Los Angeles / AFP The figure-hugging gown Marilyn Monroe wore to serenade President John F. Kennedy for his 45th birthday smashed its guide price to sell for $4.8 million at auction on Thursday. The flesh-colored dress, adorned with 2,500 hand-stitched crystals, had been expected to fetch between $2-3 million, Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills said. It went to Ripley’s ...

  La Paz/ AFP Centuries ago, Spanish colonizers forced their Bolivian servants to wear the puffy skirts that have come to symbolize the country’s “cholitas,” or indigenous women. Today, one local designer is turning the tables with plans to export high-end cholita fashion — blossoming skirts, bowler hats and intricately woven shawls — to Madrid, Paris and beyond. Fresh off ...

  Bloomberg After years of steady growth and skyrocketing prices, luxury watchmakers are facing slowing sales in 2016, spurring some to introduce elite models for the first time in steel this year (such as Blancpain’s Villeret Quantieme Annuel GMT) and others to deliver complications such as tourbillons and perpetual calendars at more attractive prices. “This is consistent with watch brands ...

  Bloomberg Stylish guys love pocket watches – James Dean carried one, while Johnny Depp and Justin Timberlake also have been spotted wearing them. At the Baselworld watch fair in March, they proved popular as well. Hermes debuted a trio from its Arceau Pocket Promenade de Platon collection showcasing the beauty of Grand Feu enamel work; a silk scarf that ...

  Karachi / AFP Camped on the baking concrete outside a gleaming transplant centre, Karachi’s sick have come from miles around in desperate hope for a last chance at life. There, Dr Adibul Rizvi provides free medical care to hundreds of thousands of people each year, providing a much-needed alternative to Pakistan’s public health sector, which critics dismiss as chaotic, ...

  Kiziba / AFP Inside a red-brick building with a tin roof in western Rwanda, a group of young people are hard at work studying for a US-accredited university degree. But these are no ordinary students: they are Congolese refugees for whom such a qualification could spell an escape from stateless limbo. Over the past year, a Rwandan charity called ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE Armed Forces signed several memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with a number of local companies to increase the privileges provided to all service people through a social initiative launched earlier this year. The signing of the fifth and the latest batch of MoUs takes the total number of companies and businesses to 220, which ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE-India Joint Working Group on Infrastructure Investments held its first meeting in Abu Dhabi. The meeting addressed a range of infrastructure investment-related topics of mutual interest. The Working Group was created under an MoU signed between the UAE and India in February 2016 during the state visit to India of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed ...

  ABU DAHBI / AFP At least 11 OPEC members will meet in Doha on Friday for an “informal and consultative meeting,” Qatar’s energy minister Mohammed Saleh al-Sada has confirmed. Speaking on Thursday after the conclusion of a meeting of major gas exporting countries in Doha, Sada said OPEC members would convene in the Qatari capital on Friday morning. “We will ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM The ‘2016 Make It’ competition, designed to attract the UAE’s best and brightest young talents into manufacturing and engineering, will be held during Innovation Week at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi on November 21 and at UAE University in Al Ain on November 23. The competition will bring together 13 and 14-year old students from ...