by thepienews.com —Four universities in Lebanon are being investigated for selling fake degrees, which has led to more than 40 people being …

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s finance minister says the government has started open-ended discussions to quickly approve the country’s draft austerity budget. Lebanon’s economy …

ZALKA, Lebanon (Thomson Reuters Foundation) by Heba Kanso - Farah Ballout’s big, infectious smile is the first thing that greets you at her workplace, a cafe in Lebanon with a mission to do more than just brew coffee. Before she was hired the 29-year-old, who suffers from Angelman Syndrome, a genetic disorder that means she has developmental disabilities, had struggled to find work in a country with high unemployment. “I feel like it is a dream that I started here,” Ballout said as tears rolled down her face. “It feels like you are walking into your home - it doesn’t feel like you are going to work.” Almost all the 14 staff at the Agonist coffee shop near Beirut where Ballout has worked for the past five months have special needs, from autism to Down’s Syndrome.

Wassim El Hage set up the business in December to help people with disabilities, who are typically excluded from the workforce in Lebanon. As a social enterprise - a business that aims to do good as well as make profit - it faces even more of a challenge than most start-ups in a country whose economy has been badly hit by years of political instability and a mass influx of refugees. The country is grappling with an unemployment rate of 30 percent and last year, nearly 2,200 businesses closed, according to Lebanon’s chamber of commerce. For El Hage, that was part of the motivation - Lebanon, he said, desperately needs organizations prepared to hire people who would otherwise struggle to find jobs. “It is not my target to make money or to make profit for my own self. My target is to give them back this money [for them] to be integrated, to be independent, to have a real life,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We need it in Lebanon.”

by khaleejtimes.com —Debate about lifting the ban on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has erupted again in the UAE following comments of …