Reuters The Lebanese economy is expected to grow 2 percent this year and deposits in Lebanese banks are forecast to rise by 4.5 to 5 percent, or around $8 billion, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh said this week. Salameh, speaking at an economic conference in Beirut, described the economic growth as acceptable, adding that the International Monetary Fund had ...

  Reuters Bahrain’s Bank ABC is set to appoint Christopher Wilmot to head its treasury department, sources aware of the matter said. Wilmot will start at the Bahraini lender next month, according to two of the sources, with one saying his title would be group head of treasury and financial markets. The current group treasurer at Bank ABC, John Eldredge, ...

  Bloomberg Nedbank Group Ltd., the South African lender being spun off from parent Old Mutual Plc, said it’s in talks that may lead to the acquisition of a Kenyan bank as it seeks to benefit from an economic growth rate that’s double the average for the rest of the continent. “Within the next 12 months we’ll certainly be looking ...

  Shanghai / AFP China’s bank lending fell sharply in April, the central bank said, as the government refrained from boosting credit amid concerns over growing risk. Bank loans reached 555.6 billion yuan ($85.2 billion) in April, down sharply from 1.37 trillion yuan in March, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said. The latest figure missed a median forecast of 1.3 ...

  Bloomberg Swift, the inter-bank messaging system embroiled in one of the largest cyber heists in history, warned customers that hackers have struck again, attacking a commercial bank client that it didn’t name. The details of a second hack follow a cyber-theft in February, when more than $80 million was stolen from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP At the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, there are more than 370 rooms inside and hundreds of thousands of bees buzzing above in rooftop hives outside. Yes, honeybees. Aware of the well-publicized environmental threats to honeybees that have reduced numbers worldwide, seven San Francisco hotels have built hives on their rooftops. The sustainability effort also benefits ...

Greece / AP At the end of a long, straight road on the coastal flats between the southern Greek village of Myrsini and the Ionian Sea sits a refugee shelter that could have popped out of a travel brochure. The 338 Syrians and Iraqis who have been living there since March say they’re grateful to be safe in seaside bungalows, but ...

  Relaxnews Thousands of developers from all over the world will be heading to the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, May 18 – 20, to discover the latest version of the Android operating system — expected to land this autumn — as well as other innovations in the pipeline at Google. Android N Although the final version of Google’s ...

  Relaxnews More than one million people used a Samsung Gear VR last month. That’s according to new stats released by Oculus, the virtual reality company that powers the Gear VR. The company also revealed more details on new programming that includes a 360 3D virtual reality series that follows the lives of yak herders on the Mongolian Steppes, Maasai ...

  Relaxnews Opera claims its new power-saving mode can extend battery life by up to 50 percent compared to Chrome. Opera has released a number of improvement to its web browser in the last couple of months. It added an ad blocker to its latest release in May, and added a virtual private network to its developer version in April. ...