Written by Marco De Novellis – businessbecause.com

The Middle East is often in the news for all the wrong reasons. Yet amid the wars, the terrorism and the tension, new generations of entrepreneurs are looking to change perceptions, drive societal change and improve quality of life.

Among them, Saleh el Khazen, a Lebanese innovator using sports to make a
social impact. Over the past decade, Saleh has worked on construction
projects in Qatar and Lebanon.

He’s a partner and board member of the pioneering ELKA construction
group and founded its Lebanon-based subsidiary – project development and
management company Sminds – before embarking on a project
management-focused EMBA at SKEMA Business School.

The French “Grande école” jets its EMBA students off to study at a
range of international campuses; in Oslo, Shanghai, Dallas, and, as of
2017, Belo Horizonte in Brazil. The program culminates in the “capstone
project” where students can build business plans for their own
entrepreneurial ventures.

by By RIMA SUQI nytimes.com

Beirut, in the words of one designer I talked to recently, is like a third world country that’s put on some makeup.

It
is the capital of a country that has not had a president in two years.
There are daily power outages. It can take an hour to heat water to take
a shower, and garbage removal is a serious problem. There are almost no
street signs, but one can summon an Uber relatively easily.

Despite
all this, or perhaps because of it, creativity thrives in Beirut, which
seems to have more than its share of architects, interior designers,
industrial designers and artists. Most speak at least three languages,
have been educated in other countries and have multiple passports, so
they could live someplace seemingly easier.

“There is a soul here that you can’t find anywhere else,” said Nada Debs, a designer in her 50s with a shop in downtown Beirut.

Changiz M. Varzi

As its landmarks disappear one-by-one, Beirut is suffering from a severe
case of architectural amnesia. With the guns of civil war long silent,
the Lebanese capital is still losing magnificent pieces of its past
through the razing of its longstanding memorable buildings.

The city once known as “the Paris of the Middle East” is today a hodgepodge of unsightly high-rises made of concrete and glass that have replaced the grand old structures.

The one thing that has unified the Lebanese political and economic
power-holders amidst decades of political strife, armed conflict and
sectarian confrontation is the pouring of money into Lebanon’s property
market, which has accelerated the process of demolishing legendary
houses.

“This is not a new phenomenon in Lebanon; politicians have always
been unresponsive to these issues,” Elie Karma, a preservation activist
from Beirut, tells Equal Times.

Your Majesty, President Obama, Excellencies, Ladies
and Gentlemen,

In absolute terms, Lebanon is by far the biggest world
donor to the cause of refugees. According to the World Bank, over 15 billion
dollars have been contributed by the Lebanese economy to ensure public
services, education and health to the Syrians and Palestinians who compose one
third of our population today.
In the past
two years, no less than five major high-level conferences on the subject have
taken place. No less than three meetings are held this week here, at the
UN. What do we have to show for all this mobilization of political power? Very
little indeed, especially when we consider the overflow of those crossing now
to Europe.

 This faltering of the international
community should be urgently remedied:
First, by
devoting the substantial funding required in order to manage the consequences
of the crisis.  Second, by massively investing in development aid in
order to trigger durable growth, create jobs and fight poverty for the benefit
of host populations and refugees alike.   Third,
by establishing a transparent mechanism to track the multiplicity of funding
flows, generate synergies and avoid waste.   Fourth,
by significantly activating burden-sharing efforts by all countries which have
the possibility to relocate refugees, including by the countries of the region.

By Deacon Keith Fournier

I am a Catholic Christian seeking to apply the principles of the Social
teaching of my Church to my political, economic and social
participation.I offer a few examples of how I have approached evaluating
the
two candidates for the Presidency of the United States based upon
principles derived from my  faith. I gratefully accepted the invitation
to become a member of the Catholic
Advisory Group to the campaign of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of
the United States of America. I did so because I love my country, my
God, my Church and my family. I am honored to serve and will offer the
kind of advice which I have expressed in this essay to the Trump/Pence
campaign.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) – I write as a private American
citizen concerned about the future of the Nation I love. In this essay I
am expressing my personal political views – and I have a right to do
so.

I am a husband to my wife of forty years, father to our five
grown children and grandfather to seven. I am a “family man”, deeply
concerned about the American family and its future. I am also a
constitutional lawyer. I spent much of my career defending religious
freedom as the first freedom and the right to life as the first right. I
have stood at the intersection of faith and culture for  decades in
both ministry and activism.

By catholicherald.co.uk

Pope Francis has said that a global war on marriage is underway and
Catholics must respond by helping couples stay strong and by providing
pastoral care to those experiencing difficulty. “Today there is a global war to destroy marriage,” the Pope said
during a meeting in Tbilisi with priests, religious, seminarians and lay
people active in parish life.

“Today you do not destroy with weapons, you destroy with ideas,” the Pope said. “It is ideological colonisation that destroys.” The only way to defend marriage against the onslaught, he said, is to
help couples “make peace as soon as possible, before the day ends, and
don’t forget the three words: ‘May I?’ ‘Thank you’ and ‘Forgive me.’”

“Marriage is the most beautiful thing that God has created,” Pope
Francis said. In marriage, man and woman become one flesh, “the image of
God.” “When you divorce one flesh you sully the God’s image,” he said.

by Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: Lebanon has long stood out as the black sheep of the Middle
East, mainly because it absorbed rather than shunned Western cultural
values, at a time when the Middle East was being colonised by Britain
and France in the early part of the 20th century.

Beirut, its capital, was known in its golden age as “the Paris of the Middle East”. Both
Muslims and Christian Lebanese attended English and French schools and
universities. These institutions helped transform the small country’s
abilities to act as a window for both East and West.

But why exactly has Lebanon’s identity developed so drastically different from that of its Arab neighbours? First, Lebanon’s unique geographical position has placed it at the crossroads of civilisations.

Secondly, its people’s openness to outsiders.

Throughout
its history, Beirut has been destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times
from the period of the Phoenicians 3,000 years ago, followed by the
Romans and, more recently, to Arab conquerors who first came to these
shores around 1400AD.