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Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has called for consensus with Saudi Arabia over the presidential choice, as he reiterated that the problem is Maronite in the presidential file.

In an interview with al-Akhbar newspaper, Berri said that he is awaiting the outcome of the upcoming Christian gathering in Bkirki, when asked about who can break the presidential deadlock.

When we said yesterday that the problem is Maronite, they got dismayed. And if we say it today, they will also get dismayed, but this is the main problem, the Speaker added.

When I say that the problem is inter-Maronite, they accuse me of launching unjust accusations. Any observer can draw one conclusion: they went federalism or confederalism under the label of financial decentralization, which we reject because it was not mentioned in the Taif Accord, Berri said, in an interview with al-Liwaa newspaper.

We support broad administrative decentralization, because it involves facilitating peoples affairs and preserves the central state, the Speaker added.

Whats notable in this regard is the Free Patriotic Movements melting in the stances of the Lebanese Forces to the extent of not finding any differentiation between them, despite Dr. (Samir) Geageas rejection of meeting MP (Jebran) Bassil, Berri went on to say.

Despite competition inside the same community, Geagea has succeeded in leading the Maronite scene, and whenever he takes a stance Bassil would endorse it and try to go further, the Speaker added.

As for his recent meeting with Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari, Berri said the atmosphere was positive.

We did not agree, but we did not disagree, and accordingly consensus with the kingdom over the presidential choice is necessary, Berri added.

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Berri urges 'consensus with KSA', reiterates that 'the problem is ... - Naharnet

Trico Electric Cooperative in May plans to complete and commission a 15-MW/30-MWh battery at its Avion 10-MW solar farm in Marana, Arizona. (Photo Courtesy: Trico)

Motivated by its members, an Arizona electric cooperative is taking on its third battery project in two years to boost reliability, reduce carbon emissions, save money and deliver revenue from the wholesale electric power market.

Trico Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Marana, plans to have a new 10-megawatt/40-megawatt-hour battery system operational by end of this year. The facility just south of Tucson will be adjacent to the co-ops Sahuarita distribution substation. Trico is a partial-requirements member of Arizona Electric Power Cooperative and receives most of its energy and capacity from AEPCO. Trico and AEPCO are working together to develop the Sahuarita battery project.

Trico first installed a 15-MW/30-MWh battery system in 2022 at its Chirreon 10-MW solar and battery facility near a growing retirement community north of Tucson. This spring, the co-op plans to complete installation of an identical system at its Avion 10-MW solar farm in Marana. Both these projects are owned by Trico through subsidiaries.

Trico CEO Brian Heithoff cites members demand for innovation and value as the main driver for pursuing energy storage. Industry trends toward decarbonization, decentralization and digitization also prompted the co-ops projects, he said. Trico has committed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2032.

One of Tricos core values is innovation, and so we have a history of continually trying to improve ourselves for our members benefit, Heithoff said. When we serve our members with our battery resources, we reduce our peaking resource needs and often we can free up our other resources to sell to other energy providers.

With energy storage, Trico can use its excess capacity to save members money by strategically selling resources into the wholesale power market during non-peak months, he said.

A typical deployment strategy might be to discharge the batteries during the evening peak, Heithoff said. But if we see that theres going to be a peak and/or higher prices the next morning, we will hold some of that in the batteries and deploy it at a more beneficial time.

Heithoff said he expects battery storage to grow in importance and encourages electric co-ops to explore the technology now.

What is now strategic for us is going to become standard operating procedure in five or 10 years, he said.

Its kind of like computers. When co-ops bought their first desktop computer back in the 90s, that was probably a strategic decision. Then in five to 10 years, almost everybody had a personal computer. What is new in energy storage to a lot of cooperatives is just going be a routine skillset.

Cathy Cash is a staff writer for NRECA.

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Trico Electric Cooperative to Install Third Battery System - America's ... - National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

Kuwait City As the digital economy continues to expand at an unprecedented rate, International Data Corporation (IDC) is delighted to announce that this year's edition of the IDC Kuwait CIO Summit will take place on May 22 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Kuwait City under the theme 'Enabling the Digital Economy's Leaders'. The event will be supported by the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT), whose acting director general, Dr. Ammar H. Alhusaini, will be on hand to present the opening address.

"With digital-first strategies having become firmly established across the Middle East over the last few years, organizations in the region are now increasingly focused on deriving a larger share of their revenues from digital products, services, channels, and platforms," says Ranjit Rajan, IDC's vice president of research for the Middle East, Trkiye, and Africa (META). "Indeed, 50% of the CIOs recently surveyed by IDC across the Middle East said that this is now a major priority for their organizations.

"In order to thrive in this new world, a digital-first mindset is essential, coupled with a vision to build a data-driven organization that is ingrained with a culture of innovation. Leveraging cloud as a foundational platform, developing a data and intelligence plane powered by AI and advanced analytics, and enabling ubiquitous, consumption-based digital infrastructure will all become critical technology priorities."

Rajan will expand on these developments at the IDC Kuwait CIO Summit 2023 as he presents the event's keynote, 'Strategies for the CIO and Enterprise Innovation'. During this session he will explain what CIOs need to do now and in the future to create an environment for long-term sustainable innovation. He will also highlight strategies for building a culture of trust, examine the move toward industry ecosystem innovation, and highlight the impact of decentralization.

The IDC Kuwait CIO Summit 2023 will also host a presentation by the world's first officially recognized human cyborg, Neil Harbisson, who will explore the evolution of the human species and serve up his exclusive insights into how technology can be leveraged to overcome some of the obstacles and disabilities that human beings face.

The event will bring together more than 150 of the country's foremost IT and telecom leaders, digital government pioneers, digital regulators and authorities, and industry thought leaders. The event will examine the current state of the digital economy, assess its ongoing impact on citizens, customers, employees, and operations, address the key challenges that need to be overcome, and outline proven best practices and strategies for driving future success.

To learn more about the IDC Kuwait CIO Summit 2023, pleaseclick here or contact Sheila Manek atsmanek@idc.com / +971 4 446 3154. You can also join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #IDCKUWAITCIO.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit http://www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

IDC in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa

For the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region, IDC retains a coordinated network of offices in Riyadh, Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg, Cairo, and Istanbul, with a regional center in Dubai. Our coverage couples local insights with international perspectives to provide a comprehensive understanding of markets in these dynamic regions. Our market intelligence services are unparalleled in depth, consistency, scope, and accuracy. IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey currently fields over 130 analysts, consultants, and conference associates across the region. To learn more about IDC MEA, please visit http://www.idc.com/mea. You can follow IDC MEA on Twitter at @IDCMEA.

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IDC's Upcoming CIO Summit in Kuwait to Be Hosted Under the ... - IDC

Gnosis co-founder and COO Friederike Ernst doesnt like seeing decentralization thrown around as a superficial marketing term.

Its why she takes such pride in the fact that its very affordable right now1 GNO token, about $108 at the time of writingto become a validator on the Gnosis Chain. For context, it costs 32 ETH, worth almost $58,000, to become a validator on the Ethereum network.

That low bar to entry has helped the Gnosis Chain, one of the earliest Ethereum sidechains, amass more than 115,000 validators.

Thats 20% of what Ethereum has, she said on the latest episode ofDecrypt's gmpodcast.

Being a validator on a blockchain means verifying transactions and adding them to the ledger. On proof-of-stake blockchains like Gnosis, validators need to stake tokens to show they have skin in the game. They earn rewards for participating in a way that helps the network and can be penalized if they dont.

Ernst said the focus on true decentralization is what sets Gnosis Chain apart from other Etherem layer-2 scaling solutions.

If you go to the likes of Solana and Polygon and Avalanche, and so on, it's super, super small numbers of validators, Ernst said. I think it's really easy to forget about the benefits of decentralization until you need them. And then it's too late.

As of Wednesday morning, Solana had about 10,000 validators, Polygon intentionally keeps its validators capped at 100, and Avalanche had 1,200 validators.

We have the exact same L2s on Gnosis Chain, by the way. So yeah, definitely not knocking them, she added about the other L2s. They're super useful for many kinds of applications.

Ernst left a career as a physicist to join Gnosis in 2017, two years after it was founded by CEO Martin Koppelman and chief technology officer Stefan George. At the time, Gnosis had just spun out from blockchain venture studio ConsenSys, which was started by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.

Before she left academia, Ernst had earned her PhD in Berlin, completed postdoctoral work at Columbia University and Stanford, and was working as a professor at the University of Hamburg.

The decision to leave academia behind was hard, but ultimately she decided it was important to help build tools that would give agency back to people. And as passionately as she talks about the importance of decentralization, she knows that it comes with tradeoffs.

For developers, the entire process of building applications gets much harder when infrastructure is decentralized. It's easier to just build on a centralized platformand a shortcut that too many crypto projects have taken, in Ernst's assessment.

If you think about building the exact same applications, just on AWS, it would be cheaper and easier and better user experience," she said. "And then you build it on a blockchain that is barely a blockchain in terms of decentralization, and you have the downsides of both worlds and the upside is mostly marketing. And to me, it's not a great state of affairs.

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Why True Decentralization at Scale Is Hard and Rare: Gnosis Co-Founder - Decrypt

Ethereums developers have locked in a date for the networks next big upgrade, dubbed Shanghai: April 12. While ETH fans will laud the update for introducing the ability to unstake ETH, it couldnt be happening at a worse time.

SEC chair Gary Genslerindicated again this week that proof-of-stake modelslike those used by Ethereumare securities. Meanwhile, the NYAG filed charges against the KuCoin exchange for illegally selling securities and specifically named ETH as a security in large part due to the fact that Ethereum is not decentralized after all.

Add to that the fact that the past 12-24 months have seen legislators, regulators, and law enforcement all clamp down on illegalities within the industry in different ways. For instance, in January, theSEC took actionagainst lend-to-earn programs jointly operated by Genesis and Gemini on the basis that they amounted to illegal securities offerings. Nexo Capital paid the SEC a$45 million dollar settlement over its lend-to-earn program around the same time.

Most notable about these actions is that they confirm that the SEC is beginning to deconstruct themyth of decentralizationand the role it plays in determining whether a given asset offering amounts to a security. Look at the language used by Gensler in aninterviewwith The Block in 2021, right as the SEC began to look at lend-to-earn products:

I would note to your readers that if youre investing on a centralized exchange or a centralized lending platform, you no longer own your token. Youve transferred ownership to the platform. All you have is a counterparty risk. And that platform might be saying, as many of them do, well give you a four percent or seven percent return if you stake your coins with us or you actually transfer ownership and we the platform will stake your tokens. That takes on all the indicia of what Congress is trying to protect under the securities laws.

This should represent an enormous red flag for Ethereum and BTCtwo projects that the SEC has long considered the rare exceptions to its general position that most digital assets are, in fact, securities. Thats because these exceptions arise from the SECs assumption that both projects are decentralized: without a centralized body governing projects like these, according to the SECs logic, it cant be said that investors had a reasonable expectation of profits relying on theefforts of others, as is required by the Howey test for securities (their belief that BTC is not a security is also based on a misguided interpretation of that projects history).

These exceptions were always highly tenuous and at odds with reality. As time has gone on, they have become increasingly difficult to justify. Now, it seems, regulators and law enforcement have finally seen the lie for what it is.

Ethereum was always a securitybut now its obvious

The idea that Ethereum is anything but a security has always been a sham. This was obvious from Buterins own marketing at the time of the ETH ICO right through to the language used on Ethereum websites today. The point is made repeatedly: ETH production will slow dramatically over time, increasing scarcity and, as a consequence, value.

The Ethereum foundation website alsorefersto the fact that ETH is viewed as an investment.

But the biggest lie of all was that Ethereum is or has ever been decentralized. This was obvious back in 2016 when a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) holding almost 15% of all ETH in circulation was hacked. Ethereums developers, led by founder Vitalik Buterin, proposed, approved, and implemented the solution to fork the network and recover the stolen assets. There was the charade of a vote on the proposal, but just 6% of all ether holders participated, and 25% of the votes came from a single address, while the proposals at the heart of the vote were still authored by Ethereums core team. This can be seen again as recently as this week with the Shanghai update announcement: If Ethereum is decentralized, then who is designing, proposing, and implementing these radical upgrades? That would be the very same people that intervened after the DAO hack, of course. This is not decentralization by any realistic definition.

The notoriousEthereum 2.0 upgrade, which moved the networks consensus mechanism from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, did nothing to change this reality. If anything, the migration to Proof-of-Stake moved Ethereum even deeper into security territory. In contrast to Proof-of-Work, where miners are at least undertaking work of their own in solving hash puzzles, those staking under a Proof-of-Stake system are relying entirely on the work of others to deliver profits on whatever coins have been staked. In fact, this week, Gensler again indicated that Proof-of-Stake networks are likely to trigger U.S. securities laws, saying:

Whatever theyre promoting and putting into a protocol, and locking up their tokens in a protocol, a protocol thats often a small group of entrepreneurs and developers are developing, I would just suggest that each of these token operators seek to come into compliance, and the same with the intermediaries, he said,reportedby The Block.

Authorities are already taking action on the basis that ETH is a security

This sea change by authorities is not just a speculation over some hypothetical future enforcement drive. Instead, the enforcement drive is already here.

Last week, the New York Attorney Generalfiledcharges againstexchangeKuCoin over failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer: ETH, which is listed by the exchange, was expressly labeled a security in the charges. The language used by the NYAG couldnt be clearer:

ETHs development and management is largely driven by a small number of developers who hold positions in ETH and stand to profit from the growth of the network and the related appreciation of ETH.

Further down:

Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation retain significant influence over Ethereum and are often a driving force behind major initiatives on the Ethereum blockchain that impact the functionality and price of ETH.

The language could have been taken straight fromHowey: ETH is not decentralized, and the continued development of the network is closely governed by a core group of developers who promote the asset on the basis that its value will increase over time. It is a classic security.

The NYAGs action is against KuCoin rather than anyone directly connected to Ethereum, but between Ethereums recent upgrades, Genslers public statements on centralization and the SECs recent enforcement actions, it seems that the SEC charges against Ethereum and its developers directly cant be far away. The ramifications of an SEC case against Ethereum can be much wider reaching: the SEC is empowered to levy fines and penalties against those violating the U.S. securities regime, including disgorgement of all profits made in connection with an unregistered securities offering and injunctions against carrying on further business. In short, it could spell the end of Ethereum altogether.

And if the myth of decentralization with respect to ETH has finally been pierced, then you can bet that BTC is up for the same treatment.

FollowCoinGeeks Crypto Crime Cartelseries, which delves into the stream of groupsfromBitMEXtoBinance,Bitcoin.com,Blockstream,ShapeShift,Coinbase,Ripple,Ethereum,FTXandTetherwho have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for nave (and even experienced) players in the market.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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NYAG calls Ethereum a security and destroys decentralization myth - CoinGeek