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Beirut Poshes Up for the Holidays

Christmas decorations in Beirut | Photo: Reuters
Christmas decorations in Beirut | Photo: Reuters
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Beirut Poshes Up for the Holidays

Christmas decorations in Beirut | Photo: Reuters
Christmas decorations in Beirut | Photo: Reuters

Once again, Beirut rises from the rubble and wipes off the dust from one of the most devastating attacks it has ever seen. Today, after the August 4 explosion that struck at the heart of the capital and suspended its pulse for days, Beirut, clinging to hope, tries to avoid missing out on the holiday season, with Christmas and New Year’s Eve fast approaching. It is determined to walk on and take off the clothes of sadness imposed by the catastrophe to posh up and take the appearance it typically does; that of a city of joy and color.

Beirut’s streets, alleys, squares, and streets have been illuminated by Christmas lights. Shops in the center of the capital spread set up decorations along the main road and on their branches. The streets of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh have also worn the festive attire and are preparing for the rival of Christmas markets, the Beirut Chant concerts, and several environmental and social activities, thanks to the efforts of its people, residents, and individual initiatives.

On December 18, the Christmas activities under the title Solidarity Christmas Village will launch in Mar Mikhael. From the wounded heart of Beirut, the festive program will be inaugurated with a free concert performed by the graduates and students of the Holy Spirit University of Kasslik and includes daily activities from five in the afternoon until ten at night running until the 23rd of this month. Like other organizers of festive events in Beirut, the parties behind the initiative called on attendees to wear face masks and respect social distancing measures.

The 'In Action Events' organized Christmas Fair on Mar Nicolas Street in the Tabaris neighborhood in Ashrafieh launched its seventh edition in December. The program includes music, games, food and drinks.

A huge Christmas tree was set up in Sassine Square as part of the 'Christmas Village' in a tribute to the victims of the Beirut bombing. The names of the martyrs of the August 4 explosion are engraved on a wooden plaque placed next to it. A recreational space brimming adults and children, buying Ghazl al-Banat (an Arab sweet similar to cotton candy) and kunafa with cheese and sesame, and carrying colorful balloons as they explore the Christmas Village and the various activities organized for the occasion. Sassine will host Christmas activities until the end of the month.

For their part, commercial centers have chosen to decorate their spaces, each according to his own style. Because of the economic crisis that hit them hard on the one hand, and the lockdowns on the other they chose to re-use last year's. decorations. ABC shopping mall franchise decorated its three branches (Ashrafieh, Dbayeh, and Verdun) with his Christmas paintings, and a festively decorated large golden Christmas tree was erected in the middle of the City Center shopping center in Hazmieh.

Municipalities in Beirut and elsewhere, similarly financially strained, also reused last year’s decorations. Neither they nor any commercial institutions, local associations, or banks have the luxury to spend money on decorating, thus leaving places like Jbeil, whose Christmas trees had been lauded as the most beautiful for years, without a festive atmosphere.

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Images Show China Building Huge Fusion Research Facility

A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs
A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs
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Images Show China Building Huge Fusion Research Facility

A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs
A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs

China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research center in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organisations say, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation.

Satellite photos show four outlying "arms" that will house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that will hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers will fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organisation CNA Corp.

It is a similar layout to the $3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Northern California, which in 2022 generated mceore energy from a fusion reaction than the lasers pumped into the target - "scientific breakeven".

Eveleth, who is working with analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), estimates the experiment bay at the Chinese facility is about 50% bigger than the one at NIF, currently the world's largest.

The development has not been previously reported.

"Any country with an NIF-type facility can and probably will be increasing their confidence and improving existing weapons designs, and facilitating the design of future bomb designs without testing" the weapons themselves, said William Alberque, a nuclear policy analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

China's foreign ministry referred Reuters questions to the "competent authority". China's Science and Technology Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

In November 2020, US arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea released satellite images he said showed China's buildup of nuclear weapons support facilities. It included images of Mianyang showing a cleared plot of land labeled "new research or production areas since 2010".

That plot is the site of the fusion research center, called the Laser Fusion Major Device Laboratory, according to construction documents that Eveleth shared with Reuters.

NUCLEAR TESTING

Igniting fusion fuel allows researchers to study how such reactions work and how they might one day create a clean power source using the universe's most plentiful resource, hydrogen. It also enables them to examine nuances of detonation that would otherwise require an explosive test.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, of which both China and the United States are signatories, prohibits nuclear explosions in all environments.

Countries are allowed "subcritical" explosive tests, which do not create nuclear reactions. Laser fusion research, known as inertial confinement fusion, is also allowed.

Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, another key US nuclear weapons research facility, said that with testing banned, subcritical and laser fusion experiments were crucial to maintaining the safety and reliability of the US nuclear arsenal.

But for countries that have not done many test detonations, he said - China has tested 45 nuclear weapons, compared with 1,054 for the United States - such experiments would be less valuable because they do not have a large data set as a base.

"I don't think it would make an enormous difference," Hecker said. "And so ... I'm not concerned about China getting ahead of us in terms of their nuclear facilities."

Other nuclear powers, such as France, the United Kingdom and Russia, also operate inertial confinement fusion facilities.

The size of those facilities reflects the amount of power designers estimate is needed to apply to the target to achieve ignition, said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion programme at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which operates NIF.

"These days, I think you probably can build a facility that's of equal energy or even more energetic (than NIF) and a smaller footprint," Hurricane said. But, he added, at too small a scale, experimental fusion does not appear possible.

That other countries operate laser-driven fusion research centers is not a cause for alarm in itself, Hurricane said.

"It's kind of hard to stop scientific progress and hold information back," he said. "People can use science for different means and different ends, and that's a complicated question."