All the Beirut news.

Former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei has strongly condemned the torture of one of his supporters by security forces in the city of Fayoum in the Egyptian Nile delta.

Israel is abuzz with talk that photographer Spencer Tunick is coming with plans of staging Israelis for his trademark mass-nude landscapes.
He hasn't arrived yet, but word of him has already reached Israel's parliament, which discussed the matter Wednesday and passed the hot potato on to its education committee for further debate.

I found this radio station this morning by mistake. How long has this been around? It’s a US military station and unlike 96.9 it doesn’t have the annoying English 101 courses.

Back in January I posted 3D renderings of the Avenues phase III project and today iLSuL6ana uncovered the video presentation above. Simply put phase III is going to be jaw dropping. [YouTube]

There's a new move afoot to get Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani back to the pulpit during Tehran's Friday prayers.
According to a report Wednesday in the reformist daily newspaper Bahar (in Persian), the dean of Tehran's elite Imam Sadegh University (where many of the leaders of Iran's intelligence and security apparatus get trained) got the ball rolling in a speech last week. "I still listen to Mr. Rafsanjani," Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, the dean, said along the sidelines of an Islamic unity conference. "Those who want to omit Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani are not important."

YouTube can get lewd and licentiousness, and that just doesn't sit well with Saudi authorities.

Again, a controversial, sexually charged video has gone viral in Saudi Arabia. And, again, it appears to have ruffled the feathers of Saudi guardians of morality.

This time, a young Saudi man dressed in a police uniform flirts wildly with a person off-camera. He's been arrested and charged with morality crimes. 

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the grand sheik of the Islamic world's top Sunni Muslim institution, Al Azhar, died after a heart attack Wednesday during a brief visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt's state-owned news agency announced.

Rumored wedding bells for Bar Refaeli and Leonardo DiCaprio may ring true or false, but these are already being muffled by controversy. 
Supermodel Bar Refaeli is one of Israel's most successful "exports." But with fame comes responsibility -- and now an Israeli organization is beseeching Refaeli not to wed Leonardo DiCaprio -- out of a responsibility to future generations.

This is a need to watch movie. Can’t wait. [YouTube]

Oula just sent us this email in response to the previous post:

Turns out the cops busted the largest marijuana farm in Kuwait which funnily some guy was just growing casually in his front yard. If anyone knows the exact address please post it below! [Link]
via iLSuL6ana and Ansam

Posted by Z District
I got this in an email from a friend, and I’m shocked that any company can refuse an employee medical treatment for 2nd or 3rd degree burns such as this.
I saw this guy in “Oula” gas station in Kuwait City on march 8. I saw the Indian running over to fill my tank as I stepped outside, I saw the poor Indian’s hand and told him to back off; I will do the filling u just relax. I asked him a few questions about how and what happened to his hand.

Students at two Iranian universities staged small protests Monday and Tuesday, video footage uploaded to the internet showed, in the latest sign that the opposition movement unleashed by the country's disputed elections last year has not been stamped out.

 Is a popular independent lawmaker a crook or a victim of Egyptian politics? In a heated session on Monday, members of Egypt's first parliamentary cabinet People's Assembly hesitantly agreed to strip independent lawmaker Talaat Sadat of his immunity following charges of bribery made against him by the state security prosecutor.

Nujood Ali captured the world's attention in 2008 when she showed up in at a Sanaa courthouse demanding a divorce from her thirty-something husband, thrusting the 10-year-old into the spotlight as the face of child brides in Yemen.