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September 10: Iran national football team assistant coach António Simões says his side is ready to beat Lebanon in Beirut.

It looks like the Iranian coach forgot a few things as his side lost 1-0 by a superb goal from Roda Antar. Congrats to the Lebanese team!

After having freed the abducted Syrians earlier today, the Lebanese security forces freed the Turkish national few hours ago. By doing so, the Lebanese army put an end to the kidnappings spree of Syrians and Turkish nationals in Lebanon in the past few weeks.

As posted earlier today, the salaries hike agreed on recently in Lebanon wasn’t limited to public sector employees but also reached the salaries and compensations of the three top presidential posts of the country, the ministers and the parliament members.

Via AbirGhattas

Picture from NowLebanon

Despite the dilemma over the funding of the new wages scale, the salaries hike wasn’t limited to public sector employees but also reached the salaries and compensations of the three top presidential posts of the country, the ministers and the parliament members, As Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday. [Source]

Accordingly, the top 3 presidential posts will have an increase of around 6,200,000 LL while ministers and MPs will have an increase of around 4,300,000 LL.

Seriously? Is that the appropriate time to give raises to MPs and ministers? The funny thing is that the Economy and Trade minister is actually justifying this move, saying “the raise was equally distributed between everyone”. Couldn’t he have exempted high officials, MPs and Ministers from this law? How hard could it be?

Two months ago, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Lebanon’s outlook from stable to negative mainly due to its high public debt burden and large current account deficit. Instead of trying to cut down costs, we now added $1.2 billion for our state treasury to cover.

VDL (100.5): Interior Minister Marwan Charbel confirmed that the army freed the four kidnapped Syrians and arrested Hassan al-Meqdad who is the head of the clan’s military wing.

The abducted Turkish national Tufan Tekin was wounded in the raid apparently, while security sources are saying he was transferred to Bekaa.

Some good news for a change. It looks like the Mokdads are not going to get away with it after all. Let’s just hope things won’t go out of control after the Pope’s visit.

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Another nice find by Rami

The yearly Shtrumph beer festival is here and it promises to be as fun as the previous years. If you miss my post on the 19th beer festival last year, check it out [Here].

I had totally forgotten about this small piece of heaven until Mark posted about the amazing day he spent there. We used to organize a yearly biking trip all the way from Hrajil to Afqa and rest at the restaurant located underneath the cave and overlooking the Afqa falls. La Reserve wasn’t founded back then but was pretty much needed to preserve the location and organize all-day activities for nature-lovers and adventure-seekers.

If you don’t know what to do with your weekends, I highly recommend you book a full day at La Reserve. You can also go camping the night before in Faraya like Mark did. Check out more about La Reserve [Here].

Picture taken from 248am

You can reach La Réserve through five different paths:

- Beirut > Meirouba > Lassa > Afqa > Mnaitra (80 minutes drive)
- Beirut > Nahr-Ibrahim > Kartaba > Mnaitra (90 minutes drive)
- Beirut > Byblos > Laklouk > Akoura > Mnaitra (90 minutes drive)
- Tripoli > Byblos > Laklouk > Akoura > Mnaitra (90 minutes drive)
- Zahleh > Hadath-Baalbeck > Afqa (100 minutes drive)

Just image what could happen if one of those vertical posters falls on a car, noting that half of those posters located between Antelias and Nahr el Kalb are not fixed properly.

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Californation

Francois from Larabio.com posted a full review on the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert and uploaded some videos he took from the concert. Check them all out [Here]

It used to cost 7995 liras back then.

via LaithNY

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LOL at the last 4 seconds.

The only rockets we take pride in (Not all of us) these days are Katyousha rockets.

via +961

Habib Haddad, Founder of Yamli & CEO of Wamda (Lebanon)

The TR35 program, jointly hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region and MIT’s Technology Review, selects the most outstanding innovators from the Arab region under the age of 35 to move on to the TR35 Global Competition and ultimately participate in the Emtech MIT Conference on October 24-26, 2012. [Link]

Three out of the Five winners were Lebanese, while the two others were from Palestine and Saudi Arabia. You can check them all out [Here].

Hind Hobeika, Butterfleye (Lebanon): Hind is an inventor and entrepreneur, pioneering the way swimmers train for their races

Elie Khoury co-founded iFusion Labs and developed Woopra in 2008, pioneering real-time analytics and giving businesses and blogs the power to instantly turn live data into actions and results

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I know the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert is already over but I am still getting comments trying to convince me that they are evil and love Israel and no one else and we should boycott them. The last comment I got on this was the below:

Watch the RHCP express their love of Israel.
They are either:
- absolute idiots, unaware of what Israel stands for and how artists have been boycotting it for a few years.
- supportive of what Israel stands for.
- apathetic and lacking any human compassion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDF-w6z_cDI

I wish whomever left this comment had bothered to see other similar videos. As it happens, the RHCP upload a video showing their excitement every time they are going to a new destination (including Beirut). So I am going to say that one final time, art and politics do not mix and the RHCP boycott campaign was a complete failure.

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