The runner-up was Miss South Africa Tamaryn Green. The second runner-up was Miss Venezuela Isabella Rodríguez. Gray was officially crowned the Miss Universe title by last year’s winner, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, at the end of Sunday’s broadcast. The top-5 also included Miss Vietnam Tran Tieu Vy and Miss Puerto Rico Kiara Ortega. Gray was chosen over […]

 By NPR — npr.org — In one of the first scenes in Capernaum, the camera flies above the slums of Beirut. There is no sight of the Mediterranean Sea or the glamour of the so-called Paris of the Middle East. This is another side of the Lebanese capital. “You’re seeing dilapidated buildings, children running around playing with pieces of metals and just whatever they could find on the street, not actual toys,” film critic Nana Asfour said.

The Jury Prize winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival tells the story of Zain, a streetwise 12-year-old, who flees his abusive parents and later sues them for the “crime” of giving him life. It opens in the U.S. this week, days after earning a Golden Globe nomination and a place on many critics’ best-of lists (including NPR’s). Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki said the dystopian images in her film are a reflection of Beirut as it is today. It’s also captured in the film’s title. “Capernaum in French is used usually in French literature to signify chaos, to signify hell, disorder,” she said. In recent years, Lebanon has taken in more than a million refugees fleeing the war in neighboring Syria. Labaki said the sight of hundreds of children begging on the streets has become the new normal. She still remembers the night that she decided she had to do something. “I was one day coming back from a party at 1 o’clock in the morning, and I see a mother with her child begging,” she said. “He was almost, like, 2, and he was dozing off and he couldn’t sleep,” she said. “And we were not giving him the right to sleep. And it struck me: Everything that this kid is going to know for the next two, three years is this half-a-meter sidewalk. It’s his only playground.” Article continues after this message from our sponsor Labaki was pregnant at the time. “How come we got to that point?” she said. “How do we allow for such injustice to happen to the most fragile human beings in our society?” In an attempt to find answers, Labaki began working on the film as a reporting project with her husband and collaborator, the film composer and musician Khaled Mouzanar. After it became evident that nobody would initially finance the story, the couple mortgaged their home and set out to bring the story to screen. “We spent four years with all these people in the poorest and darkest places of Beirut, where all these people end up after going on the streets of rich neighborhoods where they are beggars,” Mouzanar said. “They go back to these places where they live, and it is close to hell.” Labaki said she always knew she wanted to tell the story from a child’s point of view. So she interviewed hundreds of kids living on the streets. “I used to make it a point at the end of the conversation to ask them: Are you happy to be alive?” she said. “And most of the times the answer was no. They just see themselves as insects, as parasites — some of them used those words. ‘I’m just an insect. I’m just a parasite. I don’t exist. I’m invisible.’ So I wanted to translate this anger.” Capernaum shows the hunger, suffering and abuse that drove Zain into a courtroom. “And by suing his parents he’s also suing a system, a whole society that is not allowing him to have his basic rights,” Labaki said.

By SARAH EL DEEB — MAYS AL-JABAL, Lebanon (AP) — As Israeli excavators dug into the rocky hills along the frontier with a Lebanese village, a crowd of young Lebanese men gathered to watch. The mood was light as the crowd observed what Israel says is a military operation — dubbed “Northern Shield” — aimed at destroying attack tunnels built by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. The young men posed for selfies, with the Israeli crew in the background, as they burned fires and brewed tea to keep warm. But Lebanese soldiers were visibly on high alert, deploying to new camouflaged posts behind sandbags and inside abandoned homes. About two dozen U.N. peacekeepers stood in a long line, just ahead of the blue line demarcating the frontier between the two countries technically still at war.

The scene highlights the palpable anxiety that any misstep could lead to a conflagration between Israel and Lebanon that no one seems to want. Underscoring such jitters, shadowy figures appearing across the misty hills of the border village of Mays al-Jabal last weekend sparked panic, and Israeli soldiers fired in the air to warn a Lebanese military intelligence patrol, according to Lebanese reports. Israel said it fired at Hezbollah members who came to the site to dismantle sensors installed to detect tunnels. Israel’s tunnel search comes at a time when the civil war in neighboring Syria seems to be winding down. Hezbollah had sent hundreds of troops to Syria in 2013 to fight alongside the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. With Assad’s forces emerging victorious, attention now seems to be returning to the tense Israel-Lebanon border. Israel said its troops have discovered at least three tunnels along the frontier — a tactic used by Hezbollah in previous wars — and called on the international community to impose new sanctions on Hezbollah. The militant group, which fought a bruising but inconclusive war with Israel in 2006, has not commented on the Israeli operation or statements. Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said Thursday that neither Israel nor Lebanon wanted to go to war, but noted that Israel violates Lebanese airspace and international waters on a regular basis. He said the Lebanese army “will deal with this issue” after receiving a full report from the U.N peacekeeping force, but did not elaborate.

by Asharq Alawsat — Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri affirmed the Lebanese government’s firm commitment to implementing the necessary legal, financial and economic reforms to improve the business environment and enhance transparency. Hariri was speaking at the opening of the Lebanese-UK Business and Investment Forum at Savoy Palace in London, which was also attended by UK Minister of State for the Middle East and International Development Alistair Burt, caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, UK Trade Commissioner for the Middle East Simon Penny and the Lebanese ambassador to UK, Rami Mortada, as well as Lebanese ministers and economic officials. The forum saw the signing of an agreement between Rolls Royce and Middle East Airlines. Stalling in the formation of the Lebanese government imposed itself on the agenda of the forum, as a factor that affects the attractiveness of Lebanon to foreign investors and British private sector companies. In this regard, Hariri said: “The delay in government formation has not halted our progress on the implementation of the CEDRE projects and reforms.” “Admittedly, Lebanon’s economy is under tremendous pressure, due partly to continued regional turmoil. Moreover, our economic and social challenges are compounded by the continued presence of one and a half million Syrians displaced for the eighth year in a row,” he noted.

By Karoun Demirjian —washingtonpost.com —The Senate on Thursday delivered back-to-back rebukes of President Trump’s embrace of Saudi Arabia, first voting to end U.S. participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen and then unanimously approving a measure blaming the kingdom’s crown prince for the ghastly killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Together, the dual actions represent an unambiguous rejection of Trump’s continued defense of Saudi leaders in the face of a CIA assessment that concluded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likely ordered and monitored Khashoggi’s killing Oct. 2 inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. It suggests a bipartisan majority of senators will pursue broader punitive measures when Congress regroups next year — including sanctions and a halt to weapons transfers — despite the administration’s objections. “What we showed in this vote today is that Republicans and Democrats are ready to get back in the business of working with a president — and sometimes against a president — to set the foreign policy of this nation,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) a longtime advocate for checking Saudi Arabia’s regional expansion. “The United States has said, through the Senate, that our support for the Saudi coalition is no longer open-ended.”

The unanimous vote to hold Mohammed responsible for Khashoggi’s killing reflects the extent to which senators in both parties have grown tired of Trump’s continued defense of Mohammed’s denials. It also puts significant pressure on leaders in the House — where the president’s Saudi policy is far more divisive — to allow for a similar vote to condemn the crown prince before the end of the year. Earlier this week, House leaders maneuvered to block rank-and-file members from forcing a vote on any Yemen-related resolutions, an attempt to stop the Senate’s effort to curtail U.S. involvement in the Saudis’ military campaign by invoking the War Powers Resolution. Senators voted 56 to 41 on Thursday to support the Yemen resolution, put forward by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), after seven Republicans joined all Senate Democrats to back the measure. That figure strongly suggests a majority of the Republican-led Senate will challenge Trump on his Saudi policy next year, alongside a Democratic-led House, whose incoming leaders also have promised to be proactive about demanding changes to the status quo. Senators discuss ending U.S. support for Saudi-led war in Yemen Senators spoke on Dec. 12 after voting to start debate on a measure to end U.S. support for Saudi military actions in Yemen. (Patrick Martin /The Washington Post) “The current relationship with Saudi Arabia is not working for America,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally who, nonetheless, is a driving force behind several efforts to punish Saudi Arabia. He often refers to Mohammed as a “wrecking ball.” Graham did not vote for the Yemen resolution Thursday, citing concerns about using the War Powers Resolution as a vehicle to call out Saudi Arabia, but he said resolutely this week that his past defense of the kingdom had come to an end. “I think you’re wrong about what’s going on up here,” Graham said late Wednesday in comments directed toward Trump. “I’m never going to let this go until things change in Saudi Arabia.”

Time magazine has named “The Guardians” — four journalists and a newsroom — as their person of the year for helping to expose “the manipulation and the abuse of truth,” globally. The four include Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who died inside Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate; Maria Ressa, from the Rappler site for its […]

(MENAFN) Caretaker Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk declared that the Internal Security Forces (ISF) had foiled terrorist attacks during the parliamentary elections in May aimed at places of worship and military posts in Lebanon. Machnouk added: “The ISF protected Lebanon against two huge terrorist attacks by thwarting the smuggling of bombs from Idlib in Syria to […]

AFP/ Beirut Ghostly apartment blocks and half-built buildings dot Lebanon, as entrepreneurs and experts fear that the country’s key real estate sector is on the brink of collapse. The small Mediterranean country’s construction sector witnessed an unprecedented boom from 2008, fuelled in part by sales to wealthy Gulf Arabs and Lebanese expatriates. But after civil […]

by aawsat.com— Beirut – Asharq Al-Awsat President Michel Aoun is working on a solution to the cabinet crisis, and has informed his visitors that he might send a letter to Parliament for examining constitutional measures that could push all parties to assume responsibility in resolving the stalemate, informed sources in Beirut told Asharq Al-Awsat on […]

By Dartunorro Clark —nbcnews —  Former President George H.W. Bush, who died Friday at age 94, was honored Wednesday at a state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral with stories of his bravery in wartime, his compassion and loyalty, and his love of family, friends and country. George W. Bush, the 43rd president, gave a tearful eulogy of his father, peppered with jokes and personal reminiscences. He said his father taught his children about the importance of public service and how to live a life with grace, humility and kindness. “He was a genuinely optimistic man,” Bush said. “And that optimism guided his children, and made each of us believe that anything was possible.” He added, “To us, his was the brightest of a thousand points of light,” referring to the phrase popularized by his father when he accepted the presidential nomination at the 1988 Republican National Convention. Bush said that his father also showed him “what it means to be a president who leads with integrity.” He recalled his father’s final moments just days ago. Bush said he called his dad, who was unable to speak at the time, and told him he loved him. “The last words he would say on earth is, ‘I love you, too,'” Bush said.

During the final moments of his eulogy, Bush’s voice broke and he fought back tears as he imagined his father in Heaven. “Dad is hugging Robin and holding mom’s hand again,” he said, referring to George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush’s daughter who died in 1953 from leukemia at the age of 3. Jon Meacham, his biographer, was the first eulogist and told the story of Bush’s plane being shot down during World War II and how he was rescued. “George Herbert Walker Bush was America’s last great soldier-statesmen,” Meacham said, adding that the former president believed in causes larger than himself. “He believed that to whom much is given, much is expected.” Meacham drew laughter from the mourners when he recalled how, on the campaign trail, an over-eager Bush once shook the hand of a department store mannequin as he sought votes. Realizing his mistake, Bush quipped, “Never know, gotta ask.”