by alaraby.co.uk

This article does not represent khazen.org opinions

The Lebanese public have become accustomed to political stasis with a lack of effective executive power in the country’s parliament becoming the norm these days.

After a period of over two years without a president, a position constitutionally ascribed to a Maronite Christian, Freedom and Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, was finally nominated to the position at the beginning of November. 

Over a month after his appointment the the cabinet is still needed yet to establish a cabinet due in part to political wrangling between the country's rival political parties.

While Aoun's son-in-law and political heir apparent, current acting Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, has said that all of Lebanon’s diverse political parties will be represented in a future cabinet, members of the Lebanese public have grown tired of waiting.

This is certainly the case for Mohamed and Omar Kabbani, identical twins, who together form renowned Lebanese graffiti crew Ashekman.

Rather than embrace apathy, Ashekman have come up with their own tongue in cheek critique of the current status quo of political stasis. 

By albawaba.com

Lebanon’s Alaa Najd has been announced the winner of the first season of Project Runway ME on MBC4 and MBC Masr 2.

The grand show finale took place at Dubai Design District (d3) where each designer showcased their final collections. The live studio audience included Arab celebrities and socialites, members of the press, fashion bloggers and social media influencers. Meanwhile, guest judging this episode – alongside international designer Elie Saab and Tunisian fashion icon and media personality Afef Jnifen – was Algerian-French actress and former fashion model Farida Khelfa.

The finalists included Rayan Atlas from Algeria, Selim Chebil from Tunisia, Issa Hesso from Syria and of course, Najd.

Commenting on his win, Najd thanked MBC Group along with the entire Project Runway ME team, including the members of the jury, led by the world-renowned celebrity designer Elie Saab, who was the head of the judging panel.

He described Saab as “a father figure, an inspiration to us all, and the perfect mentor. We couldn’t have asked for someone better to leads us all.”

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has helmed the energy giant for the last decade and struck deals around the world, is expected to be President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state, transition officials told media on Saturday. The 64-year-old Texas native has no governing or diplomatic experience, and has spent the entirety of his career at Exxon, where he began as a production engineer in 1975 after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a civil engineering degree.

The foundation for Tillerson's knowledge of foreign diplomacy is thought to be his extensive experience traveling across the the world for Exxon, which has operations in more than 50 countries, according to the Wall Street Journal. Already, his dealmaking history has begun to draw criticism — through his work at Exxon, Tillerson has cultivated longstanding ties to the Russian government that date back to the 1990s.

Tillerson has struck several major deals with the Russian state-run corporation Rosneft and has a personal relationship with Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who in 2013 awarded him the country's Order of Friendship. Tillerson's appointment is also drawing scrutiny for the potential for conflicts of interest; Exxon's global operations are extensive, and Tillerson owns company shares worth $151 million, according to securities filings reviewed by the Journal.

by Jessi Hempel, Backchannel

Jesse Leimgruber has 22 employees, and every last one is older than him. He tells me this over coffee at a downtown San Francisco Starbucks that is equidistant from his company’s coworking space and the one-bedroom apartment he shares with his girlfriend. Leimgruber is the CEO of NeoReach, a digital marketing tools firm he started in 2014 with his brother and a friend; they have raised $3.5 million so far, and last year they did over a million dollars in sales. He is 22.

Leimgruber is one of 29 people who make up this year’s class of Thiel Fellows — the crazy smart youth paid by Peter Thiel to double down on entrepreneurship instead of school. Leimgruber has dramatic eyebrows, longish hair, and the kind of earnest perma-grin that creeps across his face even when he’s trying to be serious. He speaks with the authority of a three-time CEO who has learned a lot on the job, explaining a challenge particular to fellows like him: “A common piece of advice is, don’t hire your peers; They probably aren’t qualified.”

Welcome to the 2016 version of Peter Thiel’s eponymous fellowship. What began as an attempt to draw teen prodigies to the Valley before they racked up debt at Princeton or Harvard and went into consulting to pay it off has transformed into the most prestigious network for young entrepreneurs in existence — a pedigree that virtually guarantees your ideas will be judged good, investors will take your call, and there will always be another job ahead even better than the one you have. “We look for extraordinary individuals and we want to back them for life,” says executive director Jack Abraham. He speaks with the conviction of a man who sold a company by age 25, has spent the entirety of his professional life in the cradle of the upswing of the technology revolution, and only just turned 30. With no irony, he adds: “We consider ourselves a league of extraordinary, courageous, brilliant individuals who should be a shining light for the rest of society.”

This is not what Thiel endeavored to build. In 2010, when he set out to take down higher education by plucking kids from the ivory towers of the Ivy League and transporting them to San Francisco, he had his eye on teenagers. In a hastily conceived plan that he announced at a San Francisco tech conference, Thiel said he’d pay $100,000 to 20 people under the age of 20 to drop out of school for two years, move to the Bay Area, and work on anything they wanted. His goal was to jumpstart the kind of big tech breakthroughs — walking on the moon, desktop computing — that he believed the contemporary Valley lacked. He also meant to prove that college was often counterproductive; it required kids to take on debt while laying out a set of overly prescriptive options for their futures. A college diploma, he once said, was “a dunce cap in disguise.”