by Sarah Maisey - thenational.ae

A fashion juggernaut rolled into Muscat for Condé Nast’s third annual International Luxury Conference, with renowned designers including Elie Saab, from Lebanon, as part of it. Founded and hosted by Vogue’s international editor, Suzy Menkes, the event brought the leading lights of the luxury industry together for a gathering featuring presentations from chief executives, designers and bloggers. Alber Elbaz (formerly of fashion house Lanvin), Indian fashion designer Manish Arora and blogger Hudda Kattan (recently named the third-most influential beauty blogger in the world by Forbes) were among them, along with the bosses at Jimmy Choo.

Saab took time out to talk about his rise to haute couture fame. "Breaking into Paris was very hard for me, it took a long time," he says. "I started as a designer alone and didn’t know much about the industry. I had to learn it all." He opened his atelier in Beirut in 1982, with the Lebanese civil war raging around him. Inspired by the style and elegance of his city in its heyday, the 18-year-old Saab launched his label, drawing on the experience of those around him. "When I started there were no fashion designers in the region, but ... in Beirut there were high- quality dressmakers and tailors," he says. "I went to them with a clear vision of what I wanted."

His elaborate designs soon gained attention and international acclaim slowly followed. In 1997, he was the only non-Italian invited to join the National Chamber of Italian Fashion (Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana) in Italy and went on to launch his first ready-to-wear collection in 1998. Saab’s true passion lay in haute couture, so it was with pride that he accepted an invitation in 2000 to join the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris. "We have our prêt-à-porter [ready-to-wear] studio in Paris, but our base for haute couture is in Beirut," he says."Some of my team members have been with me since the beginning and we have come up together. It is beautiful."

This story by Carol Hills originally appeared on PRI.org on April 13, 2017. It is republished here as part of a partnership between PRI and Global Voices.

Some advice from an Arab son. If your career choice is to become a comedian, don't expect your dad to be very excited. Here's how Lebanese-American Nemr Abou Nassar's dad responded: “You want to become a clown?” No, explained Nemr, a stand-up comedian. His dad remained skeptical. “Oh, you're going to stand up and be a clown!” The riff goes on. Nemr's father buys a horn, the kind you put on a bicycle, and for the next eight years, he squeezes it every time his son visits: “Everybody, the clown is here.” Then Nemr makes it onto the cover of Rolling Stone and suddenly his father changes his tone. “This is my son the comedian. I always told him follow your dreams.” But instead of Rolling Stone, he pronounces “Throwing Stones,” in a thick Arabic accent.

This was the May 2014 cover of Rolling Stone (Middle East). Credit: Rolling Stone

Nemr says his father is a huge fan, “as much as an Arab father would be a fan of his son because it's against Arab culture to ever encourage your children. It's a constant thing to keep them humble.” His father's only no-go zone is swearing. “If there's the funniest joke in the world and somebody drops an f-word, he just shuts down. He doesn't like that.” But all those jokes about him? Nemr says his father just nods, “as long you're making money.” The Arab father topic is intentional. Nemr performs in English across the Arab and Muslim world and now in North America. Right now, he's on a world tour, everywhere from Oklahoma to Saudi Arabia. “You don't really need to be from anywhere to actually relate to a father who has high expectations for their son.”

Nemr's global reach reflects his own experience. Born in Lebanon in 1983, his family moved to San Diego, California, when he was 2, during his country's long civil war. But just nine years later, his family moved back to Beirut. He found American issues like drugs and missing children too scary, telling his son: “In Beirut, the only danger is war. We can run away from that and hide.”

by dailystar.com.lb

Standard Chartered expects modest GDP growth in Lebanon in 2017 compared to 2016, thanks to the positive political environment following the election of a president.  “We expect GDP growth to pick up marginally to 1.5 percent in 2017, from an estimated 1.0 percent in 2016, as private-sector confidence improves due to political progress at end-2016. The latest survey data supports this view,” Standard Chartered said in its latest report on Lebanon.

It also noted a minor improvement in Lebanon’s PMI. “Following the election of President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s rapid formation of a coalition cabinet, the PMI rose to 47.7 in January from an all-time low of 43.8 in October 2016 (at the end of the 29-month presidential vacuum). Construction permits also recovered in Q4, growing 6 percent year-on-year after a 22 percent contraction in Q3,” the investment bank said. However, Standard Chartered does not see further improvement in business sentiment due to the fact that the current government will resign once parliamentary elections are held this year.

“Beyond improved confidence and business sentiment, we do not expect game-changing structural reforms or economic improvements, particularly given that the current government is temporary. The political road map is not yet complete, and we think the policy focus will be on amending the electoral law to allow scheduled parliamentary elections in May. This should lead to the formation of another cabinet,” it explained. The bank released its report prior to recent political developments that will almost certainly see the election schedule delayed.

By Monica Showalter - With the pathetically humiliating failure of North Korea's missile launch in the wake of a very big puffy buildup, the shark tank must be working overtime over in Pyongyang. You wouldn't want to be one of the North Korean minions who worked on that wretched fizzle-out that has humiliated the vicious little dictator on the world stage. He gets mean when the world is laughing. And what a coincidence, it happened as Vice President Pence makes his way to South Korea.  And more interesting still, an intriguing leak of sorts has come to light: That the U.S. hacked the launch, ensuring its failure. It comes from former British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind, who served under Prime Minister John Major, speaking with the BBC in a buried lede if there ever was one. 

"It could have failed because the system is not competent enough to make it work, but there is a very strong belief that the US - through cyber methods - has been successful on several occasions in interrupting these sorts of tests and making them fail," he told the BBC.

Riftkind qualified himself by saying that there have been other successful launches. But the hacking possibility took precedence in the popular press. The infomation was mined out by The Sun and front-paged on the Drudge Report, both of which have far greater reach and are sure to reach Kim Jong Un's ears, if the BBC report doesn't.