Christi Danner

Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico’s wealthiest man and one of the richest self-made billionaires in the world, flies under the radar more than you might expect, considering he owns more than 200 companies in Mexico, which is also known as "Slimlandia." 

With a net worth of $35.4 billion, Slim’s influence is far-reaching in Mexico and abroad.

So what drives the man who built a giant business empire across one of the poorest countries in the Americas? Read on to find out.

By Elise Harris

Beirut, Lebanon, Aug 1, 2015 / 03:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a rare move, the Armenian Catholic Church has pulled their new patriarch from out of retirement to take on the role as their new head. Church leaders cited his energy and authority as necessary when dealing with current issues, particularly those in the Middle East. Gregory Peter XX Ghabroyan was elected Patriarch of Cilicia of the Armenians July 24. He succeeds former patriarch Nerses Pierre XIX Tarmouni, who died June 25. he patriarch is head of the Armenian Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Pope. The Church uses the Armenian rite, and is estimated to have 1 million followers.

“The patriarch was born in 1934, which makes him 80 years old, and in November he will be 81. However, you have to know this person to be able to understand why he was elected,” Fr. Thomas Garabedian told CNA July 28.“When he talks he talks with authority. He has the charisma to have people listen to him and to appreciate what he’s saying to them. He’s a person that when he talks to you, he convinces you.”

By Babu Das Augustine, Banking Editor

Dubai: A weak economic environment, domestic political uncertainty, conflicts in the neighbourhood and government’s over-reliance on banks to fund deficits are expected to keep the banking sector outlook negative for the next 12 to 18 months.

“We expect the budget deficit to remain high at 8 per cent of GDP for 2015, with the government relying on the domestic banking sector for financing, we expect Lebanese banks’ operating environment to remain weak,” said Alexios Philippides, Moody’s lead analyst for Lebanese banks. “Credit exposure to the weakened Lebanese sovereign, as well as dampened profitability, remains key challenges.”

Staff writer, Al Arabiya News

Germany is to study plans to export Lebanon’s garbage, Beirut-based paper The Daily Star reported on Saturday, alleviating the tiny Middle Eastern country’s waste disposal problem.

The capital and nearby areas have faced an acute trash problem over the last couple of weeks, after the nearby landfill –which had reached full capacity – closed. Amid sweltering summer heat, trash soon began to build up in the streets, prompting an outcry from the city’s two million residents.

When nearby municipalities refused to accept Beirut’s garage, the cabinet began to mull the idea of exporting it abroad.

By Joseph A. Kechichian,Senior Writer

Beirut: Amid news reports that highlighted how Lebanese officials added a garbage crisis to their growing list of woes that further sank the country into unresolvable dilemmas, comes a devastating new World Bank report that highlights what ails it.

Relying on solid data from the 2004-2011 period, and supplemented with projections for more recent years, “Lebanon:
Promoting Poverty Reduction And Shared Prosperity,” provides a systematic diagnosis that will upset many. It affirms in its primary conclusions what stifles institutions, prevents growth, and denies the creation of effective wealth for a majority of the population instead of concentrating wealth in the hands of about 4,000 families that financially rule the country.

By Maya Jaggi

Places have some kind of memory," the late writer WG Sebald once told me, "in that they activate memory in those who look at them. It’s an old notion: this isn’t a good house, because bad things have happened in it."

These words came to mind as I had a preview tour of Beit Beirut (Beirut House), a ruined beauty of a Levantine apartment building, in the Lebanese capital’s Ashrafieh district, that is to become an extraordinary Museum of Memory. A four-storey landmark on the corner of Independence Avenue and Damascus Road, its yellow walls are pitted and pockmarked by bullets and mortars from the civil war of 1975-1990.

Natasha Bertrand

Last week, Turkey went from being effectively neutral in the conflict brewing on its southern border to opening a war on two fronts against ISIS in northern Syria and the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq.

And what happens next will determine just how messy Ankara’s Syria policy has become.

The dramatic reversal came after an ISIS-affiliated suicide bomber killed 32 activists in the southeastern town of Suruc, just across the border from the embattled city of Kobani, Syria.

30th July, 2015 by Lucy Jenkins

Speaking to the drinks business Wardy’s winemaker, Diana Salame Khalil, explained that although its wines have been in Hong Kong for three years, the winery views the future in Asia as “an exciting one” due to its consistently good vintages that has “wooed the trade.”

“People in Hong Kong are always willing to try new styles,” she said. “It’s a good opportunity for us to promote our wines, and we’re able to show them that our styles are not the same as other producers – not even in Lebanon.”

• Barbara Tasch

King Salaman of Saudi Arabia is spending his summer vacation along the French Riviera — and is causing a lot of trouble in the process. 

The king seemingly acts as if French laws do not apply to him, something that’s angered locals. A usually busy beach has been closed in the middle of the summer, and the king has engaged in illegal construction work as well.