AFP – The more advances that are made in scientific research, the more we learn about the impressive extent of babies’ knowledge and abilities. A new study suggests that infants are much more musically inclined than we previously believed. This is because they have a natural affinity for rhythm.

Professor of Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam Henkjan Honing and his colleagues already observed back in 2009 that infants just a few days old could feel the beat – the regular, continuous pulse that marks the rhythm of a song. This cognitive skill is essential, as it greatly facilitates the appreciation and understanding of music. So it’s even more remarkable that newborns possess it.

While this 2009 discovery marked a turning point in our understanding of infant hearing, questions remained. That’s why Dutch and Hungarian researchers decided to conduct an experiment with 27 newborns, in which they manipulated the timing of several drum beats.

The first recording the babies listened to was rhythmically isochronous; the time spacing between sounds was always the same. The second was articulated around the same drum rhythm, but with random or jittered timing. It was therefore more difficult to clearly perceive the rhythm of this sound sequence. Headphones fitted with sensors were placed on the heads of the infants, who were asleep throughout the experiment, so that the academics could record and analyse the electrical signals linked to certain brain responses.

RHYTHM PERCEPTION

This experimental protocol highlighted the fact that the babies were able to perceive rhythm when the time interval between beats was regular. However, they were unable to distinguish it when the sounds followed each other more randomly.

This shows that “being able to hear the beat is innate and not simply the result of learned sound sequences,” as Professor István Winkler, co-author of the study, published in the journal Cognition, stated in a press release. He added: “Our findings suggest that it is a specific skill of newborns. More insight into early perception is of great importance for learning more about infant cognition and the role that musical skills may play in early development.”

This research confirms the idea put forward by previous scientific research that babies prefer certain sound stimuli to others.

A 2018 study by the Institut Marquès even claims that their musical preferences are forged even before they are born, when they are still in their mother’s womb.

According to the researchers at this Barcelona-based centre specialising in medically assisted reproduction, foetuses have a preference for classical or traditional music, such as Mozart’s A Little Night Music. 

AFP – Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest smashed into Earth, killing off three quarters of all life on the planet – including the dinosaurs.

This much we know. But exactly how the impact of the asteroid Chicxulub caused all those animals to go extinct has remained a matter of debate.

The leading theory recently has been that sulphur from the asteroid’s impact – or soot from global wildfires it sparked – blocked out the sky and plunged the world into a long, dark winter, killing all but the lucky few.

However research published Monday based on particles found at a key fossil site reasserted an earlier hypothesis: that the impact winter was caused by dust kicked up by the asteroid.

Fine silicate dust from pulverised rock would have stayed in the atmosphere for 15 years, dropping global temperatures by up to 15 degrees Celsius, researchers said in a study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Back in 1980, father-and-son scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez first proposed that the dinosaurs were killed off by an asteroid strike that shrouded the world in dust.

Their claim was initially met with some scepticism – until a decade later when the massive crater of Chicxulub was found in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico. 

Now, scientists largely agree that Chicxulub was to blame.

But the idea that it was sulphur, rather than dust, that caused the impact winter has become “very popular” in recent years, a researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium Ozgur Karatekin told AFP.

Study co-author Karatekin said this was because the dust from the impact was thought to be the wrong size to stay in the atmosphere for long enough.

For the study, the international team of researchers was able to measure dust particles thought to be from right after the asteroid struck.

The particles were found at the Tanis fossil site in North Dakota, United States.

Though 3,000 kilometres away from the crater, the site has preserved a number of remarkable finds believed to be dated from directly after the asteroid impact in sediment layers of an ancient lake.

The dust particles were around 0.8 to 8.0 micrometres – just the right size to stick around in the atmosphere for up to 15 years, the researchers said.

Entering this data into climate models similar to those used for current-day Earth, the researchers determined that dust likely played a far greater role in the mass extinction than had previously been thought.

Out of all the material that was shot into the atmosphere by the asteroid, they estimated that it was 75 per cent dust, 24 per cent sulphur and one percent soot.

The dust particles “totally shut down photosynthesis” in plants for at least a year, causing a “catastrophic collapse” of life, Karatekin said.

A geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and not involved in the research Sean Gulick told AFP that the study was another interesting effort to answer the “hot question” – what drove the impact winter – but did not provide the definitive answer.

He emphasised that discovering what happened during the world’s last mass extinction event was important not just for understanding the past, but also the future.

“Maybe we can better predict our own mass extinction that we’re probably in the middle of,” Gulick said.

SEOUL (AFP) – When news broke about a bedbug outbreak in his native South Korea, 29-year-old blockchain engineer and self-professed insectophobe Kang Jae-gu got straight to work – on the data.

As authorities scrambled to install high-temperature steam heaters at the airport and approve industrial-strength insecticides for home use, Kang started mapping reported infestations.

South Korea has been largely bedbug-free for years, but it has seen a surge in infestations as travel has rebounded after the pandemic – with more than 100 cases of the bloodsucking pests reported since late November, official statistics show.

And while the public has bugged out – and media coverage has spiralled – thousands of people have turned to Kang’s website, bedbugboard.com, for a sober data-driven look at the outbreak.

“I am extremely sensitive to insects, so I sleep under a mosquito net throughout all four seasons,” Kang told AFP.

His fear of bedbugs drove him to create an interactive map that shows the approximate locations of reported infestations across the country, as well as real-time news stories on the issue. The site now receives as many as 50,000 visitors a day, up from around 40 when Kang launched it.

He used a soothing olive-green colour scheme to try and create “peace of mind” for readers, but he told AFP that having to look at photographs of the critters and their eggs to run the website still gives him “goosebumps”.

The bedbug invasion of Seoul comes on the heels of a similar outbreak in Paris, which is set to host the Olympic Games next year.

A surge of reported sightings of the creatures sent a shudder through France during the summer and fall – prompting several school closures nationwide.

Public concern has also spread to Britain and Algeria.

In South Korea, 44 per cent of reported cases have been in so-called gosiwon – cheap, tiny housing units typically measuring less than five square metres.

Other affected locations include student dormitories, public bathhouses, and extremely small housing units known as jjokbang, which often lack basic amenities such as bathrooms or kitchens.

Authorities have swung into gear, with Seoul city government allocating KRW700 million (USD500,000) to defend residents in vulnerable housing from the invading pests.

Incheon International Airport, the main airport serving the capital, plans to install high-temperature steam heaters this month to prevent the entry of the bugs into the country.

Seoul also recently approved Neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides used widely on farms, for home use against bedbugs.

“The city of Seoul defines the inconvenience and concern of citizens caused by bedbugs as a significant public health issue,” said an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Government Park Yu-mi.

The city “seeks to take the lead in implementing countermeasures”, she added.

Bedbugs have appeared in greater numbers in recent decades, mostly due to high population densities, people taking more holidays and mass transit.

In France, one in 10 households are believed to have had a bedbug problem over the past few years, usually requiring a pest control operation costing hundreds of euros that often needs to be repeated.

The critters bite people to feed on their blood, creating wounds that can be itchy but do not usually cause other health problems.

But exposure to bedbug droppings can trigger asthmatic attacks while bites can cause rashes or more severe reactions such as anaphylaxis, and even depression.

South Korean experts said the insects are particularly hard to eradicate.

“Bedbugs can live for over 100 days even if they do not eat properly.

They are thin and also hide well,” Kim Ju-hyeon, a professor at Seoul National University’s school of tropical medicine, said in a YouTube video.

Kang plans to keep his website running until the South Korean outbreaks subside.

He said he has never personally experienced an infestation, but “I can imagine how stressful it would be if that happened to me”.

AP – If it still seems strange to think of fish growing on farms, it shouldn’t.

Aquaculture has been the fastest growing food sector in the world for decades, and people now eat more farmed fish than wild fish.

The industry has had to grow. Demand for seafood is soaring and will continue to rise. But the oceans are giving up all they can: Production of wild fish has been flat since about 1990.

Fish farming and shellfish production usually spew far less greenhouse gas emissions than production of beef and other animal protein, but aquaculture can still cause serious environmental problems.

And as it has grown, the problems with large-scale farming have grown with it. Many are like problems that face massive chicken and cattle operations. The farms and the waste from them can degrade and pollute nearby ecosystems, diseases can quickly sweep through the tightly packed fish, and gathering the feed for the animals can cause distant environmental problems.

Faced with stinging criticism and tighter regulations – and eager to meet demand – fish farmers are trying new ways to boost production and minimise harm.

AQUACULTURE VILLAGES IN INDONESIA

Indonesia’s rise to become the world’s third-largest producer of farmed seafood brought destruction to nearby shorelines. Mangroves, which protect the coast and act as nurseries for a host of aquatic species, were ripped out.

Untreated waste polluted watersheds. Massive fish die-offs shook local economies.

“Every year we faced the same problem, especially when seasons changed,” said Jono, an aquaculture farmer who like many Indonesians only uses one name. “We had so many dead fish.”

Jono was trained as part of a larger plan by the Indonesian government that will establish over 100 aquaculture “villages” around the country that are designed to reduce the impact of fish farming and expand production.

He’s learned how to better prevent and treat disease, new feeding techniques, better pond construction and proper waste disposal.

“Previously we used to harvest every eight or nine months, now it can be every four to five months,” he said.

CHINA TAKES FISH FARMING OFFSHORE

China, by far the world’s biggest aquaculture producer, is also trying to lessen the environmental impacts of fish farming.

One way: Take it offshore, where currents can deliver clean water and waste can dissipate quickly.

Two kilometres off the coast of the city of Yantai in northeast China, three round cages 80 metres across sit below the surface of the sea.

Sea bream, Korean rockfish and other fish wiggle and swim in a mesh made of a durable, lightweight plastic that can withstand extreme weather and keep barnacles at bay.

The facility’s platform is equipped with a monitoring system that constantly senses water temperature, water quality and oxygen levels, said Zhang Zhuangzhi, who is in charge of fish farming at Shandong Ocean Harvest Corporation, which runs the operation.

So far, costs and technical challenges have slowed wide adoption.

A SALMON FISHERY IN A FLORIDA WAREHOUSE

In a warehouse near Miami, large indoor tanks are designed to mimic the natural environment of salmon by establishing the right temperature, the right salinity and the right lighting.

The idea: Grow the salmon indoors to reduce exposure to parasites, warming waters and algae blooms that threaten the fish grown in farms in open waters – and in turn reduce the fish’s impact on the shoreline.

The technology “removes some of the downside that you could have in nature”, said chief sales and marketing manager Damien Claire of Atlantic Sapphire, the parent company of Bluehouse Salmon.

Claire said the company doesn’t need to vaccinate or medicate their salmon and has lowered the mortality rate of the fish to around three per cent – much lower than the industry average of 20 per cent.

Raising fish in an indoor, tightly controlled environment has also led to other benefits, he said.

The company produces about three million salmon a year and hopes to eventually produce 65 million.

It’s a promising model, but not easy to follow because the system relies on an uncommon feature of the groundwater near the warehouse’s location: Salmon need both fresh and salt water, and both are found nearby.

FRENCH FLY FACTORY

When the fish grown in farms are fed wild-caught fish such as sardines and anchovies, a major benefit of fish farms – less stress on ocean ecosystems – can evaporate.

At Innovafeed, based in France, protein-rich black soldier flies are being raised as a feed alternative.

The company chose the fly for three main reasons: It doesn’t get sick, eats almost anything and has a short lifecycle that allows it to be bred and harvested quickly.

“There’s a joke saying that black soldiers fly larvae will eat everything except concrete and steel,” said chief business officer at Innovafeed Nizar El Alami.

The company’s fly protein is feeding salmon, sea bream, shrimp and other species with food producers across Europe, the Americas and Southeast Asia, according to product manager at Innovafeed Alex Diana. It has two factories now and is planning 10 more by 2030 that will produce insect protein for fish, chicken and even pets.

“We are trying to reproduce what happens in nature, but at industrial scale,” he said. “We’re trying to minimise the impact of the food chain on the planet’s resources.” – Victoria Milko

TOKYO (AFP) – A second-hand pop-up store in Tokyo by casual clothing giant Uniqlo was a first for the Japanese firm, but also a sign that a local aversion to used garments may finally be fading.

Uniqlo is a major player in an industry blamed for immense carbon emissions and other pollutants like microplastics.

It has ridden a wave of consumers buying, and throwing away, ever more clothes.

But in Japan, the world’s third-biggest clothes market, growing awareness of the sector’s huge environmental impact has yet to spark much interest in second-hand options.

Uniqlo’s Aya Hanada said the 10-day pop-up in the hip Harajuku district, where second-hand clothes were a third of their original price – with some dyed for a “vintage” look – showed attitudes were changing.

“I think the feeling of resistance to used clothing has disappeared in Japan, mainly among young people,” said the 45-year-old, who works for the firm’s recycling programme RE.Uniqlo.

The change is in part thanks to the internet, she told AFP outside one of Uniqlo’s major stores, which allows customers to access items “without having to go all the way to a second-hand clothing store”.

There is still a long way to go, however.

In Japan, 34 per cent of discarded clothing is recycled or reused, according to the environment ministry.

But this includes exports to developing countries, where the waste also often ends up in tips or is incinerated.

Globally, the equivalent of a truckload of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill every second, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity focused on eliminating waste and pollution.

JapanConsuming, a market research firm, estimates that the Japanese second-hand segment represents less than six per cent of the USD75-billion market, albeit with strong growth in recent years.

For a long time in Japan, used clothes were a small niche confined to hipsters, JapanConsuming’s co-founder Michael Causton said.

“Maybe compared to somewhere like France and UK where the ecological, environmental factors probably came first, in Japan, it was a fashion thing,” Causton told AFP.

In Japan “there is a very strong concern with hygiene, that is a fixture of Japanese culture. And that definitely was a barrier for the average consumer”, he added.

Alongside Fast Retailing-owned Uniqlo, which touts efforts to transform second-hand clothes into new products and also donates them to refugees and others in need, used garment specialist 2nd Street has expanded to 800 stores across Japan.

There has also been growth in online sales between individuals, driven mainly by the popular Japanese platform Mercari, where around a third of transactions by value are fashion items.

Second-hand Japanese clothes are even popular in China and elsewhere, Causton said, “because people know the Japanese look after their stuff and what they will send is a high level of quality”.

“I feel like in Japan, used clothes have a high quality… and if it’s not, it’s clearly stated if there’s any damage,” said Charlotte Xu, 18, an Australian tourist looking through a thrift store in Harajuku.

Rising prices, which after years of deflation have been hitting Japanese wallets since 2022, have also helped some to drop their opposition to second-hand.

But the biggest factor for many is simply whether something looks good or not. “I am aware of the sustainable side of things, but I often buy them simply because they are stylish,” shopper Yamato Ogawa, 28, told AFP at the Uniqlo pop-up.

THE WASHINGTON POST – Octopuses can open jars, use tools, solve puzzles and even recognise individual human faces staring back at them through aquarium glass.

Should they serve as menu items, too?

Whether stuffed into sushi or draped over pasta, their savoury tentacles have squirmed their way onto dinner plates around the world, serving as a staple of many East Asian and Mediterranean cuisines.

But a growing scientific understanding of the cognition of octopuses and other cephalopods is now calling into question the idea of eating these problem-solving sea creatures – as well as our notion of what exactly makes an animal “intelligent” in the first place.

“They have a kind of exploratory, inquisitive, interesting way of being in the world that I think is unexpected,” said Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher at the University of Sydney and author of the book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness.

Humanity’s relationship with octopuses is reaching an inflection point: Just as scientists begin to understand these animals’ brains, seafood companies are trying to farm them commercially.

Seafood purveyors said farming octopus will relieve pressure on wild populations and provide more of an increasingly popular low-fat, high-protein food. But proposals to open octopus farms are being met with opposition from environmentalists and animal welfare advocates worried about tormenting the intelligent invertebrates.

The United States (US) government is now considering whether to ask for ethical reviews of scientific experiments on octopuses, just as it does for mammals such as monkeys and mice.

Adding to the sympathies for the squishy sea creature is the 2020 documentary My Octopus Teacher. Widely watched on Netflix during the coronavirus pandemic, diver Craig Foster’s documentary about his bond with a wild octopus won an Academy Award for best documentary feature.

CLEVER AS AN OCTOPUS

On the tree of life, octopuses sit about as far from humans as an animal can get. About 750 million years of evolution separate us and the eight-armed creatures, suggesting that the octopus evolved its mode of cognition all on its own.

“When we think about evolutionary questions, there’s this bias in neuroscience to think about everything leading to a human,” said Robyn Crook, a San Francisco State University neurobiologist. “Cephalopods are really the only other animal that have a complex brain but don’t share our evolutionary lineage.”

In a sense, octopuses don’t have just one brain but nine: A doughnut-shaped main brain plus another eight for each arm, controlling limb movement. The arms are able to communicate with one another, possibly without involving the central hub.

“The arm itself does a lot of processing,” Crook said. “It’s a little bit like our spinal cord. And so a lot of information that’s received in the arms never makes it to the brain.”

In experiments, the mollusks use their nine “brains” to squeeze through mazes and press buttons to escape enclosures. There is even some evidence they can dream.

In the wild, they can mimic their surroundings by changing their colour and build dens by arranging stones, bottles and shells. Some have even been observed wielding the tentacles from a jellyfish-like animal called a Portuguese man o’ war as a makeshift weapon.

Many biologists used to assume that intelligence arose as animals formed social bonds. A herd of elephants or a pod of dolphins, for instance, needed enough brainpower to work together to find a watering hole or hunt for fish.

As a solitary creature, the octopus defies that story. The common octopus only lives for a year or two. Male octopuses die after mating while female octopuses cease hunting and waste away just after laying their eggs. Researchers have even recorded cephalopods eating each other in the wild.

“The word ‘intelligence’ is not the best word,” Godfrey-Smith said. “They do show sometimes a decent amount of intelligence, but it’s not the most natural way of describing what’s special about them.”

He contrasted octopuses with crows. When facing a puzzle, “sometimes a crow will just sit and look at it, and essentially think it through, because then on their first attempt, they’ll do something quite clever to solve the problem”.

But octopuses are more tactile when dealing with a problem. “They would just confront it with their bodies and manipulate it,” he said. “They don’t have that kind of sit-back-and-think intelligence so much.”

UNDER THE SEA IN AN OCTOPUS FARM

For the Spanish seafood company Nueva Pescanova, their scientific breakthrough came four years ago. Researchers there announced that they had succeeded at raising baby octopuses outside their natural habitat and breeding those captive adults.

Now the seafood firm is rearing its fifth generation of octopuses and is preparing to open its first octopus farm in the Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa. Other “octoculture” research is underway in Portugal, Italy, Greece, Mexico, China and Japan.

Some experts worry that octopuses are particularly ill-suited for farms. The animals, they said, are too asocial and neurologically sophisticated to pen up together. Unlike cows, octopuses are carnivorous, meaning its meals must be fished from the ocean in a potentially unsustainable way. To boot, farming octopuses comes with the gory risk of cannibalism in captivity.

“These animals are just too curious, too sophisticated to be subject to mass production,” said Jennifer Jacquet, who led an influential essay against octopus farming an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University.

Nueva Pescanova said that its farmed octopuses have not been aggressive toward one another and that its researchers are working on ways to painlessly stun the animals. Its feed will be made up in part of existing byproducts from fishing operations.

Cephalopods, the company added, aren’t any smarter than traditional barnyard animals.

“There is no scientific evidence as to whether they are more intelligent or sensitive than other species that are also raised for human consumption,” Nueva Pescanova said in a statement.

But Crook’s research strongly suggests that octopuses feel pain, just like cows. Unlike those farm-raised animals, for which there are standardized ways to minimise pain during slaughter, there is no known way of killing cephalopods humanely, she said.

Recognising that capacity for pain, the National Institutes of Health is considering granting cephalopods used in research some of the same protections given to monkeys, mice and other vertebrates.

Under the proposal, US scientists would need the approval of an ethics board before experimenting on octopuses to minimise discomfort and ensure they are well-cared for. Similar animal welfare measures are already in place in Europe and Canada. The agency is asking for feedback on the guidance until today.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Jabbar Lewis and Nic Ashe watched every episode of Squid Game – and were convinced they would be able to handle the deadly schoolyard contests. They never imagined they might actually get a chance to try.

At Squid Game: The Trials in Los Angeles, fans of all ages can relive the most emotional moments of Netflix’s South Korean hit show – but there is a lot less blood and no one wins any prize money.

“It’s so funny that even without the USD4.56 million cash prize, you really feel the stakes in the game. I found myself sweating and shaking and I would do it again,” said Ashe, 27.

“It’s like the show kind of came to life. It came out of my TV and I got to step into the world.”

In a series of rooms, organizers of the immersive LA attraction have set up harmless versions of the brutal games depicted in the series, in which misfits and criminals took an all-or-nothing gamble: win the prize or die.

Netflix said it hopes visitors will be transported into the universe of the show – and its reality competition spin-off – from the get-go.

Players are greeted by the Front Man, the overseer of the game, flanked by his minions in their distinctive fuchsia jumpsuits and black masks with symbols.

Classic Squid Game challenges like the glass bridge and the dalgona candy game are recreated, as is the runaway favourite: Red Light, Green Light, complete with the giant, menacing, motion-sensing doll. “It was real!” said Melanie Galano. Fellow visitor Andrew Lin chimed in, “It just felt like you’re kind of in the show.”

Participants wear wristbands that buzz when they “die” in a challenge, but some joked that they hoped for more reality.
“I expected real dying,” joked Choi Hyumbom. “I realised it’s not the same as (the show), but I’m still having fun.”

Lewis, who won his round, said for him, “Squid Game just represents determination to win, the will to win. And it does require a lot of strategy.”

When asked how he plotted his win, Lewis replied, “Be low-key in the background and then come up like a shark and destroy everybody.”

KFAR KILA (AFP) – In a falafel joint in south Lebanon, Hussein Murtada prepared flat-bread snacks for his few remaining customers as an Israeli surveillance drone buzzed above the border village of Kfar Kila.

“We work under the bombs. A few days ago, a shell fell 200 metres from here. Shrapnel hit the shopfront and the wall,” said Murtada, 60, pointing to the damage.

“I hid behind the fridge in the restaurant” during the bombardment, he told AFP.

Since the war began on October 7, Lebanon’s Hezbollah group has been carrying out near-daily cross-border assaults in support of its ally Hamas.

Israel has been responding with its own bombardments in mostly tit-for-tat exchanges that have been largely contained to areas near the frontier, although fears remain of a broader conflagration.

More than 140 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including more than a dozen civilians, three of them journalists.

On the Israeli side, four civilians and seven soldiers have been killed, authorities have said.

In Kfar Kila, nestled among olive trees, some houses had been completely destroyed, and the sound of nearby bombardment rumbled through the air.

Just one grocery store was still open in Murtada’s area, and the streets were largely deserted after many villagers fled.

Frying falafel in hot cooking oil, Murtada said he was determined to stay open, even if just for the few passing cars and ambulances.

“I serve food to anyone who is hungry, even those who can’t pay,” he said, cutting tomatoes and pickles to go with an order.

Lebanon, gripped by a crushing four-year economic crisis, can ill-afford another full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The two fought a month-long war in 2006.

A United Nations (UN) Development Programme report this week said the hostilities had already led to “considerable physical losses, mainly of buildings, houses, commercial entities, infrastructure, services, and utilities” in south Lebanon border villages.

“Economic activity and local businesses are either disrupted or have had to shut down or relocate.”

The World Bank warned on Thursday that “the current conflict and its spillovers into Lebanon are expected to quickly reverse the tepid growth projected for 2023 as the economy returns to a recession”.

At his petrol station in the village of Taybeh, Ali Mansur was waiting for customers who dared to brave the bombardments.

He said his village, just across the border from the Israeli kibbutz community of Misgav Am, is under constant Israeli drone surveillance.

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim group, does not have a visible military presence in villages along the frontier.

On December 11, an elderly local official was killed in Taybeh when an unexploded shell hit him on his balcony.

“As long as the strikes are far away, we work to earn a living,” said Mansur, aged around 50.

In nearby Adaysseh, Ahmad Tarrab said he had been serving burgers at a small restaurant until last week.

“We had stayed open since the start” of the war in October, said Tarrab, 23.

But an employee was wounded when a “shell fell in front of the restaurant, and two others behind it”, he said, pointing to shrapnel in front of the establishment, whose sign was also damaged.

Tarrab later told AFP he decided to flee.

According to the International Organization for Migration, the violence has displaced more than 72,000 people in Lebanon, mostly in the country’s south.

While the majority are staying with host families, more than 1,000 are staying in shelters, according to the UN agency.

In the main square in Adaysseh, Abbas Baalbaki, who owns a small print shop, was following the news on his mobile phone.

He said he decided to shut his shop after his customers evaporated.

He remained defiant, however, adding, “even if the war takes 10 months or a year, I’m not moving”.