Khazen – Page 864

Beirut comes in 37th for highest costs per year

adminFebruary 19, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

Daily star, BEIRUT: Property consultants Cushman & Wakefield ranked Beirut as the 37th most expensive office location worldwide and the third most expensive among four cities in the Middle East and Africa region included in the rankings. The survey, which was carried by Lebanon This Week, the economic publication of the Byblos Bank Group, covered 58 cities around the world. Beirut was the 35th most expensive city globally and the second most expensive in the region in the 2007 survey. The study evaluates 203 key office locations in 58 countries. The location with the most expensive occupancy cost in each country is then included in its annual rankings .

On a global basis, Beirut ranked immediately behind Budapest, Bucharest, Istanbul and Lisbon and was considered more expensive than Prague, Bratislava in Slovania and Calgary in Canada. The cost of office space in Beirut was 342 euros ($500) per square meter per year in 2007, close to the global average of 345 euros but markedly higher than the regional average of 245 euros. The rates reflect rent in addition to municipal tax, service charges and value-added tax. According to Cushman & Wakefield, Beirut’s drop in the rankings from last year was due to a lack of growth in the office sector. It said there was little change in the market during 2007 and a certain amount of stagnation due to the ongoing political problems.

Snowstorm batters Lebanon

adminFebruary 19, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

BEIRUT (AP)

Decoding Lebanese Paranoia

adminFebruary 19, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

New York times, Robert F Worth, Imad Mugniyah was killed in a mysterious car bombing in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Tuesday, a storm of accusation and counteraccusation quickly arose back here in Lebanon. Hezbollah, blamed Israel. Some Western-allied political figures blamed Syria. their own favorite nemesis. Still others saw the killing as the first part of a sinister deal between Syria, Israel and the United States, in which Lebanon would be the loser.

It is a familiar ritual in the Middle East, and especially here in divided Lebanon. No one here can point to any real evidence in the death of Mr. Mugniyah, a famously ruthless and elusive figure. No one has taken responsibility for killing him. But the accusations proliferate. And while they may look to outsiders like plausible explanations, they are often seen here as something different: a kind of road map to the accusers

Why Lebanon has rise to Arabian heights

adminFebruary 19, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

Adam Mynott found quiet pistes, friendly locals and great cuisine, Risk-averse skiers; surely an oxymoron? But no, they must exist

20 injured in Beirut street clashes

adminFebruary 18, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

BEIRUT (AFP) –
Twenty people were injured in street clashes between rival political factions in Beirut, which saw shops and cars set ablaze as rioters fought each other with stones and clubs. "Eighteen people were wounded by stones and baton blows and two
others were lightly wounded from shots fired during the clashes," a
senior security official told AFP on Sunday. Soldiers and police were out on patrol on Sunday in the Ras al-Nabah
district where the fighting took place but the situation was calm.

The army issued a statement calling on all Lebanese not to take part in
such gatherings which "each time end in arrests being made," but it did
not say how many people were detained on Saturday. Similar clashes in recent days between supporters of the Western-backed
government and the Shiite-led opposition have raised tensions in a
country already embroiled in its worst political crisis since the
1975-1990 civil war. The security official had said the fighting involved supporters of
ruling majority leader Saad Hariri and rivals in the opposition Shiite
movement Amal, whose leader is parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

10 hurt in Lebanon as quake shakes Mideast

adminFebruary 15, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

Fri Feb 15, 1:12 PM ET TYRE, Lebanon (AFP) – An earthquake measuring 5.0 on the open ended-Richter rocked Lebanon on Friday, injuring 10 people and sending panicked residents out into the streets in the south of the country. The quake, which was also felt across the border in Israel and in the Gaza Strip, caused damage in a number of villages in southern Lebanon while buildings shook in the capital Beirut.

In the southern coastal city of Tyre, residents ran toward the seashore and began reciting verses of the Koran after the tremor struck, an AFP correspondent said. Lebanon’s National Centre for Scientific Research said the quake had an intensity of 5.0 on the Richter Scale, with its epicentre located 17 kilometres (10 miles) northeast of Tyre, adding that 10 people were slightly injured. "We expect another quake of similar magnitude or stronger in the next 24 hours," said centre director Mouin Hamzeh. The tremor — the second in the region this week — hit at around 1030 GMT.

"Several abandoned homes collapsed and some buildings suffered cracked walls and balconies," Hamzeh told AFP. Local television said some villages in the south experienced power cuts. The chimney on one building in Tyre came tumbling down, crushing several vehicles.

Rivals mark assassinations in Lebanon

adminFebruary 14, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

(Middle East Times, with agency dispatches) By SANA ABDALLAH , Rival political leaders and tens of thousands of their supporters ignored heavy rains in Beirut Thursday to mark two assassinations with fiery speeches that are expected to deepen divisions in Lebanon and sharpen bitterness with Israel.

Thousands thronged Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut to commemorate the third anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in a massive explosion that marked the start of the worst crisis to besiege Lebanon since the end in 1990 of its 15-year civil war.

In the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut, thousands of other mourners converged under umbrellas to bury Imad Mughnieh, a top Hezbollah commander who was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus Tuesday night. While some of the pro-Western March 14 ruling coalition leaders at Martyrs’ Square lashed out at the Syrian and Iranian backers, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki were attending the funeral ceremony for Mughnieh in the southern suburbs. Accusing Israel for the assassination of Mughnieh, and by doing so taking its battle with Hezbollah outside Lebanon, Nasrallah vowed to fight back anywhere. Addressing the Israelis, he said: "O Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, then let the whole world listen: Let this be open war." Israel has denied involvement in the car bomb that killed Mughnieh, but welcomed his assassination. Middle East analysts had anticipated that the place of the killing and method used on Mughnieh, who had managed to operate underground for more than 20 years, would prompt Hezbollah to expand its confrontation with Israel beyond Lebanon’s borders. The Shiite guerilla group was widely hailed in the Arab world for "defeating" Israel in its 34-day war on Lebanon in summer 2006, and its guerillas were credited for ending Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

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Senior leader Imad Mughnieh murdered in Syria: Hezbollah

adminFebruary 13, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

13 February 2008 BEIRUT – A Hezbollah official said on Wednesday that one of it’s top commanders, Imad Mughnieh, had been killed in Syria and blamed Israel for the attack. The official said Mughnieh was killed in a car bombing in the Syrian capital late on Tuesday.

Is party over for Beirut’s clubbers?

adminFebruary 12, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

By Mike Sergeant, BBC, Beirut’s legendary nightlife has survived wars, invasions and assassinations.

But the bars and clubs are slowly being strangled by the ongoing political crisis. This city used to be the unambiguous "party capital of the Middle East". Now a chorus of depression seems to be drowning out Beirut’s famous hedonistic vibe. Mohammed Chehab – a regular in Monot Street’s once-teeming RAI club – said: "Before, it was very good. The nightlife was on fire! "Now, because of the unstable situation in Lebanon, people are afraid to come out. They are scared of explosions." ‘Nothing left’

Monot Street, a narrow avenue which snakes down to the centre of town, had an international reputation among clubbers in its heyday. At night, it was virtually impossible to drive through the crowds of party-goers and the rows of gleaming BMW and Mercedes cars. There were about 100 bars and clubs in the area. Now, locals say the number is down to about 50. "Half of the business has gone," laments Mazin Moughrabi, a manager at one of the clubs. "I will finish my studies and travel abroad. There is nothing left for me in Lebanon."

28.5 percent of Lebanese live in poverty – study

adminFebruary 12, 2008UncategorisedComments are off for this post

Report notes regional disparities, BEIRUT: An international study estimates that the poverty ratio in Lebanon is around 28.5 of the population, accounting for almost a million Lebanese, with 8 percent of the population, or almost 300,000 individuals, living under conditions of extreme poverty. These figures were disclosed by the International Poverty Center (IPC), an institute jointly supported by the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and the Bureau for Development Policy at the United Nations Development Program

"This means that the ratio of the nonpoor in Lebanon is at 71.5 percent. This level compares well to that prevailing around 10 years ago in 1997, as national accounts statistics suggest that the growth in real per-capita private consumption was at a notable average of 2.75 percent annually, since 1997," said the study, which was published by Bank Audi’s Lebanon Weekly Monitor on Tuesday. But the IPC stressed that the distribution of this growth in consumption across different regions within Lebanon was again uneven.

"It was the highest in Beirut, at around 5 percent annually, which is not surprising, considering the widespread investment and job creation that took place in the capital after 1997. Also, a higher-than-average growth rate was observed in the South and Bekaa, as it reached 4 percent annually. On the other hand, Mount Lebanon and the North saw trivial growth in consumption, which translated into a relative decline in their mean per-capita expenditure compared to the overall average," the IPC said.