All the Beirut news.

Make sure to read Habib Battah’s story on how he got physically assaulted yesterday for trying to take photos of the ruins at District S construction site in Beirut downtown.
My chest and wrists still hurt from the arms of the men who tackled me, twisted my hands behind my back, and tried to rip my phone out of my hands this afternoon.
They were enraged because I refused to delete a photo of ancient ruins I shot on their construction site.

CNN chose Barbar among their favorite Kebab joints in the world for the chicken shawarma it offers, and they got it right as Barbar’s shawarma is one of the best in town. Four other joints were chosen from Turkey, Israel, Greece, and Iran.

My chest and wrists still hurt from the arms of the men who tackled me, twisted my hands behind my back, and tried to rip my phone out of my hands this afternoon.

They were enraged because I refused to delete a photo of ancient ruins I shot on their construction site.

"Lock the door," one of the foreman said earlier today, and moments later the giant doors of the site were sealed. I was surrounded by 5 to 6 men looking at me menacingly--prepared it seemed--to do anything to shut me up.

Here's how it all went down:

Beirut Night Life posted about an American company who’s currently proposing a 150Km bridge connecting Dbayeh to Limassol to allow reaching Cyprus from Lebanon (or vice versa) within 80minutes. Using this bridge will be subject to paying a certain fee, and it will be owned by the American company for the 10 years.
Can you imagine how many things can go wrong if this projects gets approved?

Best of both worlds? 

This Wednesday, Alfa will launch the 4G-LTE network.I have been selected along with other bloggers to test Alfa’s 4G mobile broadband for a month and will be as of this Wednesday, sharing with you my 4G experience. Can’t wait!!!

After making it to late stages in The Voice France, Anthony Touma was eliminated by his coach Jenifer even though he got 59.7% of the public vote, but Jenifer awarded him only 15 points out of 50 while his opponent Olympe got 35 points which was enough for him to qualify to the semi finals.
Anyway, wishing him luck signing with some famous producer now!

Stalled since it was announced in 2004, Jean Nouvel's Landmark mall and tower development has become one of the biggest archeological digs in Beirut. It's said to contain ruins from the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic empire/periods.
But for some reason, work on the site-- which occupies a massive 20,000 square meter plot in Riad Al Solh square--has been kept top secret. 

Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui, announced a while back that as of June 1st, all illegally imported mobile devices will not work on Lebanese SIM.This issue have raised a lot of both positive and negative feedback. If you want to put an end to illegally imported devices, then you should tackle the source of the problem instead of making citizens’ life harder.

Tucked away in the sleepy village of Bechealeh, Lebanon, 16 olive trees have witnessed 6000 years of political unrest, plagues, diseases, varying climatic conditions and changing civilizations. In fact these “trees of Noah” are considered by locals to be a living miracle because nature, as we all know, is often silent and passive in the face of hardship, greed and violence so the fact that these arcane olive trees have managed to skirt 6000 years of climatic shifts, hacking axes and diseases makes me believe that, as improbable as this may sound, that there has been some mystical or divine providence watching over and protecting those trees for Bechealeh, for Lebanon and – who knows – maybe even for all the rest of us. Wikipedia has a list of the oldest trees, both alleged and verified.

Here is a series of pictures just published by Save Beirut Heritage, which is campaigning to stop what it says is the imminent demolition of some 30 heritage buildings for the Fouad Boutros highway project.

Also at stake is the clearing of a wide swath of some of Beirut's last undeveloped green spaces. The works could endanger dozens more old buildings, SBH claims.

SBH says it had proposed a park, but that plan seems to have been rejected.

More to come...

UPDATE: I've just spoken to the lead engineer and he says the project will begin "in about a month."

Americans living abroad will be watching to see what happens now that Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has introduced a bill to repeal provisions of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

The below infographic was published yesterday by touch Lebanon showing the mobile OS breakdown on their network. Unsurprisingly, Android accounted for 50% of the devices, followed by Symbian and Apple iOS.

Blog post will be updates tonight.
The post MOT to Put an End to Illegally Imported Devices in Lebanon [An Infographic] appeared first on Abir Ghattas.