If you have $425 burning a hole in your pocket and are looking to purchase some new fashion for spring that will make you look like you’ve slipped on a rainy day at a music festival, look no further. Nordstrom has you covered. The “Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans” are described as “Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that’s seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.”

So… they show you’re not afraid to get “down and dirty,” even though you spent $425 just so that you won’t have to actually get “down and dirty” in them. Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, took to Facebook to absolutely skewer the pants, saying, “Finally – a pair of jeans that look like they have been worn by someone with a dirty job…made for people who don’t. And you can have your very own pair for just $425.00.” “They’re not even fashion,” he argues. “They’re a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic – not iconic.” Fair point.

by Nathalie Bertrand -- A hacking group linked by cybersecurity experts to Russia's military intelligence apparatus has begun taking aim at France's centrist presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron, the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro said in a report published on Tuesday. On March 15, the group — known as Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sednit, APT28, Sofacy, or STRONTIUM — began registering domain names like "onedrive-en-marche.fr" and "mail-en-marche.fr" in an attempt to trick members of Macron's campaign team into clicking on links that looked affiliated with his political party, En Marche.

"A huge revelation in this Trend Micro report is that Fancy Bear has significantly upped the sophistication of its cyber attacks," said Greg Martin, the CEO of cybersecurity firm JASK. "They're taking advantage of vulnerabilities in cloud-based email services like Gmail to trick people into downloading fake applications, and compromising their inboxes without even having to steal a password."  Martin said that when targeted by this kind of attack, known as "OAuth phishing," the victim can't just change their password to regain access to their account. "It's a new style of attack is very deadly and unprecedented," he said. "It's the first time we have seen this in the wild."

A more primitive version of that phishing technique was on full display during the US presidential election. Emails stolen by Fancy Bear from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, were fed to WikiLeaks and the website DCLeaks, which is run by self-described hacker Guccifer 2.0, who researchers believe was a persona created by Russian military intelligence. "The cat got out of the bag in terms of the tools used in the DNC cyberattacks, so Fancy Bear upped the ante this time around," Martin said. 

by Vahakn Kabakian - Executive -- Lebanon’s energy sector is characterized by a significant supply-demand imbalance, continuing growth in demand (5 percent per year), high generation costs (partly due to aging infrastructure), and a lack of financial sustainability. Electricité du Liban (EDL) cannot recover its operating costs and depends on the Lebanese government to subsidize operations. In 2013, EDL received transfers amounting to around $2 billion, corresponding to 4.5 percent of the GDP – creating a significant strain on the country’s budget and economy. Lebanon’s baseline energy mix is dominated by oil, accounting for over 95 percent of generation. Renewable energy currently accounts for 4 percent of the electricity produced in Lebanon, predominantly hydropower, with less than 0.2 percent from solar photovoltaic (PV).

For the most part when we consider the Lebanese diet, traditional cuisine and eating habits we notice that firstly and most importantly it revolves around the season which means you're eating food that is fresh, and in its nutritional prime," Kehdy, author of The Jewelled Kitchen cookbook, tells The New Arab.

For Kehdy, nutritional variety is key to Lebanon's healthy lifestyle.

"The [Lebanese] diet also revolves around vegetables with sprinklings of meat with weekends dedicated to letting loose and enjoying a lavish meat-laden grills. Fruits are also still celebrated and often as a form of dessert," she adds. Meals are mostly balanced and include copious amounts of garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. "A typical lunch is very balanced with a salad, stew, not overdosed on meat and a good serving of grains. The diet also involves lots of fermented foods – pickles and yoghurt always grace the table – so lots of probiotics and natural digestive aids," Kehdy says. She also adds that cultural habits, and especially light dinners, are key. "If we go back and really consider the traditional eating culture we notice that dinners were often simply yoghurt and cheese which much lighter and easily digestible in comparison to the balanced lunch of stew, grain and salad. The old saying says: have lunch and nap, eat dinner and walk." As testified by hordes of customers filling Lebanese restaurants from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, Lebanon's cuisine had long ago found world-wide fame.