by Victor Argo – yourmiddleeast.com

It’s not only creative talent that makes a
successful designer. (Of that, Lara Khoury has plenty to offer.) It is
also about meeting deadlines and applying a determined work ethic. Lara
Khoury has understood this lesson well at this point of her career, as
she acknowledged when recently talking to the Lebanese website “Secrets
of Beirut”.  So I was hardly surprised when Khoury showed up
right on time for our Skype interview. Here she was, an immaculate
olive-skinned beauty with eyes as big as an ocean, radiant and somewhat
mysterious, sporting her trademark super short hair – we will come to
that later.  

The class of Lebanese fashion design came to the
attention of a wider international audience when Halle Berry wore an
Elie Saab dress for the Oscar ceremony in 2002. Today, Jennifer Lopez
walks the red carpets wearing Zuhair Murad or Reem Acra designs, while
actress Kerry Washington has joined the ranks of Elie Saab’s followers.   In Beirut Lara Khoury
is the undeclared star of a very diverse scene of young Lebanese
fashion designers. Many of them are women. Lara Khoury caters to a
local, a regional and a growing worldwide customer base. Unlike Elie
Saab and other ‘Hollywood designers’ who have a penchant for Haute
Couture, Lara Khoury specializes in ready-to-wear fashion.

Ready-to-wear but not mainstream. In her
collections Lara is constantly experimenting with volumes and forms and
seeks to distort the feminine silhouette by constructing new curves and
shapes, while at the same time keeping a hint of femininity.   “Who do you have in mind when you design?” was my
first question to Lara Khoury. “Do you create for Lebanese or
international customers?”  “I don’t design for a particular customer,” Lara
said. “With today’s globalization, a designer can craft a collection and
create for whoever they want. I rather think of the message that I want
to give in the collection. And then clients from Lebanon can find my
work in my studio in Beirut and other clients can find it online.” “My decisions are based on creativity – and not on
targeting a specific market,” Lara continued. “It’s not the best thing
to do business-wise, I know, but I do what I do because I love it, so I
don’t want to compromise on anything because of a certain client.” 

BEIRUT – By AP 

by Paul Szoldra The Pentagon is kicking former President Barack Obama’s preferred nomenclature for the so-called Islamic State to the curb. While the Obama administration often used ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to describe the terror group, a new memo from the Pentagon’s executive secretary says the department needs to start using […]

By Rowan El Shimi

“What can the ghosts of protests past tell us?” asks an
intertitle in Mary Jirmanus
Saba‘s Shuour Akbar Min al-Hob (A Feeling Greater Than
Love), which won the FIPRESCI
(the international film critics’ association) jury award in
Berlinale’s edgy Forum
section this week. The 99-minute film — which took the Lebanese writer-director
almost seven years to make and was edited by Egyptian editor Louly
Seif — mixes interviews, archival footage and clips from Lebanese
militant films to tell the story of two strikes, in a southern
Lebanon tobacco company and at Beirut’s Gandour biscuit factory, in
the early 1970s. Due to their failure and that of the larger
revolutionary movement surrounding them, as well as the start of the
Lebanese civil war in 1975, they are largely absent from the
country’s collective memory.

The 33-year-old filmmaker, who studied social studies and
geography in the US before spending several years in Latin America as
an organizer of agricultural laborers and as a community television
producer, decided to make the film after discovering more about
Lebanon’s 1972 uprising and the revolution it almost launched. In
relation to the region’s 2011 uprisings, it prompted her to ask:
Are we repeating the same gestures, do they bring us closer to
justice and equality, and what can we do with a desire for
change and unity now?

Placing itself in Lebanon’s strong tradition of militant
filmmaking, Saba’s film opens avenues for contemplation on the
collective failure of the left in Lebanon by juxtaposing footage from
works by 1970s activist-filmmakers, such Christian Ghazi and Maroun
Baghdadi, with present-day footage of workers who took part in the
strikes leading quiet lives in places where not much has changed 40
years later. Farmers pick leaves to sell them to the tobacco company,
which still has a monopoly, and when she takes us to the Gandour
factory through an old militant film, we realize through a cut to the
same location that it is where the Mall of Beirut now stands.

By Ian Sample – theguardian.com

A huddle of seven worlds, all close in size to Earth, and perhaps warm
enough for water and the life it can sustain, has been spotted around a
small, faint star in the constellation of Aquarius The discovery, which has thrilled astronomers, has raised hopes that
the hunt for alien life beyond the solar system could start much sooner
than previously thought, with the next generation of telescopes that are
due to switch on in the next decade.

It is the first time that so many Earth-sized planets have been found
in orbit around the same star, an unexpected haul that suggests the
Milky Way may be teeming with worlds that, in size and firmness
underfoot at least, resemble our own rocky home. The planets closely circle a dwarf star named Trappist-1,
which at 39 light years away makes the system a prime candidate to
search for signs of life. Only marginally larger than Jupiter, the star
shines with a feeble light about 2,000 times fainter than our sun.

“The star is so small and cold that the seven planets are temperate,
which means that they could have some liquid water and maybe life, by
extension, on the surface,” said Michaël Gillon, an astrophysicist at
the University of Liège in Belgium. Details of the work are reported in Nature. While the planets have Earth-like dimensions, their sizes ranging
from 25% smaller to 10% larger, they could not be more different in
other features. Most striking is how compact the planet’s orbits are.
Mercury, the innermost planet in the solar system, is six times farther
from the sun than the outermost seventh planet is from Trappist-1.

by Naharnet – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held talks Thursday with President Michel Aoun at the Baabda Palace at the beginning of a three-day visit to Lebanon. After a bilateral meeting between the two leaders, the members of the Palestinian and Lebanese delegations joined the talks, state-run National News Agency said. “We agreed to coordinate […]

By english.aawsat.com

Beirut-Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said that endorsing
the state budget tops the list of government’s goals, adding any new tax
would take into consideration interests of both citizens and the
economic sectors. Hariri said that approving the ranks and salaries scale should be
linked to administrative reforms and ensuring financial resources to
finance them. Speaking to a delegation from the economic bodies headed by former
Minister Adnan Kassar, the Prime Minister said that a package of taxes
and fees made headlines in the past few days, as it is expected to
overwhelm citizens -mainly those with limited income-, and some sectors,
including the banking sector.

The PM clarified that ongoing discussions on new taxes and fees in
the cabinet, will secure the balance between interests of citizens and
different economic sectors, and will ensure additional resources to
finance the budget. Hariri also noted that the country is battling hard economy
conditions, and the government aims to hold a practical discussion to
define the taxes and fees that should be applied, with the least impact
on the economic growth and on the low-income class.

He added that discussions held in the cabinet are open to reach a
balance between the needs of the private sector, citizens and the state.
On the other hand, there is a package of incentives to motivate the
private sector, which will likely be included in the draft state budget. Hariri said that approving the ranks and salaries scale is being
studied by the cabinet; in case it is approved, it should be linked to
administrative reforms and suitable financial resources to finance them.
Without reforms and commitment to implement them, the ranks and
salaries scale cannot be approved, as it is not possible to increase
wages without improving productivity in the public sector and activating
public administration.

As for increasing the electricity tariff, Hariri said: “I personally
believe that it is not permissible to increase the tariff before
increasing and improving electricity hours.” The Prime Minister concluded by saying that the government works on
developing a new plan to deal with the Syrian refugee issue; it intends
to benefit from the international support to develop the infrastructure
used by the displaced Syrians especially roads, schools, universities,
hospitals, electricity and water sectors.

By Wassim Seifeddine Lebanese President Michel Aoun expressed hope Tuesday that U.S. support for the Lebanese army would continue “to allow Lebanon to defend itself”. While receiving U.S. Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the U.S. Senate’s foreign relations committee, Aoun stressed his keenness to maintain “strong Lebanese-American relations and cooperation” with a view to preserving […]

By Benjamin Zhang Nissan Motors has a new CEO. On February 22, the Japanese automaker announced that Hiroto Saikawa will become its new CEO on April 1, 2017. Saikawa, who currently serves as the company’s co-CEO, will take over for Nissan’s long-time chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “I am confident that the management team I […]