deeply entrenched corruption and clientelism. Salam, for example, is not the first technocrat to take a prominent role in Lebanon.
“The difference is that, in the past, technocrats came to power when the political class wanted to procrastinate,” Houry said. “They were never brought in with any legitimacy, which depended on the political class, so they didn’t have the capacity or support to put in place most of their reforms.”
But today, the myriad crises in Lebanon mean the political class understands it has to let some reforms happen – even if it will likely continue to oppose systemic changes.
Salam and Aoun will have to tackle questions of economic stability, security and national dialogue without isolating any community and while managing foreign relations, including Israeli aggression. The series of issues to address is long and arduous.
Analysts, however, said Salam and Aoun have a unique opportunity. The collapse of the al-Assad regime, a constant meddler in Lebanese affairs, the weakening of Iran and the willingness of the international community to provide foreign aid and backing to Lebanon’s new leaders mean there is support for a reform agenda that wasn’t previously there.
Even with positive conditions, confronting the deeply entrenched and resilient Lebanese political class will still be a back-breaking endeavour. Many analysts said that despite their positivity over Salam’s appointment, they held doubts about whether anyone could uproot the Lebanese political system.
Still, Khashan said, Salam “is the right man for the period”.
NEW YORK (AP) — Launching an artificial intelligence tool to take notes and summarize important information from a virtual meeting can be alluring. Seconds after one of the agents attends an hour-long video conference, it can deliver a recap of key points and outline a to-do list for all the participants.
But the way popular AI notetakers accomplish those tasks makes some people avoid using them. The technology turns everything said during meetings into data. Confidential personnel information, corporate strategies, trade secrets and remarks that could later be seen as incriminating — all of it could end up in the wrong hands.
“There are huge risks to the organization on AI notetakers,” Amy Dufrane, the chief executive of human resources training and certification provider HRCI, said. “I don’t think companies should use it at all.”
An AI notetaker is a software application or device that uses artificial intelligence, speech recognition and large language models to record, transcribe and summarize conversations. The tools are intended to save time and improve participation, but professionals in a number of fields say there are reasons to be wary.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Chief among them is uncertainty about where the collected data is stored and for how long. Privacy advocates worry the companies behind the AI notetakers are creating voiceprints without consent. Voiceprints — a type of biometric profile similar to a fingerprint but tuned to the unique intonations and characteristics of one’s voice — can be used to access restricted or confidential information, including the contents of bank accounts.
Some tech companies resell data from the notetaking tools they created or use confidential meeting transcripts and recordings to train their AI models. There’s also the risk that conversations between an attorney and client could become fair game in legal proceedings; a New York federal judge in February ordered a criminal defendant to provide prosecutors with documents he created for his lawyers because it already had been shared with a third party, which was Anthropic’s Claude.
“People who use AI notetakers, they don’t always know where the data goes,” said Justin Daniels, an Atlanta-based corporate attorney at law firm Baker Donelson. “And in my context, if the data goes anywhere else and they’re not aware of it, that attorney-client-privileged conversation may not be attorney-client-privileged anymore.”
Here are some tips on the etiquette of kicking an AI notetaker out of a meeting, the risks of using one and how to protect yourself.
The first step when you join a meeting is check for bots
When you join a meeting, make it a habit to check whether an AI notetaker is present. It might appear as a meeting attendee, often labeled as an AI notetaker, or a pop-up message on the screen informing participants the meeting is being recorded. The latter could signal the presence of an AI notetaker.
Virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet let users know when recording is underway, but some meeting software does not make it clear when a notetaker is present, according to Thorin Klosowski, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior security and privacy analyst.
Participants also may use personal notetaking devices that are separate from the meeting platform, in which case the other attendees wouldn’t necessarily know a discussion was being recorded and transcribed.
“You hope the other person would tell you that they’re doing that,” Klosowski said. “Asking everyone for consent before doing a sensitive meeting would be the most polite approach to take.”
If you’re unsure whether someone has deployed an AI notetaker, you can ask. You can also state at the beginning that a meeting is not authorized for recording.
A polite way to establish such a boundary is to say, “Our company policy is that this meeting cannot be recorded,” Dufrane suggested. This relieves the employee, such as a salesperson who wants to make a good impression, of having to be the “bad guy,” putting the onus on the company instead, she said.
Another option is to allow the notetaker for part of the gathering but turn if off at the end to dedicate time for more delicate topics.
“I won’t start talking about anything substantive until it’s shut off, because I just don’t want to take the risk,” Daniels said.
Assert your privacy rights to protect voiceprints
Many AI notetakers determine unique acoustic signatures, or voiceprints, for each speaker in the room, said Chris Pluymers, associate attorney at The Dillon Law Group in East Lansing, Michigan. That’s how the companies distinguish one speaker from another, labeling them with monikers “Speaker 1” or “Speaker 2.”
One way voiceprints are used is to verify the identities of bank account holders over the phone. If bad actors got ahold of a person’s vocal signature, they could use it to access files, commit fraud or take over accounts, he said.
Laws in some states govern how voiceprints can be created and stored and provide rights that individuals can assert to object to the use of an AI notetaker during meetings they attend.
In Illinois, voiceprints are considered biometric identifiers, similar to fingerprints, and are covered under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires written notice and informed consent before an AI notetaker or other agent collects voiceprints. The law also mandates a documented data retention schedule and destruction policy, Pluymers said. But most companies using the tools have none of those systems in place, Pluymers said.
“In the world of AI, the world of data and privacy, the world of biometric identification, I don’t think you can have such a lax approach to it,” Pluymers said. “I think getting out ahead of it is crucial.”
Under the Illinois law, employees can say they don’t want to attend a meeting with an AI notetaker until they have assurances of where and why the data is being stored, and when it will be deleted, Pluymers said. They can also ask if there is a policy and written consent form to sign.
If an AI notetaker shows up at a meeting unexpectedly, a participant could say, “I prefer we keep this meeting without AI recording or transcript tools and I’d be happy to take my own notes and share a recap if that’s helpful,” Pluymers suggested. “Just being warm and genuine about it and asking them to respect your wishes.”
Know where your data goes
When working with AI notetaking apps, find out whether the companies that built them retain recordings, transcripts or metadata indefinitely or use them to train AI models, said Danielle Kays, a partner at Fisher Phillips who represents businesses on privacy and employment law matters.
“If there is some sort of speaker ID or voice recognition, really understand what that is and how it works,” Kays said.
Even when content is deleted, metadata about meetings can remain stored with the vendor, meaning sensitive business information could influence how the model behaves and in some cases could be memorized or reproduced, she said.
AI notetakers generate text, and that’s easier for outsiders to search through than video or audio files, according to EFF.
“Storing a bunch of video isn’t easy, it’s costly and hard to look through, but text is much easier to search and cheaper to store,” said Klosowski of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well
World
Argentinian flight instructor jumps to death from plane, 22-year-old student forced to land alone
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A flight instructor jumped to his death out of a small aircraft over Argentina, forcing the student pilot he was teaching to land the plane herself.
Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was on board a two-seat Cessna 150G on Saturday when he made the decision to jump out over the province of Córdoba, according to CNN, which cited its Argentinian affiliate TN.
“He made this tragic decision on board an aircraft with another person by his side,” Eduardo Álvarez, director of the Flying Parrot Córdoba flying school where Bertazzo worked, told TN. “It’s impossible to think about it or understand it, but the human mind is so complex.”
An undated photo of Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, a 42-year-old pilot who jumped to his death from a plane on Saturday, July 4 in Argentina. (Instagram/Leandro Bertazzo)
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Rosario, the 22-year-old student, later told authorities that Bertazzo told her, “You know what you have to do, carry on,” before taking off his gear, opening the door and leaping out, according to Álvarez.
Opening the door of a plane midair is incredibly difficult. Álvarez said it would be akin to trying to open the door of a car traveling 124 miles per hour.
Cessna 150m FRA150M climbing out after take-off with flaps deployed and hills behind. (aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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Álvarez said that Rosario managed to land the plane safely, despite being in “complete shock.” There was no damage to the plane, according to TN.
Álvarez noted that Bertazzo had gone on a flight with another student earlier in the day.
A view from the main road of the flight school Bertazzo worked at, Flying Parrot Córdoba. (Google Maps)
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Álvarez also told TN that Bertazzo had visited a psychiatric institute, something that was only known by his family prior to his death.
Prosecutors in Córdoba will lead the investigation into Bertazzo’s death. The plane he jumped from is now in police custody.
Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn denies damaging US President Donald Trump’s Washington, DC reflecting pool renovation.
Published On 9 Jul 2026
A former US Olympian has pleaded not guilty to vandalising the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, in a case that has drawn national attention amid accusations that the administration of US President Donald Trump is trying to shift blame for a troubled renovation.
David “Davey” Hearn, a 67-year-old three-time Olympic canoe racer, entered his plea in federal court on Thursday after prosecutors accused him of “maliciously” damaging the “American flag blue” lining installed at the bottom of the reflecting pool at Trump’s request ahead of celebrations taking place at Washington’s National Mall for the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence on July 4.
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Federal prosecutors allege Hearn pulled at the liner on June 19, causing more than $1,000 in damage. He has been charged with destruction of government property, an offence that carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
Hearn denied the allegations. He admitted he stopped at the pool during a bike ride, reached inside and touched a section of lining that was already peeling away, but that he did not remove or damage it. He told The Associated Press he let go when a park employee told him to stop.
Hearn’s lawyers argue the prosecution is an attempt by the Trump administration to deflect attention from what they describe as a botched renovation project.
“This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures,” they said in a statement. “The justice system exists to determine facts, not to provide political cover.”
The 620-metre (2,030-foot) reflecting pool reopened in June after Trump ordered the new liner to be installed across the bottom. He said he was compelled to go ahead with the $14.7m renovation after a friend visiting from Germany called the pool dark and disgusting.
But within days, algae began to spread across the surface, the water turned chartreuse green, and sections of the liner began peeling away.
Experts have explained that the dark new coat of paint at the bottom of the pool would elevate the temperature and allow algae to grow, and that algae blooms in water are common at this time of year, especially in shallow, stagnant water like that of the pool.
Trump blamed the issues on vandals, claiming without evidence that “corrosive and destructive chemicals” were poured into the pool and that vandals “took some form of knife or blade” and put a long “gash into the beautiful facade”, although no one has been charged over those alleged acts.
The US president warned that anyone who allegedly damaged the pool could face long prison terms. “Please remember that there is a 10 year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things — Which will be fully enforced!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Last week, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced the indictment against Hearn, accusing him of intentionally damaging the liner.
The US Department of the Interior has said that at least six people were arrested on suspicion of vandalising the pool in the weeks after it reopened. National Guard troops and US Park Police were deployed to protect the site, which was fenced off during July 4 celebrations.
Thursday’s hearing drew a packed courtroom, with dozens of supporters waiting outside after Hearn entered his plea.
The reflecting pool’s problems have continued, with Trump acknowledging it will need to be drained again so the damaged liner can be repaired.
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