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A Lebanese Blog

Month: March 2012

  • Old videos of Lebanon

    Check out this collection of old video segments shot in Lebanon during the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s of last century. I just love to watch these stuff and see how did the country use to look like before eruption of the civil war.

    The videos vary from a report about the events that led to our independence in 1943, to random scenes from Beirut, Jeita Grotto, Telepherique Jounieh, as well as footage of the US marines landing in Lebanon in 1958.

    It’s a bummer though that a lot of the listed videos are silent since they’re just offered for preview while the full versions require a license fee, but they’re still worth watching anyway.

    Thank you Kheireddine.

  • The publicly beaten Ethiopian maid committed suicide

    Just when we thought the story of the Ethiopian maid that was beaten in front of her embassy might have reached a happy ending with identifying the guy appearing in the video and her ending up at Deir El-Salib for treatment, LBC reported that she committed suicide today!

    Source

  • Beirut ranked last in city competitiveness

    This is probably going to burst the bubble of so money people who talk big about Lebanon and Beirut being the best places in the world.

    In a recent study published yesterday by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Beirut was ranked 117th most competitive global city in the world, barely managing to come ahead of the bottom 3 cities, Dhaka (Bangladesh), Lagos (Nigeria), and Tehran (Iran), taking into consideration 8 key factors that are Economic strength, Physical capital, Financial maturity, Institutional effectiveness, Social and cultural character, Human Capital, Environment and natural hazards, and Global appeal.

    New York ranked 1st worldwide followed by London and Singapore, while with regards to the Middle East, Dubai unsurprisingly ranked 1st followed by Abu Dhabi, Doha, Tel Aviv, Kuwait City, Muscat, Riyadh, Beirut and Tehran.

    You may read more about the study here, and download the full report here.

  • Reaction to the smoking ban at ABC

    You most probably know that ABC Achrafieh became a smoke free mall as of the 1st of March. Check how some people are reacting to this ban.

    Some of them are simply putting off their cigarettes on the no-smoking sign. Gotta love how classy these people are!

    Photo via @maroun_baydoun

  • Diamony Ski and Fashion Festival 2012

    Diamony lingerie held their annual winter fashion show at Intercontinental Mzaar in Faraya and below are the photos that were published on Demotix and International Business Times.

  • Confessions of Lebanese taxi driver

    Here’s one epic taxi driver. In just less than 30 seconds he managed to tell two Norwegian actors about  his dream, almost crash into another car, and of course curse at the other driver!

    The two actors are actually Jorgen and Matias, who over a period of 3 weeks shot a web series of 14 episodes while walking across Lebanon from north to south, and in each episode they chose to walk for a different cause, thus the name of series “Walk of Causes”. You may check the series website here, and their blog here.

  • Ethiopian maid beaten in the street

    This video was published by LBC and shows barbarism at its best. For some unknown reason, a man was publicly beating an Ethiopian maid reportedly in front of the Ethiopian embassy before forcing her to get into his car and take her back home.

    It was however possible to take note of his car plate number, and he was later identified as “Mahmoud Zhairani”. Now sure how accurate is this information, but if you know the guy and turns up to be the same one showing in the video, make sure to slap him, with a baseball bat, a thousand time.

    Update:

    LBC just tweeted that the man was identified as Ali Mahfouz.

  • Tons of rotten meat confiscated in Beirut

    Al Jadeed news reported last night that around 40 tons of rotten meat was confiscated from “Al-Natrour” warehouse in Sabra yesterday ( Watch the video above for more details).

    What’s more surprising than traders dealing with such big quantities of expired goods is the fact that the mentioned warehouse used to supply very famous hotels and restaurants in Beirut with meat! I’m really curious to the know the list of these places that dealt with Al-Natour.

  • Superb parking skills

    This Barbie Hummer was spotted at Le Mall parking occupying not just one, but two handicapped parking spaces. Way to go missy!

    Photo via Joya Selwan

  • Wrestling event at Beirut Sports City

    I never knew wrestling events happen here! According to this page, there’s an upcoming match between two female wrestlers, Maiju Kujala and Juliana Carneiro, taking place at Beirut Sports City this Friday March 9th. I have no idea however at what time is it happening and where can you buy tickets from. If you have any more details please share them in the comments.

    I’ve done a quick search on Google and found that a cage fight event was held at Habtoor Grand Hotel last month as well. You can watch a video of it here.

    Update:

    I just heard a radio ad for the event. It will begin at 7PM on Friday with more than 30 fighters of several nationalities (including Lebanese) participating, and ticket are available starting $20 up to $150 at Virgin Megastore.